duo31 wrote:I'd like to posit my own champion. Range.
Range beats skill, strength, conditioning, and training.
If you kill the other fucker before he has a chance to kill you, you win.
English longbows had longer range than their French counterparts.
US tanks in Desert Shield had longer range than Iraqi tanks.
When pikemen fought, the ones with the 15' poles beat the guys with 10' ones.
Woman with a gun, beats a giant man with a knife, if she can get outside of his reach.
Can i win the internets now?
Actaully, this is wrong.
English Longbows didn't have a greater range than their French Counterparts because their french counterparts where were crossbows. The differance mitigating factor was that the range differance was minimal compared to the firing time differance.
US M1 Abrams tanks have a limit of direct fire of 3 Km with the Sabot tank penetrator round. The Iraqi's were in Russian made T-72 variant tanks. The T-72 has a larger gun with a direct fire range of 4 km.
Why the Abrams a much better tank if the T-72 can start shooting a kilometer out?
The abrams has stabalizers that let it fire on the move the T-72s accuracy drops to basically nothing while shooting on the move. Additionally, the crews where better trainded. The Abrams has a MUCH better fire control and night fighitnig combat capability And the abrams uses a human instead of the T-72s autoloader for its main armament. Tank auto-loaders have always been considered quite unreliable.
A man can throw a knife accuractly at a range of 15+ yards. Many handguns (m1911 model automatics, lots of weapons in .38) are not accurate beyond 10 yards.
So its not range its effectiveness that really wins.