House Stark – Part 3

I had planned to stick to models from the ASOIAF starter set until I had a couple of little armies up and running but unless you’re new here you know by now that I’m the biggest hobby butterfly that ever lived so going off on a tangent is parr for the course. Sure enough, rather than sticking it out with the core units as I planned I decided to paint Arya Stark, the wolf girl of Winterfell, instead. Her face looks very, very pale in these photos and no matter what I do I can’t get them looking right, suffice to say she looks a little bit healthier in real life.

From the same set of models as Arya Stark comes Shaggydog, the dark furred dire wolf of Rickon, the youngest of the Stark children. Honestly I fancied painting a wolf and he had “easy win” written all over him!

Shaggydog is often described as the most feral and dangerous of the direwolves, which is exactly what will happen if you give a three-year-old boy a large, savage wild animal and expect him to train it all by himself. I do see where Eddard was coming from with his insistence that the children should care for the puppies themselves (a dire wolf is for life not just for Christmas and all that) but a little more thought in regard to his youngest son might have been worthwhile. Then again no-one else seems to have given it much thought either. Anyway, as usual when the owner fails to do any training it’s the poor beast which gets the blame so now he has a reputation for being a bad dog – and Shaggy’s protestations that “it wasn’t me” have fallen on deaf ears. 

Having painted Shaggy I decided that whilst I was on a roll I should paint up Rickon as well, on the grounds that he’s only small and so should be a fairly easy win too. Sure enough, I powered through the little lad as well.

Neither of these latter two are models that I planned to use in my Stark army to begin with but easy wins are easy wins and it’s always nice to have options. However whilst character models like these are great I still need to be working on some troops for them to lead and so lately I also turned my attention to the Stark Bowmen. Having powered through the Sworn Swords I found myself wondering if I could tackle the Bowmen at a similar pace, and the answer is… yes, possibly. 

Like the Sworn Swords they may be a bit plain but they’re also wonderfully quick and easy to paint and right now that’s a huge bonus in my book, so we’ll see if I can crack on with them over the next little while or if I get distracted by something a bit more showy like those opulent Lannisters which are forming an angry mob on the edge of my desk…

House Stark – Part 1

This month I’ve mostly been concentrating on painting the Lannister half of the Starks vs Lannisters starter set for A Song of Ice and Fire (expect to see them here soon!). Lately however I fancied a bit of a change of pace so this time we’re going to be looking at the hardy northerners instead of their fancy-pants rivals.

So far I’ve not done much with the Starks but what I have done is tackle a couple of the key characters for the faction and a few troops. The leader of my Stark army, for now at any rate, will be Robb Stark so he seemed like a fine place to start working on the faction. When Lord Eddard Stark is called away to the capital King’s Landing he leaves his eldest son Robb to command the North in his absence. Soon garnering the title “the Young Wolf” Robb proves himself to be a capable leader and a cunning and determined tactician.

I really like this miniature, it’s not fancy but it contains a lot of personality and really suits the character of the young northern lord. However anyone who’s read the novels will know that the younger Starks seem to get into trouble the moment they’re separated from their pet dire wolves, so I reckoned I’d be wise to paint Robb’s canine companion Grey Wind as well.

He’s better sculpted than pretty much any wolf Games Workshop has managed over the years but he’s still not the greatest model, the head especially is really poor and from some angles looks quite squashed and misshapen. In the end all he needed was a fairly quick and dirty paint job, and to be honest that’s all he really deserves as well. 

Just a boy and his dog, going for a walk… to King’s Landing…

Of course even these two stalwarts aren’t going to defend the North without a little help and as it happens I’ve got a whole heap of Sworn Swords on my desk ready to heed their liege lord’s call. These are not the most visually interesting sculpts by any stretch of the imagination – they’re not bad but they’re not all that exciting either. I do have a lot of them however so I went for a scheme that was quick and easy to replicate but nothing fancy.

All being well I should be able to rattle through the rest of the squad in short order – but first; some Lannisters!