Archers in Westeros armies

[Captain Blood]

I think you're spot on actually. HBO have effectively and inevitably 'defined' Westeros, and made it smaller in the imagination.
The whole point about fantasy worlds is that they're open to interpretation. People can and should portray the armies of Westeros however they see them from reading the books.
I'd rather people didn't take their lead from the telly.
The HBO/Weiss/Benioff vision of Westeros is very stylised in a particular direction.
Some elements are more or less how I saw them from the books, many aren't (in terms of how the various cultures are depicted - architecture, wardrobe, arms and armour, even climate and topography).

By my reading of the books, the world of Westeros (although not of Essos) is essentially a fairly homgenous 'knightly' culture in a broadly temperate climate from north to south and east to west.
This is certainly not how its portrayed in the HBO series. Because they need to portray much more distinctive and differentiated cultures for casual TV viewers to be able to understand who's who and how they differ.
So you have virtual Arabs in the south (Dorne) and virtual eskimos in the north (Wildlings) and the Starks are portrayed as only slightly less hairy unkempt proto-barbarians. This is not how they are described in the books, but many wargamers and modellers take the prescription from the TV series.

Personally, it's not how I see it from what's written in the books. But the great thing about it is that people can be as creative as they like in putting their own vision of Westeros together in 28 millimetres of plastic. And who's to say any of us are right or wrong? 

[Il Lord]

We have to bear in mind that Martin likes to mix together elements from various times, he specifically stated that chainmail is more common in the north while plate armor is more common in the south (expecially in the Reach), this could help choosing which miniatures to use focusing on men at arms:
the north should correspond to XII/XIII century Knights so, fireforge should work well.
iron island = viking age (gripping beast), some houses employ limited amount of knights, so fireforge shoulg go as well
westerland, riverland, vale of arryn and crownlands early XV century, perry HYW should work well
the reach stormlands late XV century, perry WOTR is perfect
dorne correspond to swabian sicily, a mix of muslim and cristian miniatures should work well (bear in mind that sandy and salty dornishmen looks more "arabian" while stony dornishmen should look more "cristian")

this for the men at arms, for nobles (at least the rich ones) you could, universally, use plate armored miniatures; for levies I agree with Captain Blood there's not to much cultural difference (with the exception of Dorne), so you could use any miniature you want, you could use different sets to rappresent difference in wealt of regions (for northen levies a 50/50 ratio of GPB dark ages warriors and fireforge foot sergeants, while for riverlands you could use a 25/75 ratio) as well as different "fashions" (basically the distinctions i marked earlier for men at arms). I would use pikemen only for cities militia, the pikemen seen in the book all come from region with lage cities; archers there are but are not always seen (in the battle of the green fork wee see lannisters longbowmen, but no nothen arrows, this doesent mean that there'are not, simple Roose Bolton didn't use his crossbowmen beacause of his scheme).

[tomrommel1]

I think Il Lord is spot on here . I pick the figures for my Westeros Armies like he does.

[LordOdo]

I agree completely with Il Lord. but personally I don't really like a very big difference between the Dornish and all the others. I pictured them not that different, only a bit more tanned, and wearing more leather instead of steel..

[LordOdo]

Actually the only army I'd make quite different to the others are the Targaryens, as those would probabaly have a more Essos way of armory. But that's my opinion.

[Captain Blood]

I agree completely with Il Lord. but personally I don't really like a very big difference between the Dornish and all the others. I pictured them not that different, only a bit more tanned, and wearing more leather instead of steel..

+1

Dorne is definitely not the Middle East. Essos includes the middle eastern type cultures.
Dorne is more a Mediterranean setting as described in the books.
The problem with the TV series is that they've made Kings Landing look like a sun-drenched, palm-fringed Mediterranean city (or actually an Adriatic city, because that's where half of the exterior scenes are flmed), rather than a north - middle European city, which is squarely what GRRM describes in the books.
So where have they got left to go when it comes to portraying Dorne, far to the south? Only somewhere even hotter, drier and more exotic.
I think it's all wrong, but there you go. It looks nice on the telly, and as Martin is an advisor on the series, presumably he must have been happy with how things are shown, even though a lot of it doesn't really accord culturally with what he describes in the books...

[Plynkes]

It looks nice on the telly, and as Martin is an advisor on the series, presumably he must have been happy with how things are shown, even though a lot of it doesn't really accord culturally with what he describes in the books...

Haven't read the novels myself, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.

If you look at "The World of Ice and Fire" (a big coffee table book by Martin himself - supposedly), the illustrations depict the Wildlings pretty much like they are in the TV show, and depicts warriors from Dorne as looking very Moorish or Arabic in their fashion style. I'm guessing he approved the illustrations. So either he's not too particular about how his works are depicted or his notions of them were vague to begin with. After all, I'm not sure if he's a wargamer, and so he's probably not got the gene for agonising over this kind of stuff that wargamers do.

Also bear in mind that you need not leave the shores of Europe to find Moorish influence in Medieval times. I had always got the feeling (though as I said, I haven't read the books) that Dorne was supposed to be a rough analogue for medieval Spain.

[Captain Blood]

Also bear in mind that you need not leave the shores of Europe to find Moorish influence in Medieval times. I had always got the feeling (though as I said, I haven't read the books) that Dorne was supposed to be a rough analogue for medieval Spain.

Yep, that's what I think too.

I think the main thing they've got wrong is they've shown Kings Landing as far too exotic, which puts everything else slightly out of kilter.

I think (and obviously, it's just my opinion) in Martin's initial thinking in the original novel (which was, let's remember, as GRRM has stated, inspired in part at least by the historical Wars of The Roses) Kings Landing was roughly analagous to London.  
I think that in the later novels, he probably evolved his thinking to re-imagine Kings Landing as a more typical, Gothic, high medieval European city - think Paris, or Prague perhaps.
But there's nothing in the books that I can recall that supports the depiction of a sun-drenched city of citrus trees and Romanesque architecture...

Anyway... There's no way to know for sure, so I shall shut up now  

[LordOdo]

The fun thing is, In Stockholm of all places I saw a building that made me think it looks like how I pictured Kingslanding 


That's how I imagined the Great sept of Baelor

[Paboook]

I have seen an interview with GRRM the other day, and he claimed hat "The World of Ice and Fire" is based on illustrations that show his word quite plausibly. He was especially pedant about the castles and some of them were painted in close cooperation between him and the painters. I have to say that some of them (like Dragonstone) seem to me too fancy. I prefer grim and dirty medieval look to "high fantasy"

[Captain Blood]

Pretty sure we've had this conversation here before on LAF, but I think most of the 'The World of Ice and Fire' illustrations are the same visuals used in the popular Fantasy Flight boardgames and CCG.

These predate the advent of the HBO series by a few years, and in my opinion are - in most cases anyway - a lot closer to what is described in the books.

So interestingly, you have two extensive and lavishly realised 'authorised' visual interpretations of the GoT universe. One by a publisher of books and games, and a slightly later one by HBO / Weiss / Benioff. Martin allegedly acted as consultant-cum-client to a greater or lesser extent on both. And yet, while there are of course some broad similarities, there are also a lot of differences, particularly in the depiction of the characters, style of dress, armour, and so on.

Interesting isn't it? GRRM has signed off on two often quite different realisations of his fictional world and characters. Both cannot be right - or can they? Is he just saying: 'make of it what you will - that's the whole point of fantasy'?

[Paboook]

What GRRM actually says is he gave HBO free hand and is perfectly fine with any changes made in the TV series. He seems to be much more pedant in the case of book products. Take a look on this interview: EDIT: full video here:

In any case, each one of us has probably his/her own idea how Westeros REALLY looks like

[Dr. Zombie]

In the books. When John Snow becomes commander og the Black Watch he introduces archery practice. That has been neglected by the previous more knightly commanders, who favoured swords and lance. Witch makes sense because a sword and lance are not much use when defending a 700 foot high wall. A bow is much more usefull.

[Harry von Fleischmann]

Good point Dr! I am idly wondering if there isn't some hint of doctrinal confusion in the Watch? Clearly the Wall was meant to keep the Others out but as time passed this defensive stance was clouded and replaced by a more aggressive "forward" strategy which focused more on the Wildlings as an enemy than anyone else? That may explain a shift of emphasis away from widespread effective use of bows. That could coincide with the arrival of noble "recruits" who naturally prefer the arm Blanche rather than the peasants bow and who still wanted to go out and biff someone, not just hold the wall against an enemy who was by now pure superstition to many.

I'm probably reading to much into it.

[Vermis]

In my experience though, most authors of historical / fantasy novels are talking about something else entirely when they indiscriminately use the word 'pike'...

So, I do wonder, with all these references to pikes and pikemen in GoT, is Martin literally talking about 'pikemen' (as in drilled pike blocks armed with extremely long pikes), or is he just talking about a mass of mixed-polearm-armed infantry? What, in late medieval terms, we'd probably refer to as 'billmen'?

Food for thought... I had originally imagined Starks/Northerners with pikes and Lannisters/Southerners with bills, for reasons that escape me at this point. Now I'm imagining well-paid, drilled Lannisters or mercenary companies armed with pike, and northern rabble armed with bills, spears etc. Not too unreasonable...?

I'd rather people didn't take their lead from the telly.

I hear that. I have the sneaking feeling the look of the HBO series was designed to ride on whatever little wave of popularity the LotR movies still had. Having Boromir up front and centre helped with that little conspiracy theory.

the north should correspond to XII/XIII century Knights so, fireforge should work well.

What happens if you don't really like FF minis? 

as Martin is an advisor on the series, presumably he must have been happy with how things are shown, even though a lot of it doesn't really accord culturally with what he describes in the books...

If you look at "The World of Ice and Fire" (a big coffee table book by Martin himself - supposedly), the illustrations depict the Wildlings pretty much like they are in the TV show, and depicts warriors from Dorne as looking very Moorish or Arabic in their fashion style. I'm guessing he approved the illustrations. So either he's not too particular about how his works are depicted or his notions of them were vague to begin with. After all, I'm not sure if he's a wargamer, and so he's probably not got the gene for agonising over this kind of stuff that wargamers do.

What GRRM actually says is he gave HBO free hand and is perfectly fine with any changes made in the TV series.

I had heard that GRRM wasn't too happy with the look they went with. I can't provide many citations, though. I do remember leafing through HBO's book on the series, with it's back few pages filled with quotes of praise from the cast and crew. Given 'wot I herd', I thought GRRM's quote was notable by it's absence.

Also, Plynkes:

After all, I'm not sure if he's a wargamer

Not a wargamer AFAIK, but he does have a fair collection of model knights:

http://www.georgerrmartin.com/for-fans/knights/

On that note, and considering things 'approved by GRRM', did everyone forget the Dark Sword range?

http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/shop/index.php/miniatures/george-r-r-martin-masterworks.html

Does that inform anyone's miniature choices for the various factions? Personally it makes me think that FF would probably be the closest match for Starks, which irritates me a bit. But I think I can do just about enough mental gymnastics to put Perry HYW French in the role.