Ottoman Turkish Janissaries

After painting so many units of French Napoleonic line, I was looking for something a little different.

I have always had a soft spot for Renaissance Ottoman Turks, and have the core of a 15mm army stored somewhere. It saw action in a few very enjoyable games in the 80's, so I decided to do the whole thing over again but in 28mm this time, and managed to complete the first unit of Janissaries over the weekend:

These guys have jumped a rather long painting queue, but it was a relief to be able to paint something without piping :

I have purchased miniatures from The Assault Group, or TAG as they are more commonly known, for this project. They are very nice figures, but took a little bit of "working out" in terms of what to paint where. That is probably more a function of the period and a lack of definition as to what combatants of period actually wore however, combined with the usual uncertainty when first approaching a new project:

There were also four command figures in each pack which I decided to spread across two elements, as I am basing in threes:

One of them includes a standard bearer, so I turned to Little Big Man Studios and their Islamic Banners, which I believe fit quite nicely (even though the Janissaries themselves were predominantly Christian):

These are decals which have to be applied to paper. This was actually very easy, although the bit that I found slightly mystifying is that they are in two separate halves with no join, so you have to position them carefully and then paint the blank space in between the two parts. It should be noted however that this is not the case with the bulk of Steve's banners and, even if it were, the end result more than justifies the extra minute or so of effort as I believe they look terrific.

That's it for the first unit or orta, and there is another on the painting table at the moment which I am hoping to complete within the next couple of weeks.