Call the Banners!

Recently I’ve been busy working on my Night’s Watch for the A Song of Ice and Fire game (Game of Thrones), as tomorrow I’m off to a tournament run by Thomas, and if its half as good as the others he has run it will be great! What is interesting is that Thomas has decided to do this to a particular theme, i.e. as part in the story, namely the battles of the river lands and hence called it “The Conquest of the Riverlands” Because of this some restrictions are in place all with the idea of trying to get people to use themed forces, i.e. no people who are dead at this point in the story! I loved the idea of doing a themed list and really happy the chose this as an idea, but my word did it cause me some head scratching to try and get a Night’s watch themed force, as on the whole they where not really there. But I got there in the end thanks to a few chats with Thomas and Brian, so thanks guys. And as such I needed so new units painted up so this is what I’ve been beavering away at.

So in total 4 heroes on foot, one on a horse a unit of infantry and most of a unit of knights (I had done on in the past for this unit), and I put the last touches on their base tonight so just got there in time!

The heroes from left to right are Donal Noye the one arm Blacksmith of castle black, such a nice character full model that one really gives a very sturdy reliable pose, and I tried a bit of stubble on his chin for the first time which was cool! Next up is a Watch Captain which are the unnamed officers, I liked the classic foot on a rock hero pose the model had and went for blond hair to make in really stand out. Next is Coter Pyke the commander of East Watch taking the other classic hero pose of point a sword. Finally we have Yoren a Recruiter for the watch in his very well traveled gear. All where nice and simple to paint using contrast blacks of different colours (browns, blues and purples) to give the black different shades then some simple belts and boots in browns, all metal I did silver (different shades) apart from one bit of gold/copper on the pummel of the Watch Captains sword, I don’t think this force would have a lot of money for fancy gear but the watch captain looked like he came from a well off family so perhaps its a heirloom.

Next up is the Hedge Knights, these are a mercenary unit fighting for coin and are basically knights down on their luck, as such all got a faded colour schemes highlighting all the scratchers the models have, but I still wanted it to look like they where from noble house and all different houses hence I chose a verity of different schemes, I’m really happy with the white and blue one, while I think the yellow one is my least favorite out the bunch. The green one hiding in the back I did some time ago. One nice thing about these models is I actually won them all at tournaments including some for the last one that Thomas won, so it will be nice to take them back to one! Hopefully their first showing will go down well.

Next up I stick to faded colour in the form of the conscripts, these chaps are people that for one reason or other are joining the Night’s Watch, but are not yet full brothers, hence they have not said the vows to wear only black and are instead in the cloths of their old lives. As such I went for lots of different colours but again very faded, I’m assuming many people joining the Night’s watch have had a hard life one way or the other. These units have only 3 sculpts, so 4 repeats of each, so to get a really nice mix of colours and shades in the unit I base coated the each repeat in a different colour (using my air brush), and then used contrast to bring the colour, which was a lot less bright as its not over white, that and a few washes of brown and black worked a treat. I would say however the yellow colour on the far left was not idea, the other 3 worked as great base coats but that one I think the colour was just a bit to strong for a base. I also took a picture with Yeorn as he is the recruiter that got them into this mess!

Last up was a Watch Marshal now this is actually the second Watch Marshal I have done as one of my lists needed 2 (one in a unit one on his own) so rather than paint the same model a second time I did a little conversion. In the 3 photo I think it helps show where I got the bits from I used the horse model from the Watch Marshal and the upper body from a Watch Captain (left and right of the new model respectively). This I felt gave a nice mounted hero, I was a bit unsure what to do in his left hand and ended up using a flag, like wise I was unsure if to do a symbol for the nights watch, but in the end I went for a picture of the wall and castle black where the nights watch are from. Nice to do a bit of free hand every now and again and I thought it came out sort of how I had in mind.

So thats the models all done, what I thought I’d briefly mention below is forces the models fit into and why I’ve picked these armies for this theme fight in the river lands.

The first force I got the idea for the easiest, the commander is Alliser Thorne in the books he went south to kings landing, but I don’t think a lot is mentioned about his return journey (their could be I’ve not read all the books yet and I really don’t have a perfect memory any more!). So the idea is he is trying to get home, along with some of the nastier Nights Watch chaps that went with him (ok I think he went on his own in the books but thats not much of an army) I also think Alliser is a git enough to fight anyone that gets in his way while doing this. Hence he is with some Vets, and he has 2 units of Sworn Brothers each with a Watch Captain in (hence the need for that new foot hero as I only had 1 before), on the way he hires some of his old mates from before he was in the Nights Watch i.e. the Hedge Knights (hence why I needed them), for the NCU’s I’m only taking 1 as I always felt Alliser had few friends other than Bowman Marsh who I recon would be trying to keep an eye out for him as much as possible. After that 1 Watch Marshal to square the points off and continue to give the force a very elite feel.

My next force was much harder to get my head around, I really wanted to do Yeron trying to get to Castle Black with his recruits as that is in the book, but in the book he is the only true Nights Watch person in the area, I did think about doing a full Conscripts force but I had none of these models and did not really fancy buying 5 boxes or so. Also Yeron can not be the army commander. So in the end I went with Pike as the commander with the idea that he had heard Yeron was trying to get back and was in trouble and he came to find him. I plan to use this force on one of the battles which is going to have a River Running through it, and deploy Pike in his Sworn Brothers one side and Yeron on the other, to represent them trying to get back together. I added both units of ranger Cav I have as I felt thats what you would take if you are looking for someone. Bowmen Marsh and Donal Noye ended up being my NCUs as I felt the things they are responsible for (provisions and weapons) could still have influence away from the wall. That left me with 5 points, so I went for 2 Watch Marshals one on his own and the second in a cav unit, hence the need for the second model.

And so with that I will finish putting my models away and get ready for battle tomorrow, I’ve going over with Chris from the local club so hopefully we can give a good showing for Bury Tabletop Gamers! I’ll try to remember to take some pics this time around and do a post after the event some time!