Quite Epic.

[Jevon]

Looking through this place I've seen many ideas, thought I'd point out how epicly smushed-together they'd become.

Horses, horns(new), monocles, Red Hunting Longcoats(new), hunting dogs.

Foxes beware, its THE HUNT.
Maybe this should go in general discussion. It's sort of a request though ;D.

[memestream]

Horse seem to get brought up a lot, as does mounted combat, and horse archery. I'm okay with horses(though no excited), but I have a hard time seeing what people think horse archery, and mounted combat would add to the game. Normal combat, as it stands, is pretty messed up. Mounted combat of any variety is just going to create a whole new host of issues in the way of balance should it ever be implemented.

Also, while I'm not exactly sure what kind of setting that J&L are portraying here, it seems to be more Scandinavian with Gallic influence than anything. Runestones, Hirdsmen, Ragnorok, and the Ring of Brodgar come to mind. While I also understand that games grow, I think that part of what makes Scandinavian cultures at least a little unique as source material is the absence of a standing practice of mounted warfare. Yeah, of course the game isn't my baby to rock, but it would still make me a little sad to see H&H move away from those sources/themes too much.

Everybody else's mileage may vary of course. Comes down to J&L at the end anyway.

[Jevon]

English immigrants :3

[sabinati]

fun fact: there's a ring of brogdar in the real world, and it's in scotland.

[CG62]

I want to see mounted archery being a very difficult skill to learn.

I'm not a good archer, nor a good horseman. I tried shooting from the back of a horse once, missed the target by an embarrassing distance.

[Raben]

Horse archery is Mongol, more than European. But still, the only way to balance it would be an high, high cost. The Golden Horde, with horse archers, cut through more advanced European armies like a knife through butter.

[jorb]

Horse archery is Mongol, more than European. But still, the only way to balance it would be an high, high cost. The Golden Horde, with horse archers, cut through more advanced European armies like a knife through butter.

Aaah. The Golden Horde. The only barbarian invasion of Europe that I can get behind. It is said of Ögedei Khan that he, before his death, had ordered that all of Europe be conquered, and that only later mongol infighting after his death prevented that. There is something deeply fascinating about the various peoples who, every few hundred years or so, seem to spring up like great clouds of locusts from the steppes of central asia, and attempt world conquest. Seljuks, Mongols, Timurids, Huns (Though their more precise origin is undetermined). Especially in the case of the Mongols there is an almost transcendental quality to the way they approach their craft. It is as if resistance did not exist to them. The Jin dynasty, the Abbasids. Persia. All gone.

Light cavalry, mounted archers. That's where it is at. Fire and movement. I have never been much of a believer in forts and trenches.

[Potjeh]

Try taking a castle in Switzerland with mounted archers I don't think Mongols ever had a chance, because there just wasn't any pasture for their horses west of Hungary.

Speaking of Hungary, Magyars are a nice historical excuse to include mounted archery in H&H.

[jorb]

I will leave you to rot in your castle while I place a symbolic army outside it to maintain a slow siege. When I dominate the entire countryside, your castle will be rendered a completely moot point. Why would I waste a single soul on trying to take a castle which is as much a prison to you as it is a stronghold?

I don't speculate on the availability of grazing pastures in late medieval Europe, because I know nothing about that, but if you can get past the Hindu Kush, the Carpathians, the Urals and The Himalayas, I reckon that a sound of musicesque Swiss Alp valley isn't going to pose much of a problem.

That said, sure, I'd rather be in charge of conquering, say, France.

[jorb]

Also, and perhaps more to the point, the Mongols were no greenhorns when it came to sieges. Kaffa (plague victims thrown into the city), Alamut, Aleppo, Samarkand, Baghdad. Of course, by then, their reputation was already so well established that most cities simply surrendered without a fight. But hey, whatever gets the job done, right?