Building a Tlaxcalan army for DBA

[CliosPaintingBench]

Agreed on the very clean lines between colours, beautiful models!

[Kaiphranos]

Here we have the last stage of this army - the Tlaxcalans' Spanish allies. In DBA, the Spanish contribute four units: swordsmen, arquebusiers/crossbowmen, cavalry, and artillery.

The figures I used for the two infantry units are all from the original Revell set, and are in fact veterans from my childhood collection. I stuck to the same general color palette I used for the Tlaxcalans, with the obvious addition of metallic armor:







The horsemen are a bit more of a mix. I only needed three, but there are four available poses between the Revell and the Caesar set. I opted not to use one of the Revell poses, of the armored knight on a rearing horse. I also made a couple of slight modifications to the figures. The Revell horseman (on the brown horse) comes with an oddly shaped shield that does not match the usual Spanish shields or adargas, so I gave him one of the round infantry shields instead. The Caesar armored knight was originally holding his shield arm out horizontally in an odd pose, so I repositioned it. And the lighter-armored Caesar rider came with a horse that looked comically small next to the other two, so I replaced it with one from their medieval Saladin set.




Finally, we have the artillery! The most of the crew, the cannon barrel, and the gun carriage are from one of RedBox's sets of Spanish sailors. (The kneeling crossbowman is a Caesar figure.) For the cannon, the small wheels it came with did not look right for a field piece, so I replaced them with some spare wheels I had around. Some people have depicted the conquistadors' artillery with solid wheels, but they are actually pictured a few places in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala and are always shown with spoked wheels there.

[Santi Pérez]

Those Spanish conquistadores look superb, Kaiphranos. You have made an excellent paint job on them.

My very best congratulations.

Santi.

[Kaiphranos]

Everyone is now based up and ready for battle!







Some more pictures of the finished product are over on my blog.

[Fire at Will]

Is now the time to tell you about Steve Thomas' DBA in the New World rules,
https://balagan.info/dbx/dba/new-world-dba

I had a great deal of fun with this variant of DBA a while ago, but it does need more Aztecs than standard DBA

Some pictures from the doubles games I ran at Leeds back in 2011, Uunfortunately the mat makes it difficult to see the figures.






and yes that it myself explaining the variations to standard DBA rules to some gullible gamers.

[Kaiphranos]

I ran across references to that more than once while poking around the internet for sources. I don't think I've seen those particular photos, though!

[Ben90]

Impressive army, great work!

[Chariobaude]

your army is a delight for the eyes, I particularly appreciate the Spaniards and their artillery !

[MABO]

Very good army for DBA. I like!
And I learned that the Conquistatores could be allied to Tlaxcalans. I thought they were only opponents.

[Kaiphranos]

A little something to celebrate the return of the forum:



These are some "camp followers"/non-combatants for the Tlaxcalans' Aztec opponents - a pochteca merchant displaying his wares to some potential customers. Anyone want to try to guess where our pochteca friend started his life?

[Peter]

Wonderfull painted civilians!

[Santi Pérez]

A little something to celebrate the return of the forum:



These are some "camp followers"/non-combatants for the Tlaxcalans' Aztec opponents - a pochteca merchant displaying his wares to some potential customers. Anyone want to try to guess where our pochteca friend started his life?

I have no idea of which was the original figure for the merchant, Kaiphranos, but I think I'm sure about the other two's. The woman comes perhaps from Airfix Tarzan figures/ Hät Jungle adventure?

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=38

And the other man is the peasant from Caesar Miniatures Pharaoh's Chariot?

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=2244

Am I right?

By the way, all of them are fantastically painted!

Santi.

[Kaiphranos]

Yes, well-spotted! The merchant started off as a Caesar Libyan, with a head swap and weapons replaced with merchandise.

[CliosPaintingBench]

Such beautiful, beautiful miniatures! The Spanish, natives and camp followers are so very detailed!

[MABO]

Good conversions and very good paintjob. I really like your army.

[johnl5555]

Wow, I'm blown away by your conversions. I have been doing Quetzalcoatl Rampant with my 1/72 plastics. I am also interested in the period. Not having your wonderful conversion skills I found in May a Kickstarter for 28mm Aztecs and Tlaxcalan files. My first print looked good but are closer to 25mm (like the Ral Partha Aztecs range) and too big to use. I'll scale them down again to be a better fit for my Caesar and Revell figs. The really cool thing is that I also have files for buildings. I bought some resin items from Acheson Creations in the US who made Aztec buildings and items. I needed Aztec smaller houses. Scaling them down to 1/72 on an FDM printer hasn't worked so far. May just try 25mm. Anyway, looking forward to your progress! Really nicely done!

Thanks

John

[Xantippos]

Great project, the Aztecs really pop out so nicely painted! the conversions are great. Now I see the great potential in that "Jane" figure...

The conquistadores are some of the few interesting I haven't got yet. This further adds to me wanting to get some