Ottomans On Parade: A Resurrected Army

 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?

Cheers and blessings,

MP+

28mm Ottoman Infantry Regiment

Hello friends:

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.

Thanks for looking and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

New Ottoman Figures and Excellent Service From Warfare Miniatures USA

Pray ye, gentles, pardon this blurry picture of some ancient 28mm Ottomans in my collection, they were quickly painted back sometime in the 1990s and are a mixed lot of Janissaries and the lower row are Tufeckis.  I have no idea what make of figure they are or how I acquired them.  Judging from the primitive muskets they are meant to be 17th century.

I wanted to flesh out the fellows on the bottom into their own unit, and so while searching the internet for Ottoman figures and flags, I came across Warfare Miniatures USA, based out of Virginia.  They specialize in 17th / early 18th century figures.

These are some of the Warfare Miniatures Tufeckis compared to one of my old painted ones.  They compare well in size, though the new figures have longer muskets, which are sadly a bit bendy but otherwise the figures are decent.

And finally, here are the paper Ottoman flags that arrived in the same shipment, printed cleanly on heavy card stock.

Before I close, a word of appreciation for this vendor.   When my original shipment arrived via UPS while I was on holiday and then got returned after I missed the deadline for final pickup because I was out of the country, Clarence at Warfare Miniatures USA reshipped the order via US Postal Service and didn’t charge me for the second shipment,  A real gentleman, and I commend his customer service and products to your consideration.

Cheers,  

MP+

WIP: 28mm TAG Janissaries

Hello friends:

As usual, the usual disclaimer about not having posted much here because too busy, real life, etc etc.

I can report some progress on the podcasting front, there is new edition of The Canadian Wargamer Podcast just up, in which we talk mostly about a big Napoleonics kiegspiel we just finished by email.

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!

MP+

 

 

 

 

Ottoman Spahi Command Group

Hello friends.

 

 

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+

 

Panthers and Concubines

Ah, I thought that post would get your attention.

This Monday saw me and RabbitMan with a shared day off, and we decided to throw down our Normandy kit again and pit his new and terrifying 17pdr AT guns against my new and terrified Panthers.   James has written a cracking good bat rep which you can find here.   Without question, the stars of the game were his two loveable Newfoundlander gunners who turned the tide for the good guys, despite the return of the dashing and sinister Dynamic Panther Man.   I must say that while all the attention currently is on its sexy skirmish-level younger sibling, Chain of Command, the more I play IABSM the more I like it.  The intelligent modelling of friction and leadership, and the sense of a battle being a near-run thing, makes it really entertaining.   In our game on Monday, my tanks charged a section of 17lbers while one was still hooked on to its transport and the other had used all of its actions pivoting.  The whole game hung on which unit’s card would show up next.  Das ist verrückt as a German friend of mine liked to say.

And now for the concubines … and no, this isn’t me getting on the wargaming blogging bandwagon of showing scantily clad young women (Paul Foster and Loki, I’m looking at you guys).

Flanking bonus for concubines.

Several days ago I saw a piece in the New Yorker magazine on a TV series, Magnificent Century, that has apparently been burning up Turkish TV screens for some years now.   It’s set in the 1500s and focuses on one of the great figures of Ottoman history, Sultan Suleyman.   There’s a brief commentary on it by Elif Batuan here, if you’re curious, with some fascinating comments on how the show intersects with Turkey’s complicated identity and desire to be a major power in the 21st century.   After watching the first episode on YouTube, I found it a bit of a soap opera, with much attention paid to a spunky Russian slave girl who finds herself a Sultan’s concubine and throws herself into the role (and Suleyman’s arms), but there’s also some court intrigue, some history, and lots of eye candy.   I would say it’s a few notches up in class and credibility from that dreadful Tudors series of a few years back.  While it is set in the Renaissance, I think it will be useful for ideas for painting my 18th century Ottomans.

Have a look and see what you think.  Be warned, though, that it’s tricky to watch if you are painting or modelling, as there are a lot of subtitles.  There are also apparently four years of shows, each almost two hours in length, if you can track them all down.

The Guns Of The Sultan

As I mentioned here recently, Sultan Osman the Petulant is delighted to take delivery of his new cannon.   The Czar’s Overseer of Intelligence, Count Boris Badinoff, has learned that the Sultan has organized his gunners into a western-style battery, and has ordered training to develop their skills.  Count Boris suspects that the Sultan has hired military advisers from Prussia.   Here the Sultan instructs his Master Gunner prior to the first battery shoot.


The massed battery preparing to fire.  The gunners in the foreground wear the parade or garrison uniform designed by the Sultan’s father, who admired the look of Europe’s armies and liked things smart and tidy.   His son is more of a traditionalist, and does not mind that his master gunner and his crew wear a more informal field dress.



The heaviest gun yet cast by the Sultan’s foundries, “The Prophet’s Honour”, passes its first test.   The special effects are supplied by an infernal device that young Kinch kindly gave me.

 Battery fire techniques are tried, and the fall of shot measured against ranged stakes.   The Sultan is pleased with what he sees.  Fortunately no barrels burst and the Master Gunner and the Foundry Master will be handsomely rewarded, as opposed to being horribly punished.

It seems that preparations for the coming campaign season with Russia are well underway!

New Ottomans - And A January Wrap

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

Ottoman Cannon and Crew

A few projects have left the painting desk this fall and winter but haven't been blogged.

Here is a 28mm cannon and crew for my Ottoman army.   I have no idea what make the figures and gun are.  Pray let me know if you recognize them.

The paint scheme is blessedly ignorant of any research as to the uniforms of Turkish artillerists.   I've been using blue as the standard for my Ottoman gun carriages, and for these figures red seemed to be a nice contrast.  Besides, you can't go wrong with red when painting gunners, can you?

Long-term readers of this blog may recall that the Ottomans were part of my Resurrected Armies project to mark Easter earlier this year.   These chaps should add a little more heft to my Turks, and give some opportunity to respond to the lashings of all those guns the Russians can field against them.  Looking forward to another game of Maurice to try it out.

Analogue Painting Challenge Entry #3: The Sultan Of Swing And The Dangerous Dryad Dames

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!