I mean, generally speaking, sending pikemen against a people famous for riding horses sounds smart to me lol
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
493 points (98.6% liked)
Lord of the memes
8100 readers
46 users here now
The Lord of the rings memes communitiy on Lemmy. Share memes about Lord of the rings and be respectful.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Yeah, I don't understand why people are confused by this. Haha
It is said he rejected reason for madness.
He had sappers. And yeah Pike beats horse.
Ladders too.
I'd hate to climb a ladder with a pike
Climb the ladder and have your mate pass up the pike.
This is an accident waiting to happen. Is this ladder even OSHA approved?
Nah, you throw your pike straight up and then catch it when you reach the top of the ladder.
Ez
Except when there's light in the pikemen's eyes apparently
"Captain Ugnark, should we be worried about leaving our rear open to a cavalry charge?"
"Gobruk, you fool! That's a 60-degree slope, there's no way that horses could safely charge down it."
This is AoE 101
meanwhile Gandalf makes a cavalry charge down a waaaaaay too steep hill towards the aforementioned pikemen 
but he had the power of "making it really bright" on his side, and we all know that this is the achilles heel of all pikemen everywhere!
Aren't Uruk Hai really sensible to light? So the riders had vision, the high ground, morale and momentum on their side.
Pikes are pushed against/into the ground, so neither morale nor momentum will do you any good against them. Discomforting the pikemen will also not do anything, since pikes and their use in formations are designed for that to happen. If you get charged by a fuckton of cavalry, you are bound to flinch anyway and you weren't supposed to actually do anything with the pike but push it into the ground if you were charged. The momentum is provided by courtesy of the attacker. So the downhill movement and the momentum are a disadvantage against pikes.
And I'm not even counting the fact that horses will not charge walls of spiky things. They are living beings with a mind of their own. A fact that we tend to forget nowadays. But I'm willing to let that one slide, perhaps there was some super special sauce training only known to the horse freaks of Rohan that made them go through with the charge.
"Then he must be a noble beast indeed," said Aragorn; "and it grieves me more than many tidings that might seem worse to learn that Sauron levies such tribute. It was not so when last I was in that land."
"Nor is it now, I will swear," said Boromir. "It is a lie that comes from the Enemy. I know the Horse Freaks of Rohan; true and valiant, our allies, dwelling still in the lands that we gave them long ago."
Ghandalf did not pass through fire and death to bandy words with a witless worm such as yourself. It was magic light, that did magic things. Okay?
The Uruk-hai were more tolerant of daylight than other orcs. I think it was mentioned a couple of times by the fellowship folks, and there was also a scene when they had captured Merry and Pippin and had to keep running day and night. The commander made fun of the others for being weaker against the daylight.
Also, cavalry can generally defeat a pole arm formation by flanking and using a combined arms operation. They need projectile weapons (arrows/muskets/cannon…) or infantry to keep the pikemen engaged. If the pole arm unit forms a square, it’s largely protected against cavalry but has increased vulnerability to missile weapons and is fairly immobile.
Or just send in the ents.
Man, making me wanna install Third Age Total War.
obviously Saruman the 4D-chess-mover predicted that Gandalf would flank them with cavalry and that's why he brought pikemen to a siege
We need to resist the hegemony of the wizards, these guys clearly have no business making decisions for the rest of Middle-earth
Shit worked, didnt it?
Wizard apparently knows a thing or two.
It makes sense narratively and tactically that he timed his charge with the sun creeping over the hill so that the orcs were blinded by it though.
The Battle of Helm's Deep is full of very obvious errors. There is an awesome Dutch historian, Roel Konijnendijk, who trashes movies for fun that talks about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPGdOXstSyk
My favourite one is when they are shouting orders to eachother. There is no way for the Elven archers to hear Aragorn's commands, or for Aragorn to hear Theoden's fallback order.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=xPGdOXstSyk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Um, piped stopped working for me on all instances a few days ago, anybody else noticed this?
Yep. Same with apps like LibreTube, YouTube broke something (Diese Fotzen)
Something to do with API changes on YouTube I believe. For whatever reason, https://piped.mha.fi/ still works.
I thought Legolas had a superior hearing, didnt he ? If yes, the elves could have heard Aragorn.
Me and a friend discussed this and it led to an ongoing joke of pole vaulting pikemen.
Wise. A wizard.
Not exactly a very experienced war lord
More like Saruman the fool
Saruman the Stinky
Sharky.
Saruman the silly
Saruman the Unwise
Every Total War Player knows how this feels "let's take this city real qui... Wait?! Who the fuck put the pikes into this army?!"
Wise once there is a breach. which is what they planned for.
Here's an eight part series by a historian on which parts of the battle are realistic within the world and which are not, in case that kind of thing is interesting to you:
I’ve already read it before, but it’s so so good.
Maybe the walls finished constructing while he was sending his troops across the map. Happens to the best of us.
Forgot to build that siege workshop and just decided to send it
They said the keep had held for 800 years...
That's like 5-10 turns tops in the early game!
Pikes beat horse dudes, Rohan has horse dudes. Unbeatable logic. Dev did not code for horse dudes having different armour off horse.
Walled shelter
view more: next ›