Mayan Warfare

 I'm committing myself - not to be confused with having myself committed - to put on a wargame featuring Mayans at a future gaming event. At this point, I'm looking at Wargames Among the Warplanes' Spring show in 2026 as being the most likely event. I blame my friend Chris for gifting me some Mayan figures and sending me down this rabbit hole. 

I'm looking at using Mana Press' "Tribal" for this game, which will involve warriors from one Mayan city-state raiding a rival polity for sacrifices and trophies. 

Tribal features units of five figures under the leadership of a warlord (accompanied by heroic single warriors), and is particularly interesting for not using dice or rulers - combat and movement are resolved using standard decks of playing cards. I haven't played yet, but the second edition rulebook is one of the most user-friendly rule books I've ever seen. I feel like once I get a few games under my belt, I'll be good to go for teaching it to others at an event. 

Figures and terrain have started to arrive, and working on getting all of this painted up will be a good way for me to spend the winter.

First up, I found that Acheson Creations is still vending at a reduced scale on Etsy, selling items whose molds hadn't been sold a few years back when the owners decided to close up shop. I bought a pair of Aztec stone houses (which, despite being from another culture a thousand years later, should be close enough for my purposes) and an Olmec Colossal Stone Head, which will be incorporated into a jungle terrain feature; while the Olmecs predate the Mayans, the ruins of their civilization still dotted the landscape centuries later. 

Craig at Acheson also let me know that he'll be re-releasing some of the other styles of Aztec house in the near future, so I'll be collecting a couple of those as well to put together a full village. He also included a complimentary pile of severed heads in my order that will make a very thematic objective marker. 

Next, at Chris' suggestion, I picked up a couple packs of "Maxzans" from Lucid Eye Publications; they're a little more fantastical than strictly historical, but they have a variety of poses armed with both spears and hand weapons, and are really nice clean casts with excellent sculpting. I ordered enough figures to assemble two units each with "long" and "short" weapons, as well as a missile unit armed with thrown wasp's nests (which is apparently not too fantastical - the Mayan text the Popul Vuh apparently attests to wasps being released in warfare!).

Given the current state of things with the United States, it was also much easier for me to order Lucid Eye figures from Badger Games, their US distributor, than to order strictly historical Mayans from Gringo40s in the UK and risk US customs simply throwing them in a dumpster if there were any errors with the tariff paperwork. 

The plan as it stands is for each warband to consist of three units of five, accompanying a warlord and a single additional hero, for a total of 17 figures. I think it's doable to paint a total of four warbands and do a 2 versus 2 fight on a 6x4 table with plenty of terrain.

So let's figure out what I need to get done before June 2026:

• Paint four warbands of 17 figures apiece (68 total figures) plus a couple of objective markers featuring lootable goods and trophies and civilians to be captured. 
• Manmade Terrain - 6-7 houses, a central temple complex, maybe some cornfields? Houses will be Acheson, temple will be MDF from Things From The Basement. I think I have enough neoprene cobblestone road pieces to cover my needs. 
• Natural Terrain - Jungle terrain bases in varying sizes, probably following Mike's lead from his Vietnam project. At least one of these will have an Olmec stone head or other ruins incorporated into it as well. 
• Playtest playtest playtest! If I'm going to be offering to teach Tribal at the table I need to have it down. 
• Sort out good storage and transport, especially for the jungle terrain which will be a bit more fragile by its nature than the solid resin houses. 

That feels really doable, I think. I have nine months to get through everything. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 158

Figures Painted in 2025: 139