davidharvey1 wrote:Is there a risk of a bit of post list drafting justification going on ?
Re the suggestion that a Norman versus armoured skutatoi result would be unbalanced, the Normans never faced a high period Nikephorian Byzantine army, the first serious encounters between Normans and Byzantines were in the 1050s in Italy, when the local Byzantine army was any old unit that happened to be about except briefly for the forces commanded by Maniakes - who won. Civic militia provided much of the infantry in Italy, not regular skutatoi.
It isn't just Normans, it is any armoured cavalry such as Lombards etc. As protected defensive spear with supporting bow the Skutatoi are more than hard enough as they stand to beat knights and lancers.
The next encounter was between Alexius 1and the Hautvilles in 1081 by which time the army of even 1060 was long gone, so we have no knowledge of a Norman versus Nikephorian skutatoi encounter or Normans versus Nikephorian battle. What we do know is that the Normans had as much trouble with steady infantry as anyone else, so what's unhistorical about skutatoi thrashing Normans knights, unless the former had been soften up by the infantry - historical or were poor quality - also historical at times e.g. in the 1080s.
The problem is that if the skitatoi are armoured the Normans won't just 'have trouble' dealing with them they will be pretty much innefectual agaiinst them. If the Byzantine ninfantry are that potent against enemy lancer cavalry they would end up being used in a very ahistorical way.
Looking at the question of average armour in a unit, before the mass use textile armour for many Byzantine units in the much expanded more infantry focussed army from 950, many records show/suggest/record front rank infantry who were very heavily armoured. While that may only have happened with elite units such as the numeri; the benefit of the doubt for a 6 base unit of spearmen plus 3 archers would have been reasonable, averaging out heavily armoured front ranks, armoured middle, textile rear.
I am not quite sure what you are saying here. My point is that Swiss and later medieval pikemen where the front rank is heavily armoured and armour levels reduce as you go further back are represented in FoG as protected. Why should Byzantines be any different?
Armoured Romans are from units where every man had metal armour and a shield.
Looking at other lists Persian immortals are classed as armoured because they did apparenly mostly have good armour and being classed as armoured gets the correct interractions with their historical opponents.
I am not aware of any real evidence that supports this conclusion, other than Herodotus mentioning that Persian infantry wore armor like the scales of a fish. But he also says or implies that one of the reasons the Persians lost to the Greeks was becasue the hoplites were more heavily armored than the Persians. Most artistic evidence there is shows non metallic armor. Of course, Herodotus also says that the Persian army and navy that invaded Greece totalled over FIVE MILLION. I suppose we can beleive what we want.
I have no real problem wirth the Immortals being allowed the option to be armored, because it is a reasonable interpretation of the evidence. It is assumed the Immortals received the best armor available. It is also a reasonable interpretation of the evidence to allow at least some of the Byzantine infantry to also be classed as armored, based on equally valid evidence.
Last edited by Delbruck on Fri Feb 20, 2009 5:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Delbruck wrote:
I have no real problem wirth the Immortals being allowed the option to be armored, because it is a resonable interpretation of the evidence. It is assumed the Immortals received the best armor available. It is also a reasonable interpretation of the evidence to allow at least some of the Byzantine infantry to also be classed as armored, based on equally valid evidence.
I suspect the Immortals are allowed armoured to get the interaction vs. Hoplites right. One could make them protected swordsmen instead (like the Jannisaries). The problem with that would be that if the Hoplites remain steady at impact, the swordsmen does not count. Armoured however always counts, giving the Immortals a fighting chance, especially vs. non-superior Hoplites.
With the Byzantines infantry the armoured option might indeed make them to powerful. It's about getting the right effect vs. contemporary opponents first and the actual equipment only a distant second.
Karsten
~ We are not surrounded, we are merely in a target rich environment. ~
Looking at other lists Persian immortals are classed as armoured because they did apparenly mostly have good armour and being classed as armoured gets the correct interractions with their historical opponents.
I am not aware of any real evidence that supports this conclusion, other than Herodotus mentioning that Persian infantry wore armor like the scales of a fish. But he also says or implies that one of the reasons the Persians lost to the Greeks was becasue the hoplites were more heavily armored than the Persians. Most artistic evidence there is shows non metallic armor. Of course, Herodotus also says that the Persian army and navy that invaded Greece totalled over FIVE MILLION. I suppose we can beleive what we want.
I have no real problem wirth the Immortals being allowed the option to be armored, because it is a resonable interpretation of the evidence. It is assumed the Immortals received the best armor available. It is also a reasonable interpretation of the evidence to allow at least some of the Byzantine infantry to also be classed as armored, based on equally valid evidence.
The key is the "and being classed as armoured gets the correct interractions with their historical opponents". FoG classes Greek hoplites at the time of the first Persian invasion as armoured. If the immortals were only protected then while they would have an edge at impact they would be on -- in close combat with all hoplites. That is probably rather over the top and the interractions with historical opponents fall down.
You cannot compare the actual armour on troops from 500 BC with troops from 1400 AD and assume that protected in one era will equate to protected in another. English longbowmen were renowned for obtaining whatever bits of armour they could and making use of it where possible. There are plenty of troops classed as armoured who have less armour than some 100YW longbowmen but when comparing within limited areas the lesser armoured troops need to be armoured to make interractions work.
Consider Lombard cavalry vs armoured skutatoi.
At impact the skutatoi are on an even POA (dSpear cancels lance, no other POA) so have 2 dice on evens and have an extra dice hitting on 5 from support shooting, the lancers have 2 superior dice. Crunching the numbers this means that the skutatoi have I make a 28.8 % chance of disrupting the lancers but the lancers only have a 17.4% chance of disrupting the skutatoi.
Assuming no overlaps (which the skutatoi will often have) in melee with protected skutatoi you end up with the lancers having 4 dice on + vs the skutatoi having 4 on - so there is a decent cance that in the melee the lancers might win. With armoured skutatoi the melee is at evens which means that at no point is there any advantage to the cavalry. For me that makes the skutatoi far too effective against armoured cavalry.
hammy wrote:
Consider Lombard cavalry vs armoured skutatoi.
Is this matchup based on any known historical interaction or just picking two contemporary troop types?
To be honest it is picking troop types that could well have fought each other. If I had armoured skutatoi in a Byzantine army I would be using them very agressively against enemy mounted. My understanding of the Byzantine manuals is that the infantry were a solid base for the cavalry to work from not the main offensive army which armoured spear/bow would end up being against mounted opponents.
The manual in question for the Nikeforian is aimed at fighting in the east with the Hamdanid emirate as the principle enemy. Ouranos' update may take in the Fatimids as well. So perhaps those are the ones you need to be comparing with.
Nik Gaukroger
"Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does, he will tell you.
If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith
nikgaukroger wrote:The manual in question for the Nikeforian is aimed at fighting in the east with the Hamdanid emirate as the principle enemy. Ouranos' update may take in the Fatimids as well. So perhaps those are the ones you need to be comparing with.
Again against armoured bow sword cavalry the skutatoi would be significantly more effective if they were armoured. I see no reason to have them as armoured, it would make them the mainstay of the army and I am fairly sure they weren't.
marioslaz wrote:I agree with you. I don't know enough Byzantine, but there are similar problems with armies I know very well. The point is an army list often cover a lot of years, so what is right in a certain period, could be wrong in another one. And, of course, the army lists must be used in tournament, so if one army was too strong...
Army lists are not hobbled because they would be 'too strong'. Classifications are however done with historical matchups in mind.
[...]
OK, I understood. You classify a troop by historical evidence, then if it is "too strong" (or "too week") in an "historical matchup" you "hobble" it
marioslaz wrote:
There are guidelines such as for troops to be classed as armoured then then almost all of the BG needs to be wearing armour. Where a BG had different levels of armour from rank to rank the armour is averaged out.
The Byzantine foot for example would as Phil has pointed out be too effective against its contemporary opponents if it was classed as armoured. As Skutatoi seem to have had heavier armour for the front ranks and lighter armour for the rear the end result is that it is averaged out as protected.
Looking at other lists Persian immortals are classed as armoured because they did apparenly mostly have good armour and being classed as armoured gets the correct interractions with their historical opponents. English longbowmen by the end of the 100YW could be argued to have had almost the same level of protection as the immortals but they are classed as protected because this gives the correct results in historical interractions and while the archers may have had as much armour as an immortal they had less armour than a 100YW billman.
Hammy, let me agree with you here. Armour should be averaged out per the FoG design philosophy. My problem is that this averaging is applied inconsistently. If the Byzantines cannot have armoured skoutatoi because only a portion of their troops wore metal armour so be it. However, there should then be no armoured Daylami's or Moslem Armoured HF of any kind either. I have never seen anything in any of the sources or Nicolle's modern works that indicates that any Moslem field infantry unit (big enough for 6-8 base size) would have had all metal armor and shields ala the Roman legionaires. Like their Byzantine counterparts they would have had a mix of metal and non-metal armor which should mean that all Moslem HF/MF should rate protected as well. This includes the vaunted Daylami. So why does nearly every Moslem list allow armoured HF/MF on probably less evidentiary basis than the Byzantines? The same argument holds for the Saxon Select Fyrd in Wolves from the Sea. Does anyone seriously believe there is sufficient hard evidence that all ranks of the Select Fyrd had metal armour? Doesn't your argument about the likliehood of weakness of Norman Kn vs armoured skoutatoi even worse for the poor Normans against the armoured Saxon Select Fyrd? I don't think we're asking for our favorite armies to be filled with super-armored troops, we're really only asking that the armies we're likely to face have the same rigorous standards applied to them.
There is an argument for the Rus mercenaries to be armoured but as the only armoured troops in a Rus army are the Druzhina the argument would have to be that the mercenaries were rich and as a result provided themselves with better equipment than their peers.
I agree that that is exactly what happened under Basil II both from their own improved resources and since they were Basil's favored troops, as gifts from the Emperor himself. My problem is, of course, there is no option for this.
Mercenary light horse and Slavs are not something that they have in the old DBM lists (they might in the DBMM ones but I don't have those so can't compare)..
Ouch! IMHO, all the DBM or DBMM army lists are, to say the least, highly suspect in any attempt to develop army lists for other rules. I use translated manuals, sources and historys such as Procopius and Leo the Deacon and modern historians such as McGeer and Haldon to develop my opinions on the Byzantines for example.
I've to agree with Paul here. Some armies (especially from the medieval middle east and those of certain islanders) seem to get the benefit of the doubt. That's not necessarily limited to armour levels though*. I guess some bias is almost unavoidable, we are all just humans, yet a somewhat more even handed approach would have been nice here and there.
* For example both Ghilman and Knights were trained to fight on foot and horse. Yet only Ghilman can dismount in all lists by default. Knights are usually allowed to dismount only if there is proof that they actually did dismount in a battle. If we applied the same to Ghilman I bet the dismount option would go poof for them in a lot of their lists.
Karsten
~ We are not surrounded, we are merely in a target rich environment. ~
There is an argument for the Rus mercenaries to be armoured but as the only armoured troops in a Rus army are the Druzhina the argument would have to be that the mercenaries were rich and as a result provided themselves with better equipment than their peers.
I agree that that is exactly what happened under Basil II both from their own improved resources and since they were Basil's favored troops, as gifts from the Emperor himself. My problem is, of course, there is no option for this.
Well there is but not until after 1042 when the Rus mercenaries become the varangian guards. I don't know why the dates were set the wya they were but I am sure there are reasons.
Mercenary light horse and Slavs are not something that they have in the old DBM lists (they might in the DBMM ones but I don't have those so can't compare)..
Ouch! IMHO, all the DBM or DBMM army lists are, to say the least, highly suspect in any attempt to develop army lists for other rules. I use translated manuals, sources and historys such as Procopius and Leo the Deacon and modern historians such as McGeer and Haldon to develop my opinions on the Byzantines for example.
Unfortunately I don't have access to the manuals and documents you refer to. My reason for mentioning lists from other rules is that these lists (or at least the ones I have) don't include any mercenary light horse or Slav foot. The FoG lists were not 'copied' from the DBM ones or any other set, they were based on information from books, internet discussion on the TNE list and discussion with subject matter experts. The information provided is then made into a FoG list.
It is possible for example that the list writers were given some indication that some of the Rus spearmen would have had better armour but that this did not justify armoured status or that there were light horse mercenaries but never in sufficient numbers to justify a FoG BG.
All I am saying is that compared to the Byzantine lists that we used to have to work with in DBM the FoG lists are massively more playable and effective.
Many points to Ghazavanid, as moderator, for “fessing up “on this one and admitting that there might be some inconsistencies and to Paul for keeping up the struggle over the weekend! There are certainly sufficient bits of evidence, to give Paul the opportunity to argue for changes he's looking for on the grounds of very reasonable doubt and they should be through a separate section of this forum -- new armies/corrections
Going onto Hammy’s points, my original point in blue, his responses in normal text, and my response is in italics
[color=#][color=#]davidharvey1 wrote:
Is there a risk of a bit of post list drafting justification going on ?
Re the suggestion that a Norman versus armoured skutatoi result would be unbalanced, the Normans never faced a high period Nikephorian Byzantine army, the first serious encounters between Normans and Byzantines were in the 1050s in Italy, when the local Byzantine army was any old unit that happened to be about except briefly for the forces commanded by Maniakes - who won. Civic militia provided much of the infantry in Italy, not regula[/color]r skutatoi. [/color]
It isn't just Normans, it is any armoured cavalry such as Lombards etc. As protected defensive spear with supporting bow the Skutatoi are more than hard enough as they stand to beat knights and lancers.
I'm by no means arguing that a significant number of skutatoi should be upgraded to Armoured, but that there is enough evidence for a small proportion, probably limited to main field armies and elite units, i.e. not in the West fighting Lombards, much the same as some middle eastern armies can upgrade Daylami, or western late dark ages armies also get the benefit of the doubt. There really are not many instances of Normans -- even post the adoption of the couched lance - taking on spear armed infantry frontally, without various softening techniques or when fighting low quality adversaries, whether the spearmen were armoured or not. It's not a matter of a small number of armoured Skutatoi if the evidence produced provides reasonable doubt being unfair on the Normans, surely it is a matter for the Norman General to use historical deployments and tactics and for the lists to be historical,
T[color=#]he next encounter was between Alexius 1and the Hautvilles in 1081 by which time the army of even 1060 was long gone, so we have no knowledge of a Norman versus Nikephorian skutatoi encounter or Normans versus Nikephorian battle. What we do know is that the Normans had as much trouble with steadyinfantry as anyone else, so what's unhistorical about skutatoi thrashing Normans knights, unless the former had been soften up by the infantry - historical or were poor quality - also historical at times e.g. in the 1080s. [/color]
The problem is that if the skitatoi are armoured the Normans won't just 'have trouble' dealing with them they will be pretty much innefectual agaiinst them. If the Byzantine ninfantry are that potent against enemy lancer cavalry they would end up being used in a very ahistorical way.
It’s historiisity , that I'm concerned about; based on the above rationale would n’t many other armies be hobbled for competition?
[color=#]
Looking at the question of average armour in a unit, before the mass use textile armour for many Byzantine units in the much expanded more infantry focussed army from 950, many records show/suggest/record front rank infantry who were very heavily armoured. While that may only have happened with elite units such as the numeri; the benefit of the doubt for a 6 base unit of spearmen plus 3 archers would have been reasonable, averaging out heavily armoured front ranks, armoured middle, textile rear. [/color]
I am not quite sure what you are saying here. My point is that Swiss and later medieval pikemen where the front rank is heavily armoured and armour levels reduce as you go further back are represented in FoG as protected. Why should Byzantines be any different?
Armoured Romans are from units where every man had metal armour and a shield.
And my suggestion si that there is enough evidence to suggest that a small proportion of units also had all men in metal armour – certainly as likely as upgraded Anglo Saxons and that the averaging should be consitent, front ranks heavily armoured, middle armoured, rear protected = armoured
And another point….
Taking another omission in the Nikephorian list, the lack of Procurastores light cavalry, referred very clearly to by Ouranos and with their role and equipment well described and very clearly operating as light cavalry in a fashion distinct from the heavy cavalry, and it's very difficult to see why alternatives aren't given to allow 4 light cavalry, unprotected, drilled Bw* lance swordsmen to be available. This is no more unreasonable than every option for Middle East and and Steppe armies to deploy light horse or unprotected cavalry.
I dare mention Phil Barker, his approach has been to ask for the documentary evidence -- whether from primary sources, well argued modern research or archaeology -- and I was able to get a number of changes to the Komnenon Byzantine list about 10 years ago and with more extensive sources and research available hope there might be more. This ought to be the way to go forward, with the addition of a new Army/new lists forum here, and the weight being very much on the shoulders of those who want change. Timescales are going to be long, of course, but there would be no harm, perhaps even marketing benefit, for a list addendum to be published, say at the end of 2010.
List writing is a difficult business having to balance the interests of those who are obsessed with history and those who are obsessed with competition, and everyone in between; yet alone work through mounds of research and opinion. None of this is meant to be knocking the FOG authors, but call it pressure for a circle of ever moving product improvement!
Any chance you could go back and sort out your formatting in that post.
I'll also repeat something mentioned before - setting up some sort of FoG TNE now to get thoughts parked for future reference would be very useful should there ever come a time that lists are revised. Do it now whilst you have the enthusiasm - most TNE stuff was done ages ago and proved very useful when lists came to be done/revised, no need to wait.
Nik Gaukroger
"Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does, he will tell you.
If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith
FWIW the reason that the Anglo Danish army has so many armoured spearmen is that the select fyrd were 'expected' to have mail, ergo large proportions of them would be armoured.
As for a TNE style discussion that would be great and it could be supported on the forum. Perhaps even as threads (one per book) in this forum.
hammy wrote:FWIW the reason that the Anglo Danish army has so many armoured spearmen is that the select fyrd were 'expected' to have mail, ergo large proportions of them would be armoured.
As for a TNE style discussion that would be great and it could be supported on the forum. Perhaps even as threads (one per book) in this forum.
Well, when I was 10 years old in the '60's, my teachers said it was 'expected' that by the year 2000, we would have flying cars, bases on the moon and have explored Mars. How'd those expectations work out? Look, I have no problem with giving the Select Fyrd armored status on the basis of the ideal of equipment possible for them, but then the same should be true for the Byzantines from their manuals, but it's not. As a matter of fact how many times have we read from list writers "Maurice's manual prescribes that infantry should have metal armor, but in practice we believe that was an ideal, that was not achieved in pracitice." or judgemental words to that effect. Selective judgements on one army as opposed to another based on list writer's biases should be avoided as much as possble.
Regarding the TNE agree that's a good idea. How can that get set up?
can the TNE strand be added here - would make life so much easier
I think it would be better elsewhere to be honest. Putting it on the official forum would give it spurious authority and lead to possibly unrealistic expectations about changes to lists - especially if contributors to the existing lists were minded to chip in.
Having it elsewhere means the information is preserved but it would be clear that it is an unofficial project - although it would no doubt be useful and appreciated should there be revisions.
Nik Gaukroger
"Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does, he will tell you.
If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith
I use translated manuals, sources and historys such as Procopius and Leo the Deacon and modern historians such as McGeer and Haldon to develop my opinions on the Byzantines for example.