Having been a great fan of the Fighting 15's / former Black Hat ranges for ages, I have had a South American army on the to-buy list for a long time - and with the closure of Fighting 15's, and hence the potential loss of these excellent ranges (unless Ian sells them on) I decided now was the moment to invest in a new 15mm army.
Given some of my clubmates already have Aztecs and others, the one that looked a little left-out at CLWC were the Tlaxcallans - and the ADLG list has some interesting options for the list, even without the Cortez alliance so Texcallan / Tlaxcallan it was.
I've actually bought a shed-load of them, giving me all options (and probably more). but as has been my habit of late I've started with just a handful to try and get a feel for how they will paint.
I've ended up with a bit of a mix in real paints and Contrasts, starting with Contrast Darkoath Flesh for the flesh parts giving them a darker skin tone than the usual "Flesh" on my European figures.
These all have white loincloths, and a palette of bold intense, real paint colouurs in reds, greens and yellows (plus the odd blue).
The "armour" is a speedpaint though, the ever-reliable Aggaros Dunes, with a drybruch to pick out he texture even more.
The feathers were basecoated yellow, and they I gave them a "wash" of Contrast Yanden Yellow to give them more texture than the rest of the "clothed" parts of the figures.
For basing I have opted to only use grass tufts and foliage on my usual Rustons Woodstain'ed Builders sand + drybrush basing, as they won't appear alongside any other of my troops (who all have static grass) - aside from a handful of European Spanish of course.
The aim overall was to make them colourful, but with a predominance of red as this was apprently a Tlaxcallan colour. I may go harder on this approach with the basic warriors I think.
This lot are now intended to be Otomi mercenaries/allies, which may or may not be correct as now Fighting 15's have essentially closed their website its gotten rather hard to identify the castings and match them to what they are supposed to be.
Anyway, pretty much all of these guys have obsidian-edged 2 handed weapons, so they will work as a coherent and discrete set of figures compared to the rest.
Very pleased how they have come out, and this test batch has made me look forward to - rather than dread - painting up the rest of the army.
