15mm Mexican Artillery.

I am finally at a point that I can start doing some light hobby work after my wrist surgery. No detail painting, but I can at least get back to basing and some ham handed dry brushing! One of the projects I was working on, before depression set in, was troops to play battles of the Mexican American War. I saw that Gajo had a decent catalog of painted figures for me to get what I would need.

As such, I ordered a whole bunch of stuff to get going. Once I saw the figures in person, I decided that I could convert a number of them to other units not represented with a little work, so I ordered more! I had to dip into some of their other lines to fill out some stuff here and there, but pretty much lines up everything I needed.

As I can only work so long before my hand cramps up, I decided to start small and start with the Mexican artillery. I decided I would go with a 1.5″ square for these and all cavalry. I opted to get some Shogun Miniatures bases, so all the armies would be magnetized. I sprayed the bases tan and glued down the figures.

The guns and crew are from the Mexican line. The limbers are actually from the Gajo Civil War line and the oxen were some figures I had lying about. I had to paint all the bases tan, from their original green, so it would better match the painted magnetic bases. I did this after I glued them to the bases.

I had originally planned on using the pumice method for the armies, but had not decided how I would do the rocky soil effect I was looking for…. Over the holidays, I came across a new product from Muddy Paw Terrain. It is a sand based product that has a hardening agent that is activated using water! All you do is add it to the base as needed and wet it with a spray bottle (I will do a full review on the product shortly). That seemed to fill the need, so I ordered a couple colors. I ended up mixing a few colors together. I did not get enough rock effect, so I added some artist sand I found at Michaels to rough it up.

Once I got the mist right, I went to work on my guns and limbers. I dunked the base into the mix and tapped it until it leveled out. I then set it on a tray and spritzed it with water. I let it set for a day or two and went back and added some flock using white glue to break up the ground for more of an arid scrubland look.

With that, I had my basing! Now, to the rest of the army!

• Manteuffel