IV/DBA 15mm Aztec army

These figures by Tin Soldier are some of my favorite 15mm sculpts ever.  The cartoony style isn't for everyone, but it has a flair all of its own.

Painting these figure posed two problems: 1) how to make them colorful without turning the army into a circus of clashing colors, and 2) I wanted to make them historically accurate.  The second one required many hours of research, but I'm happy with how they turned out.  All the colors are historical: the suits, the shields, even the banners are taken from contemporary illustrations of Aztec warriors.  As for ensuring the colors match, I decided to mix the colors, particularly a little of the light blue color into the widely used green, and vice versa.

The general stand features two suit warriors (nobles), a third noble with the hair, banner, and white shield of high status, and the general with a banner representing a God-bearer.  Supreme commanders also painted their skin red, which I've duplicated here.

There are two stands of priests (4xBd) in coyote suits.  These are my favorite stands in the army, especially the black and white figures.  The shield design on the lower left is the most common one to appear in the historical codexes.

The army list contains an additional optional unit of blades, which I've modeled as nobles (Eagle Knights) carrying shields particular to warriors from the capital, Tenochtitlan.  I'm not sure why they wore loincloths outside their suits, but apparently they did.

The bulk of the army is double-sized warbands (6x5Wb).  The bulk of these warriors were only allowed to wear plain white clothes and unadorned shields.   It isn't clear whether nobles fought amongst the tribal warriors or in completely separate units, so I took the liberty of adding one or two in each stand.  This adds color and I visualize them as lower-level leaders.  This picture shows two of the stands, but all six are unique color mixes.

The final stands are archers (2x4BW).  These wear the plain robes of the tribal warriors.