More Distractions

So I did it - supported my local games store and purchased Agricola. Its a hefty boardgame and seems to have plenty of variation with different occupations, minor improvements in the 100s!! Having said that we had a run through last night (on the family mode) and it played reasonably easy - in fact almost too quick to seem to do enough.

Agricola

In some ways it plays a lot like Lords of Waterdeep in terms of resource management etc except with scoring held to the end. Will definitely be playing this again but with all the rules included and give you a real review.

However blog posts may take a back seat, not only is American Football going really well but we've just got Series 5 of Game of Thrones (yes I know that we are a series behind and) and it may take up a lot of our time (restarting from Series 2 to extend the experience).

Slightly Silly Army List

So I've been playing around with research and ideas for "Stag Rampant!" and as a bit of a variety I thought of making a "Crannogmen" army list. Crannogmen come from "the Neck" - a narrow strip of land which divides the North from the rest of Westeros. It is Howland Reed or accompanies Ned Stark at the end of the War of the Usurper to King's landing and is potentially the only one alive who knows who Jon Snow truly is.

For anyone who has played Lion or Dragon Rampant you will be aware of the unit types - if not there is a short description.

It is quoted that Greywater Watch - the castle of the Reed family has no men at arms or Maesters - which immediately removes 2 potential units from the list. Fighting in mostly boggy, broken terrain, cavalry would be limited and so the following list is suggested.

1 x Expert Foot Serjeant* (Formed Infantry with Hand Weapons)
1 x Fierce Foot (Berserker types)
1 x Foot Yeomen with Javelins (Lesser Quality Formed Infantry with spears and javelins)
1 x Archers
3 x Bidowers (Skirmisher Types)

Yes that is 3 units of Bidowers. In an open battlefield this force would be destroyed but in a campaign this force could be extremely useful as a harassing force or to hold and ambush in tricky terrain in a multiple retinue battle.

Any thoughts?

A Song of Fire and Ice - Concept Review

Ok, so so far I have looked at three of the houses involved in Robert's Rebellion (War of the Usurper). However I'm going to pause at this point until I get a rough idea of what rules we're looking at. So far I've had a sneaky look at conceptual idea for converting:

• Warmaster Ancients
• Saga
• Lion Rampant

I have also had a quick think over what sort of armies to use (using concepts discussed on other forums).

Westerosi - French Medieval Army (More Cavalry for Tyrrell, higher tech levels for Lannister)

Stark - Scot Army

Wildlings - Celts

Greyjoy - Vikings

Martell - Hispanic/Almoravid

Dothraki - Mongol

Obviously this will be dependent on the rule set so DW lets make a decision.

A Song of Fire and Ice - Concept Part 3 (Targaryens)

Targaryen Emblem

Part 3 is a bit trickier. Having not appeared as yet on the TV series, we've not really seen the Targaryen Forces. For now I will take the ideas used by "Mount and Blade" mods and base it on this. If this doesn't work for DW then I'll try again. Suggestions for this one are requested please.

Targaryen Sergeant - "Mount and Blade"

All of the mods seem to use kite shields. Again a rough orbat would be more preferable to work out exactly what is wanted but for now I'm going to suggest the European Mid Medieval Spearmen for the infantry.

Spearmen

For light cavalry could use European Late Medieval Hobilars which match the infantry.

Hobilars

I have been asked to make the knights a bit heavier and "fancier". So I was thinking maybe some Roman Clibinarii. This is obviously personal taste so take it as you will.

Heavy Cavalry

I think the heavy cavalry may be taste dependent so I'll leave that out there. Finally, the army would potentially need Dragons (period dependent) which Pendraken do do some of.

Flame Breathing Dragon

A Song of Fire and Ice - Concept Part 2 (Lannisters)

Next on the list is the Lannisters - or at least the forces directly under Lannister banners (bannermen may well be armed/armoured differently).

The uniform has been noted as being Samurai like so I've tried to focus on that and to be honest seems right. Possibly missing visor pieces but at this scale does that matter for the standard troops? Especially if say they were based quite closely together?

Lannister Armour

Katana's are obviously too long but would take little effort to shorten to a suitable length.

Sword Armed Infantry

I also think that the shoulder guards would need reducing but the cheek plates give a similar look to the visor when opened so this would be ok. Again these are available armed with sword, spear or longbow as well as mounted versions. so would probably cover all main troops involved.

An alternative (or possibly a mix of the two would be to use some of the European Late Medieval Range.

Dismounted Knights

These guys could just have a cut put down the middle of the visor and could therefore look like visor closed options.

The only character that you may need a different figure for (yet again comes when its War of Five Kings) would be Tyrion (I'll look at Kingsguard in another post for Jaime).

Pendraken do have a dwarf range but have no pictures, the hill dwarves range is illustrated and the closest I see would be possibly the sword armed Dwarf. Obviously the sword would need modding to be an axe and the beard carving off.

A Song of Fire and Ice - Concept Part 1 (Starks)

Been discussing this with my friend DW and wanted people's opinion (as well as somewhere to collect thoughts). Have discussed how we could play a Game of Thrones wargame (probably in the Robert's Rebellion period) in 10mm with forces that look right.

So to start off with using Pendraken miniatures I'm going to take a look at the Stark armies. Unlike the other forces, although they are spread over a large area, they all appear to come under the same uniform/banner.

Stark Soldier

Basically, the colour for the Starks will be murky brown, grey, (maybe gunmetal) with rounded helmets and round shields. For the foot soldiers, the Viking range from Pendraken seems ideal.

Norse Bondi

For the cavalry, its a similar uniform and could be done by using the Irish Cavalry from the European Late Mediaeval Range.

Irish Cavalry

All in all fairly simple - the only other thing that may need modelling is a Ned Stark model with Ice. You could use one of the models I've shown with some Green Stuff or a Fantasy Barbarian Chieftain.

Sean Bean

On a side note, if we were to do the War of Five Kings then we'd need a Direwolf for Robb - how about a Giant Warwolf.

Grey Wind?

So I think this is a good start - anyone with any other ideas - or indeed rule sets to use please comment.