Saga Westeros

I won't go into much detail about the Saga wargame, you can get more info in their website:

http://www.studio-tomahawk.com/

 

Sketching the first ideas:

• Each major faction has a specific army list and battle board, time and patience permitting, battleboards for the vassal houses and most important warbands can be arranged, but I like the idea of having them as swords for hire or specific heroes.
• Although the non westerosi warbands may have different army compositions, the main houses should have similar troop types:
• Hearthguard: knights (on foot or on horse), bodyguards and elite men at arms
• Warriors: men at arms (with several weapon types), hedge knights, light cavalry, crossbowmen
• Levies: pikemen, bowmen and the average scum.
• I'll try not to create new battleboards, there are a lot of good ideas on the current ones, with just a tweak in the ability names and some ability juggle and they should be ready to go. some ideas:
• Lannister: based on anglo-danish and frank battleboards. With special characters for Tywin, Jaime and Tyrion.
• Stark: based on the viking and pagan rus battleboards. With special characters for Eddard, Robert and Aria.
• Baratheon: based on the Norman and probably some of the new crusader lists. Special Characters: Renly, Stannis, Robert. 
• Tyrell: Byzantine
• Arryn: norman and crusader
• Greyjoy: viking and welsh
• Tully: breton
• Martell: Andalusian or moor.
• Wildlings: Norse Gaels and jomsvikings. Special characters: Wun-Wun, mance raider
• Nightswatch: welsh and irish
• Nightwalkers: Revenants
• Targaryen (Daenerys): scots and
• Golden Company: scots and elephants.
• Swords for Hire and Special Characters which may be included in several warbands (based on their allegiance): Davos, Melisandre, Bron, brotherhood without banners, lady heartstone, Peter Baelish, Brienne
• The same is also true for weapons and armor, most of the available ones should be enough, although I must find a good and simple rule for pikes.
• Instead of single miniatures, each base represents a unit. A die should be placed near it to indicate the number of miniatures, the die is adjusted according to casualties. Casualties can also be tracked using a unit card and crossing the dead minis away. All miniatures should be considered for the attack dice, the only special rule applied should be regarding flank combats and fighting in narrow places which should reduce the number of fighting miniatures.

Starting a Lannister warband

My objective is to create several Westeros warbands in 15mm, most probably to be played using Lion/Dragon Rampant or Saga. For now I'm a bit more inclined towards Saga, but it will take a while until I do some playtesting, so I'll be focusing the modeling part.

Lannisters are my favourite, so I'll start with them

The core of the warband will be made of knights and men at arms, all these will have the red and gold insignia of the great house, the rest of the troops (pikemen, crossbowmen and other specialists) will bear the signs of the vassal houses, this way the several armies will be more colorful.

Units will be made of 8 foot or 4 cavalry models each glued to a big flames of war base (64x50mm), officers and special characters will be based individually on round bases.

I've started with war of the roses models from peter pig and added a cape in order to make them a bit more fantasied than usual (this was inspired by an article from Captain Blood on a WSS magazine I've read  couple of years ago). Did a mold of a cape from another 15mm miniature with instant mold, and then produced the amount of capes needed with tamya putty and glued then to the minis

And then applied another bit of putty to make things look better.

Repeated this for the knights and we're ready for painting. On the picture at the right side, I've added also the minis for the Lannister general and for Jamie, but I'll need to kit bash them a bit more than usual, so it will have to wait for another iteration. The pikemen I've left them as is, they should be considered the rabble of the army so I don't want to add them anything special.

Next steps: Painting and basing this lot and then buy a couple of crossbowmen to finish the warband.