Bolt Throwers are an enigma to some players when it comes to how and when to use them. On one hand their high strength and special rules - Piercing Shot, Rapid Fire, ect. - make them seem very good at killing Battlefield Targets. However, their shots at BTs scatter, they cannot Volley Fire and require trained crewmen (who seem way too easy to kill ) to operate. Taking into account their points value, upgrades and other factors, to which are they more suited - field battles or sieges?

I for one love the gondorian bolt thrower, I recently played in a friendly tournament entitled "cheese-fest 2006, I entered using a gondorian bolt thrower, 6 guard of the court using shield and a bunch of rangers, result: death on a large scale. The boltthrower caused unimaginable amounts of damage to enemy cavalry and shock troops (the trolls especially seemed to be allergic to bolts )

One main downside to the throwers is the fact they cant move and can be a problem in some scenarios where you need to capture an objective or penetrate enemy lines. They can still be usefull as supporting fire but lose the impact they have in a static army.

All in all the boltthrowers are very painfull in normal battles but equally so in siege games.

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I have to say, having never used one (Its a WIP for me, Im making mine from scratch) YET, I seem more inclined to say that they are a little more of a field weapon than a siege weapon, but could still be useful in sieges. If your besieging a town with wooden or small stone walls, then you could still attack those walls. But against something liek Barad-dur or Minas Tirith, they really wouldnt do that much, if any at all, damage against the walls. But, then, they could be used to snipe enemy archers and heavy troops off the walls, or, better yet, they could be used on the wall to wreak havoc on the enemies artillery. In a field battle, now thats a different story. Ive heard of stories of avengers taking down more than 5 orcs each turn. Now THATS deadly. To end, a quick question. Are these babies effective against uruk-hai?

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DOUBLE WOOTAGE....erm, yeah.

Bilt throwers shouldn't even be in the game, along with Isengard trolls, because they aren't in the film or the book, and I've never used one so I don't know, but they seem like a weapon you'd place on a wall and fire down on someone. It would be neat if the haradrim had bolt throwers on Mumak!

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just call me postulio.

Well, from a historical perspective, bolt-throwers or their realworld counterparts saw use as battlefield weapons, as defensive and offensive siege weapons and as naval artillery. But the bigger catapults and trebuchets were the really scarey stuff, mainly as offensive weapons in sieges as, let's face it, a static city or fort is damned easy to hit.

The only bolt throwers I can remember seeing in the films were the weapons on the corsair ships.

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Bolt throwers, though, are such a simple invention it'd be more surprising if they didn't have them - if the ancient Greeks could do it, Gondor sure as heck could.

Besides, plenty of evidence for such comes from the books anyways (though of course a rapid-fire version is absent )

yeah egan whats up with that? Bolt throwers are simple to make, the really ancient greeks had them, and gondor is reasonably advanced, well, at least to the point where they can make chainmail and plate mail. So, if the greeks, wearing bronze armor, could make bolt throwers, even repeating ones, then steel plate and chain toting gondorians should be easily capable of this. In my opinion, nearly every faction should have a small field weapon liek the bolt thrower, especially dwarves and easties. Hey, ther just big bows laid sideways, albeit witha few cranks and ropes. Even dark age frankish and gothic armies had them (although they were mostly stolen).

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DOUBLE WOOTAGE....erm, yeah.

Well, Alex (oh I said your name, ohh) Gondorians didn't have Plate-mail in the books, they had leather and chainmail, also, the greeks had large crossbows that were big and bulky, not slim and trim.plus, as you said, people think that the first Modern civilazations appeared in what would probably be the sixth age, or so you say and thats roughly maybe, 18,000 years or so, a lot of change. So I think that they have room for a butt-load of improvment on the Gondorians part.

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just call me postulio.

And bolt throwers would not be easy to make, not rapid fire ones like the game proposes, tthe Isengard giant crossbows(and smaller ones) are more realistic and still very advanced for their time.

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just call me postulio.

true dat true dat...*rubs chin* well, the plate mail is actually there, they just dont have it extensively, like in the movies. Bracers, greaves, helmets, that kinda thing. The gondorians were obviously based on the late romans, with kind of a renaisssancy feel to them. All the other peoples had real world equivalents, easties+persians/parthians, haradrim=arabs/bedouin, rohirrim=saxons/visigoths, dunlendings=early germanic/gallic tribes(Cherusci, Iceni, Dacians, Quadi, Marcomanni, Iazyges, etc.) So, its perfectly obvious, that if they're based on late romans(who, by that time, used chainmail surcoats and only plate armor for limb protection) then they can have ballistas, and yes, even reapeating ones. Fact. *everyone in the crowd goes OHHH*

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DOUBLE WOOTAGE....erm, yeah.

I agree. The repeating ballista was invented by Dionysius of Alexandria in the Roman Empire, and it was known as the "polybolos" ("many bolts"). The large Isengard ballistae make sense for siege offensives, but for defending a wall or in a field battle the smaller Gondorian "bolt-throwers" make more historical sense. The late Roman Empire is known to have actually used carroballistae ("ballista carts") in field battles - these were light ballistae mounted on carts that could be quickly moved to any point on the battle-field.

Ballistae were used on ships for many centuries; Julius Caesar is recorded as having mounted them on Roman warships when he tried to land on the beaches for his campaign in Britain. As the Roman Empire declined, however, the smaller Manuballista ("hand ballista"), invented by Heron of Alexandria, became more widely used: it was cheaper to make, and evolved into the crossbow of the Middle Ages. Expensive ballistae were not as extensively used as previously, but they did survive as powerful naval weapons. In 1340, during the Hundred Years War, the Genoese galleys carrying troops to the Battle of Crécy are known to have carried 40 ballistae each.

Since New Line's Gondor seems based on a mix a Roman and Medieval Italian, it makes perfect historical sense that they have such ballistae. Personally, I use them in the following games, in order of precedence:
*Sea battles
*Sieges
*Field battles

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