Crazyredcoat's Crazy Compendium of Collected Creativity

So as work is moving a bit slower than intended on the finished unit of bersekers (they are coming soon, I swear…) I thought I’d do a quick update on something a little special with this sort of unit. The Northmen of Westeros seem to lack a certain level of uniformity in their garb that is quite typical of medieval systems. You brought your own stuff to war, quite often down to your own weapons, and I wanted to present this with my berserkers. My Sworn Swords will be a bit more uniformed as they are a little bit more militaristic in their look, but the Umbers are berserkers. While it would have been fun to paint each of these chaps individually with whatever colours I felt like, I wanted a certain look to them.

Looking at the Stark list, there are 4 (5 if you count the Boltons) distinct variations so far; Starks, Umbers, Tullys, and Crannogmen. Each of those unit has a particular look to them that makes them stand out from the others. The Tullys have lots of armour, the Starks have a fair bit of mail, the Crannogmen have their hoods and such, and the Umbers look like drunk maniacs. Any guesses on why I wanted to start with them? The colour palletes of these units help them appear distinct as well and, so long as certain colours cross the whole army, can nicely tie in while looking different. The Crannogmen, for example, would wear a lot of greens alongside the browns, but if I started adding greens to my Umbers (which would be a perfectly normal colour for the people of Last Hearth) they may look out of place in a unit of leather-clad burly men. The heraldry ties the units together, but the other colours have to do the same thing without everyone looking the same as the others; it just doesn’t give the right feel to the unit.

There’s actually not that many colours across this unit, with the greatest variation appearing in the hair. Hair, when it is on every model like this, is a great way to show individuality. You’ll see that there is still a relatively consistent pallete to the hair, except the banner to help him really stand out, and that helps tie them all together, but there is still an air of the individual about them. This is even more important with mono pose minis that will be standing next to each other on the field. The more variation, the more individual they look. Hopefully, that will all work out once the last 4 chaps are finished and the unit is done. Ignoring the heraldry, my colour pallete is 4 colours; 3 browns and a grey. Even the grey is shaded with brown, though, to keep that colour and the ‘binding’ look. The grey, though, is used as a ‘uniform’ colour, mainly, on the cloaks. I also continued this colour across the Champion and The Greatjon will be the same to tie them all into the same House.

As I’ve been painting these guys in batches of a single sculpt, the overall effect won’t be seen until I can have all of them finished and arranged on the tray properly, but you can see from the images here that there is a uniform look to them while each looks different to his neighbour. When I get around to getting some Crannogmen or the Reeds they will be treated to similar methods, but with primarily green tones. Obviously, for the Lannisters these ideas don’t work as well and they benefit from a much more ‘professional’ look to their armies, but the men of the North, the Sellsword Companies and even the Dothraki will all benefit from this kind of treatment.