You vs. the Spartan army.

In My Humble Opinion
41

Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

As for the contention that armies of this sort don’t run, of course they do. How do you think battles were decided? Of course every army put the focus on holding together shoulder to shoulder. But eventually the stress of watching your buddies get massacred becomes to much, and you break ranks and run. The side this happens to first loses the battle, and if the enemy has any sort of effective command and control left, their cavalry runs down and massacres the routed side. Or they loot the abandoned baggage train and have a party instead.

Running away is very risky and likely to get you killed. But battles where the losing side held their ground and were simply killed to the last man were pretty rare. Once it is obvious your side is going to lose there isn’t any point in continuing to fight. The problem is that grunts have a different opinion about when it’s obviously time to run away than the officers do.

42

To maximise my chances of GTFO I need to run not through the Spartan lines, but equidistant between them and the Theban lines (because I want to minimise their chances of killing me) and then around. My aim will be to draw hoots of derision, not spears.

If I have to fight, I’d like the Bren gun.

43

Unfortunately an alternate future version of you tried to leg it around the side, but was skewered by cavalry.

44

Lie low and let the Thebans sort them out, as they won the Battle of Leuctra.

(Mind boggling to me to use modern weapons against an ancient army – surely it would be more interesting to work out how to defeat them using strategy with what was on hand…kinda like how the Thebans did, and then the Macedonians the Thebans, and then the Romans the Greek phalanx, and never mind. Gotta couple lectures coming up for my Classical history survey on military tactics and innovation.)

45

This poll is madness.

46

Too many of them, and yes, they do have ranged weaponry, so anything ‘up close’ is going to be immediately apparent as completely fucking stupidly suicidal.

One guy with pretty much anything short of a magical machine gun with unlimited ammo that never overheats and a load of amphetamines is going to be dead within a couple of minutes at best. Even then, I expect by morning, you’d be alive, but roasting over an open fire. They’re not stupid. They’ll back off, go around you, sneak up on you and/or just wait for you to slip up or fall asleep.

“General Theopompus, he can kill at will at great range, but only so fast. I recommend we charge him as one.”
“No. He is but one man. He must eat, he must sleep. Send the scouts to encircle him and wait for an opening. This weapon will help us greatly against Thebes.”

47

I’m going with this: M134 Minigun - Wikipedia mounted in this: Douglas AC-47 Spooky - Wikipedia with full crew and complement already airborne.

Puff the magic dragon
Lived by the Sea
And froliced in the
Autumn mist
In a land
Called Hannah-lee

And you can have a few Roman legions there too on the other side, we will be circling at no less than 300 feet.

48

I’ll take the .303 thanks but I’d prefer the No5 mk1 Jungle Carbine to the No 4 km 1. It’s a little shorter and lighter but I could still hit targets over 500 metres away with open sights without much difficulty, up to a km if I have a stable rest and time for a few ranging shots.

It makes a serious noise and I reckon after a few shots the Spartans will quickly start associating the bang with holes appearing in people. Plus the full copper jacket military ammo will punch straight through the bloke in front and do at least the one directly behind.

Even if It doesn’t make them totally scatter, it will make them back up enough for me to get through and away.

49

Even a brief reading in Wiki will demonstrate that’s not correct. This type of formation required everyone to move together. If one side starts to break apart, and they frequently did, then that side would lose.

Reread the OP, you’re inbetween the armies, you’re not facing the Spartans alone. Once you get a hole punched into the Spartan line, they’re seriously screwed. With the phalanx formation, the right side was the weakest because there wasn’t anyone with a shield to help cover you. They kept the best troops on the right for this purpose.

Since the troops would approach at walking speed until they got close, you’d have plenty of time to carve out a hole and to start to widen it. Both armies are going to notice what you’re doing, and that you’re targeting the Spartans. You can start to slowly retreat while firing and the Thebans will welcome you.

Assuming you start in the middle between the armies, and you can slowly move back to the Thebans, you’ve got five to ten minutes before the gap gets too close. With a Garand against foot soldiers walking in tight formation, there are going to be a lot of dead Greeks.

50

Did you read the OP?

51

Madness!?

52

Sure, an MG will do a lot of damage but how long is it going to take several hundred of these vicious bastages to dash forward a few hundred yards and start pelting me with lumps of lead and stone? They’re light infantry, their job was to dash up to the enemy, pelt them with stuff, and then run off again, so they’re not going to be as easy to mow down as a phalanx. A minute or two of single-handed rapid mag swaps on a Bren isn’t going to put down a massive blanket of fire.

Half-way between two armies separated by half a mile means either of them has to advance 400metres to stab me or 300 metres to hit me with a sling. Even if they are a mile apart that gives me a margin of only 800 metres from swords and 700metres from slings - while turning my back on an entire army that may not be mentally prepared to embrace my diversity, as it were. If they don’t just turn and run from all the unfamiliar noise then I would not at all fancy my odds of shooting a way out of there without a significant upgrade from what’s on offer.

[QUOTE=TokyoBayer]
Since the troops would approach at walking speed until they got close, you’d have plenty of time to carve out a hole and to start to widen it
[/QUOTE]
I believe the ancient greeks got there a long way ahead of you, first by inventing the idea of having light infantry jogging around the enemy hoplites pelting them with slings and javelins, and then by inventing the idea of using their own light infantry and cavalry to keep the enemy light infantry from pestering the hoplites. The phalanx were the heavy hitters, but it was a combined-arms battlefield even in 370BC so it’s not safe to rely on everyone moving at a steady walk.

53

How about that classic WWI bit of death-dealing technology: mustard gas shells, along with whatever sort of gun is needed to fire the things towards the Spartans. Explode enough shells between you and the advancing Spartans in a deep enough pattern so they can’t just run through the gas cloud in a few seconds, and you should be safe.

54

[quote=“slaphead, post:52, topic:700010”]

I disagree, of course, because it’s not you against a Greek army. It’s you and the army which won that day in real history, against another Greek army which lost.

If you are killing a bunch of Spartans, and only Spartans, while showing you’re friendly to the Thebans, my bet would be that they will take whatever allies they can find. You’re doing a damn fine job helping them, why would they want to stop you?

Again, you don’t have to kill the entire Spartan army, just help tip the balance a little sooner than what happened in real life.

The OP has you fighting against the phalanx and the linked wiki article gives a picture of a non-mixed battlefield, but if you links showing otherwise, talk to the OP about changing the scenario.

However, even if that were the case, it doesn’t change my position because you would have the Theban light infantry and cavalry fighting with you. You may have to retreat a little faster, but if you keep killing Spartans, I think the Thebans will protect you.

55

…well, that doesn’t mean I’m doing this bare-handed, either.

First off, thank you Mr. K for not postulating that I’m caught en flagrante delicto yet again. Not that I dislike the flagrante delicto but the getting caught part was getting tiresome.:o

[And I’m not using the time-travel tech just to go back and score with peasants. I’ll use it to score with nobility, perhaps, but only as a sideline to my research efforts. Please assure me that the tech level for human & cargo time-travel is also sufficient to produce, say, an all-body spray-on prophylactic so I won’t have to deal with ancient mites, molds, virii, and bacteria.]

I also want you to know I had nightmares about this two nights ago: My wife and I were caught back in time doing our research when the above postulated scenario ensued. Next thing I knew, I had a nice Browning MKII Hi-Power in my hands and a pallet of Federal .45ca round-nose military issue cartridges wide open in front of me. [Our gun experts will know why that’s a nightmare; the rest can just be clueless.]

Now, since you’re promising to drop WWII Allied Military Tech where I need it, I have to wonder whether or not I expect to get out of this alive. :dubious:

If I do, then I’d ask for a .45ca M1 Thompson or .45ca M3 Greaser PLUS please swap out a drum for a Colt 1911A1 and one magazine (specifically because it also takes the .45ca round) just in case I get overrun and need to admit defeat.:mad:

If I don’t, then I’d ask you to literally drop the borrowed tech right on top of me from about the 1000-foot altitude: an aircraft carrier. Yeah, an Aircraft Carrier! It’s a WWII military weapon, long enough to stretch out and cover both armies with me in the middle, and heavy enough to squash us all to a smooth pink paste. Miscegenation be damned; in centuries to come our scene will be the inspiration for the invention of spaghetti sauce! Depending on the width of this canyon, you might have to drop it in sideways, in which case the towers in the middle will probably break off. I doubt, however, that will slow it down much or cause any less squishing. Both armies will get defeated, I certainly won’t feel much pain, and it would really be spectacular – especially since you’ve promised to give it to me fully-loaded.:smiley:

Okay, so maybe an aircraft carrier is a bit large for the temporal displacement machinery to handle. You say you’ll give me a weapon and enough ammo to stack head high? I’m 5’7" tall and about 3’ wide so if we’re talking a weapon and that much ammo contained within (i.e. fully-loaded), then there was this Allied WWII military technology called Little Boy…:eek:

–G!