ANST - Combat Archery

[Carl Chipman]

War of Three kings was my first war as an archer (injury precluded me from going full contact), however my I do have some small observations...

1.  In a seige battle versus a tower for archers, it is impractical to spend a significant number of the besieger's archers trying to pin down the archers in towers.  This is because 
    a) they have elevation, and therefore longer range and better field of vision,
    b) they have a lot of stuff to hide behind,
    The scottish side @ one point in time had 4-5 archers trying to kill the two archers in the tower.  Many many arrow shafts that could have been spent killing the english troops went sailing harmlessly against the tower or over it.   IMHO it would have been more effective to have one archer per archer in the tower pinning down (thereby rendering the archer in the tower relatively useless), and let the other archers concentrate on killing commanders and pole weapons on the ground.

2.  Volley fire in SCA archery is not very effective.  This is mainly because of the fact that half of the fighters on the field hold "The unbreakable shield of the SCA".  In real like, arrows go through shields and cause damage.  In our combat they do not.  Volley firing simply gives the opponent the ability to block ALL of the archers arrows at one point of time, as opposed to being constantly worried about the arrows as they would be with the staggered fire.

3.  A commander is good.  Two commanders are bad.

Personally the strategy that I had the most luck with was I would pair up with a fighter (such as Frank the Frank from Northkeep or Orion Starshadowe) and they would point out targets (whilst I hid behind their shield) and then I would pop-up, acquire, and shoot.  It seemed to work pretty well.

Jean Paul le Pel
Second In Command, Lion-Dragon Guard

Carl Chipman
Nomadics, Inc.
http://www.nomadics.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael F. Gunter <mfgunter at fnc.fujitsu.com>
To: ansteorra at Ansteorra.ORG <ansteorra at Ansteorra.ORG>
Date: Tuesday, November 17, 1998 3:33 PM
Subject: ANST - Combat Archery


>> 
>> By the way, it was a neat war.  
>> 
>>       Tomonaga
>
>Since you brought up the war. Did the archers like having an actual
>commander? Did you feel you became more effective with me yelling 
>at you and pointing out targets?
>
>I felt the archers became a force to be reckoned with towards the
>last couple of engagements. If you guys liked that we can work on
>refining the strategies and I need you to start getting more archers
>in armor. I promise I can build a feared, effective archer force.
>
>Yours,
>
>Gunthar
>Princeps Ansteorrae
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