15mm Mexican American War – Mexican Activos Battalions.

I have finished all the regular troops for my Mexicans, so it was time to move onto the Activos battalions. These are more paint conversions from the regular infantry from Gajo. Since most of the infantry uniforms are similar, it does not take too much to do the work. I wanted at least three battalions of Activos, adding a fourth to the equation after my free figures from Gajo. I had enough figures to do four over strength battalions. This would give me a lot of flexibility and use up my figures!

However, things were a little more involved on these. First, I had to change the collars and adjust some of the figures cuffs to make sure they were red. Not too challenging, but those collars are slow work! Next came the pants. All the figures came with white overalls, so changing these would not be hard. I opted for the prescribed light blue pants with red strips down the side. Doing 160 figures at once, this took a bit of time…. Making the color work seam easy!

I decided to try an AK red paint marker to do all the stripes. I hoped that would go faster and it did. Not having to reload the brush saves more time than one would think! The exception was the command figures. I decided to do these in alternate overalls, just so I could tell one battalion from another on the tabletop. In practice, the only difference would be the letter on the collar tabs… I have neither the skill or interest to paint those differences (not that I could see them if I did). So, I gave each battalion a different color. The first kept the white, the second got the light blue with red stripes, the third got red and the fourth got dark blue with red stripes.

I also went through and hit most of the shakos. This was to give a primarily non tape look, to contrast with the regulars, and fix chips on the figures. I then hit all the pompoms with some red to finish things up.

I went with the same basing as everything else already done, naturally. Shogun on3 inch base sprayed tan. Mixed Muddy Paw for the texture and some Scenic Express flock. I then added the required flags on shorted flag staffs and added some glue to the top painted gold.

With that, I was down to my last battalion to finish the project! Then a buddy of mine showed up with some extra figures he gave me for free…. So, I guess I have some more work to do….

• Manteuffel