Ideas for SHIELD DESIGNS...

Aztec chimalli jewellery piece

On the internet you can find some amazingly well researched resources in the most unlikely of places. Some amateur ‘wargamers’ (whose hobby is to construct miniature model armies from around the world) have gone to very great lengths to get their designs ‘right’. Luckily, they find the Aztec army fascinating! The best we’ve seen is ‘A Simple Guide to an Aztec Wargaming Army’...

Here are just two pages from the 35 included in this superb Guide. For the background to this go to our special feature on the ‘chimalli’ or Aztec shield.

We’re in contact with ‘Chronofus’ (the creator of the Guide) and he’s kindly provided a link to his discussion forum on the Aztecs which is an excellent source of information (for older students) on Aztec social structure and hierarchical organisation, particularly within the Aztec military, for obvious reasons. What most impressed us, in all this, is that Chronofus lives - and does all his painstaking research - right out in the Australian outback!

UPDATE 2024:
Sadly the Chronofus.net website has now disappeared. We’re adding here instead a couple of alternative sources that we’ve checked and can recommend. The first is an Aztec miniatures forum thread with lots of photos that seem to use chronofus’s work for reference. The second is a Youtube video that uses both codex images and modern illustrations of Aztec military wear. They include several of our own images (without acknowledgement).
THANKS for these recommendations to Ian MacLeod.

Mexicolore’s ‘chimalli’ feature leadadventureforum.com - Aztec army Army Ranks and Promotion (Aztec History) video