The siege and 'The Siege'

I've decided that the previous two periods for which I recommended books were insufficiently niche, so today we are going to consider Ottoman sieges of the fifteenth century.

For non-fiction we are going to go for the big one, the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. There are first hand accounts available, but they are not accessible by me or, I suspect, you, so we need someone else's interpretation. Top of my list would be Roger Crowley's 'Constantinople', a very vivid account that brings to life not just the major figures such as the Sultan and the Emperor, but a whole host of supporting characters. Runciman's 'The Fall of Constantinople' is very good as well; treat yourself and read them both.

'The Siege' by Ismail Kadare is a cracking, and literary prize-winning, historical novel about a fictional siege during the Ottoman invasion of what is now Albania, full of detailed descriptions of what was done and how. Narrated by a variety of characters from both besiegers and besieged and ranging from those directing events to those whose only task is to fight and die, the writing really brings alive not just action, but also motivation.

Ottomans - not drums

“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.” Honoré de Balzac

In other words, I am going to keep on posting photos because I have nothing else to do. While I have the boxes out here are some more Ottomans, actual fighting troops this time. These are not so much units as they are arbitrary groups of bases.

The flags carried by my forces probably owe more to watching 'The Wind and the Lion' than they do to the 15th century Ottoman Empire. Returning to figures for which rules writers have not yet made accommodation, the Pasha has brought his falconer on campaign with him:

Ottomans - the drums

"The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums."
- Arthur Koestler

My Ottoman collection has quite a few drummers, none of whom have any function in the rules.

If there is rhythm then you might as well dance to it:

And where the denizens of the seraglio dance, can Rudolph Valentino be far away:

Murad 1 Hunyadi 0

Peter and I had a play through the Varna scenario which has been set up in the annexe for the last couple of weeks. Naturally I hadn't got round to having a solo run through - although I had made a Janos Hunyadi command stand, and a one for King Vladislav while I was at it - but in all worked fairly well. As usual it would have worked even better had we played the rules correctly, but you can't have everything. Amongst the other things that we can't have this week are photographs because I didn't take any. Normally when we play at the Casa Epictetus I umpire, which gives me plenty of opportunity to take some, but on this occasion a a player I couldn't find the time, or find the camera, or something.

It all panned out fairly historically with Vladislav charging the Ottoman fortifications, almost getting across the barricades, but ultimately dying to no effect. I thought it might be a bit one sided as a game, but the crusaders were well-placed for much of the game. The king's demise, which meant the centre was permanently out of command, was really the turning point. Having weathered the storm the janissaries eventually advanced out of their camp and dealt the coup de grace. If I have one regret a the Christian commander it's that I didn't move the wagenburg across earlier to provide cover for the crumbling Wallachians on my left flank to hide behind.

Let's focus on the things that seemed to work:

• The mechanism for causing Vladislav and the Papal Legate to be liable to move forward impetuously.
• Classing jannisaries as legionaries in TtS! terms.
• The markers behind each unit showing commands they belonged to; the reminders of saving throws were useful as well.
• The new tokens; you can easily see what number they are, they are very unlikely to be overlooked when putting them back in the bag and they don't stick together.

All in all I thought it was a good scenario and I may well get it back on the table again sometime.

Varna

A sadly postponed visit to an exhibition about Noggin the Nog (would I lie to you?) left some unexpected free time which was utilised by having a first pass at setting up Varna. My information about the battle came mostly from the Freezywater publication on Janos Hunyadi, written by Bob Black and available from the Lance & Longbow Society, and from the Warhammer Historical book Vlad the Impaler by John Bianchi, which I suspect is out of print. A lot of online references to the battle seem to be of the lunatic, right-wing, alternate history type, but I thought this blog post from Dalauppror was very useful.

Janos Hunyadi puts himself about

The battle has some resemblances to a couple we have played in the legendary wargames room over the years. Firstly, it occurred during a crusade and, just like their predecessors three centuries earlier, the crusader commanders seem to have been totally inept at manoeuvring their armies.  On November 10th, 1444 they found themselves with their backs to the Black Sea, Lake Varda on their left flank and the impassable Franken Hills blocking the way to their right. The only way home was straight ahead, which was why the Ottomans had placed their army there and built a fortified camp. Secondly, at one point Sultan Murad II was apparently on the verge of doing a Frederick and making a run for it leaving his army behind; unlike the Prussian flautist he stayed put and, perhaps as a result, never became 'the Great'.

The view from the Franken Hills

Having quoted my sources - such as they are - I had better say that I have discounted much of what they write. I take the view that the forces were fairly evenly balanced, with the crusaders claim of being outnumbered three, or even five, to one being by way of an excuse for losing. I also don't believe the assertion in Bianchi's book that Vlad Dracul (the Impaler's father) commanded the Wallachians.

Murad's camp

The letters behind each unit are there to distinguish commands, while the numbers represent the base saving throw of the unit. White beads indicate lances, green beads are heroes, and in due course red beads will be hits. I may, or as so often may not, have a play through solo to see what happens, but there will certainly be a couple of changes. At the moment Zizka is standing in for Hunyadi, but Black's book has a Hunyadi standard and I have a mountain of unpainted plastic so I shall knock out a command stand for him. I also need a couple more stands of horse archers. Apart from that - and as long as one can cope with WotR hobilars as Wallachian light horse - we're good to go.

Sharpie's Triumph

I forgot that I had taken some photos of the Malesov game, so here's one at random:

Spot the drunken hero

James' suggestion - and I know that you have been waiting for it - is to allocate the Victory Medals unevenly, with the warwagons getting the bulk. In order to win therefore the Imperialists will be forced to attack the wagenburg directly; historically accurate and tactically foolish. The sensible thing for me to do would be to try the idea out immediately, but naturally I won't; Varna is a different sort of battle.

One of the practical problems we encountered was the tokens sticking together in the bag as they were being drawn. This is no reflection on Warbases, but is rather due to a dodgy bottle of varnish that I had, which I applied after painting the backs to differentiate the various sets. I have therefore decided to try a different solution, namely Scrabble type plastic tiles:

As you can see the set includes a couple of symbols. I have some plans to use those for some scenario specific rules. The sixes and nines are distinguishable, but not easily without standing them side by side. Here's one bag's worth after judicious application of Sharpie pen.

Hope was but a timid friend

Not that you would know from either James' blog or mine, but there has actually been some wargaming in the Lower Wharfe Valley. Two games in fact, very different in most ways, but what they shared was an eventual winner who had basically given up about two thirds of the way through and only carried on because there was plenty of time left.

The first was the blow the bridge scenario that we had played in the legendary wargames room two or three times a couple of years ago, and a very good game it gives. I was the Russians seeking to prevent said bridge being blown and, not remembering any details from the previous games, chose to bring the infantry on at the road entrance nearest to the bridge with the cavalry arriving later from one end of the table. When this was revealed there was much shaking of heads and sucking of teeth from Peter and James, with the strong consensus being that I'd got it all wrong. As it happens the gods of Piquet thought differently, because in the morale draw at the beginning I drew a Brilliant Leader card plus a Stratagem, which turned out to be basically another Brilliant Leader card for one command. The net effect was that that one infantry command stormed across the table and would actually have seized the bridge had I focussed on the important stuff rather than moving as many units as possible. If you ever play Piquet then that, dear reader, is the golden rule. The converse of having good cards in my deck was that I didn't have much morale. I failed major morale twice, ran out and actually started giving it to the Prussians. That basically means the game is over, but it was only about ten o'clock and my cavalry had just arrived so we carried on. The was nothing to do except act aggressively and damn the consequences; sure enough, from that point on it was a completely one sided affair and the Prussians fairly quickly succumbed.

The second game, in the less than legendary annexe, was the previously advertised Malesov. On this occasion the Imperialists gained an early advantage by immediately getting all their cavalry over the bridge - meant to be a bottleneck - and flanking the Hussites on both sides. With the warwagons' shooting achieving absolutely nothing, the Catholic crossbowmen advanced, fired and as luck would have it, killed Zizka himself; he not just being C-in-C, but also commander of the wagenburg. It didn't look good, but Peter - for it was he on this occasion - carried on because, well, the night was still young. And then, suddenly the wheels came off the Imperialists' caravan. They lost a couple of melees (although James did implausibly draw four tens in a row at one point), did very badly in the ensuing rout tests and, just like that, it was all over. The Hussites had won without moving anything off the table.

That last point does make me wonder about the quality of the scenario. James came up with a good sounding approach to force the crusaders to attack the warwagons front on, which of course is what they did at the time, but which no tabletop commander with any sense is going to voluntarily repeat. Details will be given in a future post along with those of one or two other changes to equipment that I am going to make to improve gameplay of TtS!. We are back to James' next week, but I think the next game in the annexe will be Varna, 1444. There are still warwagons, but it also gives me a chance to break out the Ottomans. And yes, I do have a Janissary marching band.

Whatever happened to not wargaming?

When I first started this blog I was intending to write from the perspective of a wargamer who never actually played any games. A lot has happened since then and yesterday I found myself playing two games in different locations on the same day. There's only one sensible response to that, and I shall say it before anyone else does: get a life, sunshine, get a life.

Anyway, before I run off to join the circus, let me record details of what happened. James and I repeated the raid scenario, but in the end decided against using Maurice as on closer inspection it didn't really seem to suit. Instead we used the very simple rules that had been used when James played the scenario with the League of Gentlemen Wargamers (a). These proved to be quite acceptable and served the purpose very well. I actually rather liked the combined combat/morale mechanism which meant that units could be steadily pushed back; it's just a shame that it was mine that were continually suffering this fate. Sadly however, having got a set of rules that worked for the level of game, the scenario stopped working. Given automatic unit activation, an impassable river, the distances from entry points to villages and the timing of the Prussian reinforcements arrival, the Russians could never have achieved their objective. More tweaking required.

Speaking of which, I have reset the Siege of Constantinople game and will be starting again. Having had belated recourse to the higher mathematics I realise that as originally set up it had no chance of following the historical narrative arc. What is meant to happen is that the role of the first wave is to make things easier for the second wave by filling in some sections of the moat, the second wave makes an assault on the walls and by causing casualties among the defenders enables the final success of the Janissaries. Obviously the game should allow for 'military possibilities', as I understand we should refer to them, on either side of that timeline, but there has to be a strong possibility that what happened happens. However when devising the initial forces I had overlooked how hard it was to inflict casualties by shooting; the Azabs looked as if they were not just going to fill in the entire moat, but go on to scale the walls and capture the city themselves. I must confess to having also been a bit disappointed that the Great Gun of Orban had exploded without firing a shot.

So rather than change the rules I have given the Byzantines an extra unit of Genoese crossbowmen and reduced the first wave to one hit units. To win the Byzantines will have to destroy four one hit units in the first attack and three two stand units in each of the following two attacks. It sounds straightforward, but the attackers will (mostly) get first blow in melee and the Janissaries are very highly rated. And who knows what the Great Gun will achieve? Not Orban, judging by the first run through. James made a number of other suggestions and I shall try them out. The key to the scenario - as in the raid one above - lies I think in getting the balance right; the overall concept is sound enough.

A further word about the Lazer Bond adhesive. I'm still happy with it (apart from the price), but have discovered a bit more about using it in practice. It seems very sensitive to mould release agent on figures, so they need to be thoroughly washed. It is also possible to release it by applying heat; this has both good and bad implications of course. And last, but not least, to use it properly one needs three hands: one each to hold the parts being stuck together and one to hold the UV light. I haven't quite overcome this particular issue yet.

There has been some muttering in the background, asking for evidence that Janissaries used crossbows. Well I certainly don't have any. What I do have is practical experience that converting muskets to crossbows is easier than replacing them with conventional bows. A conclusive argument if ever I heard one.


(a) As the first step in my commitment to getting a life I feel obliged to make an obscure point about something which is none of my business and in which no one else is interested. On his blog and elsewhere James uses 'Gentlemen' and 'Gentleman' seemingly indiscriminately. Barry Hilton always uses the former. Surely only the latter is grammatically correct. 'Gentleman' is here being used as a noun adjunct qualifying the word 'Wargamers' rather than as a noun in itself and, as such, should be singular, the English language having no concept of agreement between adjective and noun.

The first wave goes in

An hour or so of spare time saw the Bashi Bazouks begin their attack.

After the first turn they had reached the moat, but not managed to fill any of it in yet. I have made some changes since the game was originally set up. Both the moat and the wall are now in small squares which can only hold one unit. The use of movable markers to demarcate the grid allows this sort of flexibility.

Good news for the defenders as the Great Gun of Orban blows up on its first attempt to fire, in a straightforward example of the things one takes a long time over modelling and painting being completely useless on the table. Orban also fails his saving throw and dies, which may be an appropriate comeuppance for being a mercenary, but is not going to be a very thorough test of the rules for breaching the walls.

At the end of the third turn the attacking infantry have begun to have success in filling the moat. The defenders suddenly find themselves possessed of an extra unit of Genoese crossbowmen, no doubt rushing from elsewhere in the city in response to the assault; otherwise it looks like they'll never drive off the pesky Azabs. Missile fire is not particularly effective in TtS!. I'll decide later whether they need to lose a unit of Byzantine melee troops to compensate.

Urethane acrylate oligomer

Not to mention N-Dimethylacrylamide, tetrahydrofurfuryl acrylate and a bunch of other similarly named substances (a). I mentioned a couple of years ago here that I couldn't use superglue properly and received a number of sympathetic comments. ["I note," interjects the Rhetorical Pedant "that those comments were from pretty much the same few people who still read and comment on your blog now. Isn't that just a little bit sad for absolutely everybody concerned?"] Anyway, things haven't improved. I am using regular polystyrene cement a lot because the plastic being used by most figure manufacturers these days seems to take it OK. But when trying, for example, to bond plastic to metal the superglue comes out and things still go wrong.

Yesterday, setting up the game in the annexe, it struck me that I could perhaps do with another unit of Janissaries. I have plenty in stock (believe me I have plenty of most things in stock) and so sorted out sixteen to paint. Now the problem is that the figures available in plastic (on this occasion I am going to use these) are for a somewhat later period than I am doing. The uniform is the same, but many of them have firearms and so need converting in some way. I originally went for a 'simple' change, turning muskets into crossbows, but the results were, frankly, terrible. I'll still use them obvs, but there certainly won't be any photos of them on here. Subsequently I have decided to just cut the guns off and add pikes made from florists wire, but that, of course, requires superglue.

Or at least it did. I have, again as you already know, been ill. When I was at my poorliest I could do not much more than sit on the settee and watch television all day, thus being bombarded with adverts for lots and lots of stuff that I only vaguely knew existed before. Now I am never going to buy any sort of exercise machinery, I don't yet require a stairlift or shoes that fasten with velcro (they do look comfortable though) and, as an accountant, I'm not going to touch a funeral insurance plan with a bargepole, regardless of how many pens Michael Parkinson gives me. But I was rather taken with Lazer Bond (don't worry about the spelling - no lasers are involved), the plastic adhesive that only sets when you shine a UV light on it. And so, faced with sticking pikes onto Janissaries I have splashed out and bought some.

At this point you are no doubt waiting for me to say that I have managed to make a mess of that as well. But no. It works a treat. It's clean, simple, and quick. It's a bit like me in fact, except perhaps for the quick bit. Really, it's fine. What it isn't, is cheap. I paid £9.99 for 4 ml. Of course I have no idea how long it will last, or how many little plastic chaps it will stick together, so it may be even worse value for money than that suggests. If I had to guess the order of magnitude, based on remarkably little evidence, I would go for 100 rather than 1,000. But it works. Just maybe one of those exercise machines really would give me a six-pack without any effort on my part.

(a) How do I know this? I read a book: 'All About Glue'. I couldn't put it down.

May 29th, 1453

My plans for the couple of weeks or so - the school holidays in effect - are up in the air for a variety of reasons, so I thought I would set up a solo game in the annexe which I could dip in and out of as time allowed. Something compact and small scale would seem to be in order and therefore I have chosen to have a go at the Siege of Constantinople, which I have promised myself for many years that I wouldn't do. As a digression, does anyone else remember that one of Donald Featherstone's books contained photos of a chap who was refighting Stalingrad at 1:1. Even as a naive and credulous youth I regarded that as a bit of a stretch.

My scenario is loosely based on that in the Siege & Conquest supplement for Warhammer Historical. I've only used one row of walls for no better reason than I've only got enough walls to make one row. My Hexon terrain does however allow for a fairly decent looking 3D moat to be laid out.

The scenario deals with the final assault in the area around the Gate of Saint Romanus. Sadly there is no place for many of my siege related toys such as the Ram, the Tower, the Pick and of course, the Crow. However, I couldn't resist finding room for the Boiling Oil.

The Great Gun of Orban naturally features for the attackers.

I'm going to play it using To the Strongest! and you can see the grid laid out using the markers which I use for the purpose. Piquet would normally be my ruleset of choice for solo games, but it's such a faff to prepare the cards decks for the first time, and I just wanted to get on with it and take my mind off things. I do own a copy of Warhammer Ancient Battles, but have never been tempted by them.

The attack will take place in three waves: Bashi Bazouks, Christian allies and finally the Janissaries. Each will continue until they reach the command becomes demoralised (is that the term?) at which point they will be removed to be replaced by the next. I have some ideas regarding crossing/filling the moat, escalade, the role of the Emperor, and not forgetting Hasan the Giant of Ulabad; but the advantage of playing solo is that one can change the rules as one goes along. Oh, hang a trout, that's what we do anyway.

Mercy sakes alive

Last night we played the convoy scenario from the Lion Rampant rule book. The result was positive for the rules, but negative for my translation of the scenario to the tabletop.

The picture above is extremely uninformative on both counts, but, alas, I still have no camera. My mistake was - as Peter pointed out as soon as he saw the set up - to have the convoy start off table. I did try to ameliorate this, but it didn't work; I should have stuck more closely to the version in the book. The game pitched some undefined central European Holy Roman empire types trying to take a convoy of equally vague  treasure across the table while some Ottoman raiders tried to steal it. We used most of the special rules, and while James' braveheart leader saw off the head sipahi following a personal challenge it was too no avail. He ran out of missile troops and faced being whittled away as he moved forwards without being able to reply.

The rules appealed to me for a number of reasons when I read them, all of which were, I think, validated upon playing them:

•  I could play them with stuff that I already had. Though written for singly based figures there didn't seem any real reason why they shouldn't be played with stands. We simply counted each element of two cavalry or four infantry as two hits and marked units which were carrying one. We had a bit of debate about the required gap between units, but I think that's also no real problem.
• They address a scale of game that appeals to me. I read a number of blog reviews of the rules before playing them and was taken by one observation - sadly, and as usual, I can't remember where from - that historical skirmishes involve dozens of figures and that most 'skirmish wargames' are really pub fights. Now I love a large scale battle in the legendary wargames room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach as much as the next man (1), but I also like the raid/ambush type of game and haven't always been convinced that the same rules - facings, formations, manouvre, etc - work for both levels.
• They give a chance to get out some toys that I have enjoyed modelling, but which don't really fit into a large battle environment. In this case it was wagons and pack animals, but believe me I have some strange stuff stored in the annexe. My Janissary marching band may make it to the table yet.
• They seemed easy to play. Whilst there was the usual rifling through the book looking for the appropriate section, I can't remember playing a new set of rules where we had less retracing of steps because of an obvious mistake we had made. 
• They would appear to be easy to tweak for different periods. I think the melee combat mechanism will work for my Romans in Britain rip off of Pony Wars better than the one we were using, and I've seen, for example, an ECW version.

 So, they were - in my book at least - a success. As ever, I'm not sure when they will be back on the table because James has some rubber roads to test, and the next game in the annexe will be likely to feature the new C&C Napoleonic expansion.

(1) except possibly Sidi Rezegh, which I reserve the right to like slightly less than the next man.

We can't all be lion tamers

It is this blog's proud boast that it is never knowingly up to date. In that spirit about ten days ago I went to see 'Lawrence of Arabia' at the cinema in celebration of the 50th anniversary of its release. It was, of course, visually magnificent on the big screen.

I'm not entirely sure about the historical accuracy; surely even the British during the Great War wouldn't have employed anyone as obviously bonkers as T.E. Lawrence is made to appear by Bolt, Lean and O'Toole. Would they?