Turks!!

  For any number of odd reasons or for no reason at all, I have been fascinated by the "side-shows" of the Napoleonic Era. Swedes, Turks, the North American War of 1812 - all interests of mine. I've built armies for each of those nations. Today, I'd like to show you some Turks. They are based (for the most part) for the rule set named Shako. I continue to rebase and paint more of these guys... and I may have to sell some of them off, because I have more than I'll EVER need. Anyone interested?
   So let's take a look:


A selection of Sipihis, lancer cavalry in the service of local governors or Pashas.
Some can be really wretched. (Minifigs, some ancient)



More provincial Sipihis.



A nicer group of Guard Sipihis, servant of the Sultan. (Essex minis)




Sipihis of the Porte... Regular cavalry, more or less. (Minifigs and Falcon)




A Guard Sipihi unit (Old Glory) I have a similar unit armed with swords, but I
can't find them just now. They could also be Mamelukes.



Lance-armed Sipihis of the Porte (Minifigs)



Turkoman Horse Archers... Why not? (unknown figure range)
These would be volunteer cavalry serving for plunder and might be called
"Yoruks", "Djellis" ("Scouts"?), or even "Bashi-Bazooks"("Crazy Heads")



Circassian irregular lancers (Minifigs Crimean War range)
More volunteer plunderers.





Szeklers... I don't know what it means. The figures are from some
Renaissance range and they act like Cossacks.





















European Djellis from Falcon Miniatures.
Great at raiding, crappy at fighting toe-to-toe.





Other Djellis with lances (Essex)





Janissaries! The rules rate them as 'elite', but everything I've read about them rate them as arrogant, self-important scum.
 On my table, they'll be 2nd rate at best. (AB miniatures - they are choice!)

 

More Janissaries, this time by Essex.



Bostanci ("Gardeners") of the Janissary Corps. These would be true elites
- the Sultan's personal infantry guard. (a mixed bag of Essex and Minifigs)
Shako sets elite Ottoman units at 12 figures and others at 9 figures.
I'll run Janissaries at 12 to allow them to think they are elite!

Sekhans - the infantry of the private armies of the Provincial governors.
They were often mercenaries hired from Bosnia, Albania, or elsewhere
within the Ottoman Empire. Some received training in Western-style tactics -
with bayonets! - from European renegades and later British and French
advisers or Slavs who had served in the Austrian or Russian armies.
(Minifigs)



More Sekhans - Old Glory this time; New Order Army figures painted in odd
colours. With Ottomans almost any colour is right.
"Uniforms? Ha! It is to laugh!"




More Sekhans - cause you need a ton of these mostly 2nd rate troops.
(Minifigs Renaissance and ACW, Essex ACW Zouaves in front)




Even more Sekhans - unknown ACW Zouaves in front, a cobbled-
together unit of Minifigs and Old Glory in back.





Two regiments of the Nizam-i-Cedid, The New Order Army. Formed by
Sultan Salim III in the early 1800's, they were good solid troops, who defended
Acre against the French. The Janissaries hated them, seeing them as an affront
 to Islam and to their privileges, so the Janissaries slaughtered them.
Look! Drums! Uniforms! Bayonets! Volley fire! Western innovations!

  


One of the Nizam units up close (Old Glory)




Skirmishers, perhaps Rayas or armed peasants. They'd be attached to a
more "regular" unit, possibly one of the Janissary regiments (or ortas.)
(AB miniatures)





Heavy artillery (Minifigs Mogul range) Probably too much skin being
seen here for a Muslim unit, but I liked the figures. Ottoman gunners were
fairly good, and at one time, cast their cannon on site!



Some more modern medium artillery. These Old Glory Cossack gunners
portray the Topiji artillery of the time, using more Western cannon.

A mass of fellahin or peasants without a firearm among them. They need to
be re-based, but I imagine the units to be HUGE with absolutely abysmal morale.

There's more Turks hiding in the garage somewhere and I may never find them. I love the weirdness and medieval feel of the army and the mixed bag of contemporary troops along side feudal cavalry and mercenaries from everywhere.

How about we do Swedes next time?

Bi-centennial Adventure

My previous entry dealt with last week's game (18 February), so this one reports on today's game. The Hamilton Road Library needs our usual room for a large group meeting, so we went to a smaller room, but still had about 20 gamers stop by.
My crowd played an 1812 patrol adventure game using Iron Ivan's This Very Ground rules with a few variations for the War of 1812. Each player gets a patrol and a mission. Who wins depends on who fulfills their mission. The cast included:
     Tyler - Native Warband with a British Indian Department adviser and help - arrive and leave by canoe and take scalps
     DJ - Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles patrol - burn a rebel's farm.
     Kevin - British Regular infantry detachment - take and hold a crossroads
     Robby - US regular Rifle patrol - find and recover a lost ammunition waggon
     Andy - US Volunteer Rifle unit - burn a loyalist's farm
     Martin - French Infantrie d'Ligne detachment - find and recover a lost cannon
     Darian - US State Militia patrol - take and hold a crossroads
The order of movement was determined by drawing a card; when your card came up, it was your turn to be active. All units started roughly 12" from their table edge, going the long way. All over the board were numbered poker chips, each denoting an "encounter" of some sort or other. (An idea stolen from Iron Ivan's Where Heroes Dare pulp era rules.) Some of those will come out later.
As the game began, everyone moved forward, the US side all conferring. The units could not communicate unless an officer or sergeant was in base contact with another unit. The Crown troop didn't, but they didn't seem to care.



Tyler's Native warband in their "canoes" emerge from the bridge. The
river was too deep to wade, so it was only crossable at  the bridge and at
a flatboat ferry, which Tyler took and grounded on the Crown side of the river.




Kevin's red coats pass a civilian refugee caravan. He commandeered the
carts in order to block the bridge. In the far background, DJ's Glennies hoist
cattle from the loyalist's farm and smoked meat from a hidden smokehouse,
one of the encounters. The chip in the foreground turned into a bear later. 



Martin's French... having taken a wrong turn at Baton Rouge... come up the
centre. His grenadiers and voltigeurs made up two separate small patrols.
The Sapeur - in red in the foreground - was charged with collecting mush-
rooms for dinner. They were joined by a local woman, who was called a
witch by the mob chasing her.

Andy's Volunteers (foreground) and Robby's Rifles (background) head for
 the river bank.



Kevin's unit discovered the ammo waggon AND the cannon mired at the
crossroads. He attempted to free them to block the road further, but Andy
and Robby's rifles (25" range) really hurt him.





Tyler's Native warband lands to wreak havoc. In landing their canoes, two
of them sank with all aboard being lost, including the BID officer. Now they
depended on their sachem to lead, disregarding the BID soldiers. The braves
scalped everything in sight and set fire to BOTH farms, scalping the settlers.
I should demand they be more discriminating. 




Marty's Voltigeurs face down the charging witch hunters. ("Torches and
muskets!") The witch hunters saw the witch with the French troops and
made after them. They wiped out the Voltigeurs in three rounds of combat.
Darian left and I - the gamesmaster - took over the brown-coated US Militia
which took to facing down the Natives.




Okay... DJ's Glengarries, led by a Mr. Sharpe, killed the bear, later slaughtered
 a pack of wolves, and stared down the moose seen advancing on them on the
road. They never got to burn that farm but they took everything that wasn't
nailed down and that was edible... more or less.




One of the ox carts Kevin commandeered heads over the bridge, it's red coat
handler seen dead in the shallows of the stream. My wife painted the two ox
carts and I only just remembered they were Irregular Miniatures products.
I like 'em and every body else did too! Nice work, Beth!



Martin's fusiliers move up to the bridge. You can see "the witch" next to
the mounted officer in the centre. The cart? Filled with jugs of moonshine
whiskey. The French wouldn't drink it; Maybe not cultured enough for
their refined palete or maybe their discipline held. Kept for cooking maybe?



Since the Crown forces were badly outnumbered,  I gave another patrol
 of British Regulars to Kevin as reinforcements. Here they prepare to volley
the French and ignore the moose, who heads for more peaceful places.




Andy and Robby's Riflemen support the French assault on the bridge.
They did great execution on Kevin's original force. They are at the edge of
the woods, shown by the red yarn.




Tyler's Natives and lone BID trooper fire the rebel's farm. They became
pyromaniacs... which leaves me wondering about Tyler... a little.





















It appears the Crown won. Nobody fully achieved their mission, but the Glengarries carried off LOADS of edibles and the Natives burned and scalped their way across the table. (The US Militia sank all their canoes; seem birch bark won't hold up to bayonets!) The bridge became a stalemate with Kevin and Marty contesting it and being shot down each in their turn. The two US units of rifle armed troops were  invaluable.

In retrospect, I should have had more than one way to cross the river. The barge/ferry didn't work well and was disabled early. Some of my missions were unachievable which is distressing for the players, everybody then goes and has fun... which is why we play, isn't it?

Some of the encounters included a bear, a pack of wolves, a moose, a nest of snakes, a skunk (which Andy simply walked around), the "witch" and the witch-hunters, a hen house with hens and eggs, a smokehouse with hams, bacon, and smoked fish, a cache of highly flammable lamp oil which no one found, a cart loaded with moonshine, refugees and their carts, a bog, the barge/ferry, and cattle. It may be a while 'til we do one of these again, but all the players seemed to enjoy the game.

Snakes take their toll on the militia.

Another farm goes up!

Last of the Boot Camp

Illness prevented me from blogging before this. The beginning of Lent is a bad time for a person of my profession to come up ill... it is entirely too busy! So here are some offerings for you.

The Hamilton Road Gaming Group finished up our "Disposable Heroes" Boot Camp with a few games. I was slightly under the weather so I 'advised' a young fellow from the neighborhood who's been playing with us for a few weeks. Part way through the game, he tired of it so I took over. I faces Tyler's Devil's Brigade platoon plus with some Wehrmacht Grenadier regulars. I had a Pz.IV D and Tyler had a tank destroyer with a ancient 75mm cannon on an M3 halftrack chassis. It proved to be enough.

Looking toward the Allied side. The river-like divide is a galactic separation
between my table and Marty/Robby's table.



The troops of the 1st SSF advance over the grainfields.



The Wehrmacht advances in turn. This element didn't last long. Tyler's
jeep with a .50 cal HMG saw to that.



The advance on the German right. American squads are HUGE.



My sniper team avoids the advancing Forcemen. The Pz.IV is immoblized
by a shot from the Tank Destroyer.

The firefight in the grain field begins.



Ah, yes! Darian's mortar took out the jeep with it's .50 cal and BAR team.
Somehow it's always sweet... and surprising... when a mortar actually
hits something!



A cluster of Forcemen.





















Yeah, that's the culprit! The Force's Cannon Company chalks one up...
with the destruction of my Pz. IV.





















On the other side of the table, Marty's Sikhs defended against a parachute landing of Robby's Airborne in a scrimage/maneuver/wargame-of-a-wargame. They actually had time for two games since Marty cleaned up the air-dropped Screaming Eagles in quick time in the first game. It was a night battle and the paratroop were "dropped" by dropping 'chits' from a height. If they landed off board, the represented element was gone. If it landed in trees, it was pinned. In the second, Robby had some air support and the Sikhs didn't do so well.



Sikhs on patrol are ambushed by a paratrooper HMG. More on this later.




Sikhs take refuge in a farm house. Sgt. Rock leads the paratroops at the
bottom of the photo.



The airstrikes supporting Rob's paratroopers found the Churchill a tempting
target.



We often use blue chips to show where casualties fell. Here is all that's
left of the HMG and accompanying troops I spoke of above.



Paratroops converge on two surviving Sikhs. Sgt. Rock (from Reaper
Miniatures) takes charge.





















There was a third game with Andy monitoring it, but I don't know what happened there.
At the end of all this, I had to meet with a couple who came to the library for some pre-wedding counseling. While I met with them, my daughter, Katie was introduced to Disposable Heroes! She is an experienced gamer with an Elvish army for Warmaster and some crazy D&D and Traveller characters. She fought Tyler (her fencing master) and seemed to enjoy the game. Once we went home, Tyler came over and she and Robby played him in a War of 1812 game using Iron Ivan's This Very Ground rules.



Katie, Marty, Kevin, Tyler, and Steven (in cap) work out a small scenario
in "Patton's Dream" (USA vs. USSR)




Katie's Soviets take the house and watch the SU-100 advance.




My daughter thought the "Commissar Rule" was a good one.
"Fail morale and retreat or pop one guy with the Commissar? It's a no-brainer!"





















The Boot Camp idea was a good one and a worthwhile activity. Most of the regulars are more familiar with the rules now. Everybody has their favourite army as well.
A few notes:

• American squads are massive and tough to deal with.
• I got to figure out how to maneuver troops on a cluttered board.
• Just about everything is vulnerable.

Next week - 1812 patrol adventure!