Gulf Wars discussion - Archery

Keith Duke duke at gte.net
Fri Mar 21 12:53:58 PST 1997


: From: Hugh Niewoehner <hughn at ssd.fsi.com>
: To: ansteorra at eden.com
: Subject: Gulf Wars discussion - Archery
: Date: Friday, March 21, 1997 4:40 AM
: 
: For those who don't frequent the Rialto what are the opinions of 
: folks about the effectiveness of the archers and seige engines?  
: 
:        Damon
: *-*-*-*-*-*-*
: To reply to this message remove .spamkiller from the adress

I had a blast playing with all the projectile stuff. The archers were
pretty effective, I got popped in two of the battles by archery fire (Both
open field battles) 

I ran the Northkeep Baronial siege engine (with excellent help from a
number of people, but especially Etienne Amaranthe) It was....mixed. The
catapults/trebuchets were numerous, but they have a fairly slow rate of
fire and being indirect fire weapons, were much harder to bullseye the
opposition.  While Ansteorra was attacking the castle, I fired
approximately 50-60  three-tennis-ball rocks, and was trying to land them
in that mass inside holding the sally port. I was getting right in,
according to my forward observer, but the shape of the projectile & the
wind would occasionally play havoc and drift my shots uncomfortably -and
unpredictably - close to our forces sitting at the sally port. One shot
actually fell amongst our forces causing quite some consternation on my
part (I said *bad* words!), as well as a rapid change in the aim point.
This caused my shots to not get close to our folks, but also made for a
less effective attack on the sally port defenders...

The ballista fire was way cool. There was lots of it coming out at  my
position, but they just didn't have the repeatability to nail my
position... I will be building a ballista soon and see if I can do any
better :)

I had three pavices up to protect my position while firing the catapult,
and they definitely increased my longevity... It was more than kinda nice
to "Nyaa! Nyaa!" at the archers, and then duck!

One thing that I was not real happy about was the idiots who put pieces of
rebar(!**^%&^$) in their ammunition.  Although I certainly understood that
putting metal in anything that might hit people is a bad thing... We
*really* need a set of standardized projectile rules that are *very*
clear...That of course, is a whole 'nother can 'o worms... One knight -I am
so bad with names, to my shame - was firing duct tape wrapped rolls of TP
with a small handful of beans inside. He graciously let be borrow some
ammunition for a test on Thursday. The stuff seemed safe, so I was curious
why the Marshals made him stop using it in the fort battles... Did anyone
ever hear a reason?

PiotrBalomirin syn Barsukov
Barony of Northkeep, Ansteorra





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