Roshar vs Scadrial

[asterion137]

with barely any allomancers and outnumbered 2 to 1 since they have no koloss and not much organization to muster an army? Without the Synod and/or numerous allomancers Scadrial is screwed

[Voidus]

with barely any allomancers and outnumbered 2 to 1 since they have no koloss and not much organization to muster an army? Without the Synod and/or numerous allomancers Scadrial is screwed

Well they could use Koloss with some difficulty, just not all of them.

[Argel]

with barely any allomancers and outnumbered 2 to 1 since they have no koloss and not much organization to muster an army? Without the Synod and/or numerous allomancers Scadrial is screwed

 

It would be a lot harder in Voidus' scenario, but Scardial's magic system, "crews", etc. all naturally lend themselves to guerilla warfare. We haven't really seen anything similar on Roshar. Roshar may not even realize how small the forces against them are because they willl likely assume they ran into a scouting party. Scadrial may make that mistake as well, but since they would be using guerilla warfare tactics, their approach doesn't really change, so it doesn't hurt them as much.

 

Though on the other hand, Scadrial cannot afford to make many mistakes. For example, if a lucky shot took Vin out, it would be a huge blow.

 

So, here's a tricky one -- let's say Scadrial is able to get their hands on a shardblade -- can they bond to it while not on Roshar? And if so, will they figure how to in a reasonable timeframe, given that it takes a week to bond one?

[Voidus]

It would be a lot harder in Voidus' scenario, but Scardial's magic system, "crews", etc. all naturally lend themselves to guerilla warfare. We haven't really seen anything similar on Roshar. Roshar may not even realize how small the forces against them are because they willl likely assume they ran into a scouting party. Scadrial may make that mistake as well, but since they would be using guerilla warfare tactics, their approach doesn't really change, so it doesn't hurt them as much.

 

Though on the other hand, Scadrial cannot afford to make many mistakes. For example, if a lucky shot took Vin out, it would be a huge blow.

 

So, here's a tricky one -- let's say Scadrial is able to get their hands on a shardblade -- can they bond to it while not on Roshar? And if so, will they figure how to in a reasonable timeframe, given that it takes a week to bond one?

Well they don't really need to bond to it to use it, they lose the ability to resummon it if they don't but afaik the cutting power isn't altered in any way.

[Argel]

That does match Dalinar's vision of The Recreanace. Are the king's shardblades -- the ones available for rent in the arena -- unbonded. I always assumed they were bonded to Elohkar, but I do not recall ever see him even trying to summon one.

 

Anyway, obviously if the Scadrians can get their hands on a shardblade or two that could help even the odds.

 

The biggest problem they have is Roshar will presumably adopt guerilla warfare tactics eventually. Maybe even sooner if the Scadrians start using shardblades that way. On the other hand, seeing a shardblade used against them (Rosharans) is a fear that could easily be pushed up to epic proportions.

 

Still, it seems like Scadrial could not afford many mistakes at all in your scenario -- certainly not as many as Roshar could make.

[natc]

Well, Elohkar has his own blade, and duel wielding isn't possible without developing your own style outside of the ten stances. Even if he did bond it he may never summon the thing.

[Voidus]

Yeah but Scadrial is much more experienced and effective at using Guerilla tactics, yes this situation tips things in Roshars favor but that's kind of the point. Any other situation ranges from Scadrial crushing them and sustaining very few casualties to TLR himself just slaughtering them all and then breaking the planet in half to remind them not to bother him again.

[Argel]

Yeah but Scadrial is much more experienced and effective at using Guerilla tactics, yes this situation tips things in Roshars favor but that's kind of the point. Any other situation ranges from Scadrial crushing them and sustaining very few casualties to TLR himself just slaughtering them all and then breaking the planet in half to remind them not to bother him again.

 

Yeah, and even in your scenario, Scadrial still has a chance. So what about when the KR were at their peak? How would Mistborn Era 1 or Era 2 fare then?

[Voidus]

Yeah, and even in your scenario, Scadrial still has a chance. So what about when the KR were at their peak? How would Mistborn Era 1 or Era 2 fare then?

Era 1 would probably lose if TLR didn't get involved, Era 2 would probably still be able to win. Especially post-BoM.

[asterion137]

idk about that i think the only real problems would be the Windrunners and Skybreakers. Koloss are essentially everything you want in an anti-shardbearer army: They have huge reach and enough strength to shatter Shardplate in a few hits, plus they're so big and spread out enough that a shardbearer might have a hard time killing more than a couple before dying themself to their 8 foot swords and heavy weapons

[Heir of the Void]

I'd like to throw out that everyone is seriously low-balling the Roshar troop counts. The Alethi Army has something like 150,000 men on the Shattered Plains, but that doesn't count any of the (lower-grade) armies fighting in Alethkar itself. Amaram's force was mentioned at being in the neighborhood of a few thousand and about equal to the other one it was fighting in the backstory - and both of those were relatively minor; it seems reasonable to then assume something like another hundred thousand conscripts there, given the sheer size of the country and the number of things each Highlord would need to defend.

As for Jav Keved, I'm not sure they'd be equal - they could be a good deal weaker collectively, but they could certainly have beaten any one or two Highprinces, and Alethkar obviously lacked the unity to get all ten on board. That said, there's no reason they couldn't be near the same level as Alethkar, and the speed at which the civil war escalated to scale suggest a decent standing force. All told, for ease of estimation, we could say half a million troops for the two Vorin Kingdoms.

 

But what needs to be considered is that neither nation is in a state of total war. Yes, the Alethi have been fighting for a while on the Plains for a while, and killing each other at home for a while, but they aren't really going all out in either case. While fighting for Gemhearts, there was no cause to build a force larger than twenty thousand or so, because the chasms limited speed of large forces, and armies are expensive.

 

In Mistborn, it is mentioned that the Lord Ruler and the Steel Ministry could raise over a million troops, plus Koloss, is they needed to, but they do not maintain a standing army of that size, because armies are expensive and they have no one to use it on. No upper limit is given on size, but the Final Empire isn't that big, and its worth considering that they likely haven't actually conducted a full mobilization for centuries.

[cloudjumper]

Dalinar and Sadeas had the largest armies on the Shattered Plains at around 10,000 apiece. Perhaps 9,000 would be the standard Highprince army, which means 90,000 soldiers on the shattered plains, not 150,000. Also, 4 highprinces managed to muster around 32,000 troops (Granted, this included Dalinar's depleted army).

[DrakeMarshall]

I would guess that rosharian soldiers are on average more skilled than scadrian soldiers. They are also backed up by soulcast supplies. And their society is based on being good warriors. So I think the mundane rosharian soldiers would definitely outclass their scadrien counterparts.

 

However, each side has significant magical assets which can easily tip the scales.

 

Rosharian advantages:

Roshar has shardbearers. I would say a shardbearer is devestating against regular scadrial soldiers, and could probably mow down koloss effectively although it would definitely be harder for them. A shardbearer also would outclass a misting, although a coinshot could harry a shardbearer for a long time. A pewterarms speed would probably match that of a shardbearer, meaning they could be a threat, but they very tough armor would mean they would still be disadvantaged. Dangerous variants of misting are probably about as common as shardbearers.

Roshar also has radiants. The average radiant, depending on the type, would probably be about equal to the average mistborn. There aren't many of either of these, and the numbers of both radiants and mistborns vary, but I would guess that there are more mistborn than radiants, depending on where in the rosharian timeline we are.

Technically roshar also has voidbringers and parshendi. If we were to count these in roshar's favor, this might mean roshar's victory. We have only seen one kind of voidbringer, and it can summon an everstorm (which Scadrial would have a hard time dealing with), and throw lighting which would really ruin somebody's day, probably even a kandra, koloss, or allomancer.

If we give roshar their honorblades and/or the number of radiants there once was, they would outnumber the mistborn. This would be very bad for scadrial, since groups like windrunners and edgedancers are extremely deadly. And we haven't even seen how radiants fight in shard plate yet.

Lightweavers would be able to infiltrate scadrial in a completely unexpected way. This would be bad for scadrial, because large amounts of chaos would be sowed. See a similar entry on kandra below.

 

Scadrian advantages:

As mentioned before, scadrial has mistborn and mistings. These would probably roughly balance out with roshar's radiants and shardbearers, with the mistborn being more numerous and equal in power to the radiants and the shardbearers being more powerful than the mistings and equal in numbers to them.

Scadrial also has koloss. This would bolster their lines and probably balance out the advantage of a much more trained force of rosharian soldiers. They wouldn't be disciplined or good at tactics but they are still ideal soldiers in many, many ways. The fact that more koloss can be made simply may mean that the scadrian forces would have the upper hand on the rosharian ones.

Scadrial also has kandra. These would be completely unexpected infiltrators and also are very hard to kill. They could sow chaos incredibly well in rosharian lines. Kandra and emotional allomancy together could demoralize and possibly outright collapse a camp of rosharians.

Scadrial also has feruchemy. This would be extremely uncommon, but a feruchemist could probably have a good shot at beating a radiant in combat. Minor advantage since after defeating a radiant their powers would probably be depleted.

Scadrial also has hemalurgy. If anybody figured out how to steal rosharian powers, roshar would quickly lose. It is doubtable that anybody could figure this out though.

Scadrial finally has the lord ruler. This is a significant asset since the lord ruler can compound to absurd levels. He would be vulnerable to every single person with a shardblade, but would still outclass everybody on the battlefield.

Finally, shard plate can be taken away. If a mistborn defeated a shardbearer and took his shards... They would be a significant asset to scadrial.

 

So pretty much it depends on how much each side gets access to, and also how each side executes their offensive. They aren't so unbalanced as you might think.

Edited April 10, 2016 by Drake Marshall

[asterion137]

Giving Roshar the Everstorm is like giving Scadrial the Well of Ascenscion or the atium cache

[asterion137]

And giving Roshar what amounts to two copies of every shardblade (Radiants+Shardbearers) doesn't seem like it's completely fair. At least they should have only one or the other

[Edit: oops. I thought you meant the ancient radiants]

Edited April 10, 2016 by asterion137

[Voidus]

idk about that i think the only real problems would be the Windrunners and Skybreakers. Koloss are essentially everything you want in an anti-shardbearer army: They have huge reach and enough strength to shatter Shardplate in a few hits, plus they're so big and spread out enough that a shardbearer might have a hard time killing more than a couple before dying themself to their 8 foot swords and heavy weapons

Well they'd be outnumbered by Koloss by around 100-1 so you might have something there, also not all the KR are actual combatants. Ok, I revise my answer, even with the ancient KR they're still pretty doomed.

 

 

I would guess that rosharian soldiers are on average more skilled than scadrian soldiers. They are also backed up by soulcast supplies. And their society is based on being good warriors. So I think the mundane rosharian soldiers would definitely outclass their scadrien counterparts.

 

However, each side has significant magical assets which can easily tip the scales.

 

Rosharian advantages:

Roshar has shardbearers. I would say a shardbearer is devestating against regular scadrial soldiers, and could probably mow down koloss effectively although it would definitely be harder for them. A shardbearer also would outclass a misting, although a coinshot could harry a shardbearer for a long time. A pewterarms speed would probably match that of a shardbearer, meaning they could be a threat, but they very tough armor would mean they would still be disadvantaged. Dangerous variants of misting are probably about as common as shardbearers.

Roshar also has radiants. The average radiant, depending on the type, would probably be about equal to the average mistborn. There aren't many of either of these, and the numbers of both radiants and mistborns vary, but I would guess that there are more mistborn than radiants, depending on where in the rosharian timeline we are.

Technically roshar also has voidbringers and parshendi. If we were to count these in roshar's favor, this might mean roshar's victory. We have only seen one kind of voidbringer, and it can summon an everstorm (which Scadrial would have a hard time dealing with), and throw lighting which would really ruin somebody's day, probably even a kandra, koloss, or allomancer.

If we give roshar their honorblades and/or the number of radiants there once was, they would outnumber the mistborn. This would be very bad for scadrial, since groups like windrunners and edgedancers are extremely deadly. And we haven't even seen how radiants fight in shard plate yet.

Lightweavers would be able to infiltrate scadrial in a completely unexpected way. This would be bad for scadrial, because large amounts of chaos would be sowed. See a similar entry on kandra below.

 

Scadrian advantages:

As mentioned before, scadrial has mistborn and mistings. These would probably roughly balance out with roshar's radiants and shardbearers, with the mistborn being more numerous and equal in power to the radiants and the shardbearers being more powerful than the mistings and equal in numbers to them.

Scadrial also has koloss. This would bolster their lines and probably balance out the advantage of a much more trained force of rosharian soldiers. They wouldn't be disciplined or good at tactics but they are still ideal soldiers in many, many ways. The fact that more koloss can be made simply may mean that the scadrian forces would have the upper hand on the rosharian ones.

Scadrial also has kandra. These would be completely unexpected infiltrators and also are very hard to kill. They could sow chaos incredibly well in rosharian lines. Kandra and emotional allomancy together could demoralize and possibly outright collapse a camp of rosharians.

Scadrial also has feruchemy. This would be extremely uncommon, but a feruchemist could probably have a good shot at beating a radiant in combat. Minor advantage since after defeating a radiant their powers would probably be depleted.

Scadrial also has hemalurgy. If anybody figured out how to steal rosharian powers, roshar would quickly lose. It is doubtable that anybody could figure this out though.

Scadrial finally has the lord ruler. This is a significant asset since the lord ruler can compound to absurd levels. He would be vulnerable to every single person with a shardblade, but would still outclass everybody on the battlefield.

Finally, shard plate can be taken away. If a mistborn defeated a shardbearer and took his shards... They would be a significant asset to scadrial.

 

So pretty much it depends on how much each side gets access to, and also how each side executes their offensive. They aren't so unbalanced as you might think.

I mentioned this already but I'm pretty sure Koloss would destroy Shardbearers, they're just as intimidating and strong, have just as long a reach and their weapons are almost as deadly. Plus there's 1000x more of them.

Mistings are far, far more common than Shardbearers are, at any point in Scadrials history. I agree they're not a good match against Shardbearers but against the rest of the Alethi army they're just as effective as Shardbearers would be against the Scadrians.

Lightweavers are far from as effective as Kandra are, they need a constant supply of Stormlight, would almost certainly be detectable by experienced Seekers and are no where near as experienced as Kandra are in adopting to roles.

Also, I seriously doubt TLR is in any way vulnerable to Shardblades, his healing outclasses Radiants in a big way and they can heal from Sharblade wounds. In fact he's so Invested I'm not even sure a Shardblade could sever his soul.

[Erunion]

One thing on Koloss: They're not all giant 13 foot tall monsters. In fact, the really big ones appear to be the exception: most Koloss are in the 5-7 foot range (as far as I could tell when rereading Mistborn this past couple of months). The 10ft+ Koloss are fairly rare; they're generally mentioned as towering over their compatriots. 

 

Normal Koloss aren't really all that frightening to a skilled group of soldiers: they have no armour, and die just like anything else. Their reach is shorter than a spear, and they fight without coordination or support from their fellow Koloss. 

Even the giant Koloss are not that overpowered - again the lack of armour, shielding or support is a huge disadvantage. 

 

The Koloss are in no way a match for shardbearers 1v1 or even 10v1. The speed, power and armour of a shardbearer would easily overwhelm most smaller Koloss, or kill a large one. 

Yes, Koloss are better at killing shardbearers than normal infantry (their wedge-like swords, while slow, provide a lot of hitting power, and they are unable to cower, break or flee from the battlefield so they are forced to face the shardbearer where they can be effective), but not enough to magically overpower all shards.

 

Voidus, while I agree with you that Koloss are deadly, you seem to have the idea that they're all 12 foot tall monstrosities, when it's clear in text that many, if not most, are only 5-7 feet tall (almost certaily due to the extremely high turnover of Koloss - very few survive long enough to become huge). 

 

The Koloss, as a group, have three main advantages. Firstly, they are unable to break. They can't run or flee form the battlefield. Secondly, they are difficult to kill (have a high pain tolerance, and overall a stronger body. Likely have different organs/organ positions). Thirdly, they are terrifying, especially to a force that's not used to fighting them. 

Yes, they CAN grow to be huge, and some of them do. Yes, they have large, club-like swords. 

But they lack training, discipline, skill, and are not particularly fast moving (not slow, but not lightning fast like a Pewterarm). 

 

You also underestimate the difference that skill, training and combat experience have on a battlefield - these are all crucial advantages to the Rosharans. 

 

Does that mean the Rosharans would win? No. But it means they'd be far more combat effective than you guys imply! 

[Voidus]

One thing on Koloss: They're not all giant 13 foot tall monsters. In fact, the really big ones appear to be the exception: most Koloss are in the 5-7 foot range (as far as I could tell when rereading Mistborn this past couple of months). The 10ft+ Koloss are fairly rare; they're generally mentioned as towering over their compatriots. 

 

Normal Koloss aren't really all that frightening to a skilled group of soldiers: they have no armour, and die just like anything else. Their reach is shorter than a spear, and they fight without coordination or support from their fellow Koloss. 

Even the giant Koloss are not that overpowered - again the lack of armour, shielding or support is a huge disadvantage. 

 

The Koloss are in no way a match for shardbearers 1v1 or even 10v1. The speed, power and armour of a shardbearer would easily overwhelm most smaller Koloss, or kill a large one. 

Yes, Koloss are better at killing shardbearers than normal infantry (their wedge-like swords, while slow, provide a lot of hitting power, and they are unable to cower, break or flee from the battlefield so they are forced to face the shardbearer where they can be effective), but not enough to magically overpower all shards.

 

Voidus, while I agree with you that Koloss are deadly, you seem to have the idea that they're all 12 foot tall monstrosities, when it's clear in text that many, if not most, are only 5-7 feet tall (almost certaily due to the extremely high turnover of Koloss - very few survive long enough to become huge). 

 

The Koloss, as a group, have three main advantages. Firstly, they are unable to break. They can't run or flee form the battlefield. Secondly, they are difficult to kill (have a high pain tolerance, and overall a stronger body. Likely have different organs/organ positions). Thirdly, they are terrifying, especially to a force that's not used to fighting them. 

Yes, they CAN grow to be huge, and some of them do. Yes, they have large, club-like swords. 

But they lack training, discipline, skill, and are not particularly fast moving (not slow, but not lightning fast like a Pewterarm). 

 

You also underestimate the difference that skill, training and combat experience have on a battlefield - these are all crucial advantages to the Rosharans. 

 

Does that mean the Rosharans would win? No. But it means they'd be far more combat effective than you guys imply! 

They're not all giants, but a significant number of them are, and they are still taller than most humans. But more menacingly, they're blue monsters in a giant bloodthirsty horde, wielding huge swords with tremendous strength.

Their reach is also pretty comparable to most spearmens, they're taller and their swords are also gigantic. Their skin itself is practically an armour, like the Parshendi.

1v1 I'd say probably the Shardbearer wins, but 10v1? Koloss win by a long shot. They have equal reach, greater strength and a Koloss blade would shatter Plate just as easily as another Shardbearer could.

Even the ones that are 5-foot still have the strength of 5 people, it's not just about height, they're relatively well armed, crazed and bloodthirsty and they have a heck of a lot of strength and weight behind them.

Training is all well and good but it doesn't help against things you haven't trained against, Koloss have plenty of weaknesses but unless you know how to exploit them you're not going to do much good. Alethi have battle formations but those formations are designed to be used against regular human soldiers, not monsters with giant swords. If they treated a Koloss as a regular swordsmen or heavy infantry then they'd likely deploy a spear-wall against them, very effective against most heavy infantry or cavalry, a Koloss however is neither. They have the reach to go over a spear, their momentum isn't as uncontrollable as cavalries is but is still formidable and they have immense strength that far surpasses either. They would rout even the best trained Alethi in moments.

[asterion137]

There's a reason why Kelsier's crew calculate koloss as being worth 4 normal soldiers. 500 koloss, surrounded and outnumbered, manage to take out 2,000 normal soldiers. Plus, koloss killed 3/4 of Luthadel's defenders during the battle while losing only a few thousand themselves. During the battle of Luthadel, the defenders held every possible advantage (walls, leadership, archers, and magic) and still would all have died if vin adnt figured out how to control them

Edited April 10, 2016 by asterion137

[Erunion]

Hrmm, I agree with you guys on principle, but disagree on scale. As Clubs points out before dying, the effectiveness of Koloss against the forces of Luthadel isn't because Koloss are great (they are terrifyingly effective, but not as good as all that), but because of how terrible Luthadel's army was. We see this also in Straff's posturing, how utterly ineffective the defenders are against his skirmish.

 

I am confident that a force of 20,000 Alethi veterans from the shattered plains, men who'd fought Parshendi, and who are much better trained/equipped than the defenders of Luthadel, would have held the walls against 20,000 raging Koloss. 

 

Two more points - 1, I doubt Koloss, even 13 foot tall ones, would be as effective against plate as a shardblade is. Shardblades are magic, and seem to be uniquely effective against plate (consistently shattering in two blows to the same section). 

A storming chasmfiend isn't nearly as effective at breaking plate as a shardblade is, despite being literally the size of a large building (see when the chasmfiend knocks Elhokar aside/etc with a full on blow - his plate only cracked, it didn't shatter, and that was seen as surprising and turned out to be because his plate had been drained of stormlight).

2 - Koloss skin is clearly not nearly as effective as real armour, as is shown when Elend takes down the Koloss in the warcamp 1v1. They ARE hard to kill, but that's because of innate toughness (and redundant internal organs? At least, resistance to organ failure for sure).

Let's not fall into the trap of the School of Arrorgance - overstating our positions in order to prove your point! Your points are mostly correct: Koloss are the single greatest advantage of TFE over Roshar. But they're not absolutely overpowered.  

Edit: The Lord Ruler, on the other hand, IS stupidly overpowered. The only way to kill him is to take him by surprise and separate his metalminds form his body, otherwise he'll just compound himself out of trouble...

Edited April 10, 2016 by Erunion

[Voidus]

Training is important but it's not important enough to explain the kinds of losses they took against the Koloss, highly trained groups would do better, but still no where near to successfully repelling them.
We've seen people kick Shardplate into obliteration, I have no doubts that a Koloss is far more effective than Kaladins legs are.

[Three1415]

Hmm...I'll have to mostly side with Voidus here, if only because Koloss, by definition, have at least the strength of 5 men (4 iron spikes, 1 victim), not to mention any further enhancements they get from increased size or physiological differences. I doubt even Shardplate grants that much of a boost to one's innate physical ability, so even a 6- or 7-foot-tall koloss is likely much stronger than the former, not to mention the 12-foot monstrosities that can appear. A surrounded Shardbearer will, as a result, likely get bludgeoned immediately into submission by a raging horde of koloss; he or she cannot feasibly block all sword impacts, and the Shardblade will probably just get ripped free of his or her hands within a few seconds.

[Jondesu]

Hmm...I'll have to mostly side with Voidus here, if only because Koloss, by definition, have at least the strength of 5 men (4 iron spikes, 1 victim), not to mention any further enhancements they get from increased size or physiological differences. I doubt even Shardplate grants that much of a boost to one's innate physical ability, so even a 6- or 7-foot-tall koloss is likely much stronger than the former, not to mention the 12-foot monstrosities that can appear. A surrounded Shardbearer will, as a result, likely get bludgeoned immediately into submission by a raging horde of koloss; he or she cannot feasibly block all sword impacts, and the Shardblade will probably just get ripped free of his or her hands within a few seconds.

Why block? Spin through, shearing legs, arms, etc and just killing parts or all of each koloss. I can't see koloss being much of a threat to Shardbearers except after wearing them down.

jW

[Erunion]

Hmm...I'll have to mostly side with Voidus here, if only because Koloss, by definition, have at least the strength of 5 men (4 iron spikes, 1 victim), not to mention any further enhancements they get from increased size or physiological differences. I doubt even Shardplate grants that much of a boost to one's innate physical ability, so even a 6- or 7-foot-tall koloss is likely much stronger than the former, not to mention the 12-foot monstrosities that can appear. A surrounded Shardbearer will, as a result, likely get bludgeoned immediately into submission by a raging horde of koloss; he or she cannot feasibly block all sword impacts, and the Shardblade will probably just get ripped free of his or her hands within a few seconds.

 

Again, theoretically this sounds good, but it doesn't hold up to the text. Elend, with no Allomancy, tackles and kills a (small) Koloss using a glass dagger.

Yes, Koloss are tough, tougher than humans. Stronger too. That doesn't mean they're THAT much stronger - 4 spikes does not mean 4 times as strong. It does mean 4 times as twisted. Remember, those spikes aren't just changing the Koloss's abilities, they're also changing the Koloss's behaviour and physical shape. 

And again Voidus, I must disagree with you. Having good training and equipment makes ALL the difference, with the right circumstances and leadership. Look at Rorkesdrift, or the battle of Thermopylae. Look at the battle of Salsu, or at Alexander the Great's conquests. Leadership, equipment, training and discipline (and luck, of course!) make a seriously incredible difference. Not to be underestimated. 

A well equipped, well led force with good discipline, coordination, experience and morale can CRUSH a force of much greater size, and has done so many times throughout history (the battle of Yarmouk is another great example). 

 

Of course Koloss are exceptions to many of these rules. But not completely so. And I would posit that a Greco-Macedonian phalanx would be an almost ideal counter to charging Koloss (especially if backed by good heavy archers and heavy infantry). This seems to be what Alethi tactics and equipment (pre-shattered plains, where Phalanxes are made all but useless due to the terrain) most strongly echo, with shields, longspears/shortspears in mixed formation, careful stepping, covering the person beside you with your shield and all those other things. 

Hrmm, actually a Spanish Tercio would likely be even better (pikes to hold them back, swords to charge in where they're weak/plug gaps, heavy arquebusier to kill the Koloss, especially the big ones who wouldn't drop to a pike in the chest).

But that's beside the point. 

This is my main point: Koloss are incredible warriors, but are terrible soldiers. If you get the distinction: they have great personal abilities, but poor discipline and coordination. 

Generally, I'd back 1 warrior (like a teutonic axeman, or another such ancient champion) against 2 soldiers (like roman legionaries, or Macadonion pezhetairoi). I'd back 3 warriors against 5 soldiers and so on. However, once you got to larger battles, 200+ vs 200+, suddenly the coordination and discipline of professional soldiers starts to really make a difference, until you get to battles where 5,000 professionals will crush 20-30,000 warriors, (who are often excellent 1v1 fighters!). 

Koloss break some of the rules, it's true. They're bigger and stronger. They don't feel fear.

But they don't have ANY armour, which makes them actually fairly easy to kill (at least the smaller ones) when compared to fighting troops with breastplates or full plate armour. And they have NO conception for tactics, discipline, or combat organization. No concept of supporting their allies, or of how to fight together with a friend to overwhelm an enemy. 

 

 

Yes, Koloss are terrifying, effective, and would make a vast difference. But they're not THAT effective. They're not the be-all and end-all of warfare. They have weaknesses, and can be defeated. Look at how effective the townsfolk at the start of HOA are when fighting Koloss, simply because they did something that surprised the Koloss (charging instead of cowering)! Don't overestimate Koloss, or underestimate professional soldiery!

[Oversleep]

I got lost in all the war threads (if somebody knows the correct one please relocate this post) but there was something about duralumin Push on Shardblades and discussion whether it would or wouldn't throw Coinshot back.

Vin duralumin Pushing on her earring (small and light) was thrown back into the wall. Now I know that Pushing on Shardblade would be harder, but at the same time it's way more massive and it's held with quite a strength.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Oversleep