"'The Queen of Weapons': the pike" Topic
7 Posts
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| KeepYourPowderDry | 19 Feb 2023 11:47 p.m. PST |
Latest post on KeepYourPowderDry looks at pikes: how long were they? What length should we model them as? What colour were they? Were they ever cut down? link
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Shagnasty  | 20 Feb 2023 7:25 a.m. PST |
Thank yo for your analysis of the evidence. I tend to like slightly shorter rather than longer pikes, perhaps because I still haven't replaced the cast-on pikes from my old MiniFig
figures out of nostalgia for the "old days." It was good to know about the Cornish as I am getting ready to model some of their units. |
 Editor in Chief Bill   | 20 Feb 2023 9:08 a.m. PST |
The Latin word for pike apparently gets its origin from the Latin word for woodpecker.  |
| Korvessa | 20 Feb 2023 9:13 a.m. PST |
I think true scale pikes leads to storage issues |
Puster  | 20 Feb 2023 10:49 a.m. PST |
>how long were they? Depends on the time. Around 1500 the pikelength seems to have increased from around 3-4 to 4-5 meter, mainly by using longer pikes and busting the opponent pike block with it, reaching the maximum that can be handled. |
| robert piepenbrink | 20 Feb 2023 11:11 a.m. PST |
"I think true scale pikes leads to storage issues" Not in 2mm, Korvessa. As for pike length, you see much the same arguments in Hellenistic days. 18' seems to be a practical max with 10-12' an effective minimum. At 6-8', it's a spear. It's very hard to document, since it wasn't supposed to happen at all, but I suspect the trend in pike length is the same as in body armor: the more time troops spend marching without a battle, the more "excess" weight tends to disappear. Hence those poor Covenanters, since Ireland had a lot of marching, skirmishes and sieges for very few "formal" battles. And Monck, who complains about the tendency, is another Irish vet. No less than twice the figure height and no more than three times the figure height is probably as good as we can do. |
| KeepYourPowderDry | 20 Feb 2023 12:10 p.m. PST |
Thanks for all your comments, I hope you found my blog entry useful. Puster & Robert: during the Wars Of the Three Kingdoms the account books say 15' to 18'. The Army Newly Modelled went for 16'.All of which becomes complicated by what height are the men represented by our figures? I agree that thrice the height of the figure sits about right (for reasons that I mentioned in the post). Storage isn't a problem with true 15mm either – my slightly oversized pikes are still shorter than a mounted 28mm figure. |
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