Slitherine

Been enjoying the new earlier lists in the Machiavelli expansion. Just some historical questions/musings:

Why no Szekeler units available in the Transylvanian lists? After all, they comprised one of the three "estates" of Transylvania for the entire P&s period.

Polish army; the earliest list seems to have crossbows available for the cavalry units, but in the next latest list , these are replaced with bows.... Seems like a odd "transition" of weaponry... ie , to suddenly train mounted men to use bows vs the simpler x-bows, especially when firearms were becoming more common anyway. Just curious, I dont have anything to support either way!

TheGrayMouser wrote:Been enjoying the new earlier lists in the Machiavelli expansion. Just some historical questions/musings:

Why no Szekeler units available in the Transylvanian lists? After all, they comprised one of the three "estates" of Transylvania for the entire P&s period.

Well of course the lance armed version of Szeklers is only one interpretation of how they should be classified. If you recall, in the FOGAM lists we hedged our bets by giving them a wide range of possible classifications. It does lack a certain consistency but you can assume that they are included amongst the other types in the early Transylvanian list.

Polish army; the earliest list seems to have crossbows available for the cavalry units, but in the next latest list , these are replaced with bows.... Seems like a odd "transition" of weaponry... ie , to suddenly train mounted men to use bows vs the simpler x-bows, especially when firearms were becoming more common anyway. Just curious, I dont have anything to support either way!

Well it is apparently what they did.

Thanks RBS, kinda assumed that the szkelers were subsumed into the various cavalry types in the Trans. lists, except for the fact that the Hungarian list has actual units named szekelers that are high quality and dually armed. No issue as I think the Trans list is pretty darn good already without additional superior cavalry types trotting about.

As for the Poles, i get that is what they did, was curious if anyone knew why ? Information on Eastern, SE European armies in this time is pretty lacking... Anyone know of any good links? articles? books?

Might be to do with the need for an increased rate of fire to cope with Tarter and other eastern foes ?

Hoplite1963 wrote:Might be to do with the need for an increased rate of fire to cope with Tarter and other eastern foes ?

Perhaps, but wernt they already dealing with that for some time? Plus they then went to firearms pretty quickly....

My gut tells me mounted crossbows must have been pretty much useless.....