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Shield Wall

I painted up some Medieval infantry to be Game of Thrones forces. So, following the show (I recently watched all 7 seasons for the first time - 2 month binge with SWMBO), I need a couple of forces with shield walls.

These cardboard squares are 1" x 3/4", very big for a 28mm shield. But the point is to make some specific shield wall shields and to evoke the idea on the board, rather than making a wall of regular sheilds.

On the flip side of the cardboard sheet, I outline four bands. Two for shiny red shields (Lannisters) and two for blue with lower red trim (Boltons). I not only lined out the shields, but also the red trim for the blue ones.

First Mistake. I lined out the shields with pencil. So, painting a dark grey inside for the back of the shield, I covered it up. This is especially heinous since I often put wavy lines on cardboard with black ink and expect the ink to bleed through and create wood grain effect.

So I had to redo the lines.

Mistake Two. I put the back of the shields (mostly hidden, don't need lots of detail) on the card side of the board and the front, the showy part on the glossy side of the board. Well, this how well the paint takes to the glossy side. If I had made this the inside, I could have just blotched enough paint to cover and been done with it.

And this is what I was going for, like six coats of paint later.

Since there is no orientation on this, the putting the bottoms of the blue and red shields lets me paint one thicker line instead of two thinner lines. Well, I got one bit right.

They get cut apart like this.

And then beveled at the top. I want them to look like shields.

Then I use a precision tool to round them around the z axis.

I will attach the shields to the figures with a bit of glue on the hand and a line of glue along the bottom of the shield, which will touch the base of the figure.

So the shields look like this (well, these ones will need a gold lion rampant on them, sooner or later). They are too big to be shields but when the figures line up base to base, it creates the effect of a shield wall, while still retaining individual basing for the figures.

And here they are in situ. The row of spears behind them reaches past. The forces running up on the wall are running up on a wall.

As a side note, since the sheilds (and that command figure back there) are the only ones with the flayed man insignia on them, they are the only ones that have to be Boltons. Within GoT, blue and red could also be Tulleys or Barths; there are tons of blue and red historical options. Same goes with the Lannister red and gold, plus, the lion rampant isn't a particularly singular use insignia.