Why Teutonic Knights?

This is a good question. Having known a good many wargamers, it's clear to me that the choice of army is an idiosyncratic thing governed by many things, not least the chance of winning (I've never yet met a wargamer who's favourite army was chosen for it's ability to lose; sometimes we fool ourselves, but we all at least hope to beat our opponents). This is approximately how I approached my choice of army when getting back in to the hobby after 25 years. I decided to start with taking a look at what was familiar…

Byzantines: these were my favourites when first learning the hobby at university. After much experimentation, I found I preferred any mixture involving Varangians, Normans and good-quality Kataphractoi. This pretty much means the Basilian or Early Comnenan periods 980 – 1118 AD, a period offering many other features, such as cheaper Thematic troops, Peltasts, Klibanophoroi and Trapezitoi (fantastic for sweeping away enemy light cavalry).

The downsides are twofold: firstly, there are the memories; good (such as beating by a little design and a lot of luck an Arab Conquest army designed to kill my deliberately weakened Byzantines, both supplied by my opponent) and bad (most disasters were down to my own mismanagement; my only excuse is that I was learning on the job). But mostly I find the army very pernickety; the main cavalry and infantry formations too intricate to be optimal (what is 'African'?) and not really reflecting RL Byzantine formations. So then I turned to my other favourites of yesteryear…

English 100 Years War: "Cry God for Harry, England and St George!" How could any true English patriot fail to be moved by the Longbow era? I can't tell you how often I bored my friends (not all wargamers) with tales of the prowess of the English Archer and his weapon. Unfortunately not everyone shared my enthusiasm and so I only had two opportunities to actually use the English Longbow on the battlefield; once under WRG6 (which I lost) and once with George Gush's rules (which I won).

However, despite the glory and nostalgia, both battles were disappointing. Basically, the historical tactics are to dismount your knights, plonk them on a hill, flank them with archers and wait for the enemy to blunder in to your killing zone. I did just this in both battles and both times my enemy co-operated; with WRG6, I watched my opponent merrily swan right up to my archers and beat the living daylights out of them: with Gush, I shot the enemy to pieces. But frankly an army that just sits on a hill and shoots is so boring. As an older, perhaps wiser, man, I now knew that wanted an army of manoeuvre, as well as missile power.

Ottoman: there is something about this army that appeals. It has loads of missile troops (including artillery) and hordes of cavalry, together with fantastic colour and charm (see the Osprey title 'Armies of the Ottoman Turks', particularly illustrations B & C.)

Unfortunately, only a handful of the troops are what you might call 'disciplined'. Basically the Sipahis of the Porte are excellent and the Janisseries are superb as combined shock and missile infantry, yet both are flawed. At a time when Europe had wholly moved over to plate armour, the Ottomans were still in mail (beautiful mail but…), and the Janisseries are frankly not in armour at all. Against their typical real-life opponents, no doubt the Janisseries were lethal, but against most wargames armies (the majority of which pay a lot of attention to missiles) LI in close order would quickly be shot ragged.

Of course, the standard Ottoman tactics were to soften up the enemy with missile fire and sacrificial charges by hordes of poor-quality nutters before sending in the Sipahis of the Porte and Janisseries to finish them off but frankly this just isn't me (the only troops I want to sacrifice are my opponent's). So I wanted more discipline and heavier armour. (Addendum: since writing this, I've started an Ottoman Turk army as well, in addition to my Teutonic Knights.)

Swedish 30 Years War: I've played Gustavus Adolphus in one postal wargame and am about to play him again in Alan Laird's PBEM and you don't get much more disciplined than the Swedes; the entire army can be B-class. The Swedes revolutionised warfare, marking the beginning of the rise of the personal firearm over all other types of infantry weapon. Seeing an enemy blown away with close-range salvo-fire is an awesome experience (so is being blown away by it – I've felt it from both sides).

The trouble is that it's an army of heroes. If every man is B-class and all the musketry fire in salvoes, you don't get many men for your money; outflanking is a constant threat. Not only that, but if used authentically the cavalry and infantry regiments should all field their own organic artillery (and the cavalry should have attached subunits of shot), all of which means your troops move slowly. Despite plenty of potentially fast-moving cavalry, you find yourself tied down to the speed of the artillery.

In truth, neither are the rules very kind to the Swedes (actually I've yet to see a set of rules that truly do them justice). The lightest artillery available under Gush is too cumbersome for the 3lbrs fielded by Gustavus Adolphus, and long-range musket fire too lethal, allowing poor quality shot to stand off and shoot Swedish salvo musketry off the table.

Basically, despite the fantastic cavalry/infantry ratio, this is too much like the 100 Years War English and anyway I found I hankered after something a little earlier, that wouldn't look out of place on a 15^th Century battlefield, which means armour. (And 'arquebus' is just a far more interesting word than 'musket'.)

Knights of St John: so, looking for elite cavalry and plenty of cheap disciplined arquebusiers, I leafed through the army lists: Burgundian, Spanish, Italian, Swiss - all seemed to lack something. Then I lit upon the Knights of St John: a splendid history, B-fanatic cavalry and 200 C-class arquebusiers at only 6pts each. The same army could be fielded against both 15^th and 16^th Century opponents with little modification. Things looked pretty good…until I spotted exactly how much cavalry you get; of the 24 B fanatic knights, only 10 can be horsed, to be supplemented by up to 10 mercenary lancers. Visions of glorious cavalry charges faded…

Teutonic Knights: but then I turned the page and found my epiphany. I'd skimmed through this army several times before but never actually looked at it. It has B fanatic cavalry – true only as many as the mounted Knights of St John but these are backed up by up to 40 C-class mercenary knights, 40 C-class sergeants and 100 (one – zero – zero) light cavalry. Furthermore it has a good central corps of mercenaries (pike supported by arquebusiers) that can be M or C class (flexibility) and another 40 D or E class peasant arquebusiers. Not as many as the Knights of St John but then another 60 E-class crossbowmen and 40 peasant archers are also available – cheap and nasty! Finally they have a potentially stonking artillery battery.

Not only that but they also have more colour than any other of the above armies save possibly the Ottomans: the Teutonic Knights themselves in black crosses on white (OK, I know they were snobbish thugs on horseback but they knew how to dress); their sergeants in black tau-crosses on grey; the banners of the mercenary knights flying over the gleam of plate armour and the absurd multicolour stripes of the landsknechts – a magnificent panoply if ever there was one.

My only caveat about the Teutonic Knights was that all their famous historical battles were defeats. But then I found they beat off a much larger force of Russians at Lake Smolina 14^th September 1402 and I was sold!