"Do you like to play Bashi Bazouks?" Topic

This is the ultimate "If you lose the battle, it isn't your fault" army.
Truly.
Plus they have very colorful "uniforms".
Best of all, when they bolt and run, it puts a huge gap in your lines!

What's not to like?

What's not to like?

They get paid in plunder.

That said, I'm a big advocate of mercs on the tabletop. Beyond bolting, there is lots of other interest their behaviour brings to the battle problem.

If I had been the first responder, I was going to ask "That's an old "Wham-O" game, right?

I have a horde of Cossacks, does that half count?

Well, my feeling is "If I can win commanding the 1st Guards Mechanized Parachute Ski Marines, who cares, anyone could; If I can win with Bashi-Bazouks, that's a notable victory."

I'll take garbage troops any time.

Always loved Ottomans. All periods, all troops. From the fearsome warriors who sacked Constantinople to those who were crushingly defeated and almost wiped out by Tamerlane, to Lepanto to Vienna and beyond.

Their armies have been both the best and the worst (often in the same period!) and always gloriously florid and colorful.

What's not to love?

Yes, I have some in my Victorian Colonial Egyptian forces.

Jim

C) No, but if you hum a few bars I'll fake it.

My Mahdists always enjoy their presence.

I have three units for TSATF. Two are mounted (one is only a half unit) and one foot. In spite of all the negative comment in this thread, I would say they better than my NNC regiment.

Play bashi bazouks? No, thanks. I had trouble enough with the piano.

"O hark to the groans of the wounded and dying,
Of the mother who casts a last lingering look
At her infant aloft, understandably crying
Impaled on the spear of a Bashi Bazook."

-from "Drayneflete Revealed" by Osbert Lancaster (a historical pastiche published 1949)

Like ColCampbell, I have some Bashi's in my Colonial Egyptian army, primarily for use in Sudan games set from 1881-1887.

Don't have any but I do like to play with duff troops – some of the SYW Freikorps spring to mind – also why I like playing Austrians for Napoleonics – if you lose, people say "figures", if you win, extra laurels

I'm painting up my bashi-bazouks for colonial Sudan battles. It looks like Hicks felt they must, somehow, somewhere, have some redeeming features, and he tried a variety of things, but didn't find out what those features might be. He did not try putting them in dark alleys at night and letting them mug wandering Mahdists, which might just have been their strong point.

Still, the Egyptian army in the Sudan had so many deserving candidates for the title of absolute worst soldiers. The local, tribal irregulars, the Egyptian infantry, who were demoralized at being sent to the Sudan, the Gendarmerie--it's so hard to choose!

I am looking forward to developing stats for each type of wretched troops, stats that will make each group canaille in their own, special way.

Grelber

Now, THAT is playing the period!

I am going to order Peterpig's Bashi-Bazouks just for the fun of having bad troops on the board.

Bad troops are always fun.

Especially when against all the odds they defeat Elite troops.

Exactly.
I love playing DUB cavalry in Empire. All you have to do is declare a charge. The artillery runs away if limbered, infantry forms square in front of MY artillery.
Then I fail my test to charge and just stand there picking my nose, and my artillery blasts the square.

When all else fails, they can be "rear support", though maybe you wouldn't really want them in your rear…

My old Pal Partha bashis always march with my doomed Hicks army. Usually useless but always colorful. Seem to hang around the supply wagons most of the time.