Quote Originally Posted by jere7my View Post
In my experience, arrows that strike stone at a glancing angle go skittering off downrange.* Haley wanted the smokestick to get into their midst and stick. I imagine her thought process went something like this: "How can I do that? Oh, right, the jerk in the helmet will catch any arrow he sees coming at him. Ha!" Hence the title of the strip. She didn't have to think about to-hit chances; she just had to have a psychological handle on not-Thog, to know he wouldn't dodge or deflect the arrow. If she'd wanted to maximize her chances to hit, she could've aimed at someone less heavily armored.

* Note that the smokestick went off a few seconds after Tarquin caught it, so it doesn't seem to be impact-triggered; we have no reason to think it would've gone off if it had struck the wall. We also don't know whether the trigger required that the arrow be caught — we don't know what the mechanism was.
I believe that's a fairly risky strategy, counting on behavior of a guy you saw a few minutes ago. Yes, it is more dramatic and so. But the ambush was Roy's idea in the first place, and I'm sure he prefers dull effectiveness over dramatic flair. If LG's new meatshield catches the arrow fine, but let it explode regardless of it's impact.

Not to mention shooting through the mummy crowd was pretty difficult shot on its own, picking a single target out of LG is even more problematic.

Short story: I think that with the arrow, the Order did not rely exclusively on exploiting "Thog's" desire to showboat, but they would have been also fine if he didn't catch it.