Painting The Chimu Imperial Army 1350-1480AD, 15mm, Lurkio figures for DBA

That thing on the painting table...

You know how it goes, you have lots of stuff on the painting table, some of which you might need fairly soon... but that long-neglected project somehow insinuates itself into your mind and forces it's way to the front even thought it's of no use whatsoever?

Well, in the last week or so, that project for me has been painting a DBA v3 Chimu Imperial Army 1350-1480AD from Lurkio, that I won in a competition more than a year ago. I don't really play DBA all that often, I have no intention of expanding the army to a full ADLG one, but these guys had been waiting to be painted and, well, one day I just got the bug...

I started off by spraying all of them brown, using the Army Painter leather as a base colour, and using Army Painter Strong Tone as a pre-colour-painting dip

The Chimu culture was centered on Chimor with the capital city of Chan Chan, a large adobe city in the Moche Valley of present-day Trujillo, Peru.

I went for a fairly plain look for their basic smocks, planning to go more colourful with the armoured officers and also do some edging to the smocks later. The base colours are unbleached wool and linen.

The Chimu culture arose about 900, but eventually the Inca emperor Topa Inca Yupanqui led a campaign which conquered the Chimu around 1470.

I initially wasn't quite sure what colour to paint the litter, but a nice strong red seemed suitably regal. I had also remembered the Hydra Turquiose from Army Painter which gives an unusual and vibrant colour and had started to use that as well.

The Chimu expanded to include a vast area and many different ethnic groups. At its peak, the Chimu advanced to the limits of the desert coast to the valley of the Jequetepeque River in the north. Pampa Grande in the Lambayeque Valley was also ruled by the Chimu.

The Lurkio figures are cute and short and stubby - I rationalise their appearance as being a homage to meso-american art and representations of the human form in contemporary artworks. You are free to just regard them as a bit stumpy however.

The Lurkio website doesn't have that many pictures of the figures, so I was sort of fishing in the dark for paint schemes and the like.

One idea I did steal was the "squares with dots in them" decoration around the bottom of some smocks, which can be seen here on the slingers/atl atl men. A thick red line, painted over by more of the base colour, and then dots of base colour in the "squares" you have created.

With the use of Leather Brown for skin tone, I needed a much brighter colour for the wood of their weapons, and so ended up with a contrasting Ochre Brown

And, as if by magic, they were suddenly painted and based! The basing is sand, stained with wood stain and then drybrushed in first grey then pale stone.

For this sort of desert-dwelling-ish army I elected only to use grass tufts, rather than static grass. None of them are quite pampas grass sized, buy the effect is better I think than if I had used static grass.

I'm not sure on the viability of the range of brightly coloured hats and headbands they are sporting, but having started off with all white I dismissed that as looking too boring. So, this is what you get...

Another one of those armies where the basing makes a hige different to how they look. I had also considered whether to ink the smocks, but decided against it as it left more contrast with the flesh and basing, and emphasised the colours more.

I was pleased with how the litter came out, especially the "mexican-flavoured" combination of bright green and red - this was the colour combo I had been stumbling towards to give the army a "South Armerican" feel, so lucklily I managed to find it before finishing the army!

The base of Noble Warriors is a bit of a riot of colour and bronze armour. The "blades" on their weapons and clubs I left black, to give a bit of an "obsidian" feel to it in this metal-rare society. I'm not sure how accurate this is as Wikipedia is surprisingly quiet on the subject, but I think it looks better than going with yet more bronze.

The base of Conchoco vassals on the end of the line have a uniformed look - well, if you were a vassal, but were classed as the same troop type as the rest of the army I'm sure you'd want to stand out too

A Google search for Conchoco tends to throw up plenty of results for a hearty potato and cuttlefish stew, in which the cuttlefish (the "Choco") is with ("con") the potatoes. This may well be a very good dish, but is not really useful as a painting guide for 15mm warband figures.

Here you can more easily see the visual effect of only going with grass tufts

The overall effect is quite a jolly army of pre-Conquistador Americans

Hopefully this is the most likely viewpoint to be seeing them from

All in all its 13 elements, one of which is a DBE-sized 40x40.

The rest of the Auxilia units have a mix of armoured and unarmoured figures on them. There is a surprising amount of variety for an army that it's hard to see many people actyually buying !

Quite what I'll ever do with them is a mystery. They are probably now destined to sit in a drawer until I get around to attending an event with both DBA being played, and a bring and buy

Thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure I remember how baggage works in DBA - maybe there are some bases still needing to be cooked up?

This shot shows the "square and dot" pattern really clearly. Not bad for 15mm ...

A bit of drybrushing has brought out their faces quite nicely

Everyone ages quickly in the intense Peruvian sun, and drybrushing the black hair with pale grey gives depth as well

Pretty much every Imperial colour in the paint pallette used on ths boss

I'm not sure how succesful DBA armies sell on eBay, but maybe I'll give that a go.

There is a slight element of Dalek about some of the armoured men, but hey, what's not to like about that?

If you like these you can buy them from Lurkio. Otherwise why not go to the Links Page and read some more?

About This Site & Privacy Information