Gaesatae way too overpowered

[mAIOR]

Believe it or not, being mean and nasty in combat accounts for alot.

Well, I brawled a lot and enjoyed immensely your description :) must be your 20 years in aikido and judo that gave you the insight ;) . It's true the best way to defeat someone in hand to hand is the psychological factor.
If you manage to scare your opponent to death before you engage, he'll die of fear and you wont need to worry. Now, this is nearly impossible so if you just scare him, his moves will be uncertain, shaky (not very good in sword fighting I can assure you) and weak compared to a prepared opponent.
One simple example, to all of you who do some martial art, when you fight, if you get punched hard, the next time you fight with that guy you wont go with the same spirit (unless like me you're there to fight like a real fight every single time, be sure your opponent knows this tough :p). So, your opponent gains the Psychological advantage.


Cheers...

[Watchman]

The folks in the martial arts school my brother trains in actively try to cultivate a really intimidating "crazy stare" just to try to unnerve each other in sparring matches - and because it looks darn funny if you're not on the receiving end. No, they're not all that reverent about many things. On the more practical side that also gives them practice in dealing with such psychological attacks...

Anyway, in mass warfare intimidation had a rather important role - besides sheer vanity, that's the primary consideration behind all kinds of tall crests, highly polished and decorated armours, war cries, beating shields, and so on and so on. After all, you won battles by making the other buggers run away and then cut them down at your leisure. Particularly important in cavalry-infantry match-ups, where psychological factors make the critical difference between a charge pulling short and the footsloggers being ridden down down with near impunity.

[QwertyMIDX]

There's an even simpler element to the psychological factor than all this. Most soldiers aren't trying to kill the enemy, they're trying not to die. In the context of pre-modern warfare they will be slow to attack and spend most the battle with their shields raised (today they keep their heads down and never fire a shot). Even hardened elites are still pretty much trying to come home alive, they're more aggressively certainly, more sure of their abilities, more used to the terror of combat, and know that often the best defense is a good offense, but they will still be fairly conservative in the way they attack. A drugged up maniac who is also a hardened warrior and psychologically primed to be a killing machine on the other hand, will actively be trying to kill the enemy, not trying to avoid death. This will probably get them killed, but it will take down quite a few opponents of the way there. Tightly cohesive units even tended to emphasis this. As a hoplite or legionnaire your main job was to keep your shield up, if you stab once and a while too that's great, but the main thing was to keep your shield up.

I feel like Hollywood has confused all of us as to what melee was actually like. Most of tip the people exchanging blows were doing so at a pretty slow pace, and were way more concerned about keeping themselves defends than about attacking the other person. Not too many people were beheading enemies left and right while doing backflips and drop kicking people. If battles were fought the way hollywood likes to show, they would last about 5 minutes, and most of the people would end up dead. As we all know, they generally lasted a full day, and most of the deaths actually came in running people down after one army broke. RTW is pretty lousy at letting us demonstrate this, but its good to keep in mind.

[Zaknafien]

Not too many people were beheading enemies left and right while doing backflips and drop kicking people.

That made me laugh out loud!

[mAIOR]

Lol that's why I loved the TV show Roma and the movie [Link=Rob Roy]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114287/[/link] wich by the way has the best sword fighting scenes in movies (more real I mean) and, if anyone sparred with swords you'll understand what I'm talking about. Your comment made me laugh as well QwertyMIDX as I recently saw a Steven Seagal movie where he throws a sword trough a window (with reliefs in wood) and chops a guy head of... the guy is nearlly 20 meters away... :D .


Cheers...

[antisocialmunky]

Steven Seagal movies need to be ritualistically burnt -_-'.

PS - He's 5 feet, 2 inches tall.

[Watchman]

I do not begrudge a man for being an itchy dwarf, err, short.

But repeated and unrepentant offenses of Starring In Monumentally Crappy Movies is another thing. "Mr. Christian, punish this man."

[Orb]

5'2", you must be joking?
I agree with your other statement.