Ottoman List

[Mulciber]

Interesting. This is more enquiry than gripe: What evidence is there for Janissary light foot slingers and handgunners?
I expected an option for a Janissary Medium Foot BG with handgun and swordsmen. I also wondered if there'd be a small BG option for solak/guard Janissary to be available if the Sultan was present.

[expendablecinc]

MF with hangun seems too early for pre 1500.

Anthony

[Mulciber]

MF with hangun seems too early for pre 1500.

As I understand it the Janissary ortas were adopting firearms from the 1440s onward.

[ethan]

This is an interesting list that has a number of unusual directions you can take it.

My gut feel is that the "conventional list" is something like

lots of Jannissaries, they are very good
Take the drilled guard cavalry as a single BG of 4
Take the Timariots are armoured superior
Moderate LH (12-18)
Use up any remaining points on filler LF of varying quality depending on your feelings about LF

This comes out to be broadly similar to what I have seen with Early Persian lists with Jannissaries playing the role of the immortals.

However....

There are some more unconventional options in there as well.

- Given the prescense of the Jannissaries (and relatively large numbers of LF and possibly MF archers) you could choose to forgo a big LH/Cv army, drop your initiative down to get the first move secure that against many opponents terrain won't kill you.

- You could further de-emphasize the cavalry by taking the Timariots as protected instead of armoured (and even go all the way down the protected average if really want to save points). Given that you don't have to take many of these you could really de-emphasize the cavalry aspect of the army.
This is also independent of taking large numbers of LH....

- The option is always there to a hard hitting Serb ally which if you took say 6 super knights would hit very hard indeed and could be pretty effectively covered by LH

- The LH options are very pick and mix depending on what you want. Sure you have to some Akinjis that are average/bow but after that you can choose to get bow/sword, some superios bow/sword, etc lots of options in this list to slightly upgrade or downgrade some basic troop types to fit your AP budget or get other capabilities.

[madaxeman]

The odd thing for me was that their Byzantines opponents get quite a lot more not-so-good foot bowmen than the Ottomans do.

It means its arguably easier to make a really large, poor quality Byzantine army than an Ottoman one - and also that the Ottoman list skews you towards a small, high quality cavalry force. I expected optios to have loads of rubbish foot in an Ottoman army.

????

[carlos]

Some of the min/maxes are odd across all armies to be frank. I think poor LF w/ bow or sling are EXCELLENT value and some armies can have loads of those, and funnily enough, not some armies you'd expect to have those. Oh well, put lead on table, roll dice, have fun.

[ethan]

The odd thing for me was that their Byzantines opponents get quite a lot more not-so-good foot bowmen than the Ottomans do.

It means its arguably easier to make a really large, poor quality Byzantine army than an Ottoman one - and also that the Ottoman list skews you towards a small, high quality cavalry force. I expected optios to have loads of rubbish foot in an Ottoman army.

????

You can have a load of rubbish in Ottoman if you want.

You can take 16 poor MF/LF Azab Archers, 6 Poor Defensive spear, 8 poor LF types, 12 mob, 4 average heavy weapons, 4 impact MF, 4 artillery and lots and lots of field fortifications...

Then you fill it out with rubbish protected, average cavalry....will be big

[Mulciber]

Obviously there'll always be a subjective element to lists and I'm always intrigued by people's views on them. As far as I know, the Janissaries made up a pretty small part of what was essentially a cavalry army. I'm also not aware of them having slinger or crossbow units per se.