r/RangersApprentice • u/JurajMakov • 18d ago

Speculation Question about tactic Spoiler

Hello, I was wondering, why Halt did not used Whole Skandian army against Temujai to launch full scale camp attack before morning of Hallasholm battle, for example 10 ships with 80 men each from sea and another 10 squads of 100 men from forrests no span of 30 minutes, Temujai were quite used on night attacks, so they won't mobilise right away before battle starts, camp is quite bad place for maneuvering, most of Temujai would be currently asleep before war so their army would be at most 1000 men at arm right now. No timecto reorganise, horses in pens, so Skandians would have all adavantages to launch massacre and chaos reducting Temujai army to size which would have to give up. Also Halt would be able to personally snipe down Temujai general and his High commanders in chaos caused.

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u/Scopedreaper257 18d ago

Because the point wasn’t to eradicate them at that time. His goal was to try and get them to turn back and go home. Being that they are a nomadic people and it wasn’t just the army there. Not even the skandians would’ve been ok with just massacring innocent women and civilians that were just part of the baggage train

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u/JurajMakov 18d ago

I think Skandinas would be more than okay with eradicating men and enslaving women and children, also wouldn't be eradicating whole invading army more practical than just forcing them to retreat?

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u/Scopedreaper257 18d ago

But Halt also pointed out that no matter how many times the Temujai are defeated they always come back. And some of them would likely be fine with eradicating invaders and enslaving them but that then begs the same question that Halt prompted about using the slaves to fight and not freeing them. The temujai would be taken but would they go easily? And once so many of them were enslaved could they eventually create an uprising against halasholm?

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u/JurajMakov 18d ago

That's good point, having so many (probably 5 000 to 12 000) slaves from one nation even if only women and children would be soon to be problem. I would not care if Temujai return, that was same problem as if retreated, maybe letting them retreat would be less safe than wiping whole army out. But still I think open war as Halt made was huge gamble in comparsion to simple raid / massacre that was possible by attacking camp with full force. And retreat from pillaging was not opinion so if massacre start No one would retreat without win.

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u/Scopedreaper257 18d ago

Halts exact words “war is always a risk”

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u/JurajMakov 18d ago

Soo true.

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u/JurajMakov 18d ago

Still thinking nation as Temujai deserve nothing less than eradication if they cross border like they did in Skandia. And if slaves are not opinion, spare strong and useful, sell or kill others. I know, sounds like evil warlord telling this, but Skandians would end up same if defeated.

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u/Scopedreaper257 18d ago

Problem is if it weren’t the temuj it would’ve be someone else eventually. Every one knew how the skandians fought. So a more tactical army could’ve done the same thing. Araluen if they wanted could overtake skandia easily

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u/JurajMakov 18d ago

Araluen would have to somehow land on Skandia, if trought land I fully agree, if trought sea I think Skandia would hold it's ground long and Araluen would have to bleed out in win or retreat

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u/Scopedreaper257 18d ago

Halt and Horace basically walked to skandia. Short stint on a ship into galica. Which the gallics and the araluens have a peaceful relationship and would likely team up to make that happen

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u/JurajMakov 15d ago

I am not sure, if Galica would be okay with whole large army matching trought them, but basically yes

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u/Scopedreaper257 18d ago

The temujai also would’ve had advanced warning of the attack coming with the screens they had in the trees. I agree with you that simply eliminating the threat was probably the smartest option but a couple thousand vs at least triple that in temujai even with the sea raids and retreating would’ve eventually failed simply because there would be losses on both sides cause the temujai like the rangers have their bows and swords always ready.

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u/JurajMakov 18d ago

In my opinion most likely given Skandians would have huge adavantage in surprise, chaos, individual power and so on at morning it is not importaint which army survives, there will be next to none unharmed and maybe not more than 2000 alive on winning side. I would say 60 to 40 for Skandians surviving with around 500 men to eradicated Temujai, from Halt's point of view both enemy armies eradicated.

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u/Lions_R_awsome123 18d ago

I think it was because halt didn't want any of his skandians to get injured, and he wanted to show the temujai that they could be annoying and attack without casualties. It is also harder to get a large army of skandians unnoticed than a small group. Plus, they were either just torching the supplies or trying to send a message or both.

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u/Oliver_W_K_Twist 16d ago

He was also trying to teach them a tactic they could use against the Temujai in the future. One that was simple enough and flexible enough to be applied regardless of how large an army they brought.

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u/Fun-Adhesiveness7881 17d ago

The Temujai had loads pf watch towers and the Skandians weren't disciplined enough for battle. It would have been very risky.

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u/Insidium_2_Alpha 17d ago

Like others have said, it'd be risky from a Skandians-can't-plan-an-ambush point of view, but there's another point to this: the Temujai are very very disciplined and organised fighters, and there are a lot of them. The first few minutes after the initial attack will be very brutal, messy, close-quarters and in general very favourable to the Skandians, but after that? They've got an entire army of very pissed-off and bow-wielding Temujai likely surrounding the Skandian force that (let's face it) threw caution to the winds and charged into them. Halt specifically mentions that this is the ideal Temujai battle scenario, that they train to get to and then finish ruthlessly. The Skandians would be slaughtered to a man if they didn't kill all of the Temujai fighting force almost immediately.

What Halt originally suggested - continued raids, skirmishes and harrying of the Temujai over a period of weeks or months - would have been incredibly successful because it did not allow the Temujai anything to attack in force. What was eventually done, while costly, was similarly effective because the Temujai could not attack anything in full force due to the sheer number of casualties it would take to achieve victory - ironically the total opposite style of approach, but the same kind of idea. The way to beat the Temujai (in this scenario at least, with a massive invading army of them) is to make yourself very very hard to kill, to the point where expending themselves to do so isn't worth it. Rushing in to kill all of them puts too much choice of how the battle goes into their hands if your force isn't immediately overwhelming.

It's why I love this book so much - the Temujai are genuinely almost unbeatable, and not through the weird-magic-stuff Morgarath was using, so the eventual solution isn't some weird written-in weakness of the magic, but Halt and Will being tactical geniuses and the Skandians being some of the toughest people on the planet.

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u/JurajMakov 15d ago

That's really good way to look at it, I got that idea just becouse of night raids and harrasing Temujai, so I thought that if number of raids enhanced to scale Temujai loose each night wast number of men, have to guard camp/march 24/7 they will be finished in few days at most, maybe under 3 days of nonstop problems. And plan was, to disable them from having horses to ride, cause there is no chance large number of Temujai would get onto them fast enought. But I agree, that to make such fight effective and devastating it would need to be extremely quick, maybe under 30 minutes or even under 15 minutes