Tactical Analysis of a 5v6 Vets vs Newbs Battle (Newbs Win!)

After putting so much thought into my last blog (please read that first if you haven't already) and the mistakes that the newbs made to lose that battle, it occurred to me to examine the fight that they won, overwhelmingly in fact, and see what they did correctly.  And truth be told, despite a lack of individual skill relative to the veterans, they mastered the tactics!


The Scenario

The battle was 5 veterans (5-30 years experience) vs 6 Newbs (0-3 years experience) for a single death in a 35'x50' rectangular gym.  The vets had three shields, a pole arm, and a long spear, while the Newbs had four shields, a dane axe, and a long spear.


The Vet's Plan
There are a few ways to handle a battle like this.  One is to stack up all of the veterans and charge at, and hopefully around, one flank hoping to get a quick numbers advantage on that flank while also hoping that the fighters on the opposite flank are slow to join the fight.

There were a few reasons why we wouldn't have adopted that strategy:
-  We had two long weapons and would be charging into mostly short weapons
-  There was no room to get around a flank
-  Anglesey trains for this scenario and are not usually slow to get into the fight from an unengaged flank

The other method is to secure both flanks with strong shields, try to control the fight with the long weapons in the middle, and hope to spot tactical opportunities or capitalize on mistakes.  That was the plan we chose.


Squad Tactics
Okay, so the first thing I see here is that the Newbs put a left handed shield on their left flank and a large right handed shield on their right flank to prevent any strong veteran shieldmen from getting around them and into the backfield.  Instead of putting their spear in the middle like the Vets, they had him off to one side in a position to still counter the Vet spear (that's me, BTW) while being able to put pressure on the left flank.

The biggest thing that stands out is that two fighters whom I scored quick early kills in earlier battles are set up in great positions.  Both of them are about 18" behind their spearman, and the shieldman in particular has his sword right in front of his face.

Now lets' look at the first few seconds of the fight.

The Newbs basically split into three distinct groups.  They intelligently press the fight and they all move together.  Remember the last video with two solo Leroy Jenkins charges?  That doesn't happen here.

Left Side:  Instead of charging, the left most shield is there mainly to do his job and keep the enemy shield off of his spearman.  He and the spearman work together.  At this point the spearman does a good job of threatening the face of the enemy shield, causing him to pause and throw his shield high and exposing his leg to the lefty, as well as pushing back the Vet pole arm fighter due to the extra length.

Right:  The big round shieldman on the right flank found himself in a one on one against a much more experienced fighter, so he did his job and defensively secured the flank while staying alive.  If in a one on one against a superior opponent, you almost always want to stall the engagement, which he was doing well.

Center:  Here you have a group of three with two shields leading and a dane axe following.  With the two shields working together, the Vet spear didn't have a good shot and was driven toward the back of the gym.  The right handed shield on the left side of this triad was able to protect them from the Vet pole (along with the spear who was holding her back) as they shot through the gap.  You can even see that shieldman skip a little bit as he's making sure not to get hit by the pole.

Note:  an actual gap is created on the Vet team because of the pole being pushed back on the left side of the screen, and the shield on the right side being left handed.

Next....

Left Side:  With the pole driven back, the Newb shield and spear manage to double team the Vet shield and score their first kill with a stab to the gut.

Center:  The Vet spear is driven back and has to bail on the fight, hoping to reengage on the other side.  If he's lucky, someone will pick up his attacker or the attacker will give up.   As luck would have it, one of the shields of the triad stayed on the chase.  The other two fighters double up on the middle shield and work toward scoring the second kill of the fight.

Right: The round shield is doing a good job as staying alive while keeping the Vet shield occupied.

Next....

Left Side:  The spear has just scored his kill and is now trying to move into position and kill the pole who is attacking the lefty shield.  The Vet pole takes out the shield for their first kill.

Center:  At this point they have broken through the middle and circled around to the right.  They scored their kill on the Vet's center shieldman and immediately move back into the fight.  The other shield in the triad continued to follow the spear and scored a kill on him at the other side of the gym.

Right:  The Newb round shield (now in the center and backing away toward the left) keeps the Vet's lefty shieldman occupied while also fending off a shot from the spear who is trying to get a desperation kill before it is too late.

Next.....

At this point the battle that began as a 5v6 has been reduced to a 2v5, so the 20% numbers advantage is now a 150% numbers advantage.  As long as the Newbs continue to work together, this should be an easy victory.

The lefty Vet shield finally scores a kill on the Newb roundshield, but only after three of his teammates have died scoring only one kill.  Amongst the chaos, the Newb spear takes out the Vet pole.  At this point the four remaining newbs surround the remaining Vet and back him into a corner (not shown) and the fight is called.

Good job Newbs!

Final Thoughts

After reflecting on this a bit, I guess the real mistake that the Vet team made was putting two long weapons next to each other.  I actually violated one of my fundamental tenets, and this video is a clear example of how a weakness in a line can be exploited.  If I could do it all over again, the center shield would have been between the pole and the long spear.


Full Video

Tactical Analysis of a 4v6 Vets vs Newbs Battle

This weekend I attended the monthly Tuchux Philly practice (which was awesome).  We had a lot of new fighters, and a number of veterans, did some singles, as well as melees.  The goal here is mainly just to keep people involved over the winter months, and give new people the opportunity to get into the activity.

I proposed an idea to the Tuchux dog running the practice and he allowed me to implement it.  That being several single death field battles where we put all of the veterans on one team (5, 5, 10, 20, 25, and 30+ years of experience) and the newbs on the other team (some brand spanking new fighters and some with up to 3 years experienced).  From there we played around with the numbers to get competitive fights.  In this case, it seemed like the newbs needed about a 1-2 fighter numbers advantage


Why the Imbalance in Experience?

I prefer this for several reasons:

-  It forces the new fighters to own the fight.  They need to think, come up with their own plans, and figure out how to get kills.

-  The new fighters can't just watch the veterans fight.  They get to (have to!) score their own kills.

-  The veterans have to figure out how to win battles when they are outnumbered.

Here's the thing.  I don't need a new fighter to be able to kill a veteran.  I need two of them to be able to kill a veteran.  Likewise as a veteran, its not my job to get a kill.  Its my job to get lots of kills, and get them quickly.

When the experience levels and numbers are evened out what tends to happen is the veterans get two kills a piece in every battle while the new fighters just die.  That isn't to say that there isn't value to fighting that format, only that it teaches people how to best fight at their current level, but doesn't really help develop them to the next level.  Its the difference between fighting a tourney using your strengths in your best effort to win that fight, or with a weakness that you are trying to develop into a strength.


4v6 Scenario

As said above, the newer fighters were on the team of 6, while the veterans were on the team of 4.  The battle was a single death field battle in a gym that was (best estimate) 35 feet wide, and 50 feet long.  I would describe this as a semi-limited front.  There's not much room for flanking, but still enough room for some limited mobility.

The team of 4 had two shields and two spears (one short and one long).  The team of 6 had four shields, a long spear, and a two handed Dane axe.

EDIT:  it was a pole, not a short spear.

The Plan

The team of 6 had to come up with their own plan and execute it.  Given what we presented them, they decided on three main objectives:

1)  Press the attack when they had a clear numbers advantage

2)  Initiate the attack on their left flank where the smaller team had two spears stacked up

3)  Target the long spear (that's me) and take him out of the fight as soon as possible

IMO, this was an excellent plan.  They hit on a number of key elements while making the plan simple enough to execute.  Having said that, every tactical plan, and every execution of that plan has room for improvement, which I'll talk about below.


The Red Team

We didn't really have a plan, but instead intended to wait and react.  With a stronger long spear, and more range weapons, its generally best to use that range to kill the other side before they can press, and then react to that press. 

At this point in the fighting I feel I would have done better with a pole arm, but the fights were competitive with the spear so I kept it.  Stacking our spears on one side was not a great idea.  The short spear had just entered the fight and I mistakenly thought it was a pole.  Our center shield did say that he intended to shift right once the battle began, so I left our set up alone.  if I could do it all over again, the shield would have been on our far right.

EDIT:  Just realized she had a pole arm.


Leroy Jenkins Charge 1

One of the biggest issues we notice with new guys is that they tend to either stand in the back and do nothing, or they do solo charges and get themselves killed.  That's perfectly fine as everyone goes through this phase.  It can essentially be trained out with one of two methods.  The quicker method is to give them a rigid structure like fitting into a shield wall, which is the more typical kingdom level approach.  The more long term approach is to keep fighting scenarios like the one covered here and slowly offer advice, let them gain experience on their own, etc.  The latter method takes anywhere from 5-15 practices to get a decent sense of timing and coordination with fellow fighters.  The advantage to this approach is that after the 5-15 practices they will likely have surpassed the shield wall fighters in terms of overall melee effectiveness.

Anyway, the very first move was a solo charge by the left most green shield man.  He managed to get a leg shot on the pole, but got stabbed and killed by the long spear and hit in the head by the shieldman in the process.

Now the charge was not entirely ineffective.  He was left handed so he was in a great position to make something happen on the left flank, and he did manage to leg a veteran fighter and take her out of the fight.  I do think, however, that the charge would have been more effective if the shield next to him would have moved in at the same time offering support.

In addition, the spear kill was only possible because of an earlier shot thrown at green's spear who then backed out behind his line in an effort to dodge.  I also think this would have been a great opportunity to jump the spear (that's me, again) but would require the two on green's right flank to support.  Also, had the green spear been more confident with his defense, he could have stayed on the front line keeping pressure on red's spear preventing him from getting a kill on the lefty shieldman.


Leroy Jenkins Charge 2

A beat after the first shield charged, a second one did the same, this time straight into a veteran shieldman.  This resulted in taking a leg shot from the long spear and and head shot from the shieldman.

You can see both charges in the gif below:

Gamble on the Long Spear that Works Out

At this point in the fight, what began as a 4v6 is now down to a 3.5v4.  The numbers advantage for green is dwindling.  When thinking about numbers advantages, in general you want to think about percentages.  So if a green fighter can sacrifice himself to take out a red fighter, the 6:4 advantage becomes 5:3.  Or rather, 50% more fighters becomes 67% more fighters.  If they can sacrifice a second fighter, it becomes 4:2 which is 100% more fighters.  This also works if you can successfully tie up a fighter by chasing them, getting them to follow you out of the fight, or by tying up their weapons.

What happens next in this fight is that the center green shield charges the long spear and the two fighters on green's right flank support by doubling up on the left handed shield on the red team.  The reason why I say this is a gamble is that it leaves their spear completely unprotected.  At this point he has one chance to survive and that is to take out red's right flank shieldman with a face thrust.  Fortunately for him, he landed the face thrust.  At that same moment, green's center shield killed the long spear giving green a 4v1.5 advantage.

I'd like to add that these three fighters moved together very well at this point.  Look at the timing of the charge in the gif below.  They did this by reading each other's body language rather than waiting for a commander to tell them what to do.  This comes with lots and lots of practice.

3v2 Timing Mistakes

Once the three fighters jumped red's left flank, they had a 3v2 fight for a very brief moment.  Initially they were set up perfectly with two shields on the flanks, the pole in the middle, and they had us surrounded in a kill pocket.  The left shieldman pressed hard on the spear to eliminate the range advantage.

My rule of thumb for the 3v2 is balancing out the following two factors:

1)  Play to your weapons' range strengths

2)  Win the 2v1, stall on the 1v1 if you don't have a range advantage (long or short) or significant skill advantage

The left shieldman did a great job by closing the distance on the long spear and going for the kill.  That leaves the other two fighters to decide if they are going to double up on red's shield, or stall the fight with one fighter while doubling up on the spear for a certain quick kill.

Unfortunately what happened was a timing issue.  The axe originally started fighting the shield and then shifted to the spear, reaching the spear after he'd already been killed.  At this point the right green shield found himself in a 1v1 against a better fighter.  He should have pulled back and gone full defense, but instead got killed in the exchange.  The axe may have been able to turn to get a quick kill on the occupied red shield but was slow to return from the engagement with the long spear.

Ultimately it was not a bad exchange.  They went from a 3v2 to a 2v1, which increased their advantage from 50% to 100% on this side of the field.

3v1 Bad Positions, Dragging the Fight in the Wrong Direction

At this point of the fight, the red shield did a great job of moving to try to into 1v1 situations.  The green spear moved into the fight, but he gained too much momentum and run into the red shield.

This is actually another common problem among newer melee fighters.  There is a level of controlled aggression that must be used to win small team melees.  Most fighter fight at 20% aggression or at 100% aggression.  Being too aggressive can cause one to get themselves into bad positions before their teammates can react.  (Again, for a great example of that controlled aggression, look up two gifs to see the three fighters moving together)

After the spear ran into the shield, he tried to back out of the fight, but in doing so, dragged the fight away from his teammates.  It would have been better to either wheel around back toward his teammates, or to attempt to tie up the shieldman in place.

Finishing the Battle

At this point the red shield had managed to kill the spear and leg the axe.  The red pole who had been legged in the beginning limped her way over to the fight, and now red has a large skill and experience advantage in an even number fight.  They finish off the remaining green fighters and end in victory with 1.5 fighters remaining.

Just before this happened, the green team had a hard time figuring out how to engage the red shield from behind.  I don't consider that a tactical mistake, but rather an area of individual skill to improve upon.

The Full Fight

Green Winning an Overwhelming Victory

Final thought in this post.  Green did very well on the day, winning about half of the fights.  I picked the fight above because it showed some very clear areas where the newer fighters could improve.  The following video shows an example where green kicked our butts!

Hope you enjoyed.  I look forward to this practice again next month!