Missile weapon ranges in WoR Terry Wise

[Erpingham]

In gaming terms, I think that notwithstanding all the very interesting discussion about missile penetration v distance, rates of 'fire', ammunition etc., care is needed for rules writers to not create ancient wargames which can be 'dominated' by 'static' missile fire but where missile fire does definitely have significant potential to influence the course of the combat effectiveness of units in the 'game-deciding' melees.  Hence the simple approach.

Agreed, though we go about modelling it differently.  Though we both decide the issue by throwing a single d6

[simonw]

Or in the case of Tactica 2, lots of d6s.

[Andreas Johansson]

Do the 16C sources say what effect was expected at ~200 m? Is this the "annoyance" shooting we were talking about in another thread?

Yes, that's the one.  Even John Smythe, great longbow advocate, didn't see a lot of point in it.

Thanks

Since that thread, I've been toying with the idea that shooting that actually causes significant casualties is subsumed into close combat (that is base contact; note that this would be in a set were bases are 100p deep and troops in base contact could be up to almost 150m apart), and longer ranged shooting isn't resolved as combat but affects command and control. Something like it being harder to order troops to do anything but retire or advance to contact, and unordered troops being more prone to disorder.

But if Smythe saw little point in it, maybe the best thing to do is to ignore it entirely. It sucks for the odd guy who gets an arrow in the eye, but on the army level it makes no appreciable difference.

(Now, the real question is, will any of these ideas ever be tried for real? Minis gaming of any kind, let alone playtesting of novel ideas, has been scarce enough recently.)

[Paul_Glover]

SimonW

Bye the bye, I am actually very interested in the details of the art of archery and bow-making.

Longbow making is fairly simple, but its one of those simple things that is complicated.  The most important thing is straight grained timber, ideally without knots.  If timber is partially shaded it tends to twist as it grows and while a limited amount of twist will still make a bow that works you probably have a tolerance of a few degrees.  My light weight 40lb 'home made' ash longbow is 'a little round the corner' in the lower limb, so often excites comment on the shooting line, which makes it all the more fun to show what it can do.

A billet of timber, 6'6" to 7' is best.  You then need a large throe and a hawthorn or blackthorn root mallet to hit the throe with and split across the centre of the billet.  You then need 3 or 4 timber wedges to work the crack that you make when splitting the timber.  The way you pressure a crack with the wedges, done right causes the crack to run straight rather than to run out allowing may be 6 bows to be made from a single billet.

In terms of shaping the billet you need a shave horse and a draw knife.  Traditionalists tend to use an axe for the first shaping but you need to be good with your axe work if you are going to try this.  Importantly the strength of the bow is in the continuous grain so an axe must not cut the grain in the wood that you are relying on for the strength of the bow.  A draw knife is more controllable.  Modern bow makers then go to a spoke shave and get very grumpy with those who don't like using them.  I did all my shaping with a large draw knife about 10" broad, that my grandfather used when working as a woodsman in the 1930's.  Then I use a 6" draw knife to finish off.

You will see a lot of talk about having a stiff handle in the middle of the bow, this is a very Victorian idea.  You get a much better bow if you go for a full compass bow instead, in other words a bow intended to bend along its full length including through the handle.  Provided you measure accurately and just work one end of the bow and then the other equally there is no problem to get a bow going full compass in this way.

Essentially you shape down to a 10th of an inch of your final dimensions and then start to bend you bow with a pulley held in a rig, just gently.  The tips will bend first, note where the bend in each side of the bow ceases to be even, mark it and gently shave.  Then bend again.  Final shaping only takes a couple of hours.  The tricky bit is going from a section of a billet to the bow ready to first bend.  It's not difficult, you just need to know which side should be the back and which the belly and the approximate dimensions for the poundage that you seek.

A number of bowyers offer courses and will again when normality returns.

[simonw]

Paul,

Thanks for the info. I was originally going to attempt the traditional approach with lemon wood which is (apparently) relatively easy to work compared with Osage Orange and Yew (and Elm and Ash) although it does 'take on' a slight curve eventually.

However, my MS these days means that I'm afraid that the project is another one that has been shelved; probably permanently.

I'll have to stick with my painting and gaming now and efforts to try and get back on my bike!

Cheers
Simon

[Paul_Glover]

Simon,

  I feel for you.  That's a lot to deal with.

  Making a bow is really hard work.  You need to finish it while the wood is still green (has sap left in it), so even in winter conditions you have to have completed the majority of the work in 2 days with the first half of the third day just for finishing off.  So may be 14 hours labour put in over 2 and a half days.  Those who are stronger can probably do it faster.  But essentially you need to be able to labour for 6 hours in a day with breaks to get it done fast enough.

  What are your current painting projects?

Paul.

[simonw]

Paul,

2 years ago (when I was still able to easily cycle 50+ miles in a day)  it would still have been possible but not now. My legs have 'gone'. I can only walk about quarter of a mile with a stick but I am still working at getting back onto my bike.

Currently painting 36 new Hoplites with 48 archers and skirmishers also undercoated and ready to go. I also have 48 Successor pikemen undercoated and ready and 48 Sumerian spearmen. I've just also had 36 Chaldean foot delivered to augment my Neo Babylonians.

Aside from these I have 100s of Persians, Assyrians, Macedonians, Republican Romans, Carthaginians, New Kingdom Egytpians, Hittites, Asiatics, Mycenaeans still to do.

Cheers
Simon

I have effectively finished only my Mauryan Indians and Gauls (apart from 'officers' and vignette material). Everything is in 28mm scale. I  daresay that I'll not get it all finished before my toes curl over (although I'm not anticipating that anytime soon).

I presently have about 5000 foot, 1000 cavalry and 100 chariots painted.  I have an 8ft by 5ft table at home in the 'dining' (actually a permenent games) room so I can still play good-sized Tactica 2 games at home with a few like-minded pals.

[Paul_Glover]

Standing targets were not simply shot at with a flat trajectory shot - at longer ranges they used "underhand" shooting, which is thought to mean they sighted under the hand of a raised bow arm.

I have tried 'underhand shooting' in the way that you describe but I did not find it to help (when aiming at a specific target).  For me and those I have trained with it is more accurate to take the line to the target from your normal stance, make a range estimate and then bend your rear knee from 'Kinaesthetic memory'.  When practising it is best to have your partner do your spotting for you and let you know the degree to which you may be mistaken.  Then its just a case of practise and heuristics so that knowing the loose for a few ranges with certainty the rest can be interpolated tolerably well, just a question then of gauging that range.

[Paul_Glover]

Re: handguns; most people seem to rely upon the tests carried out by Payne - Gallway using replicas of late 14thc guns with really short barrels hence the short ranges recorded.
You can load and fire a replica 15thc handgun as quickly as an 18/19thc musket. It's the discipline involved in firing ordered volleys that slows the potential rate of fire down, that and the amount of powder, shot and matchcord carried by the gunner.
I seem to remember that Monluc in his memoirs tells of an incident where his arquebusiers are happily potting the enemy at around 400 yards but typically I can't find my copy to check!

In my experience of a reproduction C17th Musket, there is no major problem with ordered volleys, once you operate in 6 ranks as the drill manuals of that time illustrate.  Instead there is plenty of time to complete loading while the 5 ranks in front each complete their shot, just needing to take one or two paces forwards once each front rank retires.  Match cord is not that much of a problem either, its perfectly possible to make a slow burning chord from good dense chord and suitably dilute saltpetre.  Powder and ready shot are the critical things, although there is an incident of musketeers running out of chord after their ammunition cart blew up.

[Paul_Glover]

Simon,

  While your painting is:

Persians, Assyrians, Macedonians, Republican Romans, Carthaginians, New Kingdom Egytpians, Hittites, Asiatics, Mycenaeans, Mauryan Indians and Gauls . Everything is in 28mm scale.

  I am in 15mm 'land' and loving the quality of the modern figure.  A deliberate choice (although we are now working on our plan for somewhere larger) is that we are in a 2 bedroom apartment just now.  So I am experimenting with gaming on the smallest board from which I still get pleasure from the visual impact of the modelling and some justifiable sense of realism from the battle.  I'm also aiming for games targeted at around the hour mark.  So a board c. 2' * 3'.  Also to work within the space I am concentrating on dark age / early medieval as my first priority, painting a core set of figures that are deliberately ambiguous so that they can stand in for a number of armies with a a few bases of specific figures to give each army its proper character.  So top priority project = Late Anglo-Danish and Norman 1066; Then Viking from the same year; Next MacBeth for Seward's Scottish Campaign and then the Welsh for Harold Godwinson's two campaigns followed by the Welsh for Anglo-Norman.  As a seprate project area I have Late / Roman ... did someone mention Arthur, and Pictish as my take on the Barbarian conspiracy and post Roman Northern Britain, I was given the Romans (so it would have been rude not to) and I have a soft spot for the Picts (a girl friend some years ago was very into them).  My partner is also guiding me to do the Cousins Wars (Wars of the Roses) that we both enjoy.

  I have experimented with 2mm, can produce figures that still have visual impact, but did not find the gaming experience satisfying despite having my battlefields as accurately modelled as I could.  In this regard I have produced 2 games, one based on the siege of Arundel December 1643 and the other on Cheriton March 1644.

[Paul_Glover]

Andreas,

 

Olaus Magnus has a pretty definite image of crossbows being used for indirect shooting

  What I most notice about the picture that your post linked to is the closeness of the Cavalry to the crossbow men and the bolts suggested to be falling vertically upon them.  I could imagine this being used to achieve killing effect on the weaker armour carried by the knights at relatively close distance, but looking at the crossbow men, they do not look that well equipped to withstand that part of a charge that should arrive (I also note what I interpret as battlefield obstacles).  So quite close shots to cover the other side of the obstacles and drive the cavalry to seek to escape the bolts through rushing forwards onto troops that do not look ready to receive them and hence onto the obstacles looks possible to me.

[Andreas Johansson]

The accompanying text says that when the cavalry gets close, the crossbowmen switch to shooting horizontally and aiming for the horses, and if any horsemen get past that and the caltrops, they have poleaxes to deal with them. So I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion the range is out of scale to the figures in the picture.

While I have my doubts about the historicity of the tactic, the combination of crossbows and polearms would be typical of late medieval Scandinavian infantry. For those for whom Olaus Magnus isn't a household name, he was a Catholic exile and titular archbishop of Uppsala who in the mid-16C wrote the Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus ("History of the Northern Peoples"), a description of Scandinavia covering everything from natural history to military tactics. It's generally regarded as more colourful than reliable.

[Justin Swanton]

But were crossbow or early arquebus shot indirecty too?

There are certainly contemporary illustrations of early handguns being fired at high angles, but the ones I can think of offhand where the target is shown are in sieges, and may reflect nothing more than men on ground level aiming direct fire at defenders atop walls.

Here's an example.

Olaus Magnus has a pretty definite image of crossbows being used for indirect shooting, but his reliability is suspect (and his physics Aristotelian).

I think the crossbows pic is not trying to show accurate ranges but just fit the concept of indirect shooting into the constraints of an image space. It certainly shows that overhead fire was a thing for crossbows.

Does shooting cause disorder? Disorder means the files and ranks are out of alignment; the ordered formation has become a confused mass of men. I doubt that actually happened. What seems to have happened is that the arrow hits worked on the men's fear, sharpening their instinct for self-preservation and sapping their courage, making them reluctant to advance further towards the enemy. This would put them at a moral disadvantage when they actually met the enemy in melee combat. Nothing weakens a man's resolve to fight quite like being subjected to a life-threatening peril and being unable to do anything about it.

Re indirect fire we did cover this somewhere before. The advantage of shooting at extreme range is that - unlike shooting at shorter ranges - the arrows will land at pretty much the same distance even if one varies slightly the elevation of one's bow, so one doesn't need to sight the target. But once the enemy passes the extreme range window then only the front-rank archers can target them. Which would explain why extreme range shooting wasn't that effective - the fear it caused would pass once the advancing line was within the range window, and only the front rankers - the best and bravest fighters of the line - could henceforth be subjected to missile fire. The men behind were free to feel as courageous as they liked.

[Erpingham]

OK, time to trot out Jean de Wavrin's account of advancing against archers at Agincourt (Wavrin was there, though he would have been with the baggage.  That said, he will have faced archery himself as a man at arms a few years later)

Then the French, seeing the English come towards them in this fashion, placed themselves in order, everyone under his banner, their helmets on their heads. The Constable, the Marshal, the admirals, and the other princes earnestly exhorted their men to fight the English well and bravely; and when it came to the approach the trumpets and clarions resounded everywhere; but the French began to hold down their heads, especially those who had no bucklers (Fr pavais = shields, pavises), for the impetuosity of the English arrows, which fell so heavily that no one durst uncover or look up. Thus they went forward a little, then made a little retreat, but before they could come to close quarters, many of the French were disabled and wounded by the arrows; and when they came quite up to the English, they were, as has been said, so closely pressed one against another that none of them could lift their arms to strike their enemies, except some that were in front, and these fiercely pricked with the lances which they had shortened to be more stiff, and to get nearer their enemies.

The arrows here are not hitting the French horizontally, they are coming in from above.  The crouched posture is interesting, as it has both a practical and (probably) psychological aspect.  It receives arrows on the glancing surfaces and thickest armour.  The psychological bit is how it mimics walking into a storm

[Justin Swanton]

OK, time to trot out Jean de Wavrin's account of advancing against archers at Agincourt (Wavrin was there, though he would have been with the baggage.  That said, he will have faced archery himself as a man at arms a few years later)

Then the French, seeing the English come towards them in this fashion, placed themselves in order, everyone under his banner, their helmets on their heads. The Constable, the Marshal, the admirals, and the other princes earnestly exhorted their men to fight the English well and bravely; and when it came to the approach the trumpets and clarions resounded everywhere; but the French began to hold down their heads, especially those who had no bucklers (Fr pavais = shields, pavises), for the impetuosity of the English arrows, which fell so heavily that no one durst uncover or look up. Thus they went forward a little, then made a little retreat, but before they could come to close quarters, many of the French were disabled and wounded by the arrows; and when they came quite up to the English, they were, as has been said, so closely pressed one against another that none of them could lift their arms to strike their enemies, except some that were in front, and these fiercely pricked with the lances which they had shortened to be more stiff, and to get nearer their enemies.

The arrows here are not hitting the French horizontally, they are coming in from above.  The crouched posture is interesting, as it has both a practical and (probably) psychological aspect.  It receives arrows on the glancing surfaces and thickest armour.  The psychological bit is how it mimics walking into a storm

One could see this in two phases:

1. The French advance to within extreme range and all the ranks, including the rear ranks that don't have shields, get peppered by arrows that come down at a 45 degree angle. They pause in their advance, pull back to outside of extreme range, have their genealogy described to them in colourful terms by their leaders, and advance again.

2. Before they reach the English their line has contracted in width, thanks to the flanking woods, and they can't fight properly since they are so jammed together. But a this point they are 'at close quarters' and are no longer bothered by the overhead fire, though the front rankers are still being targeted by direct fire - which isn't too much of a problem since they are heavily armoured. Just they can't fight. Battle over.

Notice there's nothing the passage about the French getting disordered by the arrow fire.