Monday, July 27, 2009

Ottoman Heavy Cavalry Finished (finally!)


It took me longer than I expected, but I finally finished the heavy cavalry portion of my Ottoman Turkish army over the weekend. A very colorful bunch indeed, and will make a sharp contrast to their Austrian, Polish, Russian and Swedish foes.
It's kind of hard to see in the photo, but the front rank has their lances down, charging home.

I still have light cavalry and infantrymen to do, so this is only about 25% of the full army.

I still have to get on to building my castle. Only about a month to go now to the Historical Society's Collector's Show. Definitely the wrong time for me to drop into slow motion mode!

Monday, July 13, 2009

The Ottoman Turkish Army Grows!



My Ottoman Turkish army grew from just the three command figures (see previous post) to almost 30 figures over the weekend as I (almost) finished 24 sipahi. (As you can see in the second photo, I still have to finish their bases!)

These were the Ottoman equivalent of the medieval knight, although they didn't wear all the heavy armor - in the Turkish climate, that would have been pretty much intolerable. They all wore their own colored costumes, and there were a lot of bright colors among them, so this should end up being one of my more colorful armies.

Sipahi were a part of the Ottoman armies from the early 1300s through to the 1800s. Looking at the weapons the infantry figures I have waiting to be painted though, I think my finished army will be most suitable for maybe 1400s to 1600s period, around the time of the introduction of gunpowder to the battle field.

That will work perfectly for me, as (when I have painted all the figures) I will also have Russian, Swedish, Polish and Austrian armies from the same period, and they all fought each other historically.
Next weekend I'm planning to paint some more sipahi, and then I will start work on the infantry soldiers - the janissaries - who provided the firepower for the army.

The final army should have about 150-200 figures.

Monday, July 6, 2009

First Ottoman Turks Painted Up


Yes, I SHOULD be concentrating on building my castle for the collector's show, but once again I find myself distracted!

I was in the mood to paint horses again so I made a start on my Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans ruled Turkey from around 1299 to 1918, and my army will be from the earliest period, possibly usable up to around 1700 (although I haven't done all the reasearch yet, so that might be a little optimistic).

These are just the command figures - standard bearer on the left, the agha of sipahis in the center, and a cavalry drummer on the right. (Once again, I still have some tidying up to do on the figures).

It should be a really colorful army when it is finished. I'm finding it difficult to research and plan though - each different unit seemed to have a vastly different organizational structure, which is really weird. I'm used to eastern armies being totally decimal (units of 10, 100, 1000 etc), which makes it all easy to figure.

Such apparent randomness is very unusual, so I must be missing something!

Anyway, my Mongols, Arabs, Teutonic Knights and early Russians are all very eager to get a piece of these guys, so there is certainly not going to be any shortage of fights for them to get stuck into.