That's a heck of a title, isn't it?
Let me explain.
Looking ahead to 2026 and planning my hobby goals, one thing I want to do is a project centered on pre-European Contact Maya culture. This stems from my friend Chris gifting me copies of some Maya miniatures he'd had sculpted and cast, which got me reading about these fascinating people of Central America for the first time since the Mesoamerican history class I took in college almost 20 years ago.
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| The figures Chris gave me. They're based and primed now. |
In reading "A Forest of Kings," by Linda Schele and David Freidel, I came across the concept of Maya "Star Wars." The Maya of the first millennium CE were every bit as into astronomy/astrology as the Ancient Egyptians, and they had a specific type of warfare in which city-states would attack and even overthrow one another in conjunction with certain appearances of the planet Venus (known as Chak ek', the "Great Star") in the night sky. Linda Schele named these Venus-driven conflicts "Star Wars."
Well who could resist?
To go with these figures from Chris, I've bought about 30 figures from Lucid Eye's "Savage Core" range - their "Jaguar Tribes" figures are passable Maya/generically Mesoamerican - as well as a few Maya character figures from Paymaster Games (with an eye towards getting more) and a few days ago ordered another 10 Maya figures from Gringo 40s.
I've also bought some terrain: two MDF temples and two pairs of engraved columns from Things From The Basement, and so far two Aztec-style houses and a pair of Olmec heads from Acheson Creations. I even got a Lemax cobblestone-stamped vinyl mat from my local craft store, designed for use with Christmas village displays, to form a city square. There will be more houses, grain storage, etc., ordered from Acheson in the coming months, and probably more columns (and maybe some walls/lookout towers) from Things From The Basement.
So what's the plan?
I want to put on a game of Maya warfare at the June 2026 Wargames Among the Warplanes show that's able to seat four players, in which one side (ideally, two players each taking one "wing" of an invading army) attacks a Maya city-state being defended by the other side (again, ideally two players each taking one "wing" of a defending army). Each army has specific goals (capture slaves/sacrifices, loot a treasury, protect the King's daughter, etc) so that victory isn't simply a matter of "we move all armies to the middle of the table and roll dice until one side's all dead."
Ruleset: Right now I'm looking at Mana Press' "Tribal, 2nd Edition" rules for this. Each warband will be about 16-18 figures (three units of five, a warlord, and a hero, maybe two heroes), which feels very doable painting-wise. And it's a ruleset that's already designed to handle ceremonial warfare among pre-gunpowder peoples, where how much Honor (or, since the game is written by non-Americans, Honour) one gains and loses is as important if not more so than actual victory in the field.
I haven't played Tribal, but I've got 7 months to practice and get enough of a handle on it to confidently teach the game at an event. I think Chris has played it so maybe I can talk him into giving me a hand.
The figures I have right now are enough to yield two warbands. So I'm already off to a great start in terms of purchasing, I just have to start slinging paint at them. I've got four figures I need to paint for my Dracula's America posse ahead of them, but once those are taken care of I plan to jump on painting my Maya. The sooner they're painted the sooner they're on the gaming table.
I might grab another eight or nine packs of Lucid Eye Jaguar Tribes to make up the second two warbands, or I might order a bunch of Maya from Gringo 40s; the only thing I'm maybe worried about there is I've heard their alloy is softer, so spears and atlatls tend to be on the bendy side. Ged at Gringo 40s has also let me know in the email exchange following my order that he's planning on expanding their Mesoamerican offerings in the coming year. So either way I'm anticipating another Gringo 40s order or two or three in the coming months.
As mentioned above, I've made a start on terrain collecting. For a lot of my terrain I'm taking beaucoup inspiration from Mark Morin's 2022 Mesoamerican project; reading his blog posts reminded me of Acheson's offerings (which fortuitously came back into production exactly when I started considering this project). Things From The Basement also ran a 20% off sale on their Mesoamerican-inspired "Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago" line of buildings a few months ago, allowing me to get both temples and a pair of column sets at a discount.
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| I'm still so damn proud of how these turned out. |
I also have my jungle terrain that I scratchbuilt; it surprisingly does not provide that much coverage on a 3x3 table, much less the 4x4 I'd want to use for an event game. So producing more bases of jungle terrain will be a necessity; fortunately, they're pretty fast and easy to make all things considered! Maybe do another 20 terrain bases?
I've got a pair of Olmec stone heads from Acheson, one intact and one ruined; I'll incorporate these into terrain bases for variety and because the Maya were aware of the Olmec people and saw them as their ancestors, so having Olmec ruins on the table is not anachronistic or anything like that. Less anachronistic than having "Aztec" branded architecture, though from what I've seen in my readings so far there was probably a lot of overlap between cultures in that regard. I'm not expecting any tenured Maya studies scholars showing up at my wargaming table!
So let's start breaking this down into steps:
- Paint 34 figures that I already have cleaned, based and primed.
- Begin practicing Tribal, using the solo rules provided in the rulebook and Chris' help if he's amenable.
- Buy and paint an additional 34 figures (plus additional figures for objective markers).
- Assemble and paint the terrain I already have.
- DETERMINE HOW MANY MORE BUILDINGS I WANT TO HAVE ON THE TABLE. This is a project I can easily see growing dangerously, to the point where I end up with a village filling half the table and that's probably not necessary. I just need to evoke the feel of a Maya city on the tabletop, not build an accurate recreation. My love of cluttered urban table setups does not need to come into play here! It helps that the Maya didn't have wheeled vehicles or carts, domesticated animals, crates, barrels, garbage cans or any of my usual street scatter.
- Buy, assemble and paint the remaining buildings I want/need.
- Produce another 20 bases of jungle terrain.
- Make sure I can pack it all securely and ensure it fits in my car. Another vitally important step in the process!
This feels like a big project but one that breaks down into manageable chunks; one eats an elephant a bite at a time, and I feel like this divides neatly into phases or sub-projects that I can hopefully rotate between to keep things feeling fresh. Having an outlined plan will also hopefully help me stay motivated and moving forward.
I do also want to make sure I'm allowing myself grace to paint other things along the way; if I need to paint new posse members for Dracula's America, or if I want to paint aliens for Majestic 13, I should feel free to do so and not let my anxiety convince me that I'm meaningfully taking away from the larger Maya project by doing so.
I think that sums up the project outline, at least for now. As we wargamers know all too well, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so we'll see what needs to change as I work my way through it.
Figures Acquired in 2025: 244
Figures Painted in 2025: 164
