I'm making a late bronze age/early iron age setting and I've run into a problem: I want to create a caste of elite soldiers from a fanatical religious order that are supposed to have some of the most tank-like armor in the game, but plate mail seems a bit too advanced/out of place.
Any suggestions for what they might look like?
Also, any Bronze Age/early Iron Age art is appreciated
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>plate mail seems a bit too advanced/out of place
Prezzy much Or google Dendra Panoply. Alternatively the combination of big shields, good body armor and steadfast discipline already makes them "heavy" in the context of their age. Add some long spears as well.
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They could have acces to a mine which produces a better iron due to trace amount of other metals in the ore vein producing a natural alloy (of course they don't know about it and just know that the iron mined there is tougher and probably attribute it to divine blessing by whatever diety(-ies) they worship.). It's actually happened in some places IRL, for example one of the reasons Wootz steel was so famous is because that.
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I'll just leave this here.
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>Greek Fantasy Tips and Resources
>Good bronze (copper+tin) surpasses iron and it's easier to work with. Some bronze alloys can penetrate steel: youtu.be
Pic related. The rightmost and frontmost warrior of the pahlanx. Note the armored feet.
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The Bronze Age is crazy. Just because iron started making its way into the scene did not mean that somebody with bronze just gave up and said "yep this is the future." The cheapness and availability of iron products eventually meant it took over the battlefield. Good bronze armor could stand up against iron weapons. If plate seems too advanced for you, go with scale mail. The stuff is incredible and if done in the style of lamellar armors you can give the military caste an incredible almost demi-godesque presence.
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Mountain pattern lam doesn't work. Chinese nerds tested it and found that arrows slip through.
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just gonna need a source on that
This. In a bronze age setting the best armor is being a trained warrior who fight in a disciplined formation.
For reference, here is how Sumerians fought
Note that IRL, bronze isn't really a worse material for tools and armor then iron, it's just 50 to 200 times more expensive.
what would Canaanites, Babylonians, Israelis, and philistines wear/carry to battle?
Just have them fight in phalanx
Is this some kind of perspective fucking with me or are some of these blades longer than I imagined bronze weapons would be?
Bronze rapiers were actually widely used in the Mediterranean.
Best bronze is about as good as worst iron, but iron is much more technologically complex to produce, despite it's abundance in comparison to copper/tin.
Why the fuck did I never heard of these?
Not a lot. A large square shield and spear, maybe a dagger or short sword. A lot of javelins. Wealthier men have scale armor and, depending on specific time and place, fight on a chariot.
They are pretty awesome. Bronze is rather soft, so to make a blade sturdy you have to make it thicker. This in turn makes it less flexible and worse at cutting, but better at thrusting. And thus you get a rapier.
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Makes me wonder of they would have adopted more two-handed weapons while wearing armor like this, if this was more widespread. The shield almost looks redundant. They could have used romphaias, two-handed axes and maces, of course not fantasy-axes and maces. And also really ong pikes.
Looks legit
>blogspot
Haha, nope.
Seing as the tasset would hit you in the thigh every time you take a step, AFAIK the current understanding is this was an armor for charioteers.
It's also expensive as hell.
bump
Swords were still an expensive thing. Spears with shields are the main weapon. Axes and knives would be the perfect sidearm. Archery would cause the most casualties though. Stray arrows catching a warrior in the shoulder or neck would knock him to the ground in moments
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how did they get their beards like that?
A U.S. Army surgeon named J.H. Bill reported in 1862 on the arrow wounds he had seen in the West during the wars with the Native Americans. The most common wounds - 35% of the total - were to the arms and hands. A soldier seeing an arrow coming at him bats at it instinctively, and thus tends to get wounded in the upper extremities. Of those 28 upper extremity wounds, 27 resulted in survival. Overall, 64% of arrow casualties survived. The deadliest wound was an abdominal wound, which killed in 18 out of 21 cases. A heart or spinal wound would be fatal too, but only three men out of 80 received such a wound. Most other arrow wounds were very survivable: soldiers hit by arrows survived 3 out of 5 head wounds, 2 out of 2 neck wounds, 11 out of 15 chest wounds, and 5 out of 6 leg wounds. The American Journal of the Medical Sciences , p. 368.
How well can my above post be extrapolated to the ancient battlefield? The medical care available to U.S. soldiers at that time was not significantly better; modern antisepsis was just beginning, and they were fighting thousands of miles away from the best medical care available at their time. The more difficult question is how well Native American archery can be compared to the ancient world’s. Some Natives used flint-tipped arrows, which would not have been usual in the ancient world, but many others used steel-tipped arrows which would have been as good or better than anything on the ancient battlefield. But more importantly, U.S. soldiers were sent into battle wearing nothing but woolen uniforms, while most people on the ancient battlefield would at least have had shields, and many would have had helmets and at least quilted armor that would have given better protection than what the U.S. servicemen had. Thus, I would suspect that arrows in ancient warfare did indeed wound more often than they killed, much as they did on the 19th century American frontier.
The longbow would surely have been significantly deadlier than the average Native weapon, but the longbow was mainly a medieval weapon, not an “ancient” one.
Pretty well I'd say. But do consider that the majority of archers would have been charioteers, and that would probably have made then more dangerous due to the extra penetrating power, although not necessarily more lethal.
>just gonna need a source on that
Just gonna need source to prove that mountain pattern shit DOES work.
Can't ask people to prove a negative, lad.
that dudes fucking face is great.
Pretty compelling argument. Roman sources describe the same, any proper infantry unit in formation receives minimal casualties from archers. Only when there were a disproportionate number of archers, or when their commanders were the rare few who could run a functional battlefield logistics system and resupply their archers during combat, did arrows become a decisive factor.
My understanding is that bronze age warfare consisted of the nobility engaging in chariot duels with thrown spears, then dismounting to fight on foot with the chariot waiting nearby for them to bug out if the local situation turned nasty. Meanwhile the bulk of the army would be mostly unarmored infantrymen with spears and hopefully shields. Oftentimes the battles would be decided by trial by champion. When the iron civilizations rolled in they did so with armored infantry backing up early cavalry, and the idea of a battle with them being decided by champion was laughable.
That being said, the bows of native americans and possibly archers of antiquity were much less powerful than the stuffs used by medieval archers such as Longbowmen.
What certainly helped was that poison had fallen into disuse at that point.
They carried a blanket with spears sewn on to it to confuse the foe?
>Pretty compelling argument. Roman sources describe the same, any proper infantry unit in formation receives minimal casualties from archers. Only when there were a disproportionate number of archers, or when their commanders were the rare few who could run a functional battlefield logistics system and resupply their archers during combat, did arrows become a decisive factor.
yeah, I can just imagine him angrily shuffling towards me on an ancient battlefield. Can't imagine anything other than shuffling, though.
pretty hard not to use OOC knowledge and not reck a phalanx
He rides a chariot, he comes for you in the humvee of the ancient world.
Arrow-spam, you retard.
>Have you ever been so angry that you grew a grove on your scalp?
