Slinger effectiveness

[malekithau]

Hi,

Just wondering what the rationale is for slingers being at - against heavily armoured types? Most of the evidence I have seen would indicate they were quite effective against armoured troops, more so then some other types.

Also why - for bows vs Elephants? From what I understand the constant pinpricks of archery drives elephants wild. Maybe I'm wrong.

John O

[shall]

At 5s to hit they still do decent damage - just not as much as a bow or longbow or xbow vs such targets.

Slings are incredibly cheap to produce - if they were as good why did everyone equip their troops with bows instead? They must be less good. Being hit by a rennaissance bullet in full plate isn't hat dangerous - its only when the speed of the projectile went high enough to cut through that high end troops stopped wearing serious body armour.

So its all relative, as they say

Si

[rbodleyscott]

Also why - for bows vs Elephants? From what I understand the constant pinpricks of archery drives elephants wild. Maybe I'm wrong.

Bows are not - vs elephants. They are on evens.

Elephants only come in BGs of 2 bases (counting as 4 bases for 1HPxB purposes - so 2 hits trigger a test and give -1 for 1HP2B). It is therefore quite easy to make them take a cohesion test from shooting. As they are Average they have a good chance of failing this. Although they get an extra +1 on death rolls, if they do fail one they are immediately autobroken - you need 4 hits for a chance at this. It is wise to screen your elephants with LF for as long as possible.

[warfareeast]

Hi,

Just wondering what the rationale is for slingers being at - against heavily armoured types? Most of the evidence I have seen would indicate they were quite effective against armoured troops, more so then some other types.

John O

Also wondered this myself, didnt the Romans use slingers specifically against cataphracts on one or two occasions for the very reason that they were more effective than other missile weapons?

Regards
Matt

[warfareeast]

At 5s to hit they still do decent damage - just not as much as a bow or longbow or xbow vs such targets.

Slings are incredibly cheap to produce - if they were as good why did everyone equip their troops with bows instead? They must be less good. Being hit by a rennaissance bullet in full plate isn't hat dangerous - its only when the speed of the projectile went high enough to cut through that high end troops stopped wearing serious body armour.

So its all relative, as they say

Si

Sorry Si but relative to what? you could equip an army with pikes, does not mean they know how to use them, X-bow popular because they are point and shoot weapons. 'if they were as good why did everyone equip their troops with bows instead' I doubt most armies equipped their troops at all, they turned up with what they were familiar with. Using a sling is like using a longbow it requires significant use to be competent with it let alone master it. Just because a weapon is cheap does not make it easy to use. I certainly believe that in the classical time frame good slingers were sought after as effective skirmishers, Rhodians, Ceasar's comments on British slingers and I think Tacitius as well.

an arrow failing to penetrate chainmail or bouncing off a helmet has little effect on the wearer, the concussive impact of a sling shot however is perfectly capable of causing severe bruising, numbness or even a concussion, without ever penetrating the armour. Also a slingshot is very hard to see and deflect away.

from a gamers perspective it would be nice to see the slings shorter range balanced out by a slightly better performance against the armoured targets.

Regards
Matt