Bridge battles have been a bit of a frustration for me. I'll freely admit that I don't have all the answers for how to win these, but I do have a lot of thoughts on the subject. The tactics for a bridge battle will vary depending on the victory conditions, the fight format, and the types of troops that each side has.
Single Death Attrition Battles
Back in the 90s I seem to remember that every year we'd have one big bridge battle fought to the last man with no time limit. Truth be told, these sucked. It involved sometimes well over an hour of standing in the hot sun, only to finally make it to the front rank and, if you were lucky enough to be one of the fighters to actually kill someone, you'd likely fight for a short bit before getting hit or being thrown off the bridge.
Since this format doesn't require any ground to be gained, spears and archers become key players. A tactic that we'd often use is to bring our spears to the front filling the entire front line. We might even have a gap between us and the rest of our unit behind us. Every now and then, the other side would mount a charge and we'd simply fall back into our ranks as our shields and poles would step up to repel the charge. We may lose some ground early on, but eventually we'd take out the better fighters and leaders, and then overwhelm them with spear superiority.
This was especially effective in the mid 90s when the SCA had just transitioned to allowing face thrusts at Pennsic, and most units still had the mentality of fighting with their spears in the 2nd rank (while ours were out front). Counter charges were usually pretty obvious, either with a small unit of guys all wearing the same tabards working their way to the front, or a loud guy yelling, "Okay, we are going to charge on the count of three! ONE! TWO!....." and by that point our spears had already retreated.
These days I will have to admit that people are much better about guarding their faces, and charges are much less obvious. To that I say, "Good job fighting world! You learned."
Timed Single Death Control Point Battles
Placing a time limit on a bridge battle and changing the victory conditions so that whomever controls the bridge by having more troops beyond the half way point can change the tactics drastically. Instead of counting kills, you are taking ground. This now makes shieldmen, particularly large shieldmen, much more valuable. In these battles, you can usually afford to lose a lot of fighters during a charge because you expect to have more than enough to make it to the time limit. Spear duels taking minutes to get a kill are of far less value in these battles.
I said, "can change" above because at Pennsic 46 the bridge battles were done the same day as the field battles. This caused a lot of fighters to drop out, leaving us with what seemed to be just enough fighters to fight to the last man by the time limit. So what were supposed to be timed control point battles actually turned into a attrition battles.
Unlimited Resurrection Control Point Battles
This is what we fought this year at Pennsic 47. The battle was an hour long with points for holding the center of the bridges awarded at unknown intervals throughout the fight. The main difference between this scenario and the one above is that there is no chance for a win through attrition, and eliminating key fighters (like a commander or a spear god) has a much smaller affect.
The other key difference that I observed this year is that the problem with getting units organized is even more pronounced.
Organization is the Key to Victory
- How timed control point bridge battles are won:
Shields to the front and charge together. Once the bodies start piling up, spears need to start filling the gaps because they can shoot across the dead bodies without the risk of being charged. Once they clear out the dead, shields need to be ready for another charge by filling up the second rank and starting to fill in ~25% of the spots in the first rank. Call another charge. Repeat this process until the battle is over.
The front rank should always either be shields and/or spears (with some opportunistic exceptions). If spears are in the front rank, then the second rank should be shields, ready to repel a charge or initiate a charge by running past their spears. The poles are always in the rank behind the shields. Spears are either in the front rank when the fight is static, or in the third rank during a press.
There should be a small gap after the third rank letting everyone else know that they are not in the fight, and to be patient. If archers are allowed on the bridge, that needs to be organized and worked into the plan.
Organized column charges can be effective as well.
- How timed control point bridge battles are lost:
Selfishness and a lack or organization.
The problems with these battles is that at any given moment, most people are standing around watching other people fight. They begin to feel like their only chance to fight is to jump into a spot as soon as they see one open up. So you have spears standing in the front rank when shields are about to charge. You have shields standing in the front rank behind dead bodies where the spears should be. You have spears in the second rank of a push where poles should be. You have poles in the front rank taking up a spearman's spot. And you have everyone in the way of your archers.
This problem is even more pronounced in an unlimited resurrection battle because there is no sense that if you wait you'll get your turn. Instead there's a lot of butting in line and shoving to the front.
My Frustrations This Year
Early in the battle I was trying to get our ranks organized. It was difficult to get people to listen, but even more problematic was noticing that as I was doing this, some of my own guys were ignoring me and just shoving their way right to the front. When the battle was over, I talked to people about how they thought it went, and I heard a lot of, "Oh, that was great fighting!" "I loved it. I just kept charging in and hitting people!" "I got like 5 kills every time I was at the front!"
But we didn't win a single point.
Killing 5 people in the front line may be fun, but it does us no good if they are immediately replaced by 5 more people. We needed to take ground, and all I saw were small teams of 1-3 people trying yo accomplish that mixed in with a ton of individuals counting kills.
Our Most Successful Year
In recent history, our most successful bridge battle was Pennsic 45. We fought with Atlantia and easily took 4 of 5 bridges that day and, as I found out later, each battle we were the only team to take a bridge.
We mixed in with Atlantia the last two years and were not as successful. The difference? We worked together that year.
I was the warlord of Anglesey at Pennsic 45. I made some bad decisions the previous day and realized that a good leader doesn't come up with the best plans. He finds the guy in his group with the best plan and listens to him. That guy was Karuk, who had commented that our biggest weakness is this instinct to individually go in and find a place to fight, rather than to be patient and go in together. When we fight as a group, we have a better sense of how to work together, and just as importantly, we are much more willingly to cooperate and not be selfish when we work together.
We had talked to the Atlantian warlord, Rusty, and worked out a deal to give us the right 1/3 of the bridge while the Atlantian army took the left 2/3. It worked out beautifully! People cooperated. Spears rotated in and out very smoothly. Leaders charged at opportune times and everyone else supported.
Last year we were given the full front rank, and it didn't work out as well. I believe that was because instead of having the right weapon in the right spot, we just had all of our weapons on the front line with no one to rotate in and out.
This year's problem was as I described above. People would just shove their way into open spots and try to collect kills.
Thoughts on Capping the Bridge this Year
Blue decided to concede the northern bridge and form a kill pocket at the end of it. Truth be told, I had no opinion on the tactic at the beginning of the battle, but I noticed the flaw in the plan .....well, to be frank, I noticed it when a knight standing next to me pointed it out.
This is not a bad strategy in an attrition battle, and it might even work in a single death timed control point battle. The problem here is that this battle had unlimited resurrections, so the other four bridges always had unlimited resources, thus it really had no effect on them. Ultimately all we accomplished was giving away a point every time the scores were collected.
In the end it didn't make a difference in this battle, so maybe it was worth it for the learning experience alone.
