A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
This is the second part of the third part of our four(ish) part (Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, V) look at the performance of the Roman army and its legions in the third and second century BC against the Hellenistic armies of the heirs of Alexander. Last time, we sought to … Continue reading Collections: Phalanx’s Twilight, Legion’s Triumph, Part IIIb: Pyrrhus
This is the first part of the second part of our four? four part look (Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, V) at the great third and second century BC contest between the Hellenistic armies of the heirs of Alexander and the Roman legions. Last time, we looked at the Hellenistic army as … Continue reading Collections: Phalanx’s Twilight, Legion’s Triumph, Part IIa: How a Legion Fights
This is the second part of the first part of our four part look (Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, V) at the context between the Hellenistic army and its Macedonian phalanx and the Romans with their legions. Last week, we looked at the weapons, organization and fighting style of the Macedonian phalanx, … Continue reading Collections: Phalanx’s Twilight, Legion’s Triumph, Part Ib: Subjects of the Successors
This week, we're going to take a look at a different aspect of ancient infantry tactics: how heavy infantry shield formations work. While I've framed this around 'shield walls,' not every kind of shielded heavy infantry fought that way and in practice the line between what is a 'shield wall' and what isn't comes down to … Continue reading Collections: Shield Walls and Spacing: Hollywood Mobs and Ancient Tactics
This week we're looking at The Great War: Western Front, a hybrid turn-based/real-time strategy game about the First World War developed by Petroglyph Games, a renowned maker of real-time strategy titles. Petroglyph generally tend to do games set in science-fiction or fantasy settings, so when this product was announced I was immediately interested to see … Continue reading Collections: The Great War: Western Front, A Gain of Inches
This is the second part of a three part (I, II, III) look at the issue of 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 … 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