War Talk Wednesday

Variant Rory goes deep in on the weapons and tactics of history that often inform warfare in TTRPGs and other forms of entertainment.

War Talk – Box Barrage

Welcome Back, Variants! Following last week’s blast of a post about artillery and indirect fire, I’d like to talk about Box Barrages today. A box barrage is a form of artillery fire that falls around a specific part of the battlefield, with the aim of preventing escape or reinforcement of that area.  For a Box …

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War Talk – Artillery

Alright Variants, let us get into the holiday season with a bang. Today, we are talking about the king of the battlefield as Napoleon called it, artillery. From the catapults, ballista, and trebuchets of antiquity and the Middle Ages to the modern cannons and howitzers, the role of artillery has changed very little over the …

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War Talk – Lances

Well met Variants, and welcome to another War Talk. Today we shall discuss the iconic weapon of the medieval knight, the lance. Since we clarified a few misconceptions about knights before here, let’s do the same with their weapons. Related: Origins of the Knight A lance is really just a fancy spear, and the earliest …

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Text reads War Talk Wednesday Pikes Part 2

War Talk – Pikes Part 2

Hello again, Variants!  As promised, I have returned for week two of our pike tactics War Talk. Last week we talked about the use of the phalanx in ancient warfare, but that’s not the only time the pike saw widespread use.   The second was during the early Renaissance, with the proliferation of gunpowder weapons. …

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Text reads War Talk Wednesday Pikes Part 1

War Talk – Pike Part 1

Welcome to another War Talk! Today we are taking a trip back to a time before the Medieval roots of many TTRPGs and talk about a tactic first popularized in antiquity: the pike phalanx. The phalanx was a formation of spearmen popular among Greek and early Roman city-states prior to the Punic Wars. Phalanxes contained …

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