Madaxeman's Wargames Blog

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. 

First posted on 4 October 2025 | 3:55 pm

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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. 

First posted on 30 September 2025 | 3:48 pm

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Otomi Warriors

The Otomi are mercenaries, which in ADLG terms are hard-charging Impetuous swordsmen. 

The Fighting 15s ranges have limited poses in their "Otomi" bag so I added in a random scattering of chaps with obsidian-edged dangerous looking weaponry to make them a bit more fearsome.

These are more erratically coloured than my main set of guys, who have a lot more red on their limited items of clothing. These chaps are still mostly red, but with some exceptions.  

First posted on 27 September 2025 | 2:13 pm

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Tlaxcalan Archers

The Tlaxcalan army has a decent number of bowmen (in ADLG at least), some of whom count as half and half mixed bow/swordsmen, making them vaguely decent in combat as well as proper shooting archers, and some of whom are Mediocre in quality too.  

Without wanting to create zillions of slightly different bases, and end up only ever using some of them, I ended up basing up 2 sets of 4 units of bowmen, and mixing in some warrior figures onto the bases of 4 of those units - this means (I think) I can categorize them as any sort of mix of bowmen, rubbish bowmen, and mixed bow/sword shooters & combat troops and not overly confuse myself or my opponent. 

These are the ones with "some"  warriors as well as archers on each base. 

All of the archer figures do also have a standard pattern on their headdresses, which helps identfy the archers compared to the regular combat infantry (who are totally random and irregular in millinery). 

These are the bow-only chaps, some of whom get low quality head wear as well. 

 

First posted on 24 September 2025 | 2:06 pm

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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...)

First posted on 19 September 2025 | 10:47 am

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The Tlaxcalans are here !

A somewhat epic painting project has now finally reached the "lets spray varnish outside before it gets too cold and damp" phase of completion, much to the delight of vendors of multicoloured grass tufts, as my first Meso-American army finally gets finished off. 

All of the figures (apart from a handful on the baggage element) are from the rather wonderful and characterful range sold by Fighting 15's - who sadly are kinda winding down their business, potentially selling off the moulds and rights at some point in future (we hope!). 

These guys are from the same family as the Egyptians I own, and have bundles of personality baked into the sculpts. They are the sort of figures that really do make you wonder whether 3D modelling and printing, with its ability to make and print out anatomically accurate poses even at 15mm without the constraints of traditional sculpting or even the need to design figures that can be cast in, and removed from, rubber moulds, will ever quite capture the magic of what is very much a work of art rather than a  3D product develped by the technical application of science.

Anyways, I'll be posting pictures of the various troops in batches over the coming weeks, starting with the main body of Warriors.

These guys are a mishmash of different figure codes and are equipped with all sorts of weapons - as you'll see later on, there are some specific, names units who soak up most of the figures I bought with particular or specific weaponry, so these "standard" warriors are a bit of everything that was left.

The painting on these is a mix of contrasts and normal paints, with some of the new Warlord Fanatic  normal paint "triads" of 6 (erm..?) slightly different tones as well. 

The padded armour is white base coat with Aggaros Dunes GW Contrast, with the skin being a couple of applications of GW Contrasct Darkoath Flesh on a white undercoat.

First posted on 15 September 2025 | 10:40 am

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