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BrutalityInc [2014-12-07 23:32:24 +0000 UTC]

"One problem we had with confronting those barbaric tribe of pegasi is that they fight in the air, while both we unicorns and the filthy earth-ponies are confined on the ground. Even with magic, all battle formations and tactics fail when they can swiftly strike us from the air, and batter us with their lightning, wind and hail. And every time they bring their Stormfront Formation on top of us,  the battle is more or less lost.

Fortunately, no problem cannot be solved given effort and time. My lords and ladies, may I present to you, for your consideration - the aerial mine. The aerial mine is a hot-air balloon with sacs made of animal skin, made light-weight by magic and airborne through a lantern of ever-burning ethereal flame. They are connected to the ground by bronze chains, and the balloons carry a payload of four barrels filled with blast-powder, along with a load of rocks and metal bearings, maybe painted with a film of enchanted flaming oil (all also made lightweight by magic). 

The aerial mine, chains and all, can be made invisible to the magic eye by our unicorn mages, hiding them from the pegasi right until they are right next to them, whereupon the magical fuses inside the barrels would ignite by their proximity and detonate the powder. Even a single blast can tear a whole flying flock of pegasi warriors to shreds, or set them alight.

Now imagine, if you will, a 'mine-field' of these contraptions, placed near and around the routes which pegasi armies travel. Alternatively, a minefield could be set up on the battlefield of our choosing before their stormfront formation arrives. Either way, we would alter the battle in our favor; when a tightly packed stormfront formation passes through them, carrying with them their phalanxes of pegasi hoplites, their weather-smiths and their supplies wanders into them, it would be decimation. 

Even if they did realize it, the minefield's mere existence would limit their movement, out of fear of being reduce to torn flesh and ashes. They would waste valuable time and magic trying to find and clear them out of their way. They would have to spread out to avoid the blasts and end up thinning their ranks, unable to bear their forces on concentrated attacks. Either way, they will lose the advantage. At least in the foreseeable future, the aerial mine will change the character of our wars against the pegasi tribe"

--- A Unicorn-tribe craft-pony, explaining his latest invention to the nobility ruling the Unicorn kingdom during the Pre-Classical Era of the Three Tribes. The advent of this and other arcane weapons defeated the previously unchallenged Stormfront Formations of the pegasi city-states and marked the decline of the ancient pegasi military supremacy.

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