Army Showcase - The Inca

As promised, a showcase of one of my Mesoamerican armies. I though I'd do the Inca first, as I have a bit of a soft spot for them. It was inspired by a list created by John Garvey, but I think he picked up some of my ideas and added them to his list, so I can't remember where my contributions start and his end any more. John's notes on the Inca HOTT army can be found HERE.

My army is as follows:

1 x Behemoth General (Sapa Inca in Litter) @ 4AP
1 x Cleric (Huaca on Litter) @ 3AP
1 x Hero (Aucakpussak Veterans) @ 4AP
4 x Blades (Cuzco Regiments) @ 2AP
4 x Hordes (Highland Levy/Subject Troops) @ 1AP
1 x Lurker (Amazonian Indians) @ 1AP

The figures are all, as far as I can remember, from Naismith Designs (sold via Navwar). They aren't very exciting figures, and were small 15mm even back in the 1980s, so are positively tiny in these days of scale-creep.

Here's the Sapa Inca in his litter, with a bodyguard. He could be run as a Hero, but a Behemoth is much more fun:

The Aucakpussak are veteran soldiers who lead the rest of the army by example. Hero might be a little extreme for them; a couple of Warband would probably produce much the same effect given the structure of the rest of the army. However it does give the army some much needed punch. This is a case where the Hero element represents a group of warriors, rather than a single powerful individual with a few followers:

A sacred mummy on a litter - the huaca - provides spiritual support to the army as a Cleric. Aesthetically it's a great figure. From a practical point of view it helps defend the Behemoth and the Hero from enemy Magicians:

The core of an Inca army were the Cuzco regiments; the Auquiconna, Mancopchincuzcos, Ayllucuzcos and Cacacuzco. These were regular troops, and are classed as Auxilia in DBA/DBM. Their classification in HOTT is tricky; they are really too mobile for Blades or Spears and too regular for Warband. Given that the majority of their 'historical' opponents are foot-based armies, though, Blades gives them the right 'elite' status. This also ties in with the fact that the Inca were more disciplined than their historical foes, who would mostly be represented as Warband or Shooters.

There are four elements in the army, one for each of the regiments. here are two of them:

And here are the other two. As you can see, I have given each a distinctive 'uniform':

The Hordes represent highland levy (dismissed as 'mosquitos' by some Spanish accounts), or troops from subject nations. I made them look regular by mostly using a single type of figure on each element, to give the impression of ally regiments. Here are some warriors with halberd:

And some with javelins:

This element has a mixture of slings and wooden swords:

And finally some ordinary spearmen:

Lurking in the bad going are some irregualr allies as Lurkers, represented by these Amazonian indians:

Here are the Cuzco Regiments, forming the centre of the army. A simple chequerboard pattern created the illusion of the rather geometric Inca style of clothing decoration:

The Hordes. Their clothing is less ornate than the Cuzco regiments:

In contrast the Heroes and the Sapa Inca himself have clothing with more complex patterns and a greater colour pallette:

The huaca and the Amazonian Indians:

The whole army arrayed. The stronghold is a resin model I picked up at a UK show some years ago. I use it for most of my Mesoamerican armies, and some others as well - the Ophidians, for example.

I have to say that I don't really have any tactics sorted for this army yet. It's not a mobile army, nor does it have a lot of 'killer' elements. However the Blades, Behemoth and Cleric can effectively blunt an enemy frontal assault, whilst the Hordes extend the line allowing the enemy flanks to be overlapped once the force of their attack is spent. The Hero can be used to plug gaps or deal with rogue Aerials.