The Lure of the Sublime Porte

A new history covering the campaigns that shaped the Ottoman Empire up to 1600. I was never going to be able to resist getting a copy!

I blame Eric Knowles for this! I first became acquainted with the Ottoman Turks via the Madasahatta campaign, the follow on WW1 South East naval camapign, along with an epic refight of the Siege of Vienna in 1683 fought using 25mm figures (mainly Minifigs and Hinchliffe) in the cellar beneath the New Model Army shop in Manor Park. As I recall - this was in the early 1980s - the result was the same as the historical version but the Turks came a whole lot closer, within a whisker even, of capturing Vienna. It was, as were most things Eric organised, large, brash and a whole lot of fun to take part in!

I have flirted with the idea of a Turkish army over the years and in a variety of scales, but never really settled on anything specific. To start with, the number of figures required to do the army justice tends to be on the large side which translates as a lot of painting. I was also undecided as to what scale of figures to use and indeed, I have looked at scales from 6mm to 28mm but have never settled on one. To be honest, for a long time I had given up on a land based set up for this very reason but instead focused on the naval side. This translates for the period in question (15th/16th century) to galleys and lots of them!

My thoughts on the naval dimension of the Ottoman Empire of the period will form a later post but as far as the land side is concerned I will, in the short term at least,  fall back on the use of my block armies. 

A long time ago in a man-cave, far, far away….

A good few years ago, when I chopped up umpteen sets of ‘not-quite-Jenga-blocks’ to make my block armies, I wanted to make a set that would be suitable for tribal or irregular armies. The formal armies consist of red, blue, green, light grey, brown and olive sets whilst the irregular set is a little more varied in colour.

The ‘Irregular’ blocks set. The blocks in the bottom three rows were designed as a ‘Zulu’ set whilst the two rows above are intended for use as Afghan/Arab types. The top row has some artillery and my version of the famous Janissaries.

The top left two sections contain the blocks that I organised to represent stylised Janissaries - the colours were deliberately chosen - with their famous white headdress, blue tunic and red leather boots. 

Jannisary blocks - although I made these best part of a decade ago up until now they have never been in action. The ‘Zulu’ and ‘Afghan/Arab’ sets have been used on a few occasions and have given some really good games (see the Games folder).

With my recent acquisition of the first two Portable Wargame compendiums - with all that 3 x 3 goodness and much else besides - as well as the ‘Dominion’ series, I have some very good rules to experiment with and so the lure of the Sublime Porte makes a compelling case for further investigation.

And of course, there is the naval dimension to consider - and consider it I am!