I wanted to grab your attention. I try hard not to use this blog to brag about my own skills, or that of Anglesey and the Bog Troopers (including Galatia, The Concusare, Head Clan, and often Clan Prechain who reside in northern Atlantia, among a few others), because it really doesn't accomplish much and it isn't the point of the blog.
I'll simply leave it at this: we do very well for ourselves in melee, and we have a way about fighting that tends to be successful. We also have a way that is radically different than just about any other successful melee group in the known world.
Who's Their Commander?
The names will remain anonymous, but I'd like to relay this story. We were at an event and faced a household whose job is was to move through our unit. They came up on a seemingly disorganized group of fighters in a loose formation, if the word "formation" can even be used. Hmmm, they saw no shiny hats, no white belts, and not even a large number of shields. They did what any group would do. They charged. They charged left, and failed. They charged right, and failed. They charged center, and failed. Maybe if the knight could spot the commander and take him out, these fighters wouldn't know how to avoid the charges anymore. But, he never could figure out who the commander was.
So after the day was over, he walked up to a very experienced knight who had been around forever and who was familiar with our group. "Sir, can I ask for some advice?" "Certainly, Sir. What can I help you with?" "Can you tell me who their commander is and how to pick him out on the field." "Oh, of course I can. You see, that's easy. There is none."
Now some of you might be reading this and thinking, "Ahhhh, yes. I know where he's going. Everyone's a commander." No. No one is a commander.
And of course, this requires further explanation.
No Commander
What this specifically means is that there is not a person on the field who gives the order. Of course we have people who yell out, "Watch the archer in the back," or, "Who's covering the left flank," or, "We need to worry about the guy in the blue," but that's not the same as being micromanaged and waiting for a play call to be made.
Think of it this way. I work for a large engineering company. I'm a grown man, have skills, experience, and an education, and have earned the trust of my managers. Lets say I get an email with an important issue that comes up. Do I wait for my manager to tell me what to do? Or do I handle it in the best manner possible?
Now keep in mind, there is a huge difference between simply deciding to wing it with no commander or no plan, and actually building a unit of warriors who are capable of fighting this way. We've been doing this for over 30 years and raise new fighters within our fight culture like a pack of wolves raise their pups. This isn't something you can simply do at the next event.
Fifty Battles in One Day
First a little background on myself. I currently work as an strategic business planner, but my education is engineering. My former career, however, was teaching high school math as well as coaching basketball and track and field. One of the things I learned through that experience is that teachers have the natural tendency to over explain the concepts they are trying to teach. The more time you spend explaining, the more that cuts into time they could be working on math problems, or running through basketball drills. Over the years I got my explanations shorter and shorter, and my teams got better and my students got smarter. As an old physics professor once told me, "you don't learn physics with your ears. You learn it with your arm," (i.e. doing problems).
This weekend we had a practice war with about 25 fighters in total. We fought from 1pm to 330 pm, taking breaks as needed. We did exactly one scenario; an open field battle, and we did it about fifty times in that 2 and a half hour period. How do we do this? We don't start the day off with a tourney or any singles. When we get 8 or more fighters on the field, we call lay on. We fight until one team is dead, we get back to our sides, take about a minute to huddle and make adjustments, and then we call lay on again. We do this until people start dropping out, and then we take a break. Rinse and repeat.
Now let me try to put into context the effect that this has. One of the fighters that fought with us that day wasn't particularly experienced. In a normal sca practice, he'd be stuck in a shield wall and would get maybe 15-20 fights in. Each time he'd be told to keep tight with the other shields and wait for the command to charge in one direction or another. In essence, he would do fewer than 20 fights, and not be challenged to think for himself one time. After a few years of this, I'd expect him to still not be very good.
Instead, this weekend we put him on the right flank and his job was to hold the right flank. Sometimes a top level fighter would try to out flank him. Sometimes two fighters would come right at him. Sometimes a spear would try to poke at him at range. Sometimes the entire unit moved away from him. Etc. etc. Each time he was challenged to think about what the best course of action would be. He failed and he succeeded. Each time he failed, a veteran fighter would tell him what he could have done differently. If he succeeded, he was offered positive feedback. I'll contend that he learned more about fighting in a melee in those 2 1/2 hours than he has in the last 3 years combined.
And when you do this, you learn a lot about yourself and a lot about the people you fight with. You know what the big strong guy can do, and what the little fast guy can do, and what your spears can do, and what your poles can do, etc.
So What's This Look Like?
At the end of the day, we generally go wider than the enemy. Tightly packed units are the norm in the sca, and we generally counter by going wide and enveloping. Because of the kind of experience we have, each fighter can quickly figure out if a charge can be stopped, or if ground should be given where the chargers intend to hit, and we'd instead pinch on their weak points. There is absolutely no way to do this if you need a commander to tell you what to do.
This weekend we started off in a line, and as the day progressed, and each side constantly made little adjustments to try to do a little better in the following battle, the flanks got wider and wider until we pretty much split into two units. This is something I've harped on in many of my posts. You simply can't let people around your flanks, and I believe that any unit that would fight fifty battles in a row against a team that's not forced to stay tight will eventually figure that out. "Why do we keep losing?" "Well, those two guys that keep running around our flank kill a lot of people in our backfield."
Ultimately there were two main strategies on the day. Side A looked for the biggest weaknesses on side B and attack them. Interestingly, side B looked for the strongest fighters on side A and tried to neutralize and kill them.
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