The Saga of Symbaroum

As well as the basic troops, I also had a command sprue, which allowed me to make 5 armoured nobles. These will likely be used as Hearthguard in the eventual warband. I really like these models, I just think they really tie the Godinja clan to the lore. I stuck with the same colour scheme as the rest of the troops, although I applied more of a uniform: brown trousers, green tops and gold undershirts. I also went with gold Armour, again mimicking the Elves although this armour is obviously nowhere near as splendid

As with the Gaoia nobles, I designed alternative shields using Tinkercad for the Godinja nobles. The basic shield was relatively simple to make, it’s just a hex shaped stretched and squashed to the right dimensions with some semi-spheres stuck on top for a shield boss. The designs were obtained from Thingiverse, literally just 3D tribal designs, which again I just shrunk, stretched and squashed to the right shape. I tried to find two different tribal shapes that compliment each other and then just arranged them on top of the shields. The designs aren’t necessarily Dacian or Germanic but then again, this is fantasy and I felt justified in taking the liberty here.

That’s pretty much all I have at the moment for the northern clans.  Initially these were bought for the RPG but I think I have definitely given myself a lot of food for thought.  The other exciting part about the northern clans is that they’re the ones most likely to have “fantasical” elements to them, being much people of the forest than their southern peers.  The Enoai capture poisonous spiders which the hurl their enemies, so there’s scope there to include spider swarms in the list.  The Gaoia are known to tame the rage trolls (semi-intelligent, human sized trolls) that inhabit the forest and use them as guards, so again, there’s scope for including those as a unit as well.  I definitely see the northern clans as a coalition army with elements of all three clans bolstered by some of the creatures of the dark Davokaar, the deepest part of the forest.  I think these will be the polar opposite of the Queen’s Army, who are suspicious of anything that comes out of the forest Davokaar.

In terms of army archetypes I am debating between The Horde (which seems designed for barbarian armies) or Lords of the Wild. Lords of the Wild allows me to field swarms as levies, which have some really cool special rules and really fit with the idea of the Barbarians throwing spiders at their opponents. It also allows for Levies to have Javelins, which are quite a thematic weapon type. On the other hand only the Hearthguard can field heavy weapons, meaning there will be less of the iconic Falx weapons knocking around. Conversely the Horde allows warriors to be armed with heavy weapons so I can field the Falxmen and also the Rage Trolls as warriors if I wanted. Currently I am undecided on this, and in theory there’s nothing really preventing me from choosing which one I want before each battle, but that’s not really how my mind works. I want to decide which archetype matches each army best and then develop the theme with the right models. Regardless of what happens, I likely need to expand the number of archers and slingers I have to either 8 (Lords of the Wild) or 12 (Horde) as the army is very light on those and I don’t have enough to make a full unit. Beyond that, it really depends on the archetype as the options for warriors and Hearthguard in the two are quite different.