in GD 224, Steve somebody, replying to my description of breaking shield walls, said:
"You come in low and fast, you have little control of your own body. Great
for berserkers, not good for anyone with a brain - what exactly do you do
then when the guy in front of you drops to
one knee, and plants his spear?"
What we would do is parry the spear with the shield while coming in, and kill the spearman. This is more difficult when the spear has a chance of sticking into your shield, I'll grant, but it is something any 1 year veteran of fighting (who we really consider a novice) is expected to be able to do. Planted spears are easy to parry and diffcult to aim.
"Has anyone done this to these guys?"
No, for the reasons above. I believe that even in period, set spear was used
against cav, not foot, for the reasons I mention above.
" Yah, you kill the guy whose planted his spear, but that little device has
also just impaled the first 3 guys in your charging group, killed your
impetus, and left you vulnerable. "
In the SCA, of course, you can't impale multiple people at once, so I can't speak to the question from experience. BUT I do not believe that non-magical spears can have this effect. People don't run fast enough to run their bodies entirely through a spear that has (theoretically) already passed through their shield. RQ Rules suggest that it is also impossible without magic. 1D10+1 spear + 1D6 charge STR bonus, even on an impale, does not go through shield, chest armor, chest and back armor, much less the above x 3.
"Or caltrops. They were pretty popular for defensive-minded troops. "
I have no historical knowledge of caltrops ever being used against infantry. If you scatter them in front of your own line, it makes it awfully difficult to advance in good order. I suspect that they were used to secure flanks that could not be held with men.
"Or finally, and this may be going beyond the level of expertise in the SCA,
but what about simply drifting files apart ala Scipio Africanus?"
I have no idea what this means or refers to. I'm no scholar of that era.
"I guess what I'm ranting about is that these SCA conclusions can't take you
very far. Yes, they can give you a feel for how useful a shield is, or
how hard it is to change weapons in combat, but for deriving useful data
for large scale behaviours, its probably worse than useless, albeit pretty
fun!"
Is this not another iteration of what I said going into this discussion? SCA experience is of VERY limited use, but as James Polk pointed out to me yesterday, it is the closest thing we can get without murder charges.
IN GD #226, Adrian White added very interesting things about english medieval re-enactors, who do things very differently from the SCA. Talking about the problem spearmen have when a column penetrates their formation, he said:
"If each of the defenders is armed a spear and large shield this soft inside
is avoided."
A situation that never comes up in the SCA. Spear and Shield is virtually unknown. Further, when a spearman, with a shield or not, has to stand close in with a sword & shield guy, a moderate novice could take out Duke Perfect most of the time. You have to be able to back up to bring the spear to bear, which you can't do in a formation.
Adrian, please confirm or dispel an old rumor for me: Common discussion in the SCA holds that a couple of UK medieval re-enactors are seriously injured or killed every year in the live-weapon re-enactments done over there. Any truth to any of this? How often does someone get hurt while you wave real weapons around? Anyone ever get killed?
Also in #226, Pam Carlson asks:
Question: How effective were soldiers behind shield walls at defending themselves once the walls were broken?
I'm not sure what you mean, Pam. In SCA, again, we are not dealing with questions of morale. Therefore, when the wall breaks and the spearmen in the back suddenly have shieldmen (figuratively) standing on their toes, the shieldmen try to parry or back up until another reserve group comes up to deal with it.
SCA walls typically have a screen of shields across the front, supported by long weapons in the second or third rank. When a bunch of shieldmen break through, they can either go wild hunting individual spearmen (wrong) or already know which way they are supposed to turn and roll up the side of the enemy (right.)
If a deep formation gets penetrated by an aggressive column, the column might make it through to the other side, but not without losses. However, the column usually inflicts 2 or 3 to 1 losses on the deep formation, because they have momentum, need less room to swing weapons than the long weapon guys do, etc. as explained before.
Mike
Codex Issue 4 is mostly done, alas, still waiting on some art.
Same for the to-be-retitled Galastar Peace Conference.
Some work has taken place on issue 5 of Codex, the "Big Issues" issue, featuring Stafford's map of the Golden Age, God Learner material, cosmology etc.
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