Dr. Bret Devereaux

But the Numenoreans have great archers, which feels more English, right?

Ironically, it could also feel more Byzantine if you wanted to go in a different direction.

But he's sort of varying his thing.

Then again, the Numenoreans are around for a really long time.

The Romans are around for a really long time.

And exactly where the core strength of the Roman army is varies.

During the Republic and the early empire, the Romans are very much an infantry-centric force.

And sort of by the late empire, cavalry is more important.

When you push well into the Byzantine period, you have Byzantine cavalry that are fighting like armored Turkish horse archers.

You know, they've adopted those forms and Byzantine armies use a lot more archers.

They have a more quote unquote Eastern style of fighting because they're adapting to the situations they're in.

And like, those are all technically Romans.

And the Numenoreans are around for just as long, so maybe they have shifted the style of fighting.

But this comment about the Numenorean bows really does feel like an evocation of English archers.

And certainly because bowshot caps out around 200, maybe 300 yards, you can absolutely hang outside of bowshot and be relatively safe.

Yeah.

You know, you're a longbow chucking a flight arrow, so an arrow designed for range, not for lethality, can probably put it out about 200 yards, plus or minus, or 300 yards, rather, plus or minus.

If you actually want to hurt somebody, you're really looking at about 200 yards.

for maximum reach these you know sort of heroic bows may do a little better but you know at 250 yards you're not actually all that far away from your opponent and you're still out of reach for bows and so this is presumably what they're doing that they hang out of bow shop while they assemble and get ready for that final kind of encircling crush

It sounds similar to how someone in roughly 1950 is going to imagine.