I've been playing "Over the top: WW1" recently on Steam and this reminded me of it. Playing bagpipes while everyone around you is getting shot and blown up. Love the humour in that game lol

This looks fun!

It does, I just looked it up but it looks like active players has tanked from thousands down to a few hundred a day. One of the big selling points is matches with up to 200 players... If the devs want to save their game they need to either do a give away or a massive 90% off sale.

Oh yeah, I feel like I missed the boat then.

You can play music when driving cars or motorcycles in BF6, its also very fun.

Same with CoD Cold War, highly recommend. Surviving zombies while jamming to Karma Chameleon..

This is basically the plot of Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

7th grade me asked teacher "Did they shoot at the drummer boys too?" and without hesitating she says "YES!" I'm sure she's right, but she had a gleeful face which made me think she was happy to answer regardless of its truthfulness.

Pipers actually did that. Germans shot one. They regretted their actions.

You reckon any savants came up with a legendary melody from all the emotions mid-battle?

I mean, in the age of muskets and field cannons they didn't really shoot at anybody in particular since the guns were not very accurate. They probably did try to hit the bagpipe dudes, though.

Fun fact. Rifling wasn't invented until right before the Civil War. That spiraling in a gun barrel helps the bullet keep aim and hit the target. Before that the balls just bounced out of the musket any old way.

That is one of the reasons the Civil War was so bloody. The armies still lined up, but this time the rifles shot straight.

No? Rifling was around muuuch longer than that, but was primarily for specialized divisions (the Kentucky Long Rifle being a notable example). It was becoming more commonly issued at the outset, but at the time, smoothbore muskets were still pretty widely issued due in part to vast stockpiles and sudden need.

William J. Johnston (July 12, 1850 – September 16, 1941) was a drummer boy in Company D of the 3rd Vermont Infantry during the American Civil War. When his division was routed during the Seven Days Battles during the Peninsula Campaign of June to July 1862, he was the only drummer to come away with his instrument. His superiors considered this a meritorious feat, given that the regiment's other soldiers had thrown away their guns and equipment to lighten their loads as they retreated. As a result, he received the Medal of Honor in 1863; at age 13, he remains the youngest recipient of the award.

I'm not sure what you're No-ing. Rifling was around longer but the Civil War introduced it as a standard.

Smoothbore muskets were issued in the Union and Confederate armies during the beginning of the Civil War, though both armies quickly adopted a rifled musket; this was the first time in military history that most infantry soldiers were equipped with a rifled musket

https://historymaking.org/textbook/items/show/275

Rifling wasn't invented until right before the Civil War.

My bad, I took this bit to be saying that rifling was new to the scene, rather than new to industrial-scale manufacture.

Oh yeah. My bad. I guess I said that wrong. There were more advances in the rounds that made the rifling better, but I was trying to simplify it.

I was interested in the Civil War cause the weapons advanced faster than the way we fight wars. You wouldn't see people lining up and walking toward another army now.

Wat. Rifling dates to the 16th Century. It was just prohibitively expensive before the mid-1800s so most troops were equipped with smoothbore muskets.

12 year olds!?

Amazing story thanks for sharing

My favorite is that the “clown song” is originally an Austro-Hungarian marching song called “entrance of the gladiators”

And up in to WW1 they would have bands playing during battles. So there is a very good chance that someone had to charge a machine gun nest while the fucking clown song was playing.

Gotta throw in some Don’t Stop Me Now too.

“Fuckin magnets, how do they work?”

Yeah, they're pretty useless in combat so they carry things around and play music to make the constant threat of death more upbeat and chipper.

Yes, drummers/music, powder boys, water, care of animals…

Appropriate song for WWI offensive tactitians that spent like 3 fucking years sending wave after wave of young men at machine gun nests until Germany ran out of bullets.

Kid when hearing why he's getting a medal: Wait, I could have just thrown it away?

Though I think WWI is an even better example. The machine gun wasn't even that new at the time and had been used in the british colonies, but no European power had themselves faced them and turns out they not only didn't have any idea how to approach them, but apparently didn't even spend much time thinking about it because they started the war with fucking calvary charges. And I mean calvary as in aristocrats in expensive armor riding horses, riding out into what would later be known as "no man's land" to get mowed down by machine guns.

Followed by three years of pretty much just trying that only without the horses and more men until Germany ran out of bullets and had to surrender.

Damn, it's only 5 months old, too.

There is a 40% sale on steam right now, but I don't think that will be enough to turn things around for them.

Its a free weekend, give it a go. I decided to buy it and its been fun enough to get my money's worth. Use the server browser, I've been joining full 200 player games during prime times

Just like in House of the Dragon. Those poor boys used as pawns.

Now this is a fun history fact.

This just made me spit out my water. Literally the funniest thing I’ve read in a long while. Thank you kind sir. Brilliant. Just imagining one of them juggling daggers running full speed lmao.