Bow Levy - what to do with them?

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David Kuijt
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Re: Bow Levy - what to do with them?

Post by David Kuijt » Tue Dec 27, 2016 9:44 pm

Snowcat wrote:Fair enough. Although, ironically, Lullubi Rabble are the same naked dudes as the Bow Levy, except they have a pointy stick instead of a bow and quiver of arrows. Not sure that would fill me with much more confidence to be honest! ;)

Perhaps, going more by your philosophy, the Bow Levy are the weedier men with no delusions of grandeur, whereas the Rabble think they're Uruks!
Sure. There are always issues with trying to fit the infinite variety of ways historical man tried to kill each other into 15 or 20 buckets. There are other examples who fit the "ready to die but untrained" mode for Rabble better -- various Jewish Revolt armies, for example. The Lullubi might be a case where incompetent dudes with a bow and a handful of arrows should be Rabble rather than Bow Levy, although we try to avoid opening that can of worms, especially when it is armies in the biblical period where we have so damn little information in most cases.

But the basic mode is this -- regardless of how weedy they might be, untrained guys with poor equipment and no ammo resupply who fought mostly in the open as massed bow are going to be bow levy, sticking together and not moving fast. Untrained guys with poor equipment who do not stick together can move faster, but are slaughtered by mounted. If you want to have a chance to resist mounted, take your crappy bows and stick together. If you can't stick together (which means moving slow) you won't have a chance against mounted.

In this case "open order" means they have no structure to their formation, no "front line", and so on. It doesn't mean they're not trying to get some help from their friends if an enemy chariot comes riding up in their shiny bronze armor and their high-tech composite bow and starts shooting the heck out of them.
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Re: Bow Levy - what to do with them?

Post by Snowcat » Tue Dec 27, 2016 9:52 pm

Yup, agreed. Categorizing so many variations is a pretty thankless task. And you've done a very good job with these extra delineations.

Amusingly I seem to have just fallen victim to my use of the Lullubi as an example to illustrate my previous point - I'm now seriously considering building an army of them! The Ultimate Man's Army. Absolute rubbish doomed to die in droves, but hey they look awesome (in a strangely compelling kind of way)!

Perhaps they'll get an Internal Ally to bolster them with something useful... :)

Cheers
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David Kuijt
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Re: Bow Levy - what to do with them?

Post by David Kuijt » Tue Dec 27, 2016 10:38 pm

Snowcat wrote: Amusingly I seem to have just fallen victim to my use of the Lullubi as an example to illustrate my previous point - I'm now seriously considering building an army of them! The Ultimate Man's Army. Absolute rubbish doomed to die in droves, but hey they look awesome (in a strangely compelling kind of way)!

Perhaps they'll get an Internal Ally to bolster them with something useful... :)
No on the allies, although they do appear in several other armies as allies -- Elamites, Gilgamesh Era Sumerians, and Early Sumerians for sure. They don't add much to the Elamites, but the Gilgamesh Sumerians with huge wads of Pike can really be helped by a wad of Rabble to sweep through difficult terrain.

I've felt the pull of The Wall O' Crap Army (tm) as well, although in my case it's the Early Nine Bows Libyan with 12-21 Rabble that's calling my name. The "elite" in that army is the 2-6 Skirmisher or Bow Levy -- you can take those bowmen and clump them together so they aren't such a disaster when charged by Egyptian Chariots, or you can have them fight in much looser order like barbarians wearing nothing but blue leather penis-sheathes ought to!
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Re: Bow Levy - what to do with them?

Post by Snowcat » Tue Dec 27, 2016 10:55 pm

Classic! You may claim the title of Best Wall O' Crap Army with that lot - they sound marginally worse than the Lullubi (who I can't help pronouncing as 'lullaby').

You know you're on a winner when Bow Levy are your elite troops!!!!!

I shall start a thread on the Lullubi for the gathering of best 15mm figures for them - I've scrounged the Net and there's not a lot to choose from, but some good figures if you're prepared to do a bit of extra work on them...

Cheers!
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