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Anonymous
ITT: Shield-breaking. 2016-07-29 20:13:34 Post No. 1479278
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ITT: Shield-breaking. 2016-07-29 20:13:34 Post No. 1479278
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Playing M&B made me ask this:
How often did shields break in battle?
I see it in plenty of media all the time and it seems plausible given that they're usually made of wood and hitting them repeatedly with something heavy meant they're breakable.
But was this really a regular occurence? Like your shield eventually reduced to a splintered mess after battle? Seems not given that shitloads of militaries relied on forms of shield walls in battle.
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>>1479278
A shield isn't an impenetrable bulwark you can hide behind indefinitely. It's (usually) made of wood, leather, maybe edged in iron/steel with metal spars to reinforce it. It'll take some damage, but it will split and splinter. A good swing from a dane ax will smash through a shield in all likeliness. Against lighter weapons they're more useful, but still won't take repeated bashing for too long unless it's a high quality example.
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>>1479278
Depends on the shield really.
You have either wicker shields with leather coverings, simple wooden two cross-plied shields, and shit like the Aspis which is a wooden, crossplied shield with a bronze facing and gets passed from father to son.
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>>1479321
Looks really cool desu
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>>1479365
Yeah, but it weight a lot so you basically can't run with it and some barbarians with javelins and slings can easily outmaneuver, outflank and outrange you until you're too exhausted to hold it up.
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>>1479399
Got it. Its was probably best used under formation or with some other kind of unit support, I guess
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>>1479436
It was. Though there was a troop of light hoplites trained to fight in looser formations and ran with the fucking thing.
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>>1479278
Old Germanic poetry constantly refers to shield breaking so it was probably pretty common.
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>>1479278
The Romans used javelins called pilums which had a very thin, long harpoon-like tip meant to pierce shields, bend and become stuck, making it harder to use and forcing the enemy to ditch them. The Iberian tribes used similar, fully metallic javelins.
In another instance, when Romans fough against the Dacians they found out the huge sickle-like swords called Falx they used could easily pierce their armor as well as getting caught and pulling their shields away, or even splitting in two. They had to reinforce their armor and adopt new tactics yo defeat them.
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>>1479399
Probably why its a strap shield rather than center grip shield. It denotes a different type of use as well as weight.
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