House Stark – Part 5

Time to return to the battlefields of Westeros and add some long-range firepower to the armies of House Stark. Back in May I powered through a squad of Sworn Swords and found myself wondering if I could apply the same batch-painting technique to the Stark Bowmen as well. However batch-painting really isn’t my forte so its taken me until now to just roll up my sleeves and get on with it.

Once again there are lots of duplicate sculpts and the effort vs outcome ratio proved not to be worth the time required to make them all unique. Gathered together as a unit though I reckon they look not bad at all.

Once again painting these has emphasised to me how quick and straightforward to paint the Starks can be when I just get on with it. Whether this translates into more northmen soon however only time will tell…

House Stark – Part 4

The other day after I painted those Stark archers I made some noises about perhaps breaking up the rather austere Starks with some nice opulent Lannisters. Instead I’ve veered off my original plan altogether and decided to paint some Stark allies in the form of some very fancy looking Tullys. 

For a while I really struggled with the shields. The Tully colours are blue and red (paly wavy azure and gules, a trout embowed argent apparently, no I don’t know what that means either – ask The Imperfect Modeller, he understands these things). The trouble is the rest of the scheme is very blue, so too much blue on the shields and the whole model just turns into a blue blob. Too much red on the other hand and it would look like they’d borrowed some Lannister shields, especially as I’ve not painted any other parts of the model red. Trying to get a mix of both colours on there looked set to be a lot of work and most likely lead to a lot of freehanding, something I was keen to avoid because a) it’s hard, b) it’s a guaranteed way to slow the project to a crawl, c) it seems a bit counter-productive when the models already have such nice designs on their shields and d) have I mentioned it’s hard? Brainwashed as I am by Games Workshop my next thought was to try blue and white (if it’s good enough for the Elves of Ulthuan…). Here’s a rare WIP picture of how far I got before I decided to change tack. 

Blue and white conjures images of the sky, little clouds, snapping pennants and snow-capped peaks. Perfect for the Knights of the Vale in fact, should CMON ever make them, but not so good for river loving Tullys. 

Then I realised that the answer was staring me in the face. I had been thinking of the raging white waters of upland brooks, not the placid green depths and winding meanders of a lowland river. I even managed to mix in some nice muddy reddish brown after all.

These really are some of the nicest models in the range in my book, and very straightforward to paint as well. Part of me wants to drop everything and paint some more straight away, and part of me thinks it would be wise to make them a treat for after I’ve worked my way through some other stuff. We’ll have to see which school of thought wins out. 

Whilst we’re on the subject of Tullys, I’ve also painted that most famous, complex and divisive daughter of the house; Catelyn (that’s “Lady Stark” to the likes of you and me). Like her opposite number in the starter box, Cersei Lannister, she’s not the greatest miniature ever sculpted so I didn’t knock my pan in trying to paint her to perfection. She’s done, I’m happy enough with the results and that’s good enough for me.

It’s not just about Starks and Tullys though. Something I want to capture with this army is the appearance of an alliance of Northern houses. In time I plan to include Karstarks, Umbers, Mormonts and Boltons. Maybe someday I’ll be able to add some Manderlys, Glovers and Hornwoods too (again that’s assuming CMON both make them and then decide to actually sell them in the UK…). Those who are familiar with the later books or series of the TV show often forget – I know I do – that the Boltons start out as allies sworn to support the Starks. In this case the men of the Dreadfort will be represented by a squad of the ominous Black Guard. As mercenaries these lads can also fight alongside my Lannisters (or even any other factions I might decide to paint – although as I’m a bit of a “book loyalist” I don’t really see that happening – unless the wildly unlikely happens and the Boltons join up with some other faction in a later book).

As with the Tullys I really like these models so I’ll aim to prioritise them in the near future. So long as I don’t invite them to any weddings everything should be fine…

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 2

I’m not usually one for batch painting but if I’m honest the House Stark Sworn Sword miniatures I have are both straightforward to paint and not very interesting so I decided to just power through without delay. 

With this little lot done the squad was almost complete and just needed a man with a banner to help them stand out in the thick of the fray.

With him done the unit could actually be called complete, as Robb Stark will be taking the final slot and acting as the leader. However there will be days when I feel like having someone else in charge of the army, or Robb will be attached to a different unit or busy doing something else like helping Uncle Edmure to plan his wedding. At such times I’ll need someone else to take charge of this unit – enter the Sworn Sword Captain.

The unit still isn’t done though, to be called complete it needs a movement tray so I got that painted up as well. 

And as I was doing so I realised I still hadn’t painted the movement tray for Grey Wind either, so I painted it at the same time.

Here’s the full squad of Sworn Swords, ready to take to the field.

In theory my next move will be to paint up some more units from the Stark vs Lannister boxset but having painted these Sworn Swords I’m in the mood to tackle something a bit more fancy from the wider Stark range so I might veer off and do that instead – watch this space I guess!

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!