[Ansteorra-archery] Survival of Combat Archery

[Eric Brown]

Caladin Here, That reminds me... 2 things... I wanted to talk to Y'all 
about.

1. From what I've gathered by listening, one of His Majesties goals 
seems to be to minimize the "Drama and whining" at the war, and so the 
15 piece of armor rule
may have been in the nature of an understandably arbitrary attempt to 
quiet those who complained and argued for no archery in the ravine 
battle, while still letting our archers get out
on the field of the ravine battle and kick butt. An unpleasant 
compromise if you will, who's goal was not realism, or even fairness, 
but to lessen the drama.

Plus you've I hope you'll agree, all those spear lines with no shields 
in front that keep happening in the ravine battle are kind of like 
Christmas morning to good archers  :).
I know I spent a lot of the battle last year wishing I'd brought my 
crossbow :)

2. As General, I've been asked by several archers to think about 
interesting and different uses for archery, than the standard 30 foot 
spear/ solo sniper tactics that we've used for so long.
I've been cogitating about asking the archers to mass up to try 
something interesting in one specific battle of one of the scenarios... 
It's not massed indirect fire,
more like a big mass of skirmishers with rifles in naploeonic warfare, 
at least that's how I think it'd work in the idea that I have rattling 
about in my gourd.

I know several of you have mentioned how much you'd like to try massed 
fire... and while this is not that, it's a step in that direction...So 
my real question is,
Would you be interested in the possibility of being pulled together in 
one place for massed sniper work, once, in one specific battle, if the 
idea gets approved and agreed to by all involved, etc etc?

I don't want to go into too much detail, but I'd want to gather most or 
all the archers in a specific place at a specific time early in the 
battle, and if the enemy does what I hope (a notoriously risky gamble, I 
admit) there would be a very brief window of utter devastation. Then 
you'd' all be free to run off and rejoin your units, move, or whatever 
you wanted to do... The downside of the Gamble being that if they don't 
do what I hope, you'll have wasted 5-10 min of your time ( and not being 
available for doing any counter archer fire), and then have to move to a 
new location or re-join yout units with nothing to show for it. You 
would not be being left out exposed to be destroyed, in case you were 
worried about that..

This idea is not fully formed, nor has it been discussed with anyone 
except y'all, but I wanted to see if you thought it might be fun to take 
the gamble before I bothered talking to anyone else about it.

If Y'all saw it as the moral equivalent of taking all the knights and 
making a super unit, theirby depriving all the units of their best 
assets, then I'd drop the idea entirely.

What do Y'all think? Does that sound like fun?

Caladin-
Generalisimo.


Mike Wyvill wrote:
> Sir Guy, Honorable Lords and gentles all,
>  
> I absolutely understand that our knights by and large support CA. And 
> all Ansteorran archers should as well. Sir Lyonel has posted to the 
> SCA Missile Combat list supporting us, I know personally of Duke Aaron 
> and Duke Ulsted and their support. Sir Alexis has crossbowmen in his 
> Blue Company so of course not all knights in or out of this Kingdom 
> oppose archery. And I did not post to the list to stir up trouble. I 
> just think we need to get an idea of our numbers so that we can come 
> up with effective tactics for the ravine.
>  
> The Midrealm has declared for Trimaris. I believe that Calontir will 
> as well. So that means two units carrying scutums that will need 
> breaking. I believe that we, the archers, are best suited for that. 
> Baron Michel is our commander this year and I would like to give him 
> the tools to state what the archers can do for Ansteorra in the ravine 
> when asked.
>  
> EdV