Castelnuovo 1539: Come whenever you dare!

Come whenever you want! ¡Venid cuando queráis!

On August 7, 1539 the last resistance of the Spanish garrison of the Albanian village of Castelnuovo (Novi for the Turks) ceased. After 22 days of open trench and more than a month of combats, skirmishes, assaults and bombardments, the last Spanish defenders fulfilled the destiny they promised themselves when they rejected the offers of surrender that, according to the rules of war, Jareidin Barbarossa, admiral of the Ottoman fleet and general in chief of the operation, had made to them.

The city and its fortifications, rather meager and outdated, had been taken by the forces of the Holy League in October 1538, so as not to close the campaign with the bad taste of the naval defeat at Preveza. Fourteen companies of Spanish infantry under the command of D. Francisco Sarmiento de Mendoza y Manuel, some 3,500 soldiers, were garrisoned there for the winter.

The following summer brought a tide of 54,000 Turks and a fleet of 200 sails before its walls. After Venice’s defection from the League, there was no possibility of naval relief and the Spanish command authorized capitulation, however Sarmiento and his men decided to respond to Barbarossa’s offer with the phrase “Come whenever you want”, which sealed their fate.

In this game two sides face each other in a desperate battle: the town and its fortifications will eventually yield to Turkish power, but the question is, at what cost?

In Castelnuovo we will manage our army with wooden pieces in vertical with sticker, where we will not be able to see the type of unit of the opponent. The board is divided into areas and we will have other types of units such as cannon batteries, walls, bastions, trenches, etc. The confrontations will be made by rolling 6-sided dice and a deck of cards for each side, allowing us to play them to give orders, improve the fighting, dig trenches and special events.

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