A Stannis Baratheon Project Log (Update 04/04, pg 15 - Jon Connington)

[HappyChappy439]

Hi Everyone,

I've been out of the hobby for a few years so I decided to get back into it (mostly after reading Captain Blood's excellent Westeros thread), and wanted to climb aboard the Song of Ice and Fire bandwagon with a thread of my own.

I've decided to theme the project around Stannis Baratheon's forces in The North, partly because it doesn't seem to be all that common of a theme, and partly because I need some practice doing free-hand shield and banner designs.

The bulk of the miniatures are Perry Agincourt plastics with a few conversions here and there.

So for a start, here's some test miniatures where I've tried to paint Stannis' sigil on a pavise (apologies for the lighting!), and a mould I've made to try and make heater shields:

 

 

I'll hopefully post updates as and when I have more miniatures finished!

[dbsubashi]

Those look fine! Good job on the sigils! And welcome to the GoT madness!

[HappyChappy439]

Hi everyone! It's been an extremely long time but I've finally been able to have time to work on this again! I've been using the downtime mostly to practice painting livery and heraldry, so I've been trying to integrate more freehanding of it into the project.

So to start up again, here's a bundle of Baratheons!

I finished up a block of the pavisiers, but to be honest...I'm not *too* happy with them for some reason, I'll probably just keep the eight of them as back-rank bodyguards.



I've also painted up what I'm going to use as a command block. King Stannis, Ser Justin Massey, Ser Richard Horpe, a couple of standard bearers, and a random groom/squire type person.



The Massey spiral is pretty excruciating to paint, so thankfully Stannis doesn't seem to have brought many more Massey men of arms with him to the Wall!

With the standard bearers, Stannis is described as having his own personal sigil of the stag in a fiery heart, and also the 'vannila' Baratheon crowned stag, so I wanted to include both. These ones weren't quite as freehand, where I drew the sigils in pencil, before painting them.



Here's the whole gang together



In terms of 'regular' Baratheon soldiers, I liked the idea of having blocks of polearm/halberd equipped infantry, I'm not sure how accurate it is to have the Perry Agincourt-era Infantry using halberds, but I've got a bit of a soft spot for them! The actual infantry don't have much in the way of defining livery badges, so they can sneakily be used as Swiss or German halberdiers in other games!



In command of the block I've kitbased a figure together to represent Ser Clayton Suggs, a rather horrible hedge knight. To represent how he's a lot lower born than some of the other knights I put him in an infantry aketon and added a visor to one of the infantry bascinets.



And finally, I've converted up a Mounted variant of King Stannis, with Lightbringer. I know in the books the sword just glows, rather than being on fire, but I liked the idea of having the flaming sword as a sort of banner for the cavalry.

[Captain Blood]

Nice conversion work there. Stannis looks great 

[HappyChappy439]

Thanks for the kind words!

I've been tinkering away with practicing with heraldry and sigils, and also to practice sculpting heater shields en masse, so I decided to paint up a block of infantry for House Florent, King Stannis' wife, Queen Selyse's house. I want to hopefully add units (or at least, random knights and men at arms with shields and surcoats) from a few of the houses sworn to King Stannis.

The Florent sigil I used was based mostly off of one that appears in some of the Fantasy Flight games card artwork. Incidentally, painting ermine is hard!



Here's the infantry without the men at arms in the block, the bascinet boys



And here's the whole gang together so far

[Ogrob]

Spiffy heraldry!

[HappyChappy439]

Hi everyone!

Been trying to practice specific heraldry, so I've been working on getting individual knights/men-at-arms painted up from the houses sworn to King Stannis

My eventual aim is to have two blocks, one of "hand-weapon and shield" and the other with polearms.

First off, here's some named characters:

Corliss Penny (his arms aren't stated in the books, so I improvised with some canting, and put five bezants on a bend sinister, because bezants...penny...ah, I'll show myself out), Justin Massey, Richard Horpe and Ormund Wylde




I've also done a few unnamed knights from the other houses in Stannis' army, so here's knights from House Morrigen, House Velaryon, House Caron and House Bar Emmon



Personally I'm not a fan of the Morrigen arms on the wiki, so I tried to do something more like the Silesian eagle on the shield and surcoat. Hopefully it turned out ok!

Here's another angle



 

[Ogrob]

Heraldry continues to look great. If you tire of sculpting heaters, I had excellent fast service from 1st Corps, I ordered a good hundred shields from them for my force.

[HappyChappy439]

Thanks for the suggestion! In retrospect the 'mould-lines' from green-stuff are more visible in the photos! I'll definitely give 1st Corps a look!

[Wellington Bonaparte]

Your heraldry is wonderful and makes me want to go back and have another go at my own. My Mormont bear was ok but other ones I've tried have been rubbish, not surprising when you are comparing yourself against the standards set on here by the likes of your self and captain Blood!

[HappyChappy439]

Oh wow! Thanks for the high praise!

I think the heraldry/freehand detail is something I want to improve on, in anticipation for looking into some 15th century historicals, especially once the coats-of-arms start getting quartered (looking at you, Burgundian arms!)

Thanks again!

[HappyChappy439]

Hello again!

Here's another of Stannis' vassal houses, House Peasebury of Poddingfield (a bit on the nose there from George RR Martin I think!). They're specifically mentioned as contributing bowmen to Stannis' cause, so I'm using them as a block of archers.



I wanted to put a figure together with a cloak to be Lord Robin Peasebury. In retrospect I ended up painting his cloak to look like a beach towel, but I liked the effect so I'm keeping it! 

As an aside, I also put together two test extremely loyal Karstark light-cavalry (of the "dozen mounted lancers" described in A Dance with Dragons). It's cold-out so I wanted to make them look better dressed for the Winter than Stannis' own southern forces, so I GS'd some gloves and extra chainmail padding. Hopefully they turned out ok!

[Ogrob]

Good builds! The pea pod banner is bril

[AKULA]

Lovely work - a great looking collection

 

[HappyChappy439]

Hi everyone, another update, this time for House Fell of Fellwood, one of the houses from the Stormlands who travel up north with King Stannis.

I've got a block of infantry (compared to the archers for House Peasebury), with men-at-arms mixed in, led by Lord Harwood Fell. I've given them all axes, because axe, fell, wood? Ah? Ah?





As a general rule, I'm wanting to give the Lordly characters big cloaks to set them apart from the Knights and Men-at-Arms.

Here's King Stannis, and his lordly followers, Lord Fell and Lord Peasebury