Weapons and Armour of Early 1400's

[Bedlam]

A bunny can send a herd of horses into a panicked flight.

True, behold the reaction of a herd of small colourful equines to a bunny stampede.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viU9ue-St28[/youtube]

[Korto]

Seeing as goats were actually used for pulling carts, I would think it would be inevitable that this role would be expanded.
According to online, a female goat can pull about its weight, and a male twice its weight, but there's no mention whether wethers keep full male strength. A group of intact males would probably fight, while I think wethers are more docile. There's also no mention of speed or endurance.

There's also dogs. Dogs can apparently pull their own weight. I think goats would be more economical, however, give they're easier to feed.


I keep on seeing goats with a steel helm with a nasty spike right in the middle of it, on the right angle for their butt. A bit of armour on the chest for how they rear up for added impact coming down. Unfortunately, what I can't see would how these "battle goats" could be taught not to attack their own side.

[Elheru Aran]

Handling animals is as much about the one doing the handling as it is the animal. I expect that if goats are developed into a battle animal, they'd be paired with a rider or driver who is also trained to control the animal and keep it from going nuts. Just setting a bunch of animals loose on the battlefield isn't (usually) a viable tactic.

[LaCroix]

Also, goats are a lot easier to feed than horses. They eat EVERYTHING. No joke - people trying to get a goat to mow the lawn found out the hard way that they eat everything else in the yard first, and the grass last. (Most likely because they pooped all over the yard, too...)

I haven't thought about having dedicated attack goats, though... I was only thinking that compared to horse-drawn (who would shy away from getting too close), a goat-drawn chariot would rather gleefully smash into a group of enemies, so driving closeby to use scythes or other chariot-mounted implements, or actually ramming opponents would be much easier.

[Elheru Aran]

As far as mowing yards goes, I understand sheep are a better choice. They're more likely to just eat the grass and are less likely to climb fences. Depends on the sheep though...

I'd be concerned about using ramming tactics with chariots. Seems like it'd be an easy way to get tangled up and not be able to back out. As an alpha strike, perhaps certainly.

The natural weaponry of chariots is either cutting implements attached to the vehicle, or more usually some form of light ranged weapon like bows or javelins. Spears can be an option with heavier chariots but are naturally shorter ranged. Ramming would bring the riders into direct opposition with the other side, and since chariots tend to be light, we are talking lighter armed riders.

The easy thing to do in this situation though is that it's historic fantasy, with a bit of magic... just have them kick up goat size evolution by a notch with a few spells, and you'll have horse-, or more practically perhaps pony-sized goats in no time. Those could then be ridden, and that's a whole different ball game to pulling chariots.

[LaCroix]

Of course, a head on ram with a chariot would be stupid, but with horses, their natural shyness means that it is already hard to make the chariot drive by an enemy force (if you want to use attached cutting implements.)

Also, a time-proven way to fight chariots is a shield wall, and some guys with spears to jump in front of it and try to make the horses shy as you travel along the line. Or to manage to catch them in a pocket - the horses will be quite unwilling to run even into a single line of people, so breaking out of that can be difficult, even with horses trained for the purpose.

A ram, on the other hand, will not think twice to run into a person. So you could even use them to break through a shieldwall, if it has only a few ranks.

[The_Saint]

I''ll second all the comments around goats for chariots and training horses (I'm part of a historical cavalry troop fwiw) but I do wonder how likely chariots are to be in a mountainous region. Chariots are more of an open plains weapon.

For a truly mountainous region without horses I'd expect some form of development of both heavily armoured infantry and lighter more mobile, probably ranged, skirmishers. The more I think of it the more this sounds like a European take on South American empires (Aztec, Maya, etc)

[Korto]

I tried to have a look at the Aztecs, but their lack of steel made it too different for my puny mind to translate over.

I concur with the concern about decent chariot terrain, but also I'm shying away from the idea of mutant goats big enough to ride directly--If I was to bring in surrugate horses, I may as well have left the horses in.

[LaCroix]

Giant Ibex cavalry charging through the mountains... The Austrian in me is yodeling with excitement at the mental picture...

Aztexts are pretty similar to Europeans, just with wood/stone and bone instead of steel. And a LOT of obsidian - all edged weapons were much sharper than steel weapons could ever be. Razor sharp was standard.

Spears - check
Kives/daggers - check
Maces - check
Axes - check
Swords - check. (Picture a wooden sword with obsidian shards along the edge)
Bow&arrow - check
Superpowered javelins - CHECK (see atlatl)

Armor:
Gambeson - check
Helmets - check (hardwood carved)
Shields - check (they even had a lamellar full body lenght variant they could "roll-up" and stow away when not in use)
Wooden/bone/fur/leather extra armor for arms/legs/body - possible, but not confirmed. Usually, the gambeson was more thna enough.

[Korto]

Aztexts are pretty similar to Europeans, just with wood/stone and bone instead of steel.

I'll have another look at them. Even if it just reminds me what it was that made my mind rebel.
I think it was something to do with their lack of heavy armour? Which flowed through to their weapons and tactics.

Those Ibex have some pretty big horns. You know, even if humans are too heavy to ride them, that doesn't rule out some goblinoid race that can.

[Zixinus]

A diminutive race would have to shift its gear and tactics if it goes up against regular humans.

Also note that the lack of ironworking is as far away as you can get from Renessaince-era warfare.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, reach and height are too much of an advantage to overlook. Pretty sure there was a thread not too long ago around here-- well, not in History, but maybe in Fantasy or OT-- about Dwarven warfare, that might be one place you could look at.

Renaissance warfare does depend pretty heavily on having steel and iron available. ALL the weapons, guns, armour, etc... there are non-metallic analogues to all these, but it's hard to get past steel and iron being the most efficient materials.

[Esquire]

Yeah, reach and height are too much of an advantage to overlook. Pretty sure there was a thread not too long ago around here-- well, not in History, but maybe in Fantasy or OT-- about Dwarven warfare, that might be one place you could look at.

Renaissance warfare does depend pretty heavily on having steel and iron available. ALL the weapons, guns, armour, etc... there are non-metallic analogues to all these, but it's hard to get past steel and iron being the most efficient materials.

Here's that thread, in case anybody else was as interested as I was but less strong in Search Fu.

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=154370

[PhoenixKnig]

Yeah, reach and height are too much of an advantage to overlook. Pretty sure there was a thread not too long ago around here-- well, not in History, but maybe in Fantasy or OT-- about Dwarven warfare, that might be one place you could look at.

Renaissance warfare does depend pretty heavily on having steel and iron available. ALL the weapons, guns, armour, etc... there are non-metallic analogues to all these, but it's hard to get past steel and iron being the most efficient materials.

Here's that thread, in case anybody else was as interested as I was but less strong in Search Fu.

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=154370

Thanks I was wondering about it