Zornhau Forums

Hey guys, have you seen this awesome guy?! This video just blew my mind!


youtu.be/BEG-ly9tQGk

Any comments from our respected game designers? May it happen that this video would affect your combat mechanics somehow, or you'd known all these facts about archery all along?

I know Agamemnon had his thoughts on Lars Andersen, so, I'll address the game question

Siggi wrote:May it happen that this video would affect your combat mechanics somehow, or you'd known all these facts about archery all along?

Well, high poundage bows aside, we don't really place a limit to the number of arrows that can loosed on every given round, but the difficulties definitely get up there for those kind of shots, especially if moving targets are involved. Hitting three stationary targets at optimal range in a single round can be achieved quite consistently by almost any proficient archer. Doing either of those things while running, jumping or falling is more difficult, but easily modelled.

I've seen that floating around. It's really interesting to watch, and it's extremely impressive in terms of raw skill. Take nothing I say to follow here as dismissing the actual impressive archery talents he has developed. The thing I would point out though is that his extremely impressive abilities are impressive for trick shooting, not necessary for practical martial application.

The video probably wouldn't ruffle my feathers if it weren't for the salesman pitch of the thing, with rather sensationalist claims about "uncovered secrets" and "everything you know is wrong!! myths debunked!@!!1" This is complete with the classic sales setup of exaggerated incompetence to sell his position. It reminds me of the part of the infomercial in which you get to watch the narrator say "BANANAS GOT YOU DOWN?" and the helpless person is there in black and white, smashing a banana with the side of a knife because slicing bananas is literally the hardest thing on the planet. "YOUR BANANA SLICING TROUBLES ARE OVER! BANAMATIC IS HERE TO SAVE THE DAY!"

There are a few things of vital importance to realize in the video. First, despite the imagery used, archery is no more monolithic and uniform an art than swordsmanship. There have been many different ways to practice archery over the years used by different cultures at different times to master the particular kind of bow they used. The Assyrians likely used their bows in a different way than the mounted Huns, or the Mary Rose era longbow archers, just as a katana is used in a different way than a Norse broadsword or a French rapier.

Much of what he is demonstrating is out of the Arabic tradition, which used the smaller bows that were used throughout the east, developing out of horseback archery. The important thing to understand about this is that many of those bows were substantially lower in draw-weight than the longbow we think of when we imagine classical archery in the west. Their style of archery was a closer-ranged affair, skirmishing on horseback with rapid-fire attacks against (often) lightly armored opponents.

In the west, archery tended to be a long range affair in which battlefield archers stood in ranks and fired into lines of enemies with extremely heavy poundage bows. Mike Loades has credited the Mary Rose era bows of being 100-120lbs or more. They fired heavier arrows farther distances and were chiefly meant to overcome very heavy armor. The bows were too large be comfortably used on horseback, and the heavier bows required a full body effort to draw. Seriously, we can identify English archers in graves because years of drawing the bow have caused their spines and the bones in their left arms to deform. This isn't to say archers never skirmished or fought while mobile, but it's an entirely different setup. You can't draw any definitive conclusions about one weapon based on the other.

Different weapons systems, different purposes, different methods of deployment.

Aside from the historical issues, one of the things that bugs me is a problem not unique to him, but as he is inviting the criticism with his own claims: there is a part of the video in which he shows how much faster he is than all of these other archers. What he doesn't point out is that the archers he is comparing himself to are drawing the bow to its length. The entire video, he never draws his bow back further than a few inches. He's not even getting the full power out of his seemingly lighter-weight bow. You aren't going to get any distance or penetration out of that.

It makes for a quick and impressive trick shot, and I'm sure he can put a lot of arrows on target, but he isn't going to have the power to actually put a target down at any significant range, let alone pierce armor.

The effect is swinging around a little Ruger 22LR semi-auto carbine, doing some parkour and pulling some trick shots while proclaiming loudly that he has unearthed the ancient sniper secrets and debunked the myths of the slow, bolt-action rifle.

I'll state it again. It's an awesome video, and really impressive trick shooting. It just has nothing to do with martial archery.

Sadly, the net effect will be similar to the awful R. Lee Ermey mail-call katana vs longsword video, wherein people who know nothing else about the subject will look at the poorly-made comparisons and later argue that the katana was clearly superior because they saw this thing once.

As for archery in 'Bastards, that's largely Higgins' baby. I'll let him respond.

Here's another critical opinion to consider. I don't actually like this article very much, because the very title of it not only insults the video but everyone who watches it. But he has some good points.

http://geekdad.com/2015/01/danish-archer/

Daeruin wrote:Here's another critical opinion to consider. I don't actually like this article very much, because the very title of it not only insults the video but everyone who watches it. But he has some good points.

http://geekdad.com/2015/01/danish-archer/

I wrote a more lengthy response on the blog, but yeah. This guy's criticism are spot-on across the board. He could have phrased his title better, but otherwise, yeah.

Thank you, guys, for your feedback! Very special thanks to Agamemnon for his in-depth answer. I did notice this commercial-style tone of the video but was distracted by the archer's performance. I've come to think that the style of the whole video and of the comments in particular does more harm than good. I believe that this Anderson guy is really talented and can do amazing stuff with bow and arrows and doesn't deserve some of the sharper points from that blog. So much for the arrogance and all that showing off...

Whatever the style of this video, personally I learnt a couple of thing about archery, that I hadn't known before (and some of these things I learnt thanks to your comments!). And it was a pleasant surprise for me to discover that something similar to Legolas-style archery did exist in history.

One thing to note about Andersen is that he uses arrows with nocks almost an inch wide, which is definitely a considerable factor in achieving that speed. And no, we don't model that kind of detail.


youtu.be/NNmbP956awI

http://www.skeptic.com/insight/pulling- ... ery-video/

This was forwarded to me as well, a rather in-depth look at the subject.

Matt Easton also joins the critics. From his FB: