To my mind, Tolkien remains the pinnacle of fantasy but like many here, I have become seriously obsessed with Game of Thrones. I'm even one of the seemingly few that loved the last series. In gaming terms, CMON came to the rescue last year when they released their A Song of Ice and Fire range. A few of us at our Club have picked up the various Starter Sets and separate units. I love the game but the consensus amongst us is that it will probably not cope with a very large battle of the type that we like to play every so often, so Phil is currently working on a variant using the To The Strongest system, which is our preferred rule set for Ancient / Medieval large battles.
In the meantime, the other guys have been busy painting up units and I have finally got my road show on the move, going for the Bolton and Umber factions to begin with. The figures in the main are beautiful - the equal of many resin and metal ranges out there, which is impressive for mass produced ready made plastic "gaming" miniatures. That said, there are improvements that can be made, and I have been delving into my stash of kits by Fireforge and other manufacturers to individualise my units.
The Cutthroats pack contains an excellent captain figure. I kept him "as is" for the first unit and then tweaked him a bit for the second one, swapping out his shield for an axe and replacing his sword with a severed head. The second figure follows the same theme, and bears a replacement head from the Fireforge Russian Infantry pack.
Here is Ramsay the Bastard himself plus another converted Cut Throat carrying a suitably vicious looking banner stolen from a GW Marauders box, and a bodyguard. In TTS terms, this will be a detached Command Base.
A close up of Ramsay and co. The original bannerman figure was posed entirely differently, waving a flag but having no weapon. He is better equipped now.
Here are the first bunch of Cut Throats. The pack is actually one of the weakest of CMON's range. None of the figures have a shield except the captain, and four of them are waving maces somewhat ineffectually in their left hands. I suspect that some of the design choices were influenced by packaging demands - each unit in the range comes in a formed transparent plastic holder, which is presumably intended to be used for storage / transportation. The downside is that this has limited some of the detail and poses. Fireforge again came to the rescue - their Foot Sergeants box provided all the shields, and I stratch-built the straps from plastic stock. The left handers were converted to right handers. Given that there are only three basic poses per pack, I re-posed many of the arms on all of the figures to provide extra variety in addition to the head swaps.
One thing the Boltons do get in the game is a very punchy unit of heavy cavalry seemingly inspired stylistically by the Warhammer Chaos faction. This figure originally carried a flag which I removed because I did not like the moulded on detail. Instead, he received the sword that I had removed from the afore-mentioned Captain, plus a scratch-built scabbard and (in a further nod to Chaos) some "Skulz".
Here is the second bunch of Cutthroats,
These chaps plus the other Bolton units (including Ramsay's Bastard Girls, the mastiffs) are now in the painting berth. I will do an Umber Great Axes unit next, possibly some Berserkers, and then I'll probably plough into the Starks.
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April 11, 2016, 01:44:41 PM