Editing Talk:1078: Knights

At the beginning of a chess game, neither knight can move to e3.  The proper move (and the move actually made, in the picture) is Nf3.  The Nc3 move is correct.
[[Special:Contributions/128.187.97.21|128.187.97.21]] 23:44, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

: Indeed, thanks for pointing that out; the move was corrected on xkcd.com, so I did the same here. - [[User:Cos|Cos]] ([[User talk:Cos|talk]]) 13:53, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Why didn't black move? {{unsigned ip|108.162.246.120}}
:He did. The lines represent black pawns raining down a hail of arrows to kill the knights. {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.61}}

I seem to remember that the bows and arrows at Agincourt (and thereby taking down the horses) was something of a surprise -- as it would be in chess, as well (otherwise, they wouldn't have made their horses so vulnerable). I'm too lazy to look this up myself, so if anyone already knows a bunch about that, that'd be something to add. --[[User:Ricketybridge|Ricketybridge]] ([[User talk:Ricketybridge|talk]]) 23:05, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

:It was a surprise because on other terrain it wouldn't have worked (the ground was muddy, impeding cavalry, and the approach was narrow, making it a shooting gallery; under more favorable conditions for cavalry, the knights would have closed and slaughtered bowmen before the bowmen managed to take down more than a handful of them).  Plus the French were stupid; obviously, they must have noticed that the terrain was not ideal, but apparently they vastly underestimated how much difference it would make. [[User:Protagoras|Protagoras]] ([[User talk:Protagoras|talk]]) 04:08, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-At the beginning of a chess game, neither knight can move to e3. The proper move (and the move actually made, in the picture) is Nf3. The Nc3 move is correct. [[Special:Contributions/128.187.97.21|128.187.97.21]] 23:44, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
+At the beginning of a chess game, neither knight can move to e3.  The proper move (and the move actually made, in the picture) is Nf3.  The Nc3 move is correct.
+[[Special:Contributions/128.187.97.21|128.187.97.21]] 23:44, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 : Indeed, thanks for pointing that out; the move was corrected on xkcd.com, so I did the same here. - [[User:Cos|Cos]] ([[User talk:Cos|talk]]) 13:53, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
@@ Line 9: / Line 10: @@
 :It was a surprise because on other terrain it wouldn't have worked (the ground was muddy, impeding cavalry, and the approach was narrow, making it a shooting gallery; under more favorable conditions for cavalry, the knights would have closed and slaughtered bowmen before the bowmen managed to take down more than a handful of them).  Plus the French were stupid; obviously, they must have noticed that the terrain was not ideal, but apparently they vastly underestimated how much difference it would make. [[User:Protagoras|Protagoras]] ([[User talk:Protagoras|talk]]) 04:08, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
-Someone wins and someone loses every game. We don't know what really happened. Wikipedia tells us the ground was muddy without explaining why or why it was an hindrance to the white team. Why (for example) would the ground have been ploughed in October (the season of mellow fruitfulness)?
-Presumably there is no limit to how many troops the locals can muster; just a limit to how many they could train and deploy correctly. But Henry was the challenger, fighting was on his side, a winter war with the logistics problem was not.
-The story is the stuff of comics.
-There was no such thing a French in those days. All loyalties were a political net that would change like the wind. Popular misconception is the the English would not have to so much to win. In fact they would have had to do nearly everything and at the double. (Example gratis:) Moving the stake barrages closer to the French arrows. How would they have done that?
-Who knows?
-They were low Welsh and English hoi palloi of little account.[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 17:58, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
-: To answer your question: It rained the night before the battle, and the ground was soft and muddy. The French, expecting an easy victory (they outnumbered the English 6 to 1, some knights were even drinking and feasting the night before the battle), neglected to send scouts to survey the battleground, and they found out how bad the terrain was only on the morning of the battle. They decided to use their (poorly drawn) plan, which was too attack with heavy cavalry (which attacked without its full strength—of 1200 knights on horse, only around 420 attacked). Each of henry's archers had cut a wooden stake and set it in the ground in front of him, to defend against cavalry. Henry's archers pulled up their stakes and moved forward to a narrow gap between the woods, forcing the French to make a frontal charge and be hampered by their numbers. The ground sloped downwards toward the English line and the field gradually tapered off to a funnel shape as they got closer to the stakes. The French knights charged, got bogged down in the mud and were massacred by the English archers and men at arms.  [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 06:53, 25 February 2015 (UTC)