Ottoman Turks

One thing that has always been mentioned on various “army lists” for the Ottomans was “chained guns”, “chains for defence of guns” or “stakes and chains to defend guns”.

Over the years I also read various descriptions about the defences used by the Ottomans and they have all used similar vague terms for the defences used by the guns on the battlefield. So as we mainly use the Pike and Shotte Black Powder variant for the games we play (good for large, multi player games over in a few hours) and not wanting my guns to be rode down by the cavalry it was time to think how I could represent these.

I have always had difficulty with the theory that the guns were actually chained together as this would mean:

a) half your crew would be on the wrong side of the defences when loading the guns

b) recoil would be a complete pain with chains and spikes flying everywhere.

So here’s my version

Next was what to do regarding the “stakes, spikes, spears” in the various descriptions. I already had some fine chain but the links were not wide enough to pass anything through.

So some square plastic tube drilled and fine plastic rod glued in place. This then had to be drilled again to pass the chain through.

Once this was done the chains were then mounted on the posts and the “spikes” spaced out and glued in place.

The final touch was painting the entire assembly starting with Gunmetal Grey and highlighting with Blue Gunmetal and Silver to try and give a bit more definition.