Editing Spear

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[[image:Yari_spear.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A Yari Spear]]
Several million years ago, among our primitive ancestors who still walked on all fours, was an ape who figured something out about sticks.  A long, solid pointy stick could penetrate the skin of an enemy, a predator, or prey at a distance. This sort of thinking caught on and became common. Eventually these primates worked out how to make sticks pointy and eventually figured out that fire could make the points harder and better at poking through stuff, and eventually that a triangular pointy rock tied to one end was even better than that. Thus is the origin of one of the oldest and most extensively used weapons in human history: the Spear, the first of the many types of weapons collectively known as [[pole-arm]]s.

== Spears in Warfare after the agricultural revolution ==
[[image:Greek_Hoplites.jpg|thumb|300px|left|A Group of Greek Hoplites demonstrating the phalanx formation.]]
First off, a general fact. Spears are designed to do one thing: poking the enemy to death. They do this very well, but they are pretty poor at other things. If they run at you, or you run at them (or better still, are on a horse running at them) that momentum makes the poking all the more effective. Two handed spears can be longer, up to 7 meters and like a Pokémon get a new name, Pikes. One handed spears leave the other free to hold a shield for better protection.

In melee combat on foot spears have one big advantage as far as weapons go: reach.  With a spear you can attack your enemy from further away than you could if you had an axe or sword.  Your blade, after all, is at the end of a shaft of wood at least a meter and a half long. However, if your enemy should get past the point of your spear and has a sword, mace, or axe, you are at a big disadvantage and are generally screwed. The best way around this fact is to gather up a bunch of spearmen and stand shoulder to shoulder, with more men behind you in case you miss. These formations can be very resistant to cavalry charges. Another downside of spears is cumbersomeness. Spears are not good in confined spaces due to their length. That's why elite or well equipped spearmen usually carried short swords or daggers for when enemies come really close or their spear broke in the middle of battle (being made of mostly wood they tend to do this quite often).

Another important fact about spears is that they are dirt cheap and easy to train with. A perfectly adequate steel tipped spear could be made by a village blacksmith or farrier in about three hours. [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|A good sword]] would take longer to forge, more iron and fuel to heat, and generally require a more skilled smith. If you want to raise a bunch of conscripts or militia and can't/don't want to pay a lot of money training and equipping them, or you want it done fast a spear is your go-to weapon.

Unlike with swords, axes or bows, spear wielders benefit the most not from the personal skill, but from discipline, as their strength is usually in formation that prevent their foes from coming dangerously close. While technically spears are a hard counter to cavalry, medieval knight utterly pub-stomped undisciplined spear-armed militiamen, while similarly armed but heavily-drilled Italian and Swiss mercenaries with pikes royally buttfucked any heavy cavalry stupid enough to charge them.

This has all been about spears as melee weapons. Spears can also be thrown, though for best results you usually need specialized spears. Thrown spears (or Javelins) are typically shorter and lighter than melee spears, but heavier than arrows. They don't have the same speed or range, but since they are heavier they can make quite an impact. Regular one-handed spears while not designed for it, could be thrown too, though at far less distances, and throwing your main close combat weapon at enemy is usually a bad idea, unless he retreats or is a giant hulking elephant you don't want to face in melee.  

Notable users of throwing-spears were Roman legionnaires, whose ''pila'' were specifically engineered to sink into a target, bend at the long, flexible barbed tip to make removal just about impossible, and then detach from their handles.  This served the three-fold purpose of making the ''pilum'' unusable for the enemies thus attacked, ruining any shields they happened to sink into, and being nearly impossible to treat without heavy surgery off the field, inflicting significant losses even on armored opponents. other famous throwing spear users were the Aztecs who used the ancient atlatl to throw stone tipped spears with enough force to supposedly penetrate Spanish steel armor. 

Spears are often portrayed as being used overhand, meaning that if you point your fist outwards the tip is pointing down. This is not a good idea; it creates an incredibly unwieldy angle to use your weapon at, limits your thrusting strength and does not allow you to stab as far as an underhand grip.

== Pike and there point end ==
Spears are good at keeping a enemy at a distance so one day some chaps in Macedonia made the spear three times longer, called it the sarissa, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great and then some chap went and took over the known world with it.] a longer spear means that you can have more guys fighting at a time and so make dense blocks of men more dangerous, like how spears can fight two ranks deep in warhammer fantasy. After his death the idea fell by the way side as first roman style professional infantry army's out flanked the formation and took it apart, then the stirrups was invented which allowing Calvary to really charge home, putting the full weight of the horse behind the lance allowing the Calvary to over run infantry formations.

by like a pendulum the pike's day was comeing back. Thw Swiss are known for today little knifes that do everything and clocks, but back in the 1500 the swiss were known for being the greatest mercenaries in Europe. There is reason, out of all of Christendom that the pope chose the Swiss for his guards.

The swiss solved issues with pikes by having much stronger training programs so there pikemen could be much more aggressive, and the Spanish would come to master the formation. the addition of early hand guns made a match truly from hell.

To understand 1500 tactics, go play warhammer fantasy but as the Empire, seriously there so similar to each other it practically a learning experience.

the thing though the killed pikemen off were guns, both hand guns that replaced it and the cannons that shot the massive formations off the map. Its roughly similar in difficulty to train a hand gunner and pikeman, but a hand gunner can kill you from farther then 7 meters. The thing that truly killed pikemen were bayonets, why have a man only have a spear when you could give a man a gun that could stab, or rather a spear the could shoot since smooth bores sucked in every regard except being easy to train with and armor penetration.

[[Category:Medieval Weaponry]]