Ottoman vs Habsburg encounter - battle report

Together with my friends we set up a table at the Wargamecon event in march. The event was a gathering for all kind of wargamers from Hungary. A bunch of historical players were there too.

In the battle of Mohács (1526) the medieval Hungarian state was annihilated by the Ottomans and an interval period started when both the Ottomans and Habsburgs tried to gain control over Hungary. In the first stage the Ottomans even supported the Hungarian king John Szapolyai against Ferdinand who was the Habsburg Emperor. These times there were clashes between all three sides (Habsburg-Hungarian-Ottoman) therefore it is worth to refight these battles in wargaming.

Our goal was to represent a clash between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs like the battle of Gorjani (1537). In the first half of the 16th century the Ottoman warmashine was the most effective in Europe, so they beat the Habsburgs in several open battles. We choose the Pike & Shotte system as a rule for the game. We have played it several times before and it is a dynamic and enjoyable ruleset to play.

Actually there was time to fight two battles during the event and both were won by the Ottomans. The two clashes were very similar, so I am writing just one battle report.

The Habsburgs had an army mostly consisted of landsnecht mercenaries. They had German knights, gendarmes, mounted crossbowman and Hungarian hussars as cavalry. The Germans had two immovable heavy cannons as artillery and a hook gun.

The center of Ottoman Army was made up by elite janissary infantrymen and azab light infantry. Their artillery firepower was devastatingly superior with 4 medium cannons - this is historically accurate, bacause the Turkish sultan had the best artillery corps in the early modern times. One wing of the Ottoman Army was protected by their fearsome Sipahi cavalry, the other by their Akinji and Tatar light cavalry.

The Ottoman center followed a defensive strategy relying on the firepower of their cannons, handguns and bows, while the sipahi cavalry managed to destroy the German gendarmes in both battles. The landsknecht pikemen struggled to advance and reach the Ottoman lines. They lost most of their artillery support because the heavy guns coundn't be moved forward. After the sipahis put the German cavalry to flight, they endangered the landsknechts by encirclement. So some units of the German infantry were forced to form hedgehog formations - easy target for the Ottoman artillery and janissary handgunners. There were some hand-to-hand combats between the German and Ottoman infantry units. The Turks were really lucky, because somehow the could manage to stop the onslaught of the more robust and capable landsknecht units.