What have I done? · 6:16pm Dec 24th, 2012
The title of this blog post explains some of my feelings.
This all started when I thought while writing th latest chapter of God Empress: how would an army of ponies fight? A simple answer would be a cavalry charge, but that leave so much untapped potential: What of unicorns and Pegasi? Wouldn't a commander also bring fieldpieces to break up enemy formations? And if assaulting a fortress, what then? Or suppose the enemy rushed you with a big line of buffalo or similar sized animal?
So I've decided to write my own version of the Codex Astartes dedicated to answering these problems.
Now, there are many problems with the 40k Codex Astartes, mostly because Matt Ward and his Ultrasmurfs ram it down everyone's throats and call it the way for Space Marines to fight wars. While it probably does have some good tacitcal insight, using it as the go-to guide leaves no real room for improvising.
Also, I'm dealing with ponies, not eight-foot tall super-soldiers. Tactics tend to change.
I imagine that this is probably a few of Celestia's musings when observing Her Legions training for battle. As an end-all guide to everything it probably wouldn't work so well, but consider it a set of guidelines and it'd probably work. I'll probably end up contradicting myself several times, and you know what, I'm okay with that.
This became an issue after reading the TvTropes page for Hollywood Tactics. I would like to avoid that.
Any suggestions are welcome.
I admittedly, don't know jack about military tactics, so I can't help you there.
Wrinkles, I don't see Ponies ever fighting wars fairly when they have magic. Just use telekinesis on every single enemy soldier and crush their windpipes.
Magic is quite overpowered and unbeatable, king me.
646540 Well, we don't know if magic users like Twilight can use that kind of magic. I've seen object manipulation, transfiguration, and standard magic missile, but crushing? Not so much. Celestia and Luna could probably do something like that, but that's because they're god-tier.
Also, it's been insinuated that unicorns are physically weaker than Pegasi and Earth Ponies, so a unicorn wouldn't be able to hold off, say, a Griffon in melee. And Too Many Pinkies showed that Twilight's magic can overheat, a bad thing in a combat situation.
And in the Warhammer 'verse, using too much magic or psychic energy can dive a person insane/ cause them to be possessed by daemons/ explode
646680 Understood. I just hate magic, that it drives me from reason.