A Song of Ice and Fire in 25mm

[sukhe_bator]

For the benefit of LordOdo and others.
The battlemasters horses have a likeable charging pose, and decently modelled barding. The mounted knights are heavily armoured but the heads are somewhat squat. I've made some minor alterations by mashing them with compatible 5th and 6th Ed. GW Bretonnian lances and heads. They are suitably different in armour style to make an all mounted contingent of knights of the Vale. I have yet to decide whether to sculpt cloaks - I'd welcome your thoughts guys. I plan to model 5 knights declarant with quartered arms on the barding and a standard bearer with banners of Arryn over Stark  .

At the rear, a knight with a Perry helmeted head with plume and a 5th Ed. Bretonnian helmed knight. I plan to seat the head better with the addition of a greenstuff gorget. In font of him, my only attempt at adding a greenstuff visor.

And a variety of 2nd hand GW Rohirrim horses clad in Perry WOTR horse armour with Perry horse heads prior to detailing and tidying up with green stuff. The addition of armour bulks out the figure making the Perry horse head addition less noticeable, but allows for a variety of poses and heads with or without shaffrons... note the leg reinforcement with a former made from drilling out the hooves and bending metal paperclips and gluing them to a circular base. The trick is to bend the wire in such a way as to provide max. stability and support. Any minor losses of hooves etc will be sculpted with greenstuff. Hopefully the extra support will prevent future breakages which are a common flaw with this pose of horse.

Another couple of horses, this time the one on the left is a GW Rohan horse with a Fireforge head

And an assortment of Northern cavalry made from converted GW Rohirrim riders with Perry parts on Fireforge horses with the saddle horns shaved off. The horse on the front left has a Perry horse head. Minor gaps will be made good with greenstuff.

[arget8]

They look promising. It will be easier to see how they work once you get paint on them, so get to work! I personally plan on using the Perry cav for everything, but the mounted sergeants will be a little bit of green stuff work to look the part. I see the Northern houses as more likely to have cloaks across the board, with the Southern houses only having them for the lords and what fancy boys. The Rohan riders may actually work pretty good for Dornish, with the scaled and quilted armor. They look quite promising. Some head and arm swaps may be in order.

[tomrommel1]

nice mash ups there !!!

[Dilettante Gamer]

Love the variety in the kit-bashing, Sukhe!!

[Dilettante Gamer]

Love the variety in the kit-bashing, Sukhe - particularly those Rohirrim coversions!!

[sukhe_bator]

goaded on by arget8, the knights of the Vale have bumped the painting queue. I decided on proceeding sans cloaks, so they got undercoated last night and instantly looked a whole lot better. The lance pennons and horse bardings have received their inaugural sky blue coat. I'm quartering the individual House sigils with that of house Arryn. This will give them a more unified look, something akin to a military order. This fits my mind's eye view of the Vale as a somewhat isolated community where regional customs and identity probably developed a little differently from that of the rest of Westeros. The Houses I've chosen are from descriptions of the Lords Declarant in A Feast For Crows, who with the exception of Royce, are reasonably well described by Martin.
House Belmore - 'six silver bells on purple' (AFFC, p.378)
House Corbray - '3 ravens, each clutching a red heart in its talons' [field colour NK] (AFFC, p.378)
House Redfort - 'a red castle' [field colour NK] (AFFC, p.377)
House Templeton - 'nine black stars within a golden saltire' [field colour NK] (AFFC, p.378)
House Hunter - 'five silver arrows fanned' [field colour NK] (AFFC, p.378)
The 6th man will be a standard bearer carrying the House Arryn banner
'the banner the riders carried before them, the moon and falcon of House Arryn, sky blue and white' (GOT, p.348)
In order to remain in keeping with the rest of the unit, those houses without a stated field colour, in keeping with real world heraldic precedents, will have sky blue showing their affiliation to House Arryn. The overall look will be somewhat akin to descriptions of Imrahil half-elven and the knights of Dol Amroth in LOTR.
'his horse and his armour were grey' (GOT, p.350)
'sky blue cloaks and silvery mail shirts' (GOT, p.373)
'a stocky, silver haired man in a sky blue cloak and hammered moon and falcon breastplate... Ser Vardis Egen, Captain of John Arryn's household guard' (GOT, p.362)
And the precedent for a double banner, which seems to be a common device in ASOIAF...
'Her uncle sent a standard bearer ahead of them, a double banner flying from his staff, the moon and falcon of House Arryn on high, and below it his own black fish' (GOT, p.355)




 

[arget8]

Oooooh, this is exciting! What will the force comp look like? I imagine the Vale as having lots of knights, archers, and skilled infantry. My impression of them is that they are a well respected and competent force overall with the Knights of the Vale being talked about all the time. Since they are in the mountains, I expect that the archers are plentiful and skilled as well. I expect that since the population of the Vale is relatively low compared to the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, they will tend to have more actual soldiers and fewer levies, meaning you get less cheap infantry. If this was a Lion Rampant list I would make it something like this:

Mounted MAA- 6
Mounted MAA- 6
Foot Sergeants- 4
Archers- 4
Archers- 4

or

Mounted MAA- 6
Mounted MAA- 6
Expert Foot Sergeants- 6
Expert Archers- 6

This will put them on the lower end, numbers-wise, but they will be pretty hard hitting and steadfast.

Not sure what you had planned, but this is just the image I have of them in my head.

[arget8]

goaded on by arget8,

Also, I don't know if I would say goaded, more like gently inspired  

[sukhe_bator]

OK, gently inspired by arget8
At present I envisage just an allied mounted contingent a la 'Battle of the Bastards' from S6 of the TV series... Since the Vale is as yet uncommitted in the Books, I figure they will put in some sort of an appearance in Winds of Winter...
I am already committed to fielding 6 to 12 LR/DR units of Northern Houses, 6 to 8 of Riverlands, 6 to 8 of Crownlands & the Reach and about 12 units of Westerlings, I'll have my hands pretty full organising and painting cavalry to accompany these factions...

[arget8]

OK, gently inspired by arget8
At present I envisage just an allied mounted contingent a la 'Battle of the Bastards' from S6 of the TV series... Since the Vale is as yet uncommitted in the Books, I figure they will put in some sort of an appearance in Winds of Winter...
I am already committed to fielding 6 to 12 LR/DR units of Northern Houses, 6 to 8 of Riverlands, 6 to 8 of Crownlands & the Reach and about 12 units of Westerlings, I'll have my hands pretty full organising and painting cavalry to accompany these factions...

That sounds good. Once you eventually decide to do wars from before the books the Vale will come in handy, though  .

Now, do you mean mounted units when you say units or just units in general?

[sukhe_bator]

That's mostly infantry units of 12 figures per House comprising;
1 Captain
1 Standard bearer
2 MAA
2 spearmen or pikemen
4 archers
2 crossbowmen or in the case of the Northern Houses, 2 additional archers.

In addition mounted units comprising at least 1 captain, 1 banner bearer and 1 MAA. Thus an average faction combining 6 Houses would also field at least 1 unit of 6 cavalry, and ultimately 3. Though whether I will ever achieve 18 cavalry per faction is a moot point.

[sukhe_bator]

Having spent an hour painting the Vale knights, I've revised my thinking about the heraldry of a couple of the Houses.
House Redfort would probably work better with a red castle on a white field, but without the red bordure embattled which is a product of the semi-canon 'Citadel'.
House Hunter according to the semi-canon sources is a fan of silver arrows on brown/tan. Brown is never a popular colour. A more traditional heraldic colour for huntin-shootin-fishin emblems would be green (as for example with House Tarly). However I'm going to stick to the sky blue field of House Arryn as with House Templeton. which looks good with a yellow saltire on a sky blue field.

[sukhe_bator]

This is kinda the look I'm aiming for...
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/003/076/151/large/fadly-romdhani-knights-of-the-vale.jpg?1469371746

[sukhe_bator]

Regarding House Tarly, I followed up the sources for the Tarly sigil in Jon's initial meeting with Sam Tarly before he dons the black in GOT. I can find no mention of the green field...
'A striding huntsman had been worked in scarlet thread upon the breast of the fat boy's fur trimmed surcoat.' (GOT, p.251)
'even a great wood and leather shield blazoned with the same striding huntsman he wore on his surcoat.' (GOT, p.252)

[arget8]

Hmmm...I guess we will have to do some more research. Have you looked at when Brienne goes to either Maidenpool or Saltpans (can't remember which) and meets Randyll Tarly?