Spear is my best weapon and I've been fighting primarily with it since 1995 or so (started off with great sword). One of the things I picked up early on, as well as my friends in Anglesey, Concusare, Galatia, KF, Head Clan, and the other melee groups in our region was that spears don't need to hide behind shields as is often taught in the SCA.
There has been this prevailing philosophy in the SCA that you want to bring all of your points to the enemy at the same time. This would mean, for example, that your shield should be within 3 feet of the enemy, your poles 7 1/2 feet, and your spears 9 feet. In theory, this combination of attackers should have three weapon ends on the opponent at the same time. There's also a belief that shields offer the best defense and spears offer the worst defense, so shields should stand in front of the spears to keep the spears safe.
This philosophy is missing the forest through the trees. The BEST defense is being out of range of your opponent while your best offense is to hit an enemy who can't hit you back. For this reason, I like to have most engagements begin with the long weapons out in front and the short weapons waiting in quick reserve, waiting to see what the opponent is going to do and then attacking him when he is blinded or focussed on someone else.
What if the opponent charges your spear? The spear has feet, does he not? Your poles have feet, do they not? Certainly your shieldmen have feet as well. If a shield begins one full step behind his spear, in the time it takes one step, a spear can take a step backward while the shield takes a step forward, and the spear is now behind the shield.
Experiment
I didn't need to do this experiment because I already knew the answer from 20+ years of experience, but I did it anyway to help our new guys to understand. We had a newish sword and shield on the left, a newish pole fighter on the right, myself in the middle with a spear, and we faced a young, athletic, well practiced shieldman with 4 years of experience. The shield merely had to get into position to kill me to with the scenario. I was only allowed to move at walking speed (this prevents me from just turning and running away and winning by cardio rather than by tactics).
We tried three different scenarios, each one doing 3-5 times.
1) Spear behind the pole and shield
2) Spear even with the pole and shield
3) Spear in front of the pole and shield
Results:
1) Opponent used our shield to pivot around to get into the back field
2) Opponent used the same strategy as in 1, but with significantly less success (50%?)
3) Opponent said after several tried that it wasn't even worth trying anymore because he was getting overwhelmed. He repeatedly either got stabbed in the face, stabbed in the belly, or hit on teh left side of his head by the pole.
The big difference was that in the first scenario, the enemy could get close enough to our line before our weapons got into range that he could block both the pole and spear with his shield as he made a dash to pivot around our shieldman. He would be blinded briefly, but could see the fee of our shieldman to make the turn.
In the 3rd scenario, he would have to begin his charge 6-7 feet further out. This put him charging 14 feet away from our shieldman instead of 8 feet, which meant that he couldn't see the feet of our shield, and it gave our entire side time to react and maneuver so that he couldn't pivot around our shield and into the backfield. At some point he would have to take a peek to see where we were, and he'd either look over his shield and take a shot to the head or face, or he'd look past the side of his shield and take a stab at the face or belly.
The gif below compares the two scenarios:
After doing several of these drills, our pole fighter, Rygus, had employed these very same tactics at the next couple of events with astounding success. Attacking to the left side of the head of the enemy shieldmen before he can get within weapons range sets up the rest of our team for success.
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