The Bosses - and the Baggage

 Rounding out this expansive run-through of the Tlaxcalan army I finished last month is the 3 Commande rbases, and the ritual sacrifice that is the baggage camp. 

These figures are from the command pack, with a couple of extras tucked in as well to bulk out the retinue of the main leader

The big boss is on a 40mm round, with 30mm rounds for the lesser commanders.

The camp, on an 80x40 base, has as its highlight a... tiki bar-style lighter picked up in Walgreens in Key West many moons ago, and kept for exactly this purpose ! 

The eyes light up in a fiery hue when the top of the statue is pressed. 

OK, so Polynesian tiki statues are not exactly Meso-American but hey, did I mention that the eyes light up? 

The sacrificing guys are 3D prints, for which I must thank Harry, and the baggage carriers are F15's figures from Dave from the Podcast, as he had some spares left over. 

All in all it does a pretty good job IMO. 

The boss will see you now...

The Suits are here to see you now !

 Mad as you like, and twice as dangerous, the Suit Wearers are the Military Orders of the Tlaxcalan army.

All of these figures are kind of dressed in the same suit - a bit like a crocodile onsie if I'm honest - but with a lot of bright contrast paints and drybrushing to pick out highlights I'm pretty pleased to have made them look as varied as they do. 

Doing red "lips" aorund each suits "mouth" was a bit of a faff, but very much worth it IMO.

There were just enough back banners in the army pack to add one to each unit of 6 men. 

Warriors in brightly dyes PJs' - who'dve thought it eh?

The Cortez-inspired Mercenaries

 The Texcalans famously allied with Cortez and the Conquistadores (or perhaps "not" famously, as I suspect many folks believe that Cortez and a couple of dozen men beat the Aztecs on their own?).

In that alliance of Aztec-hating contingents were the Totomac levies and Chinantec levies, both of whom I have made by picking out some distinctive figures and conjured up a unit of each with little or no basis in historical reality - but at least they are colourful and can be easily distinguished from the other Tlaxcallan troops!

I decided to use these chaps as Totomac Levies, as they were so different to the orun of the mill Tlaxcallan warriors that I didn't feel they would mix in all that well anyway. 

 

They have very exuberant head dresses, and I gave them all similar frilly-edged shields from the set that came with all of my purchase from Fighting 15s 

There is more than a sniff of the Xenomorph about them in a weird way, but at least they are obviously different to the regular warriors. 

These guys will play as Chinantec Medium Spearmen - they are all armed with spears, and I gave them a simple almost-plain blue shield as well. 

Given all the other options in the army, they may be a little-used option - or I may even get two bases of Chinantec "pikemen" at a later stage if I can find any suitable figures to use. 

With all of them in red (or pink) romper suits they are very much a distinctive unit.

Tlaxcalan Skirmishers

 Every army needs some hapless peasants to screen the main body of warriors, and lurk around in the bushes taking nasty little pot shots at any enemy troops unwary enough to venture too close - and the Taxcallans are no exception with both slingers and archers in the roster. 

These slingers are pretty basic troops, and could easily come from the Biblical ranges from the same designer - which is not to disparage them in any way, as they are great, animated little figures. 

The musculature really takes contrast paints very well - the two layers of Darkoath Flesh work very well indeed on them IMO

I made the skirmisher bowmen out of the non-headdress-wearing bowmen in the pack from F15's, on the assumption that the massed formations of bowmen would be better dressed than the skirmishers.

There are only 2 poses of these, but adding the odd shield in as well gives a bit more variety.

Brightly coloured (parrot?) feathers for the arrow fletchings adds a splash of extra colour too.

A few more Tlaxcalan Warriors

 Running alongside the "red flower on the base" Tlaxcalan Warriors are these sets of "purple flower" and "yellow flower" chaps:

On these it's really easy to see how I have made the shields ping a little by blacklining the bands and areas of bold colour on them. I did this with a fibre tip fine marker, which thankfully didn't then bleed into the paint underneath even when varnished (rather scary moment doing the varnishing though...)

The Army Painter Fanatic paints have such great coverage, and that is absolutely what is needed for making Meso-American armies really look vibrant and bold. 

There are quite a few guys in all-over onsies, but I have saved those with headgear as well for the Suit Wearers - coming soon !

 

 

More Almughavars

 Having test-done some Lurkio Almughavars a while back, the "test" painting clearly worked as I managed to drum up enough enthusiasm to tackle the full 70+ figures who had been waiting patiently in the "undercoated" box for quite some time. 

The last lot got their photos taken outside, but for this batch the Lightbox got rolled out - so here they all are:

The Lurkio packs contained a couple more than the 72 figures that were supposed to be there, allowing me to make up 11 bases fo infantry and these 4 bases of Light Foot javelinmen.

These guys got some serious love from the box of random tufts !

Knowing they will be used in a 3-command army at some point I took the decision to mostly go with  a variety of monocolour paint schemes to allow units to be easily allocated to different comnmands, but also mixed up the hues, tints and trouser colours to still leave them vaguely "irregular" looking.

The painting was again a mix of Speedpaints, Contrasts and some of the new Warpainter 6-part "Triads" from the Fanatic ranges. 

Reds and Blues as well as Greens. 

And some "Mustardy Yellows" as well. 

Almost all of the shields have a "Barcelona FC" Catalan-esque palette 

There are a few mixed up units who can be added to either the Reds or the Blues to tweak numbers more flexibly. 

I was even sufficiently inspired to repurpose a couple of units of "generic" Essex medieval cavalry as Catalans, rather clumsily cutting down their lances to turn them into javelins and adding some "Catalan" paint schemes too. 

Here's the guys being painted as well - just to show I did actually do it myself..

Just need to find an excuse to get them on the table now !