Gideon Ploy: Difference between revisions
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*"Quaker" guns (a slur on the Society of Friends who are renowned as a pacifist sect) were often used in the black-powder age. A log was disguised so that it would look like a cannon in a spyglass thus multiplying the presumed artillery power.
*A trick that is [[Older Than Dirt]] is to build campfires in the sight of the enemy, leave a small party to tend them and move the rest of the army to where the strike is desired (or if it be the case, extract an army from an engagement). Possible refinements include having troops nearby party loudly.
**During the [[Punic Wars|Second Punic War]] Hannibal was stalemated in Italy. His brother Hasdrubal was just coming to reinforce him and sent a messenger to that effect which was intercepted telling where Hasdrubal was. The Roman General, Gaius Claudius Nero (not the same as the Emperor of that name) watching Hannibal marched a detachment from his camp of several thousand out at night to join the army waiting for Hasdrubal and destroy him in the Battle of the Metaurus and returned in time before Hannibal could realize the reduced strength of the Romans opposing him. James Dunnigan, in ''Victory and Deceit'' gives that as an example of the "campfire trick", for according to the [[Big Book of War|Strategematicon]]
*When [[Erwin Rommel]] first landed in North Africa he held a review in which he paraded his men in a circular march in the hope that enemy agents would notice the length of the march and not the fact that the same units reappeared. This is more to be congratulated as the British were good in the deception department themselves. ▼
▲**During the [[Punic Wars|Second Punic War]] Hannibal was stalemated in Italy. His brother Hasdrubal was just coming to reinforce him and sent a messenger to that effect which was intercepted telling where Hasdrubal was. The Roman General watching Hannibal marched a detachment from his camp of several thousand out at night to join the army waiting for Hasdrubal and destroy him in the Battle of the Metaurus and returned in time before Hannibal could realize the reduced strength of the Romans opposing him. James Dunnigan, in ''Victory and Deceit'' gives that as an example of the "campfire trick", for according to the [[Big Book of War|Strategematicon]] Claudius had left behind orders to maintain regular patrols of the same amount (which means said patrols would have to work proportionately harder), and light the same number of campfires working extra hard to make sure they could not be noticed and in general maintain a camp appropriate to the difference between the troops present and the one's who had moved out.
***When Gaius arrived at his destination he forbade his men to make camp thus making them shiver for the purpose of making the enemy think the Romans had ''fewer'' troops facing Hasdrubal, which is kind of an inversion.
▲*When [[Erwin Rommel]] first landed in North Africa he held a review in which he paraded his men in a circular march in the hope that enemy agents would notice the length of the march and not the fact that the same units reappeared. This is more to be congratulated as the British were good in the deception department themselves.
* Operation Compass, the first Allied land victory or at least one of the first, is a downplayed version. The [[The British Empire|Imperial]] army made a series of demonstrations that if it did not involve real killing would resemble mischievous adolescents. The goal was to test the Italians, cause a little damage, steal the initiative, and generally raise a ruckus. But it was also partially to deceive them into thinking they faced a larger force than they did and that was the most important result. The Italians either retreated in panic or remained in their trenches in equal panic and in either case were outmaneuvered when the Imperial offensive started in earnest.
*An inversion was the [[Double Agent|Double Cross System.]] The British managed to turn a number of key German agents. With this they were able to intercept further insertions of agents who were given [[An Offer You Can't Refuse]]. This project meant the British controlled every "enemy" agent in Britain and they refined this by creating "notational agents": cover ID's without an actual human attached to them existing only on the testimony of the "German" agents. They took this so [[Up to Eleven|ridiculously far]] that once when a scheduled operation took place where it could not avoid being spotted by a notational agent they gave him a [[Awesome Yet Practical|notational]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|death]] and had a [[Crowning Moment of Funny|notational funeral]]. This is an inversion in the sense that instead of the British making the enemy think they were stronger than it actually was they made the Germans think their own team was stronger than it was.
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