Deli for the Ottomans

/

I’m still building my 15mm 17th Century Ottoman army: the Sipahis and Janisseries are done, not it’s just a matter of adding some of the more irregular troops.

About as irregular as you can get, the Deli are technically a light cavalry unit consisting of fanatical warriors and known as The Mad. They would dress themselves and their mounts in animal skins, decorating everything with feathers, fur or hide.

Altough my Sipahis are painted using traditional acrylics, I went back to Contrast paints for these mainly because Contrast really suits the depiction of fur and feathers.

When you get these (mine are from By Fire & Sword, some of the last of the v1 models before the v2 ranges are released hopefully later this year) you get a packet of stiff wire lances which come with a lot of little metal balls.

I puzzled over what these were for before managing to find a picture of the models from the BF&S website that showed them in place: they fit on the lance and rest just on top of the hand holding it as, I suppose, a sort of hilt. Might have been nice to have that on the box somewhere as I almost discarded them in ignorance.

For some reason, I also found the flag and epnnants difficult to do this time. Usually I’m fine with them, but the flag is a second attempt after I ruined the first one, and you can see that some of the pennants suffer from the dreaded “edges don’t match white edges”! They still make the unit really pop though, so worth doing.

The Deli were certainly light cavalry, but you don’t give horsemen a lance and call them fanatic and mad unless you expect them to charge people. As most rules don’t allow lights to charge formed units, I’ve therefore classed the Deli as fanatical formed cavalry, but might have to review my decision in light of the various whinges I have heard about this. I think I might add the option of fielding them as light or standard: people can then make their own minds up!

So just a few light cavalry units to go now, although to tell the truth I have many units of lights in my other armies that would pass as Ottoman lights. They were, after all, largely the same peoples…but it’s just I like a full roster for each of my armies rather than operating some kind of central pool. Any excuse to buy more minis!

FK&P-E AAR: Polish Lithuanians vs Ottomans

/

Friends Mark and Si have been collecting Polish-Lithuanian and Ottoman armies in 28mm to use with my “eastern front” variant of For King & Parliament.

As I currently have neither army in my collection finished, and play in 15mm, I was keen to have go. I would play the Polish-Lithuanians (hereafter known as ‘the Poles’) and John and Si would play the Ottomans (hereafter known as the Ottomans or the Turks!).

The Poles won the scouting, so I deployed my Winged Hussars and veteran Pancerni cavalry on the left, my guns in the centre, and some German foot supported by Reiters and Turkoman light cavalry on the right.

The Ottomans had their Janissery infantry and artillery on my right, their Azab levy foot in the middle, and their Sipahi cavalry (including some guard) on my left.

The game opened with each side moving their cavalry forward as rapidly as possible, and soon a collosal melee broke out, horse swirling back and forth amongst the confusion of the battle.

Meanwhile, my plan on the right had been to use my ‘German’ horse and accompanying lights to disperse the enemy horse in front of me, then advance to threaten the flank of the enemy infantry and guns as my ‘German’ foot advanced to contact from the front. Unfortunately the cards had other ideas, and my men refused to move more than a token distance towards the enemy.

The Ottoman cavalry command opposite my ‘Germans’ had exactly the same plan, and did manage to advance forward into bow range.

Fortunately their attempts to do unto me what I had intended to do unto them failed miserably and, with a new turn beginning, I was able to clear the enemt horse away and start my ‘Germans’ forward.

This left the game progressing nicely: I reckoned my four units of foot with cavalry support hitting the enemy flank could take care of the Janiserries, and my cavalry on the left were all veteran versus merely a mixed bag of Turks, so provided Si couldn’t get the Azabs in on my guns and more ‘German’ foot in the centre, I should be okay.

And so it came to pass: my cavalry on the right proved unstoppable, and soon Ottoman horse were fleeing the table in great numbers.

In fact, the battle was won on the left by the cavalry before my poor infantry and flanking cavalry had time to get stuck in at all:

So a solid win for the Poles…doubtless helped by my secret weapon lurking in her crate under the table: a fierce Pomeranian* mascot to inspire my troops to the heights they achieved!

*Pomerania being part of Polish Lithuania at the time!

Location of the Pomeranian Voivodeship within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Painting Ottomans

/

I have about half a 17th Century Ottoman army ready for the tabletop: the infantry bought from a friend, the cavalry painted by Glenbrook Painting Services (recommended).

Half an army is no good to man nor beast, so Time to get started on the other half. First up were some more European Sipahi and, as I had the figures handy, another infantry command base.

As the rest of the cavalry is painted acrylics-on-a-black-undercoat, I followed suit with the two horse units shown above rather than using my beloved Contrast Paints.

This was a bit of a shock to the system, especially with the horses, but they didn’t seem to turn out too badly. The By Fire & Sword figures are above-average castings but one unusual trait is that, with cavalry, the horse provided is plastic versus a metal figure.

This has two effects: firstly a base is a bit top heavy, and secondly the horses are sometimes bent out of shape and can’t easily be straightened. Fortunately not a problem with this batch, although I did have to remeber to be careful when taking them off their painting-bases.

The Janissary command base, on the other hand, uses Essex figures and is done using Contrast Paints. Comparing the two (i.e. command base versus the two cavalry units) shows the difference between the two painting styles. In this case, for this colour scheme, I prefer the Contrast look, although I accept that for some colour schemes nothing beats the layered (base coat, top coat, highlight) acrylic treatment.

Rainy Day Painting

/

It’s raining again, and no-one is around, so a trip to the painting table to see what we can find to work on.

First up are a couple of large artillery bases for my 17th Century Ottomans:

I wanted some big guns for the Ottomans and, as you can see, I found them!

The guns themselves are from the English Heritage: a recent trip around Framlington Castle (recommended, even in the rain) gave me access to the gift shop and to said guns. They’re great for a huge artillery pieces and it’s only the wheels that need painting. Add on some Ottoman crewmen from Essex and away you go.

The Ottoman artillery didn’t take very long, so it was what else I could find in the lead mountain to fill the time. With all the news being about the situation in Palestine, it seemed grimly inevitable that my eye eventually fell on a small bag of figures that turned out to be Khurasan’s Egyptian crewed weapons for the Yom Kippur War 1973.

In the packet you get one HMG team, one 81mm PM-41 medium mortar team, and two Malyutka or “Sagger” anti-tank guided missile teams. All nice figures that paint up nicely: the only problem was remembering what combination of paints I’d used for the crews’ uniforms…but fortunately I keep a record of that sort of thing so was able to quickly find the info I needed.