Mass Combat: Militray Tactics Old and New!

[mmadsen]

I've started reading The Wars of America, recommended quite highly by SHARK, and it's excellent!

I guess I'll continue my thoughts over in The Wars of America--By Robert Leckie.

 

[Leopold]

I've started reading The Wars of America, recommended quite highly by SHARK, and it's excellent! As the review from the Saturday Review (quoted on the back cover) says, "As military history, Mr. Leckie's volume has four cardinal virtues: compression, accuracy, color, and boldness in the delivery of judgements upon movements of men."

In addition to being compressed, accurate, colorful, and bold, it's also surprisingly applicable to D&D -- or at least the early chapters on the Colonial Wars are.

what kind of tactics and theories to they imply that pertain to this?

 

[mmadsen]

what kind of tactics and theories to they imply that pertain to this?

Well, I'm not sure if the "surprisingly applicable to D&D" aspects were particularly tactical/strategic; they were colorful examples of savage warfare -- the kinds of things you expect from barbaric Orcs.

This could describe The Five Orc Nations:

Known as the Five Nations -- Mohawk, Oneida, Onandaga, Cayuga, and Seneca -- they were the dread of surrounding tribes: killing, torturing, eating or enslaving them, while imposing upon some the humiliating ephithet of "women" or exacting from others a ruinous tribute.

And this combat seems D&D-esque, even with the gunpowder:

A few hours after dark they made out a flotilla of Iroquois war canoes approaching from the south. Both Indian bands exchanged war cries, and then the Iroquois landed on the same shore to erect a barricade of logs in preparation for the morning's fight.

On that morning, Champlain and his fellow Frenchmen vested themselves in steel armor and seized the short, stubby matchlocks in their hands....After Champlain's savages went ashore, their steel-clad allies stealthily slipped from the canoes and followed behind.

Soon the Iroquois begain filing out of their makeshift fort. There were about 200 of them. They also were "armored." Some carried shields of wood or hardened hide, or wore vests made of twigs bound by fiber....[Champlain wrote

I looked at them, and they looked at me. When i saw them getting ready to shoot their arrows at us, I levelled my arquebuse, which I had loaded with four balls, and aimed straight at one of the three chiefs. The shot brought down two, and wounded another. On this, our Indians set up such a yelling that one could not have heard a thunder-clap, and all the while the arrows flew thick on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished and frightened to see two of their men killed so quickly, in spite of their arrow-proof armor. As I was reloading, on of my companions fired a shot from the woods, which so increased their astonishment that, seeing their chiefs dead, they abandoned the field and fled into the depth of the forest.

 

[mmadsen]

what kind of tactics and theories to they imply that pertain to this?

The basic tactic at work seems to be the midnight raid, accompanied by lots of war-whooping (Intimidate checks?) -- usually against a fairly defenseless settlement.