Some years ago I started something called the Resurrected Armies Project, where I would revisit an old wargaming project and try to breathe some life in it, assuming that the project made the cut (my 20mm WW2 collection was rehomed rather than resurrected, but that's another story).
Recently, after finishing a unit of Assault Group janissaries as seen in my previous post here, I wanted to see how my entire Ottoman army looked on the table. Some of these figures are quite old, and some, like an ancient Minifigs janissary regiment (the chaps in red) have been recently rebased. There's more cavalry rebasing to do.
Here's the entire army.
The total collection can field three units of skirmish bows, two units of janissary infantry, two units of levytype guys with choppers, three units of skirmish akinci cavalry with bows, two units of armoured spahi cavalry, two medium and one heavy gun, and several command figures. A unit of tufecki musketeers is in the painting queue.
The heavy gun. I have no idea what make of figures the gunners are.
Gunners in blue and janissaries in red are ancient Minifigs.
The flower of the Sultan's cavalry. There are a few Assault Group spahis mixed in with God knows what else. As you can tell from the banner, my Arabic is a bit rusty.
Newer janissary regiment and behind them some bare chested fellows, once dubbed the "Turkish love slaves" in a game ages ago
It's embarrassing that I have so many Ottoman figures and know so little about the Turks in the 18th century. I've looked at several SYW rules sets and there are no lists for them (there might be an Ottoman list in the very old Age of Reason rules by Todd Kershner, I should see if I still have my set). Generally I would rate the skirmish troops as low quality, the artillery and janissaries as varying from low to line/trained, and the spahis as line to good, able to go up against European heavy cavalry.
The secret of an Ottoman army should be superior numbers of horse - even a multitude of bad horse units can threaten and engulf the flanks of a smaller, superior force, which is why the Russians favoured large brigade or divisional squares when fighting the Ottomans.
What are your thoughts on how to rate and use such an army?
Bit of a change of direction here, as I finally finish a unit that's been on and off the painting table since the start of winter.
This is a regiment of Janissary infantry, figures by The Assualt Group. While these figures are more Renaissance than 18th Century, they will be opponents for my SYW Russian army.
The flag was from a set I purchased from Warfare Miniatures USA. Good customer service. I have some of their Ottomans and while they aren't as good as TAG, they're ok.
Figures are painted using the Foundry tri-tone system. I'm especially happy with the headresses.
Also some single based command figures, always useful for Sharp Practice.
Always fun to paint Ottomans.
I'm hoping to muster these fellows into my Ottoman army, which is a strange mix of new and old figures, and put them on the table against my Russians. I don't have a set of SYW rules that includes an Ottoman list. However, Henry Hyde's new horse and musket rules have a colonial section that might do for some of the wilder Ottoman troop types. More to follow.
On the painting front, other than some scale model aircraft, I’ve been working on a unit of 28mm Ottoman Janissaries, metal sculpts from The Assault Group, very nice figures.
I’m totally improvising with the uniforms, just whatever colours strike my fancy. Someone said on Twitter to me today that blue was a standard Janissary uniform, but the rest (and especially the officers) was whatever took my fancy. To me the Ottomans are practically an Imaginations army anyway, but they give my Seven Years War Russians an opponent while I work on my SYW Prussian collection, a longer term project.
The blue and red are GW/Citadel contrast paints, the rest are mostly Foundry tritone paints with some AK thrown in.
Hopefully I’ll have this unit fielded by midsummer.
Thanks for looking, be well and blessings to your brushes!
There has been a lot of painting at the Mad Padre's Painting Chapel but rather little blogging. That trend was made worse on Thursday last when I spilled a large mug of tea on my desk, and a considerable amount flowed into the USB and audio ports on my MacBook Air, which is a new and rather nice piece of kit. Alas, while I shook offending liquid out as best I could, the machine soon shut down and would not revive.
Rather panicked, I used my smart phone (feeling now that it was considerably smarter than me) and googled "Spilled Tea on my Macbook Air", A page from Apple Support advising me to take the computer into my local Apple store. Here's the funny bit. To make an appointment at the service desk, called the Genius Bar, one can't do so by phone. One must make the appointment on the internet. What would one do if one's only access to the internet had been disabled by, say, oh I dunno, a giant mug of tea? Fortunately I had acess to the interwebs, was at the store within an hour, and learned that the computer was probably salvageable, but that the cost of replacement parts would likely be $300, making it the most expensive cuppa I've ever had.
Oh well, to brighten my spirits, I present you with the latest installment of my OttoMania, a Spahi command group from The Assault Group, who make quite splendid figures indeed.
I had great fun painting these fellows, and bought some of the most garish paints I could find for the job, seeing as Spahi, as someone once said, rode to war as if dressed for a wedding. The commander has that vital sign of office, a white stick with a big gold ball on the end, no doubt quite useful for clubbing subordinates to announce that the O-Group is over or to punctuate delivery of sub-par performance reviews.
I quite like the fellow with the drawn pistol, a pose you don't always see with cavalry. He looks bound and determined to protect the chap with that ancient symbol of regimental honour, the red and gold thingy on a stick, His blue tunic is the most ordinary colour of the bunch - I had some Vallejo Luftwaffe uniform blue open for another figure and thought it would do ok. It's nicely offset by the shocking purple of his caparison, I think.
It's been a good few weeks for getting some projects done, and if I can negotiate more time on Mdme Padre's computer in the next few days, I'll put up some more work.
These figures bring my 2014 totals to:
28mm Mounted: 13
28mm Foot: 22
28mm Artillery: 1
15mm Vehicles: 4
15mm Foot: 26
15mm Buildings: 3
6mm Buildings/Terrain Pieces: 2
Kilometres Run: 513
Blessings to your brushes!
MP+
Here are the final figures I am going to claim for January in the Too Fat Lardies painting challenge at Vis Lardica - my thanks to Robert Avery, or Mr. Motivator, as Richard Clarke has christened him, for helping us Lardie Lads and Lasses track our work in a way that is considerably less Olympian than Curt’s painting challenge, but still most helpful. Here are four projects that have been seen on my Saturday Painting Desk posts for a few weeks now.
First, a Minifigs cannon for my Ottoman Turks. Sultan Osman the Petulant will be pleased to take delivery of this gun, which will allow him to field an entire battery of cannon. More on that in a later post, I think. Minifigs made some good stuff in its day - this piece, I think, was part of their English Civil War range, and looks suitably exotic in Sultan Osman’s trademark blue and white.
The wooden carriage was done in an acrylic from FolkArt, Bavarian Blue, and washed with GW/Citadel Asuren (I’m sorry GW if I have that wrong, but I really can’t be bothered to spell nonsense names correctly) Blue, and it turned out rather splendidly.
And, the first three of the twelve Spahi of the Porte cavalry from The Assault Group that I purchased last year. I have nine more to go, but at the rate I paint one-off figures, I need to go slow with three at a time or I get swamped in all the little choices.
I’m very happy with the way the vines and flowers pattern on this fellow’s shield and caparison turned out, and very grateful for the kind comments he got from you all as he was a WIP. Nice to have him finished. I am encouraged to try some more freehand work with the next chaps.
These figures bring my totals completed this year to:
28mm Mounted: 7
28mm Foot: 20
28mm Aritllery: 1
Also in January: kilometres run, 107. I am hoping to reach 110 in February, but with three days fewer to do it in, I had better not slack off.
Thanks for looking and blessings to your die rolls and brushes!
Michael
I’m trying to keep up the lovely idea that Sofie started recently.
Three 28mm Spahis of the Porte from the renaissance range of The Assault Group. Lovely figures. Going slow on them since each demands his own colour scheme and I’m a bit rubbish when it comes to freehand painting.
I’m planning to add small red flowers (blobs, really) to the vines on the shield and caparison of the fellow on the left.
It's been a quiet weekend thus far at the Mad Padre's Painting Chapel on the edge of the frozen Canadian prairie. I've spent quite a lot it thus far painting terrain. The terrain is 1-1 scale and might be suitable for FIBUA gaming. Quite realistic, isn't it?
While I'm quite happy about being posted this summer, the down side of it is getting the house ready to sell. There are pros and cons to owning one's home while in the military. The upside is that military housing can be a little gruesome, and is not always well or promptly maintained, whereas I am free to buy the house I want, build up equity, and, hopefully, sell it for a modest profit. But getting it ready to sell requires work, and ironically it is work that I could have done early in my time here and enjoyed the results, as Mrs. Padre has observed. But darling, i wasn't idle in all that time, I go a LOT of miniatures painted.
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Signs you've been a miniatures wargamer for two long. While painting today, using a Flat Khaki eggshell that Mrs. Padre is quite fond of, I was watching it go on and thinking "that looks rather like dunkelgelb. I wonder if I could paint some panzers with it?" I would use a smaller brush than this one were I to do that.
I did find time to goof off from the housepainting:
In other news, I was very pleased to find a package from The Assault Group in my mailbox on Friday. The contents are not to be painted lightly. Besides a complete unit of Ottoman Spahis of the Porte (more on that in a subsequent post on my resurrected armies project for April), there were these four TAG samurais with katana, who will make up my samurai offering to Curt for the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge.
TAG stayed in character with the awesomeness they have shown me to date, and included this bonus samurai figure in my order.
He's as smart as a chap with two heads!
I don't really have the foggiest idea how to paint samurai. I've been consulting some top-notch panting guides, including this one:
Fortunately for me, a recent post on Alfons Canovas' amazing blog has some sumptuous samurai colour plates. Right, think sumptuous when I start painting them, and all will be well.
Now, the only think that worries me is what these samurai are going to do while they are waiting to be painted. I can already hear them downstairs, shouting for more sake and geisha girls. I don't have any geisha girls on hand, but this winsome young lass jumped out of the lead mountain and promised me she would keep them in hand. She is the Reaper Miniatures Oktoberfest Fraulein, and my plan for her is to use her as an Allied spy in my Weird War project, so it looks like she'll get primed and painted along with the Gentlemen From Japan. I am enthralled to her charms.
Warm wishes to you all from the edge of the frozen Canadian prairie. I am delighted that there are five new followers to Mad Padre Wargames, and I'll greet you personally in an upcoming post. In the meantime, may God prosper your brushes and bless your die rolls!
If you haven't been following Curt's blog, or even if you were because if you blinked you missed it (Monday was a busy day on Curt's blog), here is my third entry in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. And no, it's not the Doctor's latest gang.
This lot of 5 28mm figures is however a mixed bunch. The two on the left are Bob Murch Pulp Figures and I'll get to them in a subsequent Weird War post.
This chap, longtime readers may recall, is The Assault Group miniatures renaissance Ottoman general that they kindly sent me as a free figure during their promotion last year. It's a wonderful sculpt and I have just ordered some more figures from TAG (the Spahis of the Porte) as a way of rebooting my SYW Ottoman/Russian armies.
I wasn't sure what to do with the feathers on the turban. I thought about peacock feathers, but the ones I've seen are flimsy things, and these look like big bushy sort of feathers, so maybe they are dyed? I have more Ottoman research to do, apparently.
These two dangerous leaders are more minis from the Wargames Foundry Faerie pack. I showed off their sister, Charlock the Hunter, in an earlier post. Some readers may be questioning the Padre's interest in scantily clad women, which, I hasten to add, is confined to lead. I find it odd myself, rather. I do enjoy the challenge of painting skin tones and getting them right, and I was pleased when Mrs. Padre (full disclosure, she knows who I'm seeing on the painting bench) pronounced me moving in the right direction. I'm reasonably happy with them, though I need to fix the unibrow on the spear lady.
I was amused by Curt at Analogue Hobbies commenting that he admired "the sylvain support garments provided to their archers (how she draws and releases a bow beggars the imagination)".
These ladies will join Charlock the Huntress as part of my LOTR collection. I'm thinking of a wood elves version of Special Forces, called "Galadriel's Scouts" or some such, to keep the glades free of foul orcs. Sounds like a great excuse to clear off the games table once I finish sinking some ironclads (next post).
Finally I'd like to welcome followers 98 and 99. Ross McFarlane is a semi-legendary Old School gamer who hosts the Battle Game of the Month blog among others. Of him, young Kinch recently opined that "There are days I just want to strand him in a scrap metal yard. I guarantee within two weeks, he'll be playing the War of 1812 using homemade Britains knockoffs cast from moulds made of out of old sparkplugs and prayer. A chap of infinite invention." Brummie is from the UK, and his Brummie's Wargaming Blog shows a talented painter and eclectic gaming mind. Both welcome, chaps!
