How to Build and Run Standard Ottoman Infantry in Trench Crusade
I spent way too long last month sorting through Ottoman deployment options for my Thursday night game, and I keep seeing the same mistakes at the table. People grab a block of Spahis or throw every elite unit on the board and wonder why they get shredded by French machine guns two turns later. Let's talk about the standard infantry piece you actually want in your list. The basic Ottoman infantry block in Trench Crusade is the Azap. They cost 4 points per model in the standard Ottoman army list, you field them in blocks of 10, and they come with a good chunk of stats that look respectable on paper but require real attention to how you actually use them. An Azap gets Movement 3, Shooting 3, Melee 3, Firepower 3, and a Toughness of 5. They carry muskets and scimitars, and unless you spend extra points, that is everything they have. Here is the part most people miss. The Azap has the Coverless special rule, which means when you place them in open terrain without using trench works, they suffer a -1 to their Shooting and Melee values. That single rule changes how the entire unit behaves. If you are not dropping them into a trench, a hedge, or behind a ruined wall before you shoot, you are effectively giving your opponent a discount. I learned this the hard way during a match against someone running a British regulars list. I held my Azap block in a wheat field because I wanted them to advance safely. They fired on a German machine gun nest and rolled six successes instead of the seven they would have gotten with cover. That one success difference meant the MG nest survived to cut my entire left flank apart the following turn. I rebuilt my list after that, but it cost me three game sessions to fix the mistake.
The work around is simple but requires discipline. Always put your Azap block within two inches of a trench line or a ruin before you declare a shooting phase. If the map has no trenches and you are playing on a flat desert terrain board, buy a few sandbag markers or use a handful of rubble tokens to create improvised cover for them. It takes thirty seconds at setup and it keeps your firepower numbers honest. You should also be aware that the Ottoman rules give Azaps access to the Javid special rule when they are supported by an officer model. Javid means they gain +1 to their Morale tests when rallying. This only works if the officer is within six inches at the moment the Morale roll happens. I used to forget to check the distance, roll the Morale anyway, and then wonder why half my block broke and scattered. Now I keep my officers stacked near the Azap block instead of spread out chasing the action on the flank. Another thing nobody mentions until they lose a game is the ammo limit. Azap units only carry enough ammunition for two rounds of shooting before they start suffering the Ammunition shortage penalty, which is a -1 to hit on subsequent shooting phases. In a standard six-turn match, that means your Azap block is effectively a one-round investment unless you pair them with a supply unit or accept that you will be firing conservatively. My workaround is to use the Azap as a shock action rather than a sustained fire unit. You spend your activation on them once, get your best shooting off, then move them into melee or hold the line while your newer reserves come forward. It is not the textbook approach, but it matches how Ottoman doctrine actually functioned in the game's setting. If you want the Azap to stay relevant past turn three, you can attach a Sipahi officer, which gives the unit a -1 to their Morale test and lets them reroll one failed hit per turn. The trade-off is that the Sipahi costs 6 points and ties up a command resource. In my experience, you only do this when you are running a thin list and need a few extra points of resilience. Otherwise, the baseline Azap block does exactly what it should do, which is hold a trench line and trade casualties until something heavier arrives.
I also want to flag a common error with the Ottoman standard infantry deployment chart. The rules let you start with any number of Azap blocks on the board, but there is a hard cap of three Azap blocks per ten models worth of total army points. If your army runs 120 points, you cannot field more than three Azap blocks. I hit this limit during a tournament game when I tried to flood the board with cheap infantry and got flagged by the judge. We had to remove two blocks on the spot, which turned a solid army into a hole-ridden mess. Keep your point total in mind before you fill out the order of battle sheet. The real takeaway here is that Ottoman standard infantry is not a weak unit. It is a medium-tier holding piece that rewards position play and punishes careless activation ordering. The Azap can outshoot light infantry if you give it cover, it can absorb a hit or two in melee if you have an officer nearby, and it forces your opponent to commit real resources to dislodge it. Lose the cover bonus, ignore the ammo limit, and deploy it like a generic infantry block from another system, and it will underperform every single time. The game is brutally honest about that.
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