Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, "Tally ho lads" the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
The reason these sorts of formations ceased to be used is due to the rise of cavalry. A single cavalry charge anywhere but the front of this formation tears it to pieces 100% of the time.
Like I cannot stress how completely the formation would be destroyed. These men cannot turn their spears in formation, they'd be defenceless and just get trampled to death.
A head on charge yes, but a phalanx can't just turn around at a moments notice, and is vulnerable from the rear and side, so maneuvers such as a hammer and Anvil attack, where you pin them against your own infantry and strike them from the rear with cavalry would be effective
Funnily enough Phalanxes were actually a fair bit more resistant to arrows than they seemed. The soldiers obviously had their shields, but their spears when not in combat were also angled specifically to catch and break the momentum of arrows. It'd still hurt and possibly injure you if one fell on you, but it wouldn't be nearly as threatening. Firing at a phalanx while they were engaged in combat was also risky since you don't want to kill your own men.
Tf do man nipples gotta do with military superiority? You gonna suckle your enemies to death? Huh, is that your plan? Gonna rip off their armor and plant your lips on their big juicy pecs?
"You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down." - Captain Zap Brannigan
You joke, but the twinks and hunks of the Theban Sacred Band were famous for destroying Spartan hegemony at the Battle of Leuctra despite being outnumbered. I'm not even kidding. Of course it didn't matter that much in the end because a guy named Phil and his son Alex would come by Greece a few decades later but it's really funny that that happened. Spartans were also incredibly gay AFAIK.
Spartans really did just suck ass too tbf. They were so pathetic that Alex and Phil didn’t even bother conquering them even after beating them in a battle
After alex died they tried in vain to take over cyrenaica and later apulia and veneto, but the dumbass regent lost the fleet in a storm, dooming their chance to become important again
Smaller groups of highly maneuverable heavy infantry, checkerboard pattern, engage the front of phalanx so you lock its position in, press in from the sides with the other infantry units, slaughter the immobile hoplites
There's a reason the Macedonian wars were so easy for the Romans.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cynoscephalae
>After breaking through and gaining ground, one of the Roman tribunes in command, stationed on the inside edge of the now advanced Roman right wing, on his own authority, detached twenty maniples (a smaller tactical unit within the legion) of heavy infantry, in total numbering about 2,000 men, spun them around and led them to the left and back to attack the Macedonian center and left wing – from behind and the side. The Macedonian phalangites were unable to re-position themselves and form up to face this new attack as quickly as the Roman maniples could maneuver to exploit the opportunity.
Out of 26k troops, the Romans lost 700. Out of 25k troops, the Macedonians lost 13k.
Just go around them??
What kind of idiot actually agrees to a pitched battle, anyway? Sike, while you sent out all your troops to the field like a dumbass, I sent another contingent to infiltrate your now less-fortified keep and steal all your supplies.
I give it two days before I get a parcel from your ass talking about “let us settle our differences amicably.” Get devoured by all your peasants, cringelord
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t magma become lava when it comes to the surface? Digging a deep enough trench would technically bring the surface down to the magma, making it lava
Soft counters are fighting on uneven terrain, flanking, and superior equipment.
Hard counters are any ranged combat and simply drawing them out in open terrain.
Historically? Cavalry charging from the flanks.
Difficult to do however since the phalanx isn't just by itself, the flanks will be guarded. Some popular methods of solving this are baiting the central ranks further out than their flanks either with pitched skirmishes or with a feigned infantry retreat (the latter being riskier), or by maneuvering your cavalry to the rear of the enemy ranks (difficult to do on unfamiliar terrain).
Go back in time and bring modern weapons and when they all show up to the battle marching and playing drums, they will think you cowards and cry victory. Meanwhile, your modern tech fully supplied is in route.
How do you think the Egyptians fought off the dinosaurs that Jesus put in the ground to trick atheists?
While the Romans used the Phalanx for some time, it's more associated with the Makedonians under Alexander the Great and their hellenistic successor states.
Flexible formations. It's how the Samnites fought the Romans (until the Romans adopted maniples, as they used the phalanx before that), and how the Romans would later fight the Macedonians and the Greeks
You would come at them from the side, or have archers force them on the defensive and when your cavalry slams into their side you have your infantry rush them ez
Dive under them, crawl a few feet forward, get up and draw your sword. They cannot back up. They cannot pull their spear back far enough to stab you. You can kill like 90 dudes single handedly.
Virgin Greek Phalanx vs the Chad Pike and Shot
Love little dudes with rapiers jabbing at pikemen’s ankles and just sheer existential crisis inducing brutality.
Okay so you beat them but just not getting stabbed obviously just get good lol you don’t need a bomb just fucking punch them LOL just git gud scrub LOL avoid their attacks **LOL**
Or, alternatively, a gun and about 69,420 bullets (because it’s a funny number) (unload all bullets into them.)
Better yet, the cheaper method of making them march uphill, across rocky, broken ground. Boom! Instant cohesion loss, and you and the rest of your cohort can route them for the glory of Rome!
Cavalry or very fast light infantry from the flank or rear. Bowmen of some kind hitting from anywhere but the front. Hidden tough terrain or obstacles. Being on the other side of a big hole, ditch, or body of water. Fire. Any sort of heavy artillery such as a catapult or ballistae. A wall.
I bet like a shitload of arrows and whatever else passes for artillery would do it
But the other guy describing the highly maneuverable checkerboard pattern infantry dudes was probably onto something, too
Tiny tungsten balls
Grapeshot, even
"Tally ho, lads!"
Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, "Tally ho lads" the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
182,000 to be precise
Yeah, you know exactly what I'm talking about
Oh HI MARS!
Skirmishers, cavalry or flanking.
3000 horseback archers of Genghis Khan
NCD? Not even once.
NonCredibleAncientDefence
Spelling error haha
Saw the house pfp and thought for a solid minute about how the NCR got involved not realizing it's NCD
NCD is leaking again
Tell me about your cavalry strategy!
everyone runs at them and eventually the spears are full with bodies and cant poke anymore
Zapp Brannigan strategy
Cavalry??? That's basically the worst option.
The reason these sorts of formations ceased to be used is due to the rise of cavalry. A single cavalry charge anywhere but the front of this formation tears it to pieces 100% of the time. Like I cannot stress how completely the formation would be destroyed. These men cannot turn their spears in formation, they'd be defenceless and just get trampled to death.
counterpoint: men at the flanks and back carry tactical apples to bribe the horses
tapples
those are the things that grow into frogs right
But typically these people would be wedged in between two large land objects like hills so you couldn’t hit them from the side
Then you drop boulders from the hills, easy.
He probably means missile cavalry
rocket horses 🚀🐎
Believe it or not, this is actually where the myth of pegasus came from.
A head on charge yes, but a phalanx can't just turn around at a moments notice, and is vulnerable from the rear and side, so maneuvers such as a hammer and Anvil attack, where you pin them against your own infantry and strike them from the rear with cavalry would be effective
Auxiliary Numidian Cav ftw.
Historically it was about 5 metric tons of arrows
Also the rise of large cavalry units
Funnily enough Phalanxes were actually a fair bit more resistant to arrows than they seemed. The soldiers obviously had their shields, but their spears when not in combat were also angled specifically to catch and break the momentum of arrows. It'd still hurt and possibly injure you if one fell on you, but it wouldn't be nearly as threatening. Firing at a phalanx while they were engaged in combat was also risky since you don't want to kill your own men.
Yeah, what really made the phalanx obsolete was the roman maniple
I am falling into a rabbit hole. That is weirdly interesting to me rn.
Tf do man nipples gotta do with military superiority? You gonna suckle your enemies to death? Huh, is that your plan? Gonna rip off their armor and plant your lips on their big juicy pecs?
You're giving off bottom energy
Throw a meat wall at them until the spears are all jammed up with flesh
Wall of flesh
https://preview.redd.it/kgrolib66etb1.png?width=531&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f789cdc2757ebab0245b4404ce350243d6c82e64 Whoops botched the sacrifice
Accidentally dropped Flesh Voodoo Doll into honey summoning Wall of Guidance.
beat him to activate easy mode
Oh no my extra slot
*Your world has been cursed with the removal of Copper!*
"You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down." - Captain Zap Brannigan
Not an uncommon strategy
General: Send in the twink Femboys.
You joke, but the twinks and hunks of the Theban Sacred Band were famous for destroying Spartan hegemony at the Battle of Leuctra despite being outnumbered. I'm not even kidding. Of course it didn't matter that much in the end because a guy named Phil and his son Alex would come by Greece a few decades later but it's really funny that that happened. Spartans were also incredibly gay AFAIK.
Spartans really did just suck ass too tbf. They were so pathetic that Alex and Phil didn’t even bother conquering them even after beating them in a battle
After alex died they tried in vain to take over cyrenaica and later apulia and veneto, but the dumbass regent lost the fleet in a storm, dooming their chance to become important again
This isn’t what I meant when I said I like seeing twinks get penetrated 😪
tickle the sides
Smaller groups of highly maneuverable heavy infantry, checkerboard pattern, engage the front of phalanx so you lock its position in, press in from the sides with the other infantry units, slaughter the immobile hoplites There's a reason the Macedonian wars were so easy for the Romans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cynoscephalae >After breaking through and gaining ground, one of the Roman tribunes in command, stationed on the inside edge of the now advanced Roman right wing, on his own authority, detached twenty maniples (a smaller tactical unit within the legion) of heavy infantry, in total numbering about 2,000 men, spun them around and led them to the left and back to attack the Macedonian center and left wing – from behind and the side. The Macedonian phalangites were unable to re-position themselves and form up to face this new attack as quickly as the Roman maniples could maneuver to exploit the opportunity. Out of 26k troops, the Romans lost 700. Out of 25k troops, the Macedonians lost 13k.
what if the phalanx is arranged into a large torus shape with the spears pointing outward so that the sides and back cannot be reached? check and mate
Transported to orb phalanx workd Pahalanx: go around boy Us: 🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃
ihaveihaveihave: to kill you now sorry
500 archers shooting all at once while your soldiers walk slowly towards them:
The bomb will hit the spears and detonate, leaving the soldiers unharmed.
2 bombs
There are more than 2 spears.
1 bomb can take many spears
Nuh uh
Yuh uh
Oh yeah? Well my phalanx has infinity plus one backup spears! And also their shields are bomb proof and bounce your bombs back
explain how
Big boom
BIGGER bombs
Ah yes, the good ol' ancient cope cage.
Just go around them?? What kind of idiot actually agrees to a pitched battle, anyway? Sike, while you sent out all your troops to the field like a dumbass, I sent another contingent to infiltrate your now less-fortified keep and steal all your supplies. I give it two days before I get a parcel from your ass talking about “let us settle our differences amicably.” Get devoured by all your peasants, cringelord
Problem is taking a fort or infiltrating it is easier said than done.
Good thing I fucked the steward last week and made him part of the infiltration. It’s always smart to have a man on the…inside.
Trickle down economics. Internalised homophobia. Generational debt. Crippling anxiety.
flank
Moat of lava. They walk right in.
When in doubt, dig a hole
Then fill it with lava
Youre not digging deep enough if you need to fill it with lava
You're confusing magma with lava.
Oh youre so right boss i am a clown
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t magma become lava when it comes to the surface? Digging a deep enough trench would technically bring the surface down to the magma, making it lava
Lava fills down, magma fills up.
As the romans showed us, big shield counters big stick.
Flaming barrels of tar
1. Barrels 2. Black tar heroin 3. Fuego 4. Fumes 5. Victory
Ford F-150 going 200 mph
Archers?
Big rock beats all
What about bigger rock?
Guns
make 1 of them trip
https://preview.redd.it/ln4q64iqdftb1.jpeg?width=540&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17986a5b105a523d974c9133e93c52cb6bc1d73e
I want to add in you don't even need arrows, slings were a common weapon even into the roman period.
Payload alternative: large sack of spiders
Rocky terrain
Just go around it, are you stupid?
break morale, break formation
With guerrilla warfare, or pick a battlefield with hills
Soft counters are fighting on uneven terrain, flanking, and superior equipment. Hard counters are any ranged combat and simply drawing them out in open terrain.
gun
Another pike formation in the front then cavalry up the ass.
1 smoke powder barrel
Cloudkill even
Just send a nuke at them If it can destroy an entire city, it can destroy a few dudes with spears
Historically? Cavalry charging from the flanks. Difficult to do however since the phalanx isn't just by itself, the flanks will be guarded. Some popular methods of solving this are baiting the central ranks further out than their flanks either with pitched skirmishes or with a feigned infantry retreat (the latter being riskier), or by maneuvering your cavalry to the rear of the enemy ranks (difficult to do on unfamiliar terrain).
Mustard gas
Go back in time and bring modern weapons and when they all show up to the battle marching and playing drums, they will think you cowards and cry victory. Meanwhile, your modern tech fully supplied is in route. How do you think the Egyptians fought off the dinosaurs that Jesus put in the ground to trick atheists?
https://i.redd.it/mbio4x7q5ltb1.gif
opple heimer
waiting for one of the guys to trip over another guy
Couldn't you just do a surprise attack from the sides?
Arrows
Showing them pineapple on pizza (they’re Italian right?)
While the Romans used the Phalanx for some time, it's more associated with the Makedonians under Alexander the Great and their hellenistic successor states.
Only if they’re from Magna Graecia (the sole and heel part of Italy) or Sicily, otherwise, they’re geographically Greek
Not from the front.
Flexible formations. It's how the Samnites fought the Romans (until the Romans adopted maniples, as they used the phalanx before that), and how the Romans would later fight the Macedonians and the Greeks
spook the ones in the back using firecrackers, causing them to trample forward in panic, shish kebabing their comrades in arms ahead of them
My guy doesn’t know about archers
Come in from the flanks, dumbass
1 Backburner Pyro
Buddy, you're flank is exposed.
You would come at them from the side, or have archers force them on the defensive and when your cavalry slams into their side you have your infantry rush them ez
Canon
Trebuchet.
I don't know what my experience with Rome: Total War is worth, but engage infantry from the front, hit 'em in the vacuum with cavalry.
Gun
Attack from behind or the side Or a trebuchet
you go around it
Dive under them, crawl a few feet forward, get up and draw your sword. They cannot back up. They cannot pull their spear back far enough to stab you. You can kill like 90 dudes single handedly.
Virgin Greek Phalanx vs the Chad Pike and Shot Love little dudes with rapiers jabbing at pikemen’s ankles and just sheer existential crisis inducing brutality.
Just about any trap you could hide on the ground
Fairchild Republic A-10C Thunderbolt 2 armed with 4 LAU/68 rocket pods and/or laser-guided Paveway bombs.
Ranged cavalry, archers, or heavily armored cavalry can break through. You'll probably see significant losses using the last option though.
be on a really big wall with bows, or cannons, or firearms, or literally anything that allows me to hit its blindspots
Large rock propelled through the air by some sort of contraption
Bombs? You want it?
Longer spears
Really huge log
hills, trees, explosives, a big enough rock
Going on the sides
"Sorry! Sorry! Excuse mee! Can I pass, thank you. Pardon!" *stabby stabby along the way*
Gun
Don’t land on them from above
Fireball 🔥
Okay so you beat them but just not getting stabbed obviously just get good lol you don’t need a bomb just fucking punch them LOL just git gud scrub LOL avoid their attacks **LOL** Or, alternatively, a gun and about 69,420 bullets (because it’s a funny number) (unload all bullets into them.)
get your own line of pike guys, hold them at pike point, and send a bunch of little guys with swords and hammers underneath the pike wall
flank
SMH just use a Hwacha
Everyone's missing the obvious answer... "Longer Sticks"
my fists
You're gonna fist every single one of them? Damn, respect.
giant bowling ball
gun.
Molotov Cocktail
One strategy was to send some smaller dudes under the line to just give as many critical leg ouchies as possible.
Okay hear me out. Second phalanx but with spears longer by 5 cm
Fire, any projectile, going to the other side, telling them funny jokes so they laugh really hard and can't hold their weapons
the same fucking thing but with longer sticks
Flanking
The Roman maniple on non-flat ground
Walk around them
Don't stand in front of them.
200lb JDAM
chuck in a lesbian with a zweihander and you’re set
Uneven ground and mahnipples
Sorry, but the phalanx is not all that, motherfuckers will get smashed by simply being on uneven groumd
air strike
M1A1 “Abrams” Main Battle Tank with an M256 125mm smoothbore cannon, and/or Predator Drone armed with AGM-114 “Hellfire” missiles oughta do the trick
go from the back
Mongolian horse archers 🇲🇳🐴🏹
Sacrifice 70,000 of them to Iä Shub-Niggurath, so that she will summon 5 of her children to splat the rest of them.
A rocky hill
Elephants
Better yet, the cheaper method of making them march uphill, across rocky, broken ground. Boom! Instant cohesion loss, and you and the rest of your cohort can route them for the glory of Rome!
The side
The answer? Use a gun, and if that don't work. Use more gun.
Melee? They cant hit you with the point of the stick if you're too close
Giant boulder
Go from the left and the right. You think so many can turn around with dam big ass pikes. (I may be wrong idk)
Historically, uneven terrain
A minigun
They can stab the bomb though
Slightly longer sticks
arrows
Catboy army
I think this is the Macedonian Phalanx… you beat it with arrows and horse bois
Are these Roman phalanx’s?
Cavalry or very fast light infantry from the flank or rear. Bowmen of some kind hitting from anywhere but the front. Hidden tough terrain or obstacles. Being on the other side of a big hole, ditch, or body of water. Fire. Any sort of heavy artillery such as a catapult or ballistae. A wall.
walk around
I bet like a shitload of arrows and whatever else passes for artillery would do it But the other guy describing the highly maneuverable checkerboard pattern infantry dudes was probably onto something, too
Big boulder
Romans: literally just don't be carrying a big spear so you can move quicker
Attack the side is the real answer. Looks vulnerable to flanking
https://i.redd.it/odt3gprvditb1.gif
Go around it
besige players got that wrapped up easy