KoW, breadth vs depth

From: Andrew Joelson <joelsona_at_cpdmfg.cig.mot.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 12:17:53 -0600

        I went on vacation, and what a load of digests I found waiting for me! I know I'm a little late with the KoW thread, but I have one more thing to say...

        There are two ways to have lots of 'War' magic; 1) you can have a a very broad background, and know a little bit about

   every aspect of war. You have breadth. 2) you can 'specialize', and know a everything there is to know about

   cavalry (light, heavy, archer/lancer, mobility of, spooking of anaimals,    etc). You have depth.

        IMO nobody short of Kargan Tor has complete depth & breadth.

        One of the reasons the fighting in Dragon Pass is so severe is that there are 'specialist' units all over the place; the EarthShakers, the Black Horse Troop, the Crater Makers.....

        I beleive that the KoW has a great deal of breadth (100 gods of war), and reasonable depth in some areas, but not to the extent witnessed in Dragon Pass. The reason for this is simple; if something like the Crimson Bat had existed inside the KoW during the Ban it would have been used extensively. Either one faction would have whipped everybody else rapidly, and there would have been no 'war machine' development; or they would have wiped themselves out wholesale long ago. Imagine the Ban lifting and finding a county inside that was sterile; just filled with Craters...

        Hence I think that the KoW could be beaten by the Lunars OR Argrath, they don't have the knowledge or experience to deal with the Bat, or one of Argrath's summoned Dragons. They have gobs of magic for making individual soldiers nastier, and regiments better co-ordinated, but nothing on the vast scale available to the Colleges of Magic.

                Andrew


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