Lone archer against charging spearmen

[Kortoso]

This is an interesting experiment. I think he could have used at least one spearman on his side...

[Kortoso]

Here's a little detail about it:
http://madscytharchery.blogspot.com/201 ... u-and.html
It is of course quite rudimentary, but when you do a bit of experimental archeology like this, you learn something.
A) Shield on shoulder in a run leaves a slanted surface, which covers quite a lot of the body on a frontal rush. We did test the effect of a slanted shield with a 115lbs bow, and the arrow glances off- but might hit somebody in the back ranks.
B) You have that Arimnestos run effect, like Christian Cameron outlined in his novel Killer of Men. I was instinctively inclined to target the fastest runner - the most dangerous one- while the other hoplites made much easier and better targets.
C) The effect of visibility on a battlefield is very apparent. In this situation with all of the shrubs and trees on the Marathon battlefield, I could only spot them and could start to target them when they were already very close: 100 meters, aka only 17 seconds away before Hoplite impact ! The spot where we held the event is Schineas beach.. Pretty much the position where the Persian fleet was anchored. We do not know how the battlefield looked like 2500 years ago, but I suppose that with a very substantial force of some 20.000 camping there for already a couple of days, the location would have looked like already being hit by a swarm of locusts, and most probably had substantially less vegetation remaining than there is now. The view would have been better back then.I think that the persians with a clear view might be able to start shooting from 250 meters, so at the rate I was shooting here, that might be some 14 to 15 arrows per archer.

D) of course I keep my nerve here and keep shooting because we are not going to kill eachother in this experiment. I wonder how long I would have kept my cool as a Persian Archer before I would start to back away and run with a whole wave of bloodthirsty heavy armored Hoplites charging you that are obviously NOT going to stop because of your arrows. When they are at the tree perhaps? Or perhaps already earlier ?

[Harper]

Interesting.

Thanks for posting it.

[E.MacKermak]

Interesting. I am not sure I would hang out long enough for them to close the distance without some level of support. I think I would shoot and back off and hope they would spread out a bit and wear down since they are armored and I would be less so. Staged ambushes are definitely the tactic I would try.

[Kortoso]

The page I linked to has some very interesting info. They were exploring the era of Thermopylae; in fact, the video was shot in that area.
The shields those guys were carrying were absolutely massive. So a lone archer would have everything to gain by retreating into a hasty ambush.