Existential dread, something about being scared for the world, yadda yadda. This wasn’t too bad of a week, but I just keep seeing headlines about how we’re all dying and that’s not great for my state of mind! It makes me want to not go to work! But I need to be paid! So you see the problem I’m in!
Anyway I was thinking of doing a more Limyaael-style Saturday Note this time around.
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Tactics in Fantasy
Alright I know that movies aren’t great depictions of battle tactics. I know. Okay. It’s fine. Movies are for entertainment. I’m not one of those people who sits and cries foul every time there’s the tiniest inaccuracy in a movie, unless it hits my buttons, or I’m really annoyed or something.
But I would like to see people do some more stuff with tactics and warfare in fantasy. To be clear, books tend to be better at this than movies, but there are also things that I don’t see that often in books either, that I’d like to see more of.
SPEARS!
Look, you know that the ancient Greeks didn’t really like swords that much? They had them, obviously, but that wasn’t the weapon of choice for warriors--the spear was. The sword was what you used when you were too close to use the spear. The iconic weapon of the king of the gods, Zeus, was a spear. Mind you, that spear was also a lightning bolt. But it was a polearm that he hurled at people!
And I’m not saying that fantasy must follow the rules of ancient Greek hoplites or Greek culture at all (although I would really like more Greek-flavored fantasy), but think about spears! Think about the advantages that a spear has that a sword doesn’t. No, it doesn’t have the same connotation in modern culture as swords, but it’s a weapon with more range than swords, and it’s a lot better to use in a shield wall.
In fantasy there are a lot of opponents that you’re probably better off fighting with a spear. Giants, for starters--a long lance or spear is going to be a lot safer than walking up to him with a sword. Dragons as well. And spears are probably the first weapon you’ll be using if you’re on horseback, rather than a sword. And if you’re riding an animal larger than a horse--well, a spear is going to be helpful.
MAGIC!
While playing The Witcher 3 during the Battle of Kaer Morhen there’s this thing--when Geralt’s in trouble, the plan is to shoot up a flare and get Triss to rain down fire on your position. Basically, use magic as heavy artillery to bombard a location. And that’s… really cool.
I feel as if despite the fact that magic and wizards are common in fantasy, they’re not used that tactically? Generally, it’s about a lone wizard going into a fray and throwing lightning or fire or something, and maybe coming up against another wizard and doing a wizard duel. And that’s okay I guess. You get some great scenes like that--Dresden Files has quite a few.
Inheritance Cycle has a thing about mages always seeking each other out in battle, because they’re all so ridiculously overpowered that they’re trying to cancel each other out with telepathy. Which is kind of a cool idea, but they make for not as interesting magic battle scenes, because it mostly amounts to two wizards glaring at each other until one of them breaks (or some normal guy walks up and smacks them with a hammer).
But what about tactical magic? Wizards have a tendency to be a lot more frail than hardened warriors in battle, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t be in the thick of it, using magic for other purposes (and NO, not just as healers, although that’s not a bad use). These are the big guns! Use them to bombard enemies with fire, or shards of ice, or something! Have them call up mist to block opponents’ visions, or erect barriers from the ground to divide the battlefield.
AERIAL UNITS!
In a world with dragons, or griffins, or whatever, there are remarkably few aerial units in war? Or preparations for them? To be fair to something like Lord of the Rings, when Fell Beasts show up, no one has ever seen them before so they’ve got no preparations for them other than to shoot arrows. And we see what happens: when a Nazgul shows up on a Fell Beast, he utterly decimates Gondor’s horsemen on open ground.
And The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has a bit in the big battle where we see that the Narnians under Aslan have a bunch of their flying creatures drop boulders on the White Witch’s army. The only counter her army has is to shoot arrows (which can somehow reach that high?); in the sequel we see the Telmarines deploy ballista against griffins, which shouldn’t be as effective as it is (that should take some really quick aiming for such a small and nimble target), but there ya go. We also see the Pevensies use the griffins to airlift them in and out of Miraz’s castle, which is pretty brilliant I think.
Flying units should be Instant Win cards in a lot of fantasy, especially when you have dragons that can breathe fire. Or, if the world has been dealing with dragons and other flying creatures for a while, they should have some way to counter that. Maybe it’s not a perfect way of dealing with it--we still don’t have perfect ways for dealing with tornados or earthquakes here, for instance--but it would be something, especially if it’s expected. You’d think a lot of fantasy armies, knowing they’re going up against dragons, just hope that the dragons stayed home that day.
Do they get their wizards to develop fireproof armor? Are there castles designed with defenses from aerial attack? Spikes all over to stop flying creatures from landing? Ballista designed for downing large flying animals? An aerial corps to fight enemy flying animals? (This last one is the premise of Temeraire by Naomi Novik.)
TERRAIN!
I remember seeing a Tumblr post criticizing a sword fight scene in Game of Thrones (on Sam Swords’s page) that points out that despite being in a rocky environment, the fight itself takes place in the flattest part of the terrain, and so it’s kind of boring because of that. No one uses the rocks or differences in elevation to try to one-up each other. It makes me think--plenty of fights don’t happen on flat ground! You wouldn’t get that from fantasy films and television though, in which most of the fights take place on plains or lightly rolling hills. Maybe in a forest, though those don’t tend to use those very well either.
There’s a lovely bit of monologue in 300 in which Dilios talks about the pass they’re stationed in, and mentions that in that narrow gorge “numbers count for nothing.” Except then they go and fight out in the open and kind of ignore their greatest tactical asset. Mind you, it’s maybe meant to be fantastical, as it’s a story being told to sound awesome, but still--the whole point was to the enemy into a place where they can’t all show up at once.
Where are ambushes in mountain passes? Where are the people hiding in treetops? Where are the fighters climbing up rocks and such to gain a height advantage over opponents?
And more importantly, where are the armies that adjust the terrain in order to use against enemies? I suppose sometimes you see people digging trenches or pits to make enemies fall in, which is good, but they don’t really go beyond that. Pits with spikes? Treetop canopies to fire from? Building barriers? You don’t see it that often.
EXPLOSIVES!
What’s weird to me in Shadow of War, and I realize it’s a nitpick, is how common explosives seem to be in Mordor? If this is set in the continuity of the movies, or something like it, then that shouldn’t be the case, because we see Saruman invent bombs for military usage, and at the Battle of Helm’s Deep it seems to be a complete gamechanger, the likes of which no one has ever seen before. I suppose explosives existed before that point, given that Gandalf used fireworks, but they’re not common, and no one’s used them for military applications.
If explosives exist in a fantasy universe, whether they be magical or mundane, the fact is that they should become a major part of warfare. Once Europeans started getting a grasp on gunpowder, it wasn’t long before they started making crude firearms. At the very least, we’re talking bombs or rockets.
Combine this with magic? People who can start fire with just a flick of the wrist? Explosives should be all over the place. You should be something like the Powder Mage Trilogy, in which mages make use of gunpowder to wreck armies. In that series, the more traditional Privileged absolutely hate Powder Mages because of the way they can take out enemies much further away and use nontraditional weapons (and some other things, but not relevant to our discussion).
Explosives should change the playing field considerably.
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I also had some ideas about horses, and volleys, and shield walls, but I’m late on this Note and I’m behind on a bunch of other things already, so for now we’re leaving this here.
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