Louis R wrote:Don't forget that Desnair used the same force mix as Harchong, although apparently with rather more heavy horse. The RSA would have developed methods for dealing with horse-archers. Why Harless & Co. thought they would have forgotten them I'm not sure. Perhaps because they bought Clyntahn's assurance that the Sword had shattered the RSA?
That said, I suspect Don was referring to the MHOGATA, not the old Harchong regular army.
I'd figure the old regular army, if it had pikes - to the extent it had pikes - knew what to do with them. But it was at least a fairly minor component of that old regular army, and when they filled out to be the Mighty Host, whatever poor sods got armed with pikes initially had at least some chance of being trained by people familiar with the use of pikes.
Force mix for Desnair versus Harchong would be very relevant. I took it that Desnair emphasized heavy cavalry so much more that Siddarmark really didn't have to make much use of ranged weapon infantry. I'd suppose the RSA was well enough prepared to use them inside pike blocks in case of attacks by medium and light cavalry, without having had to face that so much from Desnair. Against Harchong, what would be an occasional, exceptional sort of threat from Desnair would be the normal form of cavalry attack.
I'd lay better odds on the (Siddarmarkan) pike plus arbalest/bow/arquebus formation over an attacking Harchongese horse archer one, and would figure that that's more likely a typical pre-Merlin hypothetical encounter between the RSA and old Harchong regular army. (Boy, we need HFQ badly.) I'd not read Don as posing that match though, and I'd rate that as a closer thing than he sounded like making it.
Harchong's army was small for the size of Harchong, with dated weapons and aimed primarily at internal control. Like Siddarmark, it was relying for foreign influence on an old reputation - it was just a much older one. All that said, as dated units go, its horse archers would age so much more gracefully than Desnair's heavy cavalry or Siddarmark's pikes.