Quote Originally Posted by Landwalker
In addition to the obvious angle problem with this, there are others. First of all, only the front line or, at best, two lines could manage this, and everybody behind them would have to hold their pikes above the ground (e.g. overhead, as you see in M2TW). You will never convince me that even the strongest human could hold that position without giving ground to the impact of a huge warhorse in metal barding, carrying a big knight with metal armor. As for the poor mucks in the front two lines, in addition to crouching down (because we don't want to get any roadkill marks on the upper barding, you know), it would have been expensive and impractical to mass produce pikes that were entirely metal. You get a long wooden stick, maybe with a metal point. And when that knight hits you at that angle, your pointy stick is going to snap like a twig, so even if you do manage to kill anything, you now have no pointy stick, and you're still in the front line, so you're either going to get crushed by that dead horse, or mashed to a pulp by the one behind him, which in addition to not being dead no longer has to contend with your pointy stick (and could probably knock away the pointy stick of the guy behind you like a twig, since, as mentioned above, there's no way the guy could maintain that unbraced position with enough force to puncture metal barding).

Cheers.
Entirely metal pikes would probably break faster anyway. I'm not even sure if the wooden shaft of the pike would snap like a twig. Also this second horse you mention doesn't seem to be affected by the dead horse infront of him at all?

If pikemen where so bad at defending against cavalry charges then why were they used at all. Or why where they able to win battles against strong cavalry forces (the Scots against the English or the Flemish against the French for instance?).