SquiresOIAF – Yecats Tale of Four Gamers

Yecats Miniatures has begun a hobbying project with four players in the ASOIAF Miniatures community where they slow-grow a Faction for the game. This includes fully painting and basing the collection, whilst developing their understanding of using them on the field. We will be joining in on this project and you can too! 

Squires of Ice and Fire 

Yecats Miniatures have been inspired by the Games Workshop series called A Tale of Four Warlords. This series saw four players gather together and slowly build an army over several weeks. Each week would see a new unit added to the force and required it to be fully painted for a following battle. This would keep growing until they reach a large game size, and they have a fully painted army.  

Squires of Ice & Fire will follow the Yecats Small Council – Karl, Steve, James, and Grant as they slowly build a new A Song of Ice & Fire army. They have already begun by discussing what they are enjoying and how they’re finding their new factions. They have also discussed the hobbying side with new techniques. Their intention is to build over the next eight months ready for UK Nationals 2025.

You can catch the first episode where they discuss this here. 

The Twist

Whilst doing things the way the creators intended is one thing, it is certainly not mine. Thus I bring you a twist. I will be taking part in this project with ASOIAF: Tactics!

Now we don’t have the Tactics models, but we do have most of them in alternate sculpt form from the main game. I will be starting with the miniatures that are inside of The Riverlands Set, bar three of them which are brand new models to the game. 

I will follow this up with The Battle Beneath the Wall set which we can do in full, then behind that is the scattering of Neutral models you can obtain, and a few from the Battle of the Trident. 

My aim is to have fully painted models for me to immediately begin playing ASOIAF: Tactics on its release. There is also a potential to paint more models due to an image revealed on the Gamefound page which shows Baratheon Heroes Box 1 as something you can use in the new app within Tactics. With that being said, could you use all of the Heroes Boxes in Tactics at launch? 

The Models 

The first step is to select a Commander, Unit, and NCU, all from a Starter Set, so we are going to pick two. 

Since we are going with The Riverlands as our main set to begin with, we are going to grab Robb Stark and Jaime Lannister as our two Commanders, the poster boys for the War of the Five Kings and two player Starter Set. 

Following this needs to be respective Units, Stark Sworn Swords and Lannister Guardsman will be the two Units we will be painting. We only need a few models from these but I plan to do the whole Unit at the same time. 

Finally, we have the power behind the Commanders. Catelyn Stark and Tyrion Lannister will be the NCUs for this first phase since they both appear in The Riverlands box set, plus they are the leading two figures that kick it all off. I did want Cersei Lannister to have the two NCUs be the women of Westeros in theme, but we have no idea if Cersei Lannister will be playable. 

Schemes of Paint

As a huge fan of the story, I want the models I paint to be quite close to how they were described in the books. So I want a traditional colour scheme for the Starks and Lannisters with blues for the North, and reds for the Westerlands. 

Duncan Rhodes has done amazing tutorials on how to paint both schemes that I will be following for the Stark Sworn Swords and Lannister Guardsmen. But we will need to get a little creative for the Commanders and NCUs. 

I want to follow the same scheme for Robb Stark so that he is recognisable as a Stark model, but I will need to work out how to do wolf fur for his cloak, I have thought about doing a gradient from dark brown to a beige which would pop on the miniature amongst similar colours. For Jaime Lannister, I want to do a metallic red using contrast paints and silver, hopeful this will be a nice colour for more elite Lannister forces. 

Catelyn Stark is going to have similar colours but the base is going to be different from the rest of the force. I may also include some freehand for House Tully on her cloak since the Tactics model is coming with some nice designs on the clothing. For Tyrion, he will be quite straight forward but just like Catelyn some freehand might elevate the model. 

Here is a link to Duncan’s Tutorial on YouTube for the Lannister Guardsmen; for the Stark Sworn Sword, Duncan did a Tutorial over on his website here.

Basing wise, Starks will have a swamp theme since I see so many Autumn leaves or snow designs on Starks already. The idea here is to have the force look like they are traversing the neck, particularly to follow the plan Robb had post Red Wedding to take back Moat Cailin for his campaign to remove the Ironborn from the North. This will test my basing skills as I plan to add water effects in the form of see-through resin and splash effects. 

For Lannisters, I want to make King’s Landing themed bases whilst messing around with pinning. I plan to have the whole base be sandy cobblestones and bricks, with the models being pinned into the base to have a seamless look to the Unit. This will mean we would need to make additional bases for the models to be used in Tactics, which I am looking forward to doing. It will also allow me to make a display board in the future where I can mix the models without worrying about the bases. 

Lay of the Land 

Over the years I have played a lot of games and early on Lannisters were my main force. I look forward to playing with them more with a fully painted force, however it has been so long that a lot of Units and Characters have changed. But some have remained the same. I am curious about making forces with tools that people don’t tend to use and seeing what I could achieve with them. Jaime Lannister has always been a let down in the Lannister forces but in Tactics he is a lot better, so I am very much looking forward to playing him in skirmish style.

Starks however, are everywhere right now. This is mainly due to how strong House Umber is, as well as Ned Stark and Tully Cavaliers. These are so good that a lot of people are running them at events, and to be honest, it puts me off wanting to paint those aspects of the forces. When it comes to Tactics though, some of these models become more relevant or change entirely to spark a new flavour within them, like Catelyn Stark for example. 

If you are interested in hearing about the rules of The Riverlands set for ASOIAF: Tactics, then I did an initial review a few months ago going over them (split into Starks and Lannisters).

Beyond the Beginning

We do not know when Tactics will release as we have not had an update from CMON on the Gamefound page yet about delivery, which is said to take place this month. I think it is wise for us to assume that it will be delayed until the Summer and I plan to have the goal of UK Nationals 2025 for this to be painted just like the folks over at Yecats Miniatures. 

We have two Factions we will be building alongside a bunch of Neutrals, which is perfect for one to be brought to the East Anglian Grand Tournament, and the other to be brought to the UK Nationals 2025. But which for which? We will have to see when we are further down the line. 

We will be dipping our toes into some other Factions to help flesh out the options for Tactics on release with Baratheons being a main choice for what to include. But some Boltons, Brotherhood, and Greyjoys, could all see the spotlight. 

Your Turn 

The four players of the Squires of Ice and Fire encourage clothes to take part in this project as well. For the first month you will need: 

• Select a starter set of your choice.
• Paint 1 Unit, 1 NCU & 1 Commander from that starter set.
• Take pics and upload to social media using the tag #squiresoficeandfire or email in to gravilvox at gmail.com so they can feature your work in the next episode.
• Build a 30 point list with your starter set.
• Play some games. Make some notes and join in the discussion for the next episode.

This article will be the first in a new series of hobby-themed articles to go alongside this project. We would love to feature some of the community’s work in the articles as well, so if you do then add the additional hashtag of #squirestactics.

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