And now my watch begins

In researching fantasy figures both for Frostgrave and D&D I came across Darksword Miniatures.  I'm a bit surprised I had never seen these before as they have a ton of figures inspired by the artwork of a lot of the old-school TSR artists.  Their other offer is a line of figures for the various characters from George R.R. Martin's Song Of Fire And Ice series.

I only recently started watching Game Of Thrones but I've been really enjoying it so I decided to order a few models to use where I could.  They seem like they will fit great with Frostgrave and should make good models for D&D.  I'm planning on running a Ravenloft game next month and the men of the Night's Watch in particular seemed like they would make good fits.

I decided to start with one of my favourite characters from the show Samwell Tarley.  Sam is the son of a minor noble who's father has always hated him for being fat and weak and not much good at any fighting skills.  Within 5 minutes of Sam's introduction on the show he has confessed to his new companions that he is a coward after taking a one-sided beating during a fight with practise swords.  What's great about Sam though is that he's smart and loyal and when the pressure is on he finds out he's not really a coward at all.

What I really like about this figure is that he's different from most traditional fantasy figures.  He's obviously overweight and doesn't cut a particularly dashing figure, but having said that he's not catoonishly obese of comical looking.  It's always great when you can find figures that look like 'real' people and not just high fantasy artwork.

I took a few liberties with my colour choices on Samwell.  When a man joins the Night's Watch it is traditionally referred to as "taking the black" as the Night's Watch dresses head to toe in black.  I've had a lot of experience lately with how washed out and incomplete that looks so  I decided to paint his tunic and breeches a flat green and then give them multiple thin black washes so that his clothes are almost black but still show some colour.  His dagger is also a shard of Dragonglass (obsidian) but once again I didn't want the figure to be be 100% glass so I painted it a bit more like traditional glass.

In addition to Sam a couple of days ago I finished a Mantic Zombie Troll for Frostgrave.

This unfriendly looking guy will be used for the next scenario for Thaw Of The Lichlord and then may also make an appearance in a D&D game at some point in the near future.

That's it for now.  A few more baddies for Frostgrave coming soon and I need to get started on my models for our Ravenloft game.

-Jay