Conquerors of Mictlan

Beside the Last Patrol Kickstarter by Black Scorpion, I pledged the Conquerors of Mictlan campaign by Antediluvian Miniatures last year in September. It was supposed to be delivered in January 2019 - it wasn't. Dropped here in mid of march. For a range of miniatures, that were mostly done and only needed casting, that's mediocre project management.

I had an eye on Antediluvian for quite some time, as they took over the Paul Hicks sculpted range from Claymore Casting. But the reason I participated in the Kickstarter was, that I earlier saw this thread by Don Voss on Aguirre, Wrath of God. That's an old Werner Herzog movie with Kinski, and the miniatures are clearly inspired by the movie (IMDB and Wiki link on it) - the movie is even included in Amazon prime, at least currently and in Germany. And with that in mind, adding the Crewmen plastik kit from the Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago range made sense to me, as the models could make a great warband for fighting in the jungle. In case you were wondering, Mictlan is the Aztecan underworld. You could say similar to Hades.

But well, let's see what we have. I went with the Expedition pledge, covering the "living" part of the Kickstarter. There were / are aztec themed Zombie and undeads available, but they didn't trigger me. There were stretch goals, rather small or unspectacular ones to be honest, but well...

The pledge costed 45 GBP and covered 13 miniatures, the stretch goals added a female Conquistador and another swordsman, boosting the expedition to 15 models (enough for a Frostgrave warband itself). Then there was a single tick, a "mermaid" and treasure. The mermaid is heavily inspired by the "Fiji Mermaids". And of course the expedition itself has a lot of nods towards history and pop culture, we have Leonardo (Da Vinci) as a mage, Klaus Kinski in his role as El Loco / Aguirre, the swordswoman (Mona) Lisa, and so on.

Casting on the models is good, some of the weapons will unavoidable break, as with the rapiers it is foreseeable but the greatsword is so thin, that it bends easily and will break at some point. So that's a bit annyoing if you already know that that is going to happen. Mould lines aren't a problem, details are good, so all in all I'm quite happy. With the kickstarter offer the price per models drops below 4 GBP each, which is good as well.

If you want to boost up that expedition with more miniatures, you could use the Crewman as mentioned above or go for some more conquistadors. There are interesting models available by Wargames Foundry (El Dorado by Mark Copplestone), Eureka Miniatures and Gringo 40's have some as well. Other ranges, like War of Religion or spanish soldiers from the 16th century could work as well, depending on the models. I for example went with the War of Religion by Warlord Games, they have Arquebusiers, Pikeman and Swordsmen. Of the later two I got a blister each, along with a mounted mercenary captain. I got them not directly for this project, they are a mercenary force for the Game of Thrones warband, but tie in very well with this one. Especially as they seem be sculpted by Paul Hicks as well (older sculpts, but well...).

A brief comparison of the Antediluvian miniatures next to the Warlords' sculpts.

What's left to do? Alocate the models to their roles as Heritor, Warden, what type of crewmen they are so on. Osprey even offers these pages from the rulebook for free, if you want to take a look into it beforehand.