Warlord: King of All Clans

As the two armies faced off and gradually approached, the longbowmen of the Petukhov family were the first to launch a rain of arrows.

In the long-range forces of Petukhov's Legion, in addition to the 300 Basaka longbowmen who had just joined Hewan, there were also 200 longbowmen recruited and trained by Rigolav himself.

Not only the barbarians in the North are good at using longbows. There are also longbow corps in the standing army. Many places lack the high-quality military crossbows mass-produced in the South, so they can only use the Northern longbows in large quantities.

However, except for the refined longbows equipped by the Empire's third-level elite longbowmen, the poundage of ordinary longbows is not as high as that of the Savage Hunters, and they are basically within 150 pounds.

Therefore, their range is a little shorter, but it is still much higher than that of the crossbow corps.

Except for the crossbowmen who have heavy military crossbows, ordinary conscripted crossbowmen only have medium-sized crossbows with an effective range of less than one hundred meters. If the crossbow arrows fly over a distance of two hundred meters, it will be the end of its power and cannot even kill unarmored militiamen.

However, the longbow legion's light arrows can easily fly over three hundred meters.

Bjorn, who was in charge of commanding the longbow troops, was wearing sophisticated legion chain mail, a cavalry helmet, and a bearskin cloak on his shoulders.

He closed his eyes and felt the air, then raised his yew longbow.

The captains of the longbows in his hands stretched their necks to look at him, and then raised their longbows according to the angle of aiming of the longbow in Bjorn's hand.

The remaining three hundred barbarian soldiers copied the action in unison.

After a long period of legion archery training, although the purple longbows in the hands of these Basaka archers have different pounds, they have been able to rely on their rich experience to shoot arrows from different angles and land them in the same area!

However, the longbowmen of the Petukhov family were obviously weaker. Their arrows were thrown everywhere after a 300-meter throw.

The captain of the longbowmen of the Petukhov family had to order the archers to stop shooting and save the arrows.

They are not like the River Bend archers, who each carry two bags of arrows and have several carts of arrow supplies behind them.

Although the Petukhov family's arrow reserves far exceeded those of other lords, there was still a huge gap compared to the River Bay, which had iron mines and assembly line forging workshops.

The arrowheads and arrow shafts purchased from the river bend were also consumed in the fighting over the past few months.

Most of the long-range troops of the Adonis Legion were crossbowmen, who were mainly townspeople of Isenpor and hired farmers in the suburbs, and did not have much time for longbow training.

Faced with the long-range projectiles of the longbowmen, these giant shield crossbowmen could only advance forward with their shields raised, just like the melee infantry.

There were also some longbowmen recruited from nearby mountain villages, but these recruited archers had not received professional archery training and relied entirely on their own experience to fight back.

Arrows fell sparsely on the heads of Petukhov's army, but there were not many casualties at all.

Without superb archery skills and dense rain of arrows, shooting from three hundred meters away would be a complete waste of arrows.

However, these enemy longbowmen were still given priority attention by the longbow troops commanded by Bjorn, and soon they could not withstand the rain of arrows and retreated.

Especially Bjorn, who was promoted to extraordinary level, had already achieved the achievement of shooting accurately from a hundred paces away. He could even hit the target three hundred meters away by projectile.

You should know that Leo's requirement for the archery troops is to control the landing point of the arrows within 20 meters of the target and attack the enemy with intensive firepower.

Adonis's longbowmen were few in number and only patrolled and shot as skirmishers, without any fixed formation.

Although the officers shouted at them to retreat at this time, it had little effect.

But because of this, their retreat did not affect the entire legion.

Adonis' infantry and crossbow troops, almost everyone holding a shield, advanced with difficulty under the concentrated fire of arrows.

The thrown light arrows could not penetrate the thick shields, but there was a chance that they could pass through the gaps in the shields and hit the legs of people wearing only leather armor and mail, leaving the soldiers in place.

This was a regular army formed by the Lord of the Square Banner, with a perfect formation and excellent equipment. If it were a disorganized bandit group, it would have been defeated by this rain of arrows long ago.

Legion commander Flynn personally led the armored knights, following the infantry and crossbow troops, to hold the position and prevent the army from collapsing.

After finally advancing to within a hundred meters, they entered the direct shooting stage from the projectile stage, and the giant shield crossbowmen also began shooting.

The crossbowmen on both sides held their large shields in front of them to form a shield wall, then aimed and shot with their crossbows.

Although Bjorn and Basarov joined the Petukhov Legion with 500 archers from the river bend, the number of archers in the entire Petukhov Legion was still less than that of the larger Adonis Legion.

Half of the strength of Petukhov's Legion comes from the loyal Corner Flag Knights. Like the Petukhov family, they are small lords in the mountains south of Isenpol. They do not have much financial resources to purchase military crossbows, and it is already good enough that they can bring a small number of conscripted longbowmen. The core of the lord's army is still melee infantry.

Flynn also observed this, so he ordered the crossbowmen to stop advancing and start shooting at the enemy.

Although the enemy's longbowmen are powerful, he has nearly a thousand crossbowmen!

There aren't too many fancy moves in the battles between local legions in the North, and the commanders who can become local flag bearers are not novices on the battlefield.

When legions of equal strength fight, they first send out archer units to project arrows at each other, defeating the long-range units on one side, and then shoot at the infantry formation.

As long as there is a loose flaw in the infantry formation, a small number of heavy cavalry can be sent to charge and completely break the infantry formation.

Then the infantry advanced to expand the victory, and the cavalry reorganized their formation and prepared to reap the rewards.

This is the simplest and most effective tactic.

Because regular legions are more fully equipped, with a much higher proportion of shield bearers and armor bearers than bandits, ranged troops may not necessarily play a decisive role as directly as bandit suppression, but they are also an important condition for victory.

Whichever side's long-range forces collapse first, the other side will take the initiative on the battlefield.

But he soon discovered that the Basaka archers who retreated behind the giant shield crossbowmen began to shoot heavy arrows.

It was extremely difficult for a crossbowman to hit the enemy hiding behind a giant shield at a distance of about 100 meters. In order to hit the enemy, both sides had to keep moving the array forward.

However, the heavy arrows from the Basaka archers falling from overhead were able to avoid the huge shields in front of the crossbowmen and pierce through their wide-brimmed iron helmets.

The wide-brimmed iron helmet of a second-level regular legion crossbowman is the thickest armor on the crossbowman. It is enough to resist light arrows and long-range stray arrows, but it is difficult to completely block the armor-piercing heavy arrows of the Ba bow.

The heavy armor-piercing arrows falling from high altitude would bounce off the thick part of the iron helmet, hitting the crossbowman's head and making it buzz and see stars.

If it hits a weak part, it will pierce directly into the skull and take the crossbowman's life.

And those first-level conscripted crossbowmen didn't even have an iron helmet, only a leather hood to prevent cuts. Facing this rain of arrows, they could basically only wait to die.

Bjorn and other wild folk hunters with superb archery skills turned around and started shooting straight at the greatshield crossbowmen, directly from the top of their shields, hitting them in the face.

Seeing that his long-range troops were being crushed in the crossfire and in decline, Flynn had to command the infantry corps to continue advancing and enter close combat ahead of time.

The infantry corps was ready behind the crossbowmen's shield formation. If they had to watch the crossbowmen being massacred, it would have dealt a severe blow to their morale.