Monday, June 19, 2017

Get into Action: Two Battles, Different Results

I've spent some time recently watching a series of battles and I found two that really stood out to me.  Each battle had pretty much the same fighters, but very different results.  Some may figure out who, when, and where these battles happened, but my point here is not to call certain individuals or certain groups out for their ineffective fighting, especially when the fight itself may not be a good example of their capabilities (not to mention, I could be completely wrong in my assessment, and that ain't fair!).


Seizing the Initiative

I wrote about this in my last blog.  In a quick moving battle with no limit to the frontage, you need to get yourself involved in the fighting as quickly as possible.  This doesn't mean to charge head first into the first group you see, or to leave a giant hole in your line so that you can run somewhere else and start pounding on someone's shield.  It means that you need to be having an effect on the battle.  This includes:

-  Running over a weaker opponent
-  Taking free shots with a spear or pole when the opponent is out of his range
-  Moving in on a flank and getting the enemy to curl in on itself
-  Holding off a unit of equal or greater size
-  Running to a place on the battle field where fighting can/will occur
-  Defending a weakness that could be exploited if you were not there

What I like about the two specific battles I'm referring to is that I believe a lack of seizing the initiative had a large impact in how the battle turned out, and it happened for each side in different battles.


First Battle

This one was pretty straight forward.  Red team sent its right flank hard and fast into green's left flank and attacked well into green's backfield.  Green's center and right flank pressed forward at a much more moderate pace.  Green's center was expecting to engage red's center, but red's center followed its right flank.  As a result, green's center unit stood in the middle of the field unsure of what to do, all while taking on archer fire.

While some of green's center slowly moved right to get involved in the fighting, a good chunk stayed together in the middle of the field waiting for a fight to come to them.  23 seconds passed until that happened, and that was with both units who returned from the flank at pretty close to full strength.

If 23 seconds doesn't sound like a lot of time for you, sit there and count 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, etc. until you get to 23.  Half of the people on the field were dead by this point.





In my opinion what needed to happen here was one of two things.  That center green unit should have either moved left and engaged the red unit that moved to join the other unit on their right flank, or green should have quickly put a lot of pressure on the unit to their right in an attempt to finish them off before the flanking red units returned.


Second Battle

The second battle is a little more complicated, yet for this reason I think its more important.  The above battle, in my opinion, is pretty straightforward and obvious.  You make that mistake once and then you fix it in the next fight.

Its the subtleties, IMO, that gets someone to really understand tactics.

For this battle, I'll focus on green's left flank (about 50% of their army).  The right flank is not pictured.  Shown below, red begins with a unit of 13 fighters, and a unit of 11 fighters.  Green begins with 18 and 4, for a 24 to 22 fight (red has slight advantage in numbers).  Green began the series of fights with 4 more fighters, so in theory, they have a 6 man advantage on the right flank.  Given the routing of the previous battle, green hopes merely to contain the left flank (though winning would be a bonus).


Green moves out hard to the left and red moves out to meet them.  Red's central unit (pictured in the upper left) begins to move to meet green, which would have put them in a great attacking position with a 24 to 18 advantage plus a flanked position, but green sent a 4 man suicide squad straight at them, causing red's center unit (all but 2) to pull out and deal with them.



Now its hard to say what the better play would have been.  In fact, upon assessing this battle after several times over, I don't think red made any bad plays.  I just think there were small tweaks that could have made the difference.  In this case, I think red would have been better off leaving 4-6 people to deal with green's 4 man suicide squad, and send the other 5-7 guys hard and fast into the flank of the larger unit.  Instead, it took them a while to deal with 4 guys, all while turning their back the the larger green unit.



As the red center unit finished off the 4 man suicide quad, green's left unit slowly started to move in on the backs of red's center unit.  I don't think this was a great idea, but it did keep a sort of slow chaotic mess happening on the left half of the field while the right half was, hopefully, winning their engagement.  Keep in mind, green went into this assuming that it was the inferior unit on the left side.

I'd also like to point out that when this happens, its not usually a commander yelling, "you six, move that way.....but meander a bit and kind of slowly reform over there somewhere."  What happens, instead, is one guy sees someone he thinks he can kill, and then it draws the attention of one of his friends, which draws the attention of two more friends, etc. until half the unit ends up fighting somewhere else.


Something else I'd like to point out.  As this was happening, there were a lot of people on red team that were meandering in the background, not really engaged in the fighting.  There was one point were I saw 4 fighters facing a lone spearman.  It shouldn't ever take 4 people to deal with a lone spearman!

Having said that, red hasn't lost a fighter, yet, so I can't fault them for fighting "poorly."  But I do think they were winning much more slowly than they could have.



Once enough green had moved right, red's right unit made a big charge.  At this point they had a 12 on 8 advantage and probably more talent.


Red's right unit charged as green's left unit retreated.  When the engagement had resolved itself, I don't believe red lost a single fighter while only one green fighter escaped.  As this happened, the toilet bowl continued in the other engagement.


At this point in the battle, red has hardly lost anyone on the left half of the field, while green is down at least 11 fighters.  You might ask, how can I possibly think that red wasn't doing everything perfectly?  Believe me, I had to ask myself that same question.

But here's what I've got:

1)  Red waited a full 16 seconds after green had split off 10 of its fighters to go and fight the other unit.

2)  It took them another 20 seconds to run down 7 of the 8 remaining fighters, which drew them 15-20 yards further away from the fight.

At this point, green's right units had just finished up on the right side of the field.  Unlike red's flank, who fought until the last man was killed, green's right flank left a few stragglers and moved quickly (running) to engage in the bigger fight.  Red's flank was slow to get back into the fight.


As a result, green was able to hit the left flank of red's center unit very hard.  In just a few second, red was completely enveloped, and within 10 seconds, 6 red fighters were killed.


The last mistake that I believed red to make was that when their flanking unit came back to the fight, many ran to the center of the battle field looking for a fight rather than taking a direct line at one of green's flanks to bail out their enveloped friends.

Still, at this point in the fight, red is pretty much even with green.  Green ended up winning with only a handful of fighters left alive, but what allowed them to clean up in the end was having a number of advanced spear fighters left alive, who usually have the advantage once the shieldmen are worn out from the initial charges, and green also had a handful of younger, faster fighters who had the stamina to stay strong at the end.

If you had asked me at the 90 second mark who was implementing the better tactics, I would have said red.  However, red allowed green to stay in the game.  I think red made three small mistakes, any one of which could have won them the battle had they been more assertive about their advantages.








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