They are not mentionned with massed piked, is this on purpose ?
Thanks !
Without massed pikes or any special rules, the only advantage is to strike first. So cavalry gets its shock ability, suffers no malus, raises defense of opponent for easy strikes. Ok flemish are not swiss and surely not deserve their mobility. But a massed pikes rules with close order reduced move maintained, seems to me more realistic and make think twice before charging with cavalry a pikes block. This is only an opinion, anyway.and the Flemings used their geldon long spear to absorb the attack of French knights at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, before other troops in the Flemish formation counterattacked the stalled knights with goedendags. Both battles were seen by contemporaries as stunning victories of commoners over superbly equipped, mounted, military professionals, where victory was owed to the use of the pike and the brave resistance of the commoners who wielded them.
These formations were essentially immune to the attacks of mounted men-at-arms as long as the knights obligingly threw themselves on the spear wall and the foot soldiers remained steady under the morale challenge of facing a cavalry charge, but the closely packed nature of pike formations rendered them vulnerable to enemy archers and crossbowmen who could shoot them down with impunity, especially when the pikemen did not have adequate armor
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