Returning to Quarterly production, the Turks.

 

I have had a long running idea for a short D&D campaign set in the midst of the Fall of Constantinople.  A couple of Years ago I took up ANton on his obscene desire to modify figures and had him "fix a few" Janissary for this project, he also cranked out a dozen Wallachians (Vlad the Impaler's boys), but I had the bulk of the force, and I decided it needed to get done, now that I had worked out the last details in my mind for the game aspect.  

This game will involve a lot of recycling of troops as the Turks will come on in Waves.  So while I do not need a lot of any one type, there are still a lot of types represented.  I added some Cavalry, as depending on how the game plays out, they may be needed, and you can not have turks without cavalry so for overall usage I include them here.  

These are two officers and two Janissary cook pot bearers (the figures in the background will be dealt with separately).  I love any unit that admits its reality and expressly states the importance of their food supply.  Thus, my decades long facination with the Janissary.  I have no idea who the manufacturer is for most of these as I bought them as seconds from ebay, god bless too large bags of figures and people selling off their unused left overs.  

Mosty of the Janissary will be rigged for hand-to-hand combat and thus armed with their Halberds. But I included a couple with the older bows and a few with the new 'fangled' Jezzails as escorts for important figures and some 'heavy' support for missile troops.  

Here are a dozen Ottoman Crossbowman.  The Ottomans swiped the crossbow from the Chinese and used it regularly until well after the conquest of  Constantinople.  They were the standard missile weapon at the time and kept the Christians busy on the walls while the gonnes cracked the walls.  If memory serves these are the aged wonders, Hinchcliffe, figures.  

And because, as Anton says, "too much is a good place to start", here is another dozen Ottoman crossbowmen for further firepower.  

Here is a group of 10 venerable Hinchcliffe Seljuk Turk swordsmen.  While the Seljuks were conquered by the Ottomans a few decades prior to the seige of Constantinople, the clothes style remained in use for decades after that, and these were exactly the sort of troops the Ottomans poured into the breach initially after it was opened.  I also have always liked the figures in this range for the curved Chinese Shields.  This was originally a dozen, but two figures had broken in the basing process, so only ten remained for my purposes.  I have always marveled at the breaking of ancient lead figures, just a clean snap like a human broken bone.  These two broke off above the ankles.  

Here are a dozen more Seljuk swordsmen.  These also exhibited the breaking quality, as half the swords broke off at the guard during the washing phase of painting.  With those six I just glued in some excess spears I had about the house and made them spearmen.  Once again tey have the marvelous curved style Chinese shields.  

Here we have several units of Cavalry, the very specific Mamelukes are in front with a couple of generic Arbs units behind them.  The Mamelukes are Minifigs I think, one of the rare clean mold runs.  The rest are a few wargames foundry giants with some Games Workshop figures to round out numbers.  

Here is the Halberd armed Janissary Unit promised previously, I have no idea who the manufacturer was. The figures themselves give off a minifigs vibe as they are not particularly detailed and are all the same, but I do not know at all.  

These are twelve Russians that I had mistakenly bought for my Tlingit game.  SInce I had them, I decided to reporpose most of them for this game as there were some religious zealot sects that dressed in brighter colors, and such clothing styles were very common up in central asia when the Ottomans originated. a few decades prior to their Conquest of Constantinople.  

Here we have six more Minifigs? figures.  They are early Cossacks, so stretching the era a bit, but there was always a wide variety of costumes for these roops, and they were thrown in free with the Janissary Halbardiers previously shown.  A better look at the last group of Foundry Arabs stands behind them.  

Finally, here is a unit that I include just because I love them.  I never remember what group they were inspired by,but there was some pistolier cavalry group that wore all black armor with bronze trim and rode Black horses as well, so I decided to go for it.  They turned out Phenomenally well by my usual standards, and I would even say they came out pretty good by even Anton's standards.  The figures are Games Workshop Empire Pistoliers. I was so happy with how they turned out that I bought two more units worth of them.  Now I just need to find some units that inspire my painting again.  

So there you have 115, 28mm figures to go along with the zombies detailed elsewhere.  

In the final analysis, while this is designed for a one off campaign, I wanted to have them be useful in the overall, so the units are all in sixes and twelves so these figures will work in a Pikeman's Lament army as well, so now I have one of those as well.  Actually, as you will see in the next installment of this quarters production, I have two pikeman's lament armies ready to go, but that is for the next post.