Russo-Turkish War 1877....Part 1

Turkish infantry advance - note the Peabody Martini Henry Rifles

Now that the poll has closed the serious business of 'drilling down' into the war of 1877 can begin. The sources I possess are fairly modest; consisting as they do of the War in the East by Quintin Barry and the Osprey title covering the war. I also have some ebook histories including the work of Archibald Forbes which is a great read. Of course the internet will also be useful and for reasons that will become obvious the game at the end of all this research will look rather special. I will not go into details until a couple of experiments have taken place but if my plan works out OK then it will make a huge difference to the visual look of the action.

As far as the game itself is concerned I shall be using the hex based version of Bob Cordery's Big Battle Portable Wargame 19th century rules with a couple of very minor tweaks. I intend fighting an my usual 13 x 9 hexed playing area and of course, the action will be written up and recorded for posterity. At the moment though, the biggest issue I will have is finding an action to translate into a game that does not involve anything related to either the siege of Plevna or the numerous battles in the Shipka Pass!

Luckily there are a lot of other actions both great and small that could be worked into a game and that will be my main focus for the time being.