Slingers

[geala]

Arrows rely on piercing, sling shots rely on the transfer of momentum to what's under the armor. Arrows need to penetrate the armor to do damage, slings just have to hit the armor. The shot might not break the armor but its going to mess up whatever is underneath. Its the same concept used against Medieval European knights. If you can't penetrate armor, whack the armor hard enough to do concussive damage to the person underneath. Break a clavical, give someone a consussion, and generally mess his squishy bits up. You see it in the late medieval weaponry when armor won out over arms.

If you can't stab it to death, crush it.

I concur in general but the performance is strongly connected to the energy and momentum of a weapon or missile. I'm a bit tired to write it again and again and give the maths, in the unlikely event somebody is interested he could find the threads on RAT or on this forum with search.

If slings were without effect it would not have been used. Clearly. Mardonios was perhaps killed by a slingshot. Xenophon describes its use against the Persian archers, the Romans used it to good effect against the Parthians. And so on. Slings were surely effective against people without armour (death or blindness from headshots, broken bones, flesh wounds or at least concussions) and effective against people with armour in the sense that with soft armour without adequate backing materials perhaps bones could be broken and hits on the helmet could result in unconsciousness. Or just headache. Same would have happened from an arrow stopped by the armour, so I don't like the ap stat for slings.

Please take into account that you need about 600 to 700 Joule to injure a person wearing a modern helmet (without penetration) and that projectiles from slings normally had energies between 50 and 100 Joules. Of course a modern helmet has better shock absorbing qualities but ancient helmets also had substantial padding to cope with the much lower energy.

[Watchman]

IIRC the sling was one of the very few native weapons armoured Conquistadors were wary of; even through a helmet, a head hit was wont to cause all kinds of unpleasantness up to and including death. (Concussion sucks.)
And that was with stone shot.

Put this way, if an arrow is a spear-thrust delivered at long range then the sling bullet is a mace blow.

[geala]

IIRC the sling was one of the very few native weapons armoured Conquistadors were wary of; even through a helmet, a head hit was wont to cause all kinds of unpleasantness up to and including death. (Concussion sucks.)
And that was with stone shot.

Put this way, if an arrow is a spear-thrust delivered at long range then the sling bullet is a mace blow.

As far as I know from the sources the sling was the Indian weapon most feared by the Spanish. But death or blindness were only reported when no helmet was worn or unarmoured parts were hit. I always took the reports or the Conquistadores as proof for the limited performance of slings against armour. Same for Xenophon, often presented as the witness of supreme power although his diction indicate an often less than lethal performance.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

IIRC the sling was one of the very few native weapons armoured Conquistadors were wary of; even through a helmet, a head hit was wont to cause all kinds of unpleasantness up to and including death. (Concussion sucks.)
And that was with stone shot.

Put this way, if an arrow is a spear-thrust delivered at long range then the sling bullet is a mace blow.

Heh, actually the Spanish were afraid of spears hurlded with the adahadal (sp?), one of the tutors here told me it will go through steel plate, the increase in throwing power is just insane. Then there are the Obsidion swords capable of cutting an armoured man in half (though it ruined the sword).

[Watchman]

I don't quite think *those* claims stand up to much scrutiny - given that the Europeans themselves had to develop a whole new generation of weapons just to deal with the mediocre-quality "munition" plate worn by common troops. And they were using steel and quite sophisticated metallurgy for their weapons.

Obsidian business ends? *snap* That stuff is volcanic glass. It's hard and takes a good edge, but hoo boy it's brittle too. Hit metal with that stuff and you can just as well already reserve a refit session with the weaponsmith... Far as I've read of it the most even the two-handed version of the macauitl achieved on metal armour was knocking the victim around with the sheer weight of the weapon itself. Doesn't really help those sword-clubs weren't the altogether most lethal weapons to begin with (good old spear, axe and mace were probably rather more reliably deadly) - which was just peachy for the POW-sacrificing obsessed Aztecs mind you.

The heavy copper axes the Incas used were apparently regarded as rather more dangerous by the European invaders.