Month: March 2015

As an aside, I realize that my book reviews, are more like book recommendations. I don’t plan on writing reviews of books that I don’t like. So, if a book appears here, expect it to be a positive review.
Sieges played a huge role in medieval and ancient warfare, but I realized that I didn’t know that much about them. I had seen various documentaries that covered a siege engine or two and I knew the difference between the major types of siege engine (or so I thought), but I didn’t really know the details. Who used what? What were the strategic and technological reasons for the development of different siege engines? Ancient and Medieval Siege Weapons: A Fully Illustrated Guide to Siege Weapons and Tactics by Konstantin Nossov is an excellent introduction to the history of siege warfare from the earliest known examples through the introduction of cannons.

Overall, the writing style is what I like in a historical book. The author presents the information in a straightfoward manner, without too many diversions or minutiae. Even though I only have the Kindle version, I recommend getting the print version. The color plates are not inline with the text. This wouldn’t be a big deal if I knew where the images were and could flip back and forth, but the Kindle version didn’t have any crosslinks. In fact, I didn’t know that the color plates existed until I bumped into them in the middle of the section on throwing machines. There are plenty of black-and-white illustrations peppered throughout the book to illustrate key ideas.

The first section of the book is dedicated to the history of siege warfare.  Nossov uses this historical overview to provide context for the machines and tactics that he will discuss later. For example, battering rams and borers are used against different types of walls.

The second section is dedicated to different types of siege engines.  The author groups siege engines together by broad types such as “Scaling Ladders” and “Battering Rams” and then goes on to provide specific examples within each category. He discusses the tactical uses of each machine, how they were built, and how defenders would try to destroy or disrupt them. Some measurements are provided, and the drawings are quite detailed, a creative builder could reconstruct from this information, but that is not the goal of the book.

This section on seige engines is the meat of the book and probably the main reason why people will be interested in it. The book focuses on well established machines, instead of getting distracted by failed inventions and obscure flights of fancy. Even so, you will find a lot to learn here. As you would expect, it covers catapults, battering rams, and siege towers, but it also covers mobile sheds, borers and sambucas (which I never heard of before this book). There are plenty of illustrations to help you understand these machines and how they were used.

A small, but important, detail that he cover is how certain terms (such as “catapult” and “ballista”) were applied to very different machines at different times. This helps prevent a lot of confusion.

The third section builds upon the first two sections to discuss siege tactics. This includes tactics of both the besieger and the besieged. By the time you reach this point in the book, many of the ideas will be familiar, but Nossov brings it all together to paint a picture of a siege. He does not limit his discussion to which machines to use, he discusses many of the other gambits that armies took to claim a city.

I realized that I have been a fantasy roleplayer for over 30 years and not once have I played a siege. Sieges tend to go against the “epic quest” model of fantasy role-playing, but this book has motivated me to find a way to work it into a game. If you have any interest in siege engines or warfare, this is a great book to start with.

Note: Migrating this website to a new server has given me the opportunity to rethink earlier posts. I am unlikely to do any more “Gamer’s Guides” – at least not in the “Mythbusting” style of this article. I find it a poor way of communicating.

Another note: In this article I say that the buckler is used to create a “cone of defense”. Over time, I have learned that this is only one way of using the buckler and other styles use the buckler for other goals. For example, the early medieval treatise, I.33, shows the buckler being used to protect the hand and forearm of the sword arm.

Like most fantasy gamers, I’m fascinated by medieval and ancient arms and armor. Over the past few years, I have been delving deeper into the history and usage of historical weapons. So I find it interesting when a historical item is described differently in an RPG. As I research, I plan on creating “Gamer’s Guides” for different weapons and armor that will discuss different weapons from both a gaming and historical perspective. Before I begin this discussion, I need to point out that I am not a professional historian. I do not claim to know everything about the topic and I will point out areas of greater uncertainty.

What is a buckler? (Gamer version)

The Pathfinder SRD defines a buckler as “This small metal shield is worn strapped to your forearm. You can use a bow or crossbow without penalty while carrying it.” Obviously, not all RPGs are the same, but a similar definition can be found across many other fantasy RPGs and many gamers use this definition. The key points are that the buckler is a small shield that is strapped to the arm in such a way that allows you to feely use both hands.

What is a buckler? (Historical version)

The buckler is a small shield that is held in the fist. (Wikipedia). Bucklers are usually held out away from the body, doing so creates a “cone” of protection that maximizes the effectiveness of a small shield.

Who used a buckler?

Bucklers were very popular as a civilian shield. It’s small size meant that you could carry it as part of civilian dress without impediment. On the battlefield, the buckler was popular with those who used a sword as a backup weapon, such as an English longbowman. Larger shields were simply infeasible, but they could carry a buckler hooked over their sword hilt until they needed to engage in melee.

 Did shields exist that meet the gamer’s description of the buckler?

Ok, so maybe historians and gamers use the term differently, but are their other shields that fit the description? There were plenty of shields that strapped onto the forearm. However, most of these shields still had a handle to grab onto and did not allow any significant use of the shield hand.  A knight could hold onto reins, but wouldn’t be able to use that hand for much else.

The Scots had a shield called a Targe that comes close. The targe is a circular shield that has one strap for the forearm and a strap that acts as a handle. The size of the targe allowed warriors to hold a dirk in their shield hand and its blade would extend beyond the edge of the targe, allowing it to be used in combat.

The targe come close, but it’s not quite what gamers picture when they talk about bucklers.  The Codex Wallerstein, a German fighting manual, shows something closer to the gamers idea of a buckler. In it, the spear fighters have a shield that is called a tournament shield, a targe or a tartsche. This fits the gamer description – it is small and straps on the arm  and leaves the left hand free to hold a weapon. I have yet to encounter any other examples of this and the Codex Wallerstein presents the image without additional description. The image demonstrates one of the challenges with such a shield – you must keep your arm bent in front of you to keep the shield facing the opponent. With a spear (or other thrusting weapon), it appears that you can do this, but it is hard to imagine other weapons that would allow this.

What about archers? A frequent statement by gamers is that archers wore bucklers at the same time that they used their bows. We do know that some archers carried bucklers with them, but it appears that they were meant to be used only when in melee combat. I have yet to find a historical example of how bucklers would be used in archery. I hope that this is a lack of knowledge on my part, and if anybody has good examples, please share. My main concern is that an arm-strapped shield requires the left arm to be bent. Either the archer bends the arm, drastically reducing draw length, or draws to full length and gets little protection from the shield. Anyways, I might be missing something, hopefully I will revisit this article later with more information.

Does it matter?

How much historical accuracy do we need in games? Only as much as we want. However, it becomes important when we want to add historical elements into our fantasy gaming, especially when we start reading history to find familiar terms used in different ways. There are a lot of things from history that haven’t been explored in fantasy gaming and we can mine historical resources to create new gaming experiences.