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1682-1725), along with lighter muskets that no longer required a firing rest. Of course the actual solution here to combine the two weapons was the bayonet, which arrived in Russia in the early 18th century under Peter the Great (r. Also it means firing a weapon with a significant kick while resting an axe-blade underneath your shoulder, so if something goes wrong, well, I hope you didn’t need that arm.
TOTAL WAR THREE KINGDOMS UNITS FULL
This looks cool, but is, I should note, utterly impractical – it makes a very heavy firearm even heavier (an arquebus, not including shot and powder, might weigh around 5kg, generally heavier than a full length halberd) without the obvious utility of the arquebus-rest (meaning that in a real world scenario, rather than a game, they’d have to carry a fork-rest too).
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In-game, the streltsi take this up to eleven by combining their bardiche with their arquebus, replacing the rest of the firearm with an axehead.
![total war three kingdoms units total war three kingdoms units](https://content.totalwar.com/total-war/com.totalwar.www2019/uploads/2019/05/13121440/techdoc3k11.jpg)
This of course forced significant compromises in the design of the bardiche – thus its short length. The historical streltsy combined that with their bardiche which lacked a halberd’s spear-point and so had a flat space to rest the arquebus. Early muskets and arquebuses were long and very heavy and so generally used with a fort-rest, essentially a monopod that supported the end of the barrel. The historical streltsy were primarily arquebusiers (that is, firearm troops) who used a relatively short (usually at or below five feet) polearm, the bardiche, alongside their firearms. Of course the game’s streltsi must have a fantastical element and in this case it is their melee weapon. The actual historical streltsy wore far less armor than this, being essentially unarmored because of course they were primarily firearm troops. Via Creative Assembly’s Kislev Roster Reveal, an art reference for the Streltsi. You can tell this inspiration was on the minds of the developers because the streltsy are just straight up in the game as a unit, called ‘streltsi’ (and I am going to use the spelling difference there to distinguish between historical streltsy and the game’s streltsi). 1682-1725), the standard firearm-infantry of Muscovy/Russia. The inspiration here seems to be the historical streltsy, which were, prior to Peter the Great (r. This is unusual in Total War generally: most units that have any kind of ranged attack are lightly armored and poorly armed and thus if forced into a close-combat fight will handle it poorly. K islev’s unique tactical element is that most of their infantry units are ‘hybrid’ units, capable of fighting effectively in both melee and at range. What put me in mind of this topic was actually the unique faction quirk for the new human faction in Total War: Warhammer III, Kislev. (The banner image is a mix of a screenshot from Total War: Warhammer II and, via Wikipedia, a model of a section of pike and shot from the Army Museum in Stockholm.) Kislev And if you want updates whenever a new post appears, you can click below for email updates or follow me on twitter for updates as to new posts as well as my occasional ancient history, foreign policy or military history musings. But in the process, as we’ll see, Creative Assembly has essentially given up on modeling how firearm infantry in particular worked on most early modern battlefields and moreover has never actually attempted the most common historical solution to the need for an infantry unit that could engage in both fire (ranged combat) and shock (melee combat), what I’ll call ‘composite’ infantry units.Īs always, if you like what you are reading here, please share it if you really like it, you can support me on Patreon.
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TOTAL WAR THREE KINGDOMS UNITS SERIES
In particular, I want to look at how Creative Assembly, the studio behind this series of games, is attempting to create infantry units that occupy a flexible space between ranged and melee combat in an effort to shake up a Total War formula that increasingly is beginning to feel a touch stale. This week, we’re going to take a break from the more serious topics to look at infantry tactics and compositions in the Total War series, particularly in the light of the recent Total War: Warhammer III, a real-time strategy game set in a late-medieval/early-modern high fantasy setting (the Warhammer setting) and how well (or poorly) some of those tactics correspond to their actual real-world historical counterparts.