"pikes (phalanx) vs spear and shield (hoplites)" Topic

and the Bruti and the Lucanians were beaten by the Romans.

here is the Battle.

link

note at end the remarks of shield vs pike.

Thank you for the link the Battle of Pandosia. According to the article it was fought the same year as the Battle of Gaugamela. To me it seems unlikely that the Epirotes would have had a pike phalanx at this time. Certainly nothing comparable to Alexander's (and his army only contained about 25% pikes). More likely their phalanx consisted of traditional hoplites.

Also, to be clear, I said the earlier Romans were less competent NOT incompetent (which is a big difference).

I have no idea who made up the idea that Alexander of Epirus had a pike phalanx. This is highly unlikely.

Pyrrhus himself had no pike phalanx when initially warring against Demetrius. By defeating Demetrius' generals he gained arms and armor to outfit the Epirote phalangites, later on while established in Macedon he could have outfitted more. A large contingent of Macedonians were loaned to Pyrrhus which expanded his phalanx to invade Italy. Eventually Pyrrhus seems to have a fairly large phalanx, but needs lots of allies to extend his front in the large battles .. and of course that was his main weakness.
We have no firm data to conclude that Pyrrhus outfitted his local troops with pikes, for example the Tarentines, who once had a vaunted white shield hoplite force, but had decayed.

Still this is a digression from pikes vs. hoplites, Romans vs. phalanx is a well worked topic here on TMP.

One note since Pyrrhus was brought up… the Carthaginians, who employed hoplites, and their own African troops formed as some kind of hoplite style phalanx, retreated from Pyrrhus completly, and refused to engaged except in sieges against the elephants and the pike phalanx… there is one allusion to an apocryphal battle but no details….

Pyrrhus however was able to overcome the Mamertines in a battle in which they may have fought as hoplites--- but that is conjecture too.

Where the pikes used by the Scots against the English inferior in some way because they are recorded as losing to English billmen?

If you are refering to Flodden it has much more to do with the training of the Scots (or rather the lack of it), the way the Scottish army was organised and equipped and the impact of the terrain which disrupted the momentum of the Scottish attack and probably had an impact on the cohesion of their units as well.

Hoplites of the era were probably untrained compared to Philip's army and certainly less experienced. Hopite armies came from a previous age and comprised a social elite. Macedonian soldiers were career soldiers. Like some Greeks were who lived as mercenaries. Hoplite armies had no strike force like the Macedonian cavalry. For these reasons the Greeks could not successfully attack a pike phalanx like the Romans could later. Macedonian tactics relied on pinning the enemy with the unbeatable phalanx and delivering the coup de grace elsewhere. The pike block's unbeatability in a head-on clash is its main characteristic in any period it was used. But it was never without an Achilles heel if the enemy was flexible enough to exploit it. Once the social order that gave rise to them was broken by the Macedonians then the hoplite disappears.

Regarding the DBA factors: DBA 3.0 has now replaced Spear depth with sheildwall.

Essentially Spear now get a +1 for having another Spear adjacent. This makes them much more challenging to both Pike and Blade armies (as they now do not have to give up an overlap to get the +1). Spears pretty good at least while the shieldwall holds.

Seems to give a much better interp to historical battles.

TomT