A Song of Ice and Fire in 25mm

[Dilettante Gamer]

After a very, very lengthy interregnum imposed by the need to clear my late father's house, I'm finally getting back into the swing of things.
...
Have any of you other GoT'ers out there had similar ideas/thoughts? This is a familiar conundrum to representing multi company formations in other periods like Medieval and ECW using a limited number of models.
I'm having great trouble squaring up my desire to represent a number of minor houses within factions along feudal lines, while still ending up with functional units that work on the battlefield. I want to game large skirmish/small battles, but as yet don't have a system in mind. I see other gamers using unit sizes around 8 strong, but I don't want to generate dozens of such units...

SB - I have some preliminary thoughts but have not yet reached clarity on similar questions. Perhaps we can help each other figure out what's workable as we both pull the cobwebs off of our escapist hobby aspirations.

Context - My evolution:

  > When I started this 3 years ago, I was inspired by Frank Becker's Stark/Lannister factions for modified SAGA (Tactica). But I've never warmed to
     the SAGA battle boards.  Somehow feels to gimmicky. Don't get me wrong. FANTASTIC pick up game. But "gamey".

  > Then I fell in love with the TFL Dux Britanniarum rules - particularly the mechanics of linked raids and growing forces building into battles, that
      there are stakes outside of any one particular game.  I thought this would work for a Greyjoy / Stark or Lannister combo.

  > Then came Lion Rampant, now Dragon Rampant which allowed me to configure retinues based on what I conceive as the characteristics of each 
      house. I have retinues for Lannister, Stark, Greyjoy completed, with Tully and Arryn (for a friend who fancies that do-nothing house) in the works.

  > Right now, my retinues are all one house and not their bannermen - though I do want to include that variety.

Some thoughts on this:

  > Stay with Lion Rampant as a skirmish game, and larger, multi-player (viz Dalaupproar) but then combine retinues into two larger forces - using
     movement tray/sabots - and use another rules set (Medieval Warfare? Hail Caesar? Sword & Spear?) for massed battles.

  > With LR, commanders don't do much and banners are just for show.  In a larger game, I'd use rules for organizing into "battles" a la WotR with
      major house leading the center (main) battle - e.g. Rob Stark and key lieutenants leading the van and the rear battles - e.g. Rickard Karstark and
      Greatjon Umber

  > Keep the mounted elites, and possibly one of the foot sergeants in the major house colors and have each of the other units represent the
      bannermen houses I think appropriate or I fancy representing.

  >  Just leave the current retinues as major houses and build additional retinues or partial retinues to play larger points games of LR.

That's what I have for now. More thoughts later perhaps.

PS - My ambitions far exceed the hobby time I've been committing. But a guy can dream...

[Charlie_]

Yeah I had similar thoughts on the Crakehalls, as there is no way they are getting left out of my Lannister army.

Agreed. When (if) I eventually expand beyond the Riverlands, the two Westerlands houses I'm definitely going to do are Crakehall and Brax. House Brax doesn't really do that much in the books, but the name Ser Flement Brax just sounds awesome to me, and they have nice heraldry. Purple unicorn on silver.

Ah, but look at this.
http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Brax
An AWoIaF they have interpreted silver as grey. But unless I'm mistaken, 'silver' in actual medieval heraldry was white.... A purple unicorn on a white field looks MUCH better, and that's what I'll be doing for sure.

[commissarmoody]

Make it so! 

[Hupp n at em]

Agreed. When (if) I eventually expand beyond the Riverlands, the two Westerlands houses I'm definitely going to do are Crakehall and Brax. House Brax doesn't really do that much in the books, but the name Ser Flement Brax just sounds awesome to me, and they have nice heraldry. Purple unicorn on silver.

Ah, but look at this.
http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Brax
An AWoIaF they have interpreted silver as grey. But unless I'm mistaken, 'silver' in actual medieval heraldry was white.... A purple unicorn on a white field looks MUCH better, and that's what I'll be doing for sure.

Oooh, I like the purple on white idea much more.  For me, I definitely have to represent House Marbrand, as Ser Addam strikes me as a Westerlands leader in the same vein as Kevan Lannister: professional, and well liked by both his subordinates and superiors. Plus their blazon is pretty cool:
http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Marbrand

[Charlie_]

For me, I definitely have to represent House Marbrand, as Ser Addam strikes me as a Westerlands leader in the same vein as Kevan Lannister: professional, and well liked by both his subordinates and superiors. Plus their blazon is pretty cool:
http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Marbrand

Absolutely, except I think his heraldry is one of those weird ugly ones!!!
But perhaps you could make it look good. Very dark grey, almost charcoal perhaps?

[Captain Blood]

I definitely have to represent House Marbrand, as Ser Addam strikes me as a Westerlands leader in the same vein as Kevan Lannister: professional, and well liked by both his subordinates and superiors. Plus their blazon is pretty cool:
http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Marbrand

You see, this is what worries me about the whole area of ASOIAF heraldry...
That AWOIAF entry on House Marbrand quotes just one verifiable reference from A Game of Thrones, where the sigil is described. Then it cites two other references from 'The Citadel' and 'semi-canon' sources.
Follow the links to 'The Citadel' - and that's just another fan site with entries on the heraldry of several dozen different houses.
But most of these are unattributed. In other words they are not shown as being based on descriptions by Martin in any of the books.
So does this mean some nerds are just sitting in their bedrooms making them up, and then putting them out there as 'official'?
And what are 'semi-canon' sources? Surely something's either in the books or it's not?

I have an inescapable feeling that there are people out there making half this stuff up, which other people (like us) are taking at face value as primary source material - when it isn't 

[Charlie_]

And what are 'semi-canon' sources? Surely something's either in the books or it's not?

I've a feeling some of these semi-canon sources might be from a board game of some kind, an 'official' GRRM-approved one. But I might be wrong.

I have a copy of The World Of Ice And Fire, which is fantastic and well worth buying, and it does have artwork of lots of houses from each region. This is the book that was written by GRRM and his #1 superfans / assistants Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson. If there is anything in it he didn't write himself, it was from those two and he most certainly approved of it.
The heraldry in it does look much better than the wiki page ones. From the houses we have just been discussing, Marbrand looks more like a burning tree against a background that sort of fades from black to white, and the brindled-boar-on-brown of Crakehall looks acceptable.

EDIT - See, here is Marbrand from first AWOIAF, then the official World Of Ice And Fire book. Judge for yourself.

[Hupp n at em]

I've a feeling some of these semi-canon sources might be from a board game of some kind, an 'official' GRRM-approved one. But I might be wrong.

I have a copy of The World Of Ice And Fire, which is fantastic and well worth buying, and it does have artwork of lots of houses from each region. This is the book that was written by GRRM and his #1 superfans / assistants Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson. If there is anything in it he didn't write himself, it was from those two and he most certainly approved of it.
The heraldry in it does look much better than the wiki page ones. From the houses we have just been discussing, Marbrand looks more like a burning tree against a background that sort of fades from black to white, and the brindled-boar-on-brown of Crakehall looks acceptable.

EDIT - See, here is Marbrand from first AWOIAF, then the official World Of Ice And Fire book. Judge for yourself.

Yeah, I was in no way planning on emulating that horrible wiki picture, it looks much better in my head. Though I really doubt I can paint that aWOIaF example. 

[Hammers]

I've a feeling some of these semi-canon sources might be from a board game of some kind, an 'official' GRRM-approved one. But I might be wrong.

I have a copy of The World Of Ice And Fire, which is fantastic and well worth buying, and it does have artwork of lots of houses from each region. This is the book that was written by GRRM and his #1 superfans / assistants Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson. If there is anything in it he didn't write himself, it was from those two and he most certainly approved of it.
The heraldry in it does look much better than the wiki page ones. From the houses we have just been discussing, Marbrand looks more like a burning tree against a background that sort of fades from black to white, and the brindled-boar-on-brown of Crakehall looks acceptable.

EDIT - See, here is Marbrand from first AWOIAF, then the official World Of Ice And Fire book. Judge for yourself.

From a heraldic perspective the image to the left is much more in accordance with formal rules in our world than the one to the right. But maybe that's your point. Alos, if I remember correctly, orange is not a heraldic colour. I think it sorts under gules, just like pink. But that seems to be the case with many GoT heraldry, which uses turquoise, browns and other tinctures quite freely.
 

[sukhe_bator]

A very rough and ready photo of one of my converted GW Rohirrim/Perry miniatures mashups. A Bracken captain before highlighting and detailing coming off the production line. Despite my best efforts to max out the settings on my camera it is still pretty mediocre I'm afraid...

[Charlie_]

Oh wow, very nice, I like that a lot!

How do you feel the LOTR range matches up with the Perry range in terms of scale?

[Captain Blood]

Works well - a nice looking character (in a sinister way) 

[sukhe_bator]

Praise indeed Cpt! Yeah - I know there's still a lot of painting work to do...
Charlie. I reckon they are pretty comparable. I've been experimenting with some success mounting Perry horse armour panels on GW Rohan horses and doing head swaps of horses - though the Perry WoTR horses have a slightly heavier build more akin to heavy hunter types than the more slender Rohirrim ones.
Other more straightforward cavalry mashups I've posted before...

[sukhe_bator]

House Bracken emerging from the plastic... still WIP but now a recognisable faction

[tyrionhalfman]

He looks great. Thanks for sharing