Dacian Falx

[Matthew Amt]

Myself, I'd take the falx, and a scale cuirass, and some greaves maybe. Get enough such soldiers, some training and you have a shock cadre that's going to tear open a Legionary line of battle.

Well, perhaps. But clearly the Dacians couldn't do that, since most falx-men are not even wearing tunics! If you can armor and train a significant force, better off just arming them in Roman fashion, as other ancient nations tried to do, since that gets you a much more flexible force.

Besides, even if you do armor and train a few cohorts worth of falx-men, sure, they'll cause a ton of damage, but you don't think that's going to beat the Roman Empire, do you? Kill a legion's worth of Romans, and they'll bring in 3 more, with artillery or cataphracts or pikemen or whatever it takes to neutralize your falx-men. Adaptation was their specialty.

Good point about pole-arms not necessarily needing a whole lot of space. I don't think the falx is quite the equivalent of a medieval halberd or poleaxe, though, since it's shorter and has no thrusting point. So the falx-man is still reliant on the regular spear-and-shield guys, overall.

Vale,

Matthew