ANST - curious about archers in war scenarios
Keith Hood
jemuga at freewwweb.com
Sun Dec 7 23:52:19 PST 1997
In their wars against the French, the English used a combined arms
formation that became pretty much their standard array: the archers were
placed in the center, with 'wings' of men-at-arms flanking them and
slanting out toward the advancing enemy, forming in effect a funnel with
the archers at the bottom. They of course would set out stakes and
caltrops and whatever other obstacles to their front that they could
arrange.
Sometimes the archers would be arranged in one big block, and sometimes
they were put in smaller groups groups between wedges of heavy infantry,
preserving the 'fire funnel' effect in a series of smaller areas across
the battle front.
Anyone wishing to attack the archers had to come straight down their line
of fire; no deflection shots. And of course, if they got close
enough they would have to slow down and break their formation to weave
through the obstacles, where they would find it pretty much impossible
to keep their shield cover up while maneuvering and were pretty easy to
clobber. And they would be going down the middle between wings of
men-at-arms, so they were vulnerable to close attack on the flanks if
they went straight for the archers. If they came across the battle front
at an angle to attack one of the man-at-arms wings straight on, they
exposed themselves to defilade fire by the archers. However it's done,
the thing is to force the enemy to move as you wish. Force them to
choose between arrows in the face and spear points in the ear, or vice
versa.
If we do put effort into putting out obstacles (and we should), we need
to remember, AND TAKE INTO ACCOUNT IN OUR TACTICS, the fact that
obstacles from archer's stakes all the way up to pull-release mine fields
are not meant to defeat or even stop an enemy. The only real service
they can provide is to slow and disrupt the enemy's movement, so they
remain disorganized and under fire longer. If we put out obstacles, we
should not put our feet on the rearmost; we should array ourselves so
that enemies negotiating the obstacles can be shot from a safe distance,
or engaged piecemeal and defeated in detail as they try to come out of
the obstacle belt.
I'm not sure what the Gulf Wars rules are about field obstacles. Seems
to me that if the rules allow it, this kingdom would do itself a lot of
good to invest some money in rubber balls and glue to make some bucket
loads of non-lethal caltrops. Can you make archer's stakes out of
regular lumber, or do they have to be rattan? If the former, any Boy
Scout should be able to cobble together a man-portable, folding stake
from some 1x2's and rope. Does anyone out there have a copy of the field
rules from the last Gulf Wars? If you do, please post them. That would
at least give the boffins a starting point for design ideas.
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