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Hey guys, I am interested in historical wargames for some time but this is kinda, really overhelming. So to make it easy I am going to ask questions and pray that someone helps me.

- I saw that there are different scales. Which one is more used ?
- Is there a company like GW who has the Hand over historical wargames ? Or are their many companies who sell their own stuff ? In case of "yes" wich one is the "biggest" ?
- What are the major periods of historical wargames where Ottomans are involved and have models ?


edit: can't find Ottoman models in 28 mm scale

The Assault Group and Redoubt Enterprises make 28mm Ottomans but depends what period Ottomans you want... though many work for different periods of history.

I think Warlord Games has the most historical games. They produce Hail Ceasar (classical and medieval), Pike and Shotte (1500-1700), Black Powder (Napoleonic) and Bolt Action (WW2). All of those are 28mm.

Of course, the biggest historical wargame by far is Flames of War (WW2), which is in 15mm.

For Ottomans, you are mostly going to be looking at the 1500-1700 periods, as that was the height of their power. The Ottoman Empire really became important after the capture of Constantinople in 1453, while after 1700 they were slowly grinded to dust by the Russian Empire.
Of course, they lasted from 1299 to 1923, so you could play almost any period. It depends on where you can find the models for.
With Fire and Sword has really nice Ottomans in 15mm.

Oh thank you alot guys

Gripping Beast have a line of 28mm Ottomans from WW1 as part of their WW1 in the East line.

They have separate head options - fez, covered helmet, ottoman style stalhhelm. Nice looking figs.

A lot of people play ww2 in 15mm for large games (i.e. Flames of War), the most popular scale for ww2 is probably 20mm (Battlegroup, many others), 28mm for more skirmishy (Bolt Action).

Scales can be all over and vary depending on era, and games rules (though most rules are scale agnostic).

Later in the year Warlord is going to release some ottomans to go up against their newest line of models, The Italian Wars.

Most of the Warlord stuff also works with 15mm. I know people mention playing Hail Caesar in smaller scales. Bolt Action also works at 20mm or 15mm.

Scale depends on what you want. 28mm is most common for skirmish games and some larger scale historical. 20mm is largely 20th century forward as it mixes with 1/72 models.

15mm is the lower end of skirmish scale, but highly popular for larger scale combat. 10mm is also popular in large scale historical battles. At these scales models are relatively cheap and enable larger, unit based, battles.

Also, 6mm is popular for very large scale battles as well as armor/tank battles. Models are even cheaper and enable you to field vast quantities of tanks/equipment.

What time frame of Ottoman are you interested in?

Always fancied an Ottoman army for no real reason other than they look cool and can be used over a long time period with many of the troop types.

Easy E. I am interested in ww1 ottomans mostly.

One piece of advice I'd give is to look at historicals as you building your own personalized miniature gaming experience with the miniatures you want, the rules you want and the terrain you want. While some people would advise going and seeing what other people near you are doing and then join in on what they are doing, I'd advise the opposite: do what you want and make two small armies so you can host games.

You're the one whose going to be doing the painting and whatnot for your armies, so it may as well be something that you like. Obviously, the best of both worlds would be if you check out what is played locally and find that people are playing the time period in the scale you want with rules you like, but that might be rare.

The other thing I'd recommend is starting with small forces you can get on the table and play. I know there are tons of rules sets out there where the default assumption for a normal size games is that you'll have hundreds of figures, but you don't have to go that route. I think one of the keys to keeping things from being overwhelming is to break things down into chunks rather than having a huge amount of miniatures and terrain to paint so that you can maybe play someday.

WW1 Ottomans are fascinating. I also think the Turkish War of Independence that followed is equally fascinating.

Ottoman armies were numerous, and they're fun to play against many opponents. I'd say it would be wise to go for 10mm or even 6mm, so you could fit a decent army on the table.
Pendraken, Kallistra, and Irregular Miniatures have the field covered in 10mm, and Irregular Miniatures have a limited 6mm range which can be padded out with Heroics and Ros (have they changed hands recently?).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oops, missed your WWI reference. Sorry.

There is a whole book devoted to Ottoman-centric wargaming for Field of Glory, a ruleset formerly published by Osprey that is still pretty easy to find. The book is called Eternal Empire -- but I hasten to add this one is about the Ottoman heyday (15th-16th centuries), not WW1. Essex sells prepackaged starter armies in 15mm for most if not all of the lists in the book.

I am glad at least one other person mentioned Field of Glory and that the Ottoman's can be played using smaller scales than 28mm.

While I love 15mm armies, I have switched to 28mm recently.

Mostly because I do not much care for the selection of 15mm miniatures available.

But if I had my druthers, I would go with 15mm. It is just a more convenient scale.

28mm is so impressive, though...

Also, you might want to look into DBR, which is published by WRG.

It is a rules set that covers the era/period of the Ottoman's from around 1400 - 1700, and is basically on par with the Field of Glory rules in terms of complexity. The DBR rules have a very different style of play, though.

But FoG or DBR are both my favorite rules for that period.

MB