For the most part, I thought the ability levels on both sides seemed fairly well matched. Aethelmearc certainly had a greater number of top end fighters (knights) from an individual skill standpoint, but the Tuchux even that out with the fact that they are very well trained and skilled at melee combat.
The point being, since both sides were relatively matched at skill level, winning or losing the battles came down to battlefield tactics. In fact, for the most part, even the strategies were fairly evenly matched. i.e. I never really felt that either side left a glaring weakness or strength from the start of the battle.
Motivating the Press
The biggest weakness I saw on the field was needless stalling. There's a time to stall, and there's a time to press. In short, you stall when you don't have the numbers or the skill to win, and you press when you do. Too often I saw units that faced a weak opponent who were too willing to just stand there and let the spears poke at each other. While this is happening, there is likely action occurring somewhere else on the field where your side is losing.
Consider the following example from one of the battles I remember from yesterday:
Shown above is roughly the left half of the field. The green team has a clear numbers advantage, which means that red had a numbers advantage on the right side of the field. In fact, I remember looking to my right and seeing that red was in the process of collapsing our right flank.
Take a second to think about what options green has at this point. Green's reserve unit (where I was) is completely unengaged and out of the fight. Red is about the roll the left flank of the main green unit in the center of the field (right side of diagram), and we know that red is about to roll the right flank of the main green unit on the right side of the field (not pictured) and eventually win that fight and move toward the center of the field.
Now the green reserve unit could mobilize and move to the right side of the field to stop the collapse of their flank, but its going to take a long time to get there. The obvious move for this unit is to move straight forward and engage the right flank of the main red unit.
There's still a problem, however. By the time they get through this unit, they are still going to have too many fighters on the left side of the field held up by a smaller unit, which means they may still have a numbers disadvantage once they meet up with the red unit on the right side of the field. Also, it may take a while to get through this center red unit, and in order to roll the flank, green will have to potentially expose their backs to the red unit on the left side of the field which, at a minimum, slows the progress.
I felt the key to this battle was motivating the press on the left side of the field. As our reserve unit pressed forward toward the middle red unit, I actually left the reserve unit to go and yell at the left unit (Midrealm) to press the attack. Now when I say "yell," that was exactly what I did, but not because they were necessarily doing anything wrong. They just were not in a position to see the importance of expediency at this point. By running over and yelling, "we need to kill these guys right now," I'm letting all of the fighters and their commanders know what job needs to be done and that it needs to be done quickly.
After these two presses resolved themselves, the red unit on the left was killed off pretty quickly, allowing the left green unit to move right and continue to roll red's main unit's right flank while killing them. By the time green meets red's unit that is on the other side of the field, they will be strong and all moving in the right direction toward the fight.
Think about how much weaker this attack would have been had green's left unit continued to stall and spear duel while making little progress.
On an additional note, green's left most skirmisher's who were protecting the flank needed to do very little in this fight. Since they had an even matchup with the red skirmishers, there was no need to engage. They only needed to keep them out of the fight.
Find Someone to Hit
So the first tactical key was to motivate the press when you have the advantage. I use the term "motivate," because its not simply enough to know that a press is required. You need to be able to motivate those around you to join in on the press. That is a skill that shall be left for another day to discuss. =)
The next tactical key is what I call finding someone to hit. I blogged about this earlier, but that one was focussed more on an individual within an engagement. I'm now talking about this in terms of large groups of people who are unengaged. What this means is, if you are in a battle and you are not actively engaged (not necessarily attacking, but involved in someway in the fight), then you need to find someone to hit. And if you don't see anyone, you need to look really hard. If the battle is not over, your job is not over.
Lets consider the above scenario after the left green unit defeats the smaller red unit.
One of the keys to winning this battle is how quickly the now unengaged green fighters can find a way to get themselves back into the fight. In this case, the obvious move is to turn right and join the main green unit to help finish off the main red unit. The more quickly it is done, the more effective it will be.
One of the things that absolutely kills a lot of units is waiting for a commander and reforming the unit before moving. This takes way to long. The fighters need to individually start moving to where they can make an impact and gradually reform as they move in that direction.
Getting Reserves Involved Sooner than Later
It was my opinion that as the battles played themselves out, our side generally did better when our reserves engaged earlier rather than later. This is similar to the concept above. The side with the most fighters engaged tends to do better. Having a reserve unit is a great idea, but I think it works best when it finds a tactical situation to exploit, and then quickly moves in to take advantage of the situation.
Spears, Take the Horse Blinders Off
I was playing nice yesterday, but I saw a lot of good spear fighters that were so focussed on the fighters directly in front of them that they never saw me coming from the oblique.
Don't Engage in an 8 on 2 Fight
In one of the battles, one of the Tuchux (Tobar) and I ended up dragging 8 fighters all the way to the edge of the battlefield before I finally yielded. As this was happening, their other units were dying because they were undermanned.
If you ever end up in an 8 on 2 scenario, either charge them immediately to kill them quickly, or have 5-7 of your fighters leave them to go and get engaged in the fight somewhere else.
Anyway, those were my thoughts on the day. Overall, I thought everyone did pretty well. I saw almost no "fish in a barrel" scenarios, so Aethelmearc and the Tuchux seem to be doing a great job of training themselves up!
No comments:
Post a Comment