A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
This is the second part of our look at many of the smaller issues of historical realism in Amazon's Rings of Power, following on our more substantive discussion of the major worldbuilding problems the show experienced. I had hoped to keep this at two parts (actually, I had hoped this would just be a one-off … Continue reading Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part II: Falling Towers
This week, we're going to take a break from the more serious topics to look at infantry tactics and compositions in the Total War series, particularly in the light of the recent Total War: Warhammer III, a real-time strategy game set in a late-medieval/early-modern high fantasy setting (the Warhammer setting) and how well (or poorly) … Continue reading Collection: Total War’s Missing Infantry-Type
For this week, I wanted to expand a bit on a comment I made on Twitter expressing some frustration at the failure of journalists attempting to cover the war in Ukraine (and thus interpret military experts for a lay audience) to master some of the key military terminology being used and to convey its actual … Continue reading Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology
Last time, we introduced the factors that created the trench stalemate in the First World War and we also laid out why the popular 'easy answer' of simply going on the defensive and letting the enemy attack themselves to death was not only not a viable strategy in theory but in fact a strategy which … Continue reading Collections: No Man’s Land, Part II: Breaking the Stalemate
This series is now available in audio format. You can find the playlist here. This is the fourth part of a four part (I, II, III, IV) look at the Dothraki from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO's Game of Thrones. We're looking at, in particular, if Martin's claim … Continue reading Collections: That Dothraki Horde, Part IV: Screamers and Howlers
This is the sixth part of a series taking a historian’s look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. VIII) from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film of the same name. Last time, we looked at Saruman's siege tactics and found them badly … Continue reading Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part VI: Is This a Good Sword?
This is the fifth part of a series taking a historian's look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. VIII) from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film of the same name. In our last two parts, we looked at the organization of the … Continue reading Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part V: Ladders are Chaos
This is the second part of a series taking a historian's look at the Battle of Helm's Deep (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. VIII), from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film of the same name. Last time, we looked at the operations which led up to the … Continue reading Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part II: Total Warg
Hey folks. Apologies to those who were eagerly awaiting Part II of the Fremen Mirage series. While I have a draft of the next installment done, I don't feel like it is quite where I want it be, so I'm going to hold on to it for another week. Normally, I'd just push a bit … Continue reading Gap Week Roundup, Jan. 24, 2020
A look at the tactics of the 'loot train' battle from Game of Thrones (S7E4), in which it turns out, everyone is the fool.