Slitherine

philqw78 wrote:

grahambriggs wrote:I quite like the idea of early crossbows with a simple 'pull and latch' mechanisms being counted as 'bow'. Likely to be a similar effect, I'd have thought.

IIRC the classical greeks had them, gatropods or some other French sounding name. I assume they are in with the greek archers and slingers as they don't get crossbows.

Gastraphetes, or belly bow. It's unclear whether it was designed to be used in the field or in sieges; there's records on how to build one but nothing on whether they were used. It's not a simple pull and latch device.

After minutes of detailed research I have come up with the following conclusions

Gastropod - a class of molluscs typically having a one-piece coiled shell and flattened muscular foot with a head bearing stalked eyes

So this means they are slow firing, indeed snail-like

Gastraphetes - a handheld crossbow, used by ancient Greeks. It was described in the first century AD by the Greek author Heron of Alexandria in his work `Belopoeica` . It is believed to have been invented around 400 BC

Looks like pull and latch though
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20091 ... phetes.jpg

jkbrookfield wrote:I am no expert on ancient and medieval weapons. I've always been confused about the differences in efectiveness between bows and crossbows. I've always wondered why use crossbows at all if they are not as good. I was reading recently and got an answer. It takes a long time to train a good bowman...however it only takes a few days to train a unit of crossbowmen. Even if they are not as effective as a group of bowmen, the advantage of cost and time would be an important reason to field them.

Nobody (I think) is saying crossbows are "not as good" as bows. Rather that they are better against some targets, worse against others. The argument is essentially over where that crossover point should be set in the rules.

FWIW in the early versions of the development of FoG Crossbows had really good POAs but got fewer dice than bows (because they have a lower rate of fire). The end result of this was that they were absolutely rubbish because they rarely if ever got enough hits to force a test.

The end result is IMO a reasonable compromise.

Crossbows are fine against mounted and armoured opponents and poor against all other targets.

There is an argument that they should not cost as many points as bow but as bow is not that expensive for infantry anyway it is difficult to implement.

Given the choice I would probably go for a mix of bow and crossbow and then try to be 'clever' with where I deploy them.

hammy wrote:FWIW in the early versions of the development of FoG Crossbows had really good POAs but got fewer dice than bows (because they have a lower rate of fire). The end result of this was that they were absolutely rubbish because they rarely if ever got enough hits to force a test.

<SNIP>

Yeah, only thing is, a lot of people seem to think they are still "absolutely rubbish because they rarely if ever got enough hits to force a test". Not that I have enough crossbow using armies to really give an opinion one way or the other.

philqw78 wrote:After minutes of detailed research I have come up with the following conclusions

Gastropod - a class of molluscs typically having a one-piece coiled shell and flattened muscular foot with a head bearing stalked eyes

So this means they are slow firing, indeed snail-like

Gastraphetes - a handheld crossbow, used by ancient Greeks. It was described in the first century AD by the Greek author Heron of Alexandria in his work `Belopoeica` . It is believed to have been invented around 400 BC

Looks like pull and latch though
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20091 ... phetes.jpg

I think Gastros means stomach or belly, and podos means foot. So a snail is a creature with his foot on his stomach.
And you probably already know Gastraphetes means "belly-shooter", so there's you connection.

Hi ,

thanks for this lesson of ethymology of gastropods;

do you have something for Frog legs apart little skirts ?

ok I get out

thefrenchjester " french muppet cooking in Paris "

Frog Murderer wrote: thefrenchjester " french muppet cooking in Paris "

Cuisson Le Kermit Francais, sacrebleu

>Yeah, only thing is, a lot of people seem to think they are still "absolutely rubbish because they rarely if ever got enough hits to force >a test". Not that I have enough crossbow using armies to really give an opinion one way or the other.

Indeed. I have also heard people describe bows as pointless because you can't get enough hits against armoured infantry to force a test.

A particular problem for the chinese armies is perhaps that we are often talking mixed formations? So they get fewer dice when shooting than a pure xbow formation. Naturally, that makes it harder to score hits.

Exactly the same as fot e.g. Byzants in mixed spear/bow formations shooting against armoured foot, and struggling to have a major impact.

Which brings us back the intended use fo these formations - I think the general feeling is that they should be effective shooting (and hence in impact too) against mounted troops, against foot not so much.

As for the cost relative to bow, I would agree perhaps xbow should be slightly cheaper than bow on the grounds that they are less effective against a larger number of potential targets than the are more effective against.

However if your concern is viability in the open tournament scene, I think that may be a bit different. Conventional wisdom as reiterated many times in this forum is that MF/HF should always be armoured, and even then that mounted troops are preferable

Hi,

The mixed CB/HW units used by the Chinese if supported correctly can be very effective. The main area to look at is the effect of crossbows against unprotected heavy/medium foot. I have always understood that crossbows tended to have better penetration than bows (excluding Longbows) unless it was at very short range. The argument is that bows fire faster than crossbows hence the 2 step difference in the POA (+ bow , - CB) against unarmoured heavy/medium foot. Also it is argued that the Chinese tended to have weaker draw power on their crossbows hence the POA but looking at the range of crossbows used over the various "empires" including repeating crossbows I am not certain that this view is correct. I would suggest that a drilled body of Crossbow would have a relativly high rate of shooting with high "impact " value when set against the rate of fire & "impact" from a similar sized battlegroup of undrilled bowmen. I may be influenced by all the Chinese films such as RED Cliff but they do show well drilled units with high rates of fire. I would suggest a tweek to the rules may be to allow Drilled Crossbow units of any army list to use the same POA as Bow against unarmoured heavy/medium foot or at least increase it to a 0 POA.

By "unarmoured" I assume you mean only unprotected, not including protected as well? Interesting point. I hadn't really thought much about unprotected MF/HF. I guess the former are more common that I was thinking, I hadn't really been considering dedicated shooty infantry shooting at each other.

>looking at the range of crossbows used over the various "empires" including repeating crossbows
> I am not certain that this view is correct.

Exactly. Which is why we have to be clear whether we are talking about relatively fast, low-penetration crossbows; or relatively slow, high-penetration ones. Otherwise the danger is that you quote the best features of both types, hence effectively arguing for the rules to represent an idealised uver crossbow which never existed.

I think the only realistic option would be for the faster, lower penetration models to be allowed as Bow instead. I don't think there's much chance of a super crossbow getting the best of both.

Hi ShrubMik,

You are correct I did mean unprotected. I am not looking for a "super crossbow ", just trying to understand the use of crossbows by the Chinese who faced a lot of unprotected heavy/medium foot and unprotected cavalry/light horse. I think most of us think of crossbows as those used in the medival period when they used various slow winding methods. In the earlier period the crossbow archer I believe used his foot or arms to draw the bowstring although the Chinese did have various winding mechanisms especially for their artillery crossbows. I just think that if the crossbow men were in a drilled formation they should have produced a high rate of fire not to disimilar to a bow armed unit. . The Chinese used crossbows from the C5th , they used bronze firing mechanisms so were not cheap to produce, possibly more expensive than a simple bow. In FOG I tend to find that the pure crossbow units are a risk to use on mass whilst they are better in mixed units. The difficulty I have is that I have never been able to reproduce a pure crossbow unit stopping an unprotected infantry unit or cavalry unit from charging home unless an interception charge gets in the way. The Chinese stated that crossbow units were expected to stop these units by crossbow fire alone.

The logical answer would be that the crossbow is superior against more heavily armoured than usual targets because of penetration (as it is) and the bow would be more effective against less heavily armoured targets such as skirmishers and unprotected troops (which it is.)
It is the fact that the crossbow is less effective against 'normally armoured' troops (ie protected foot) that makes their usefulness suspect.
I appreciate that this is a hard thing to correct, as being good against heavily armoured troops is, in general, more important than being good against unprotected troops, so points cost presents a challenge.

Incidentally a quahog is a fellow mollusc, but not a gastropod. It is a bivalve.

DrQuahog wrote:Incidentally a quahog is a fellow mollusc, but not a gastropod. It is a bivalve.

A clam?