Broken Field Rez Battles
The gym was about the size of a basketball court, give or take, and we broke it up with a "pond" outlined with a rope in the middle. Each side had three lives.
I don't have a whole lot of specific tactical advice that I can offer in a scenario like this, other than that there is a lot of value in practicing it. There are a lot of little nuances that involve a constant chess match that is in constant flow as people die, return from rez, press, retreat, press from the other channel, move a spear from one position to the next, etc. that can only be learned through experience.
Sir Ryu' of Ironskies was at this practice and we had many conversations during and after the fighting about overarching philosophies involving tactics. You can only focus so much on specifics, but I find that they breakdown when your situation no longer presents itself in the ideal hypothetical that your specific tactical rules were built around.
Consider the scenario above. Should you use triads built of two shields and a pole/spear? The green team only has two shields. What do you do with the other four fighters? Both teams have seven fighters. You can't divide seven by three. What if you had six fighters and two just died? What if you have your triad and two come back from rez? What if your fundamental approach is five fighters, then what?
That's not to say that there's anything wrong with these approaches, but that they will ultimately breakdown at some point, and a battle like this is a very fast, constantly changing flow of situations that can only be learned through experience.
A few things we learned from this scenario:
- Longer weapons gain more and more advantage with more and more lives. The side with more shields tended to get an early advantage with an early charge, but as the battle wore on, the longer weapons racked up more kills.
- Keeping track of fighters coming through the other gap and into the backfield was an issue for a lot of fighters and something worth improving through practice.
- We had some issues with engaging from behind once pushing through a gap. Again, something worth improving through practice.
The only lesson I can really give other than to practice this scenario often is to consider weapon choices when fighting these types of battles.
Single Death Field Battles
We fought four of these with 12 fighters, and then a few more smaller ones. Our first two was a unit of five Anglesey members with 1-3 years of experience against a mixed group of seven fighters consisting of three new fighters and four super veterans. After the team of seven won twice, I moved over to the Anglesey team and we took one fight and lost one.
There were a few things that jumped out at me in these battles.
In one of the early scenarios the Anglesey team had two spears next to each other on the flank. This is almost always a bad idea. We were a bit slow about moving in on them, and they did manage to kill a new fighter before we could press, but once Vashir knocked one of the spears out of the way and began to move in, I knocked the other one out of the way and followed. With them pressed up against the edge of the room, they had nowhere to escape and we managed to kill them fairly quickly. I wasn't able to watch our right flank, but it appeared that they responded pretty quickly to our move, or possible pressed at the same time.
I could be wrong, but my gut feeling tells me that our younger spears need to be more actively engaged in the fight. By this, I mean simply throwing a lot more shots. I don't personally do this, and neither does our other super veteran spearman Steiner Von Breitenborn (aka Kelly). We tend to be more calculated with our shots than what I'd recommend that the newer guys do, but I think we have good reason for that. a) We can find more opportunities to land something because of better being able to identify openings and better accuracy but also, b) we're old and have to manage our energy a little more.
I personally like to see younger fighters throwing a lot more because it keeps the other side occupied and can open up shots for some of the veteran fighters. So where as an old fighter might want to only throw if he's got a greater than 50% chance of killing, I think a younger fighter might be better served if he just threw shots to force fighters to have to defend. Or another way to say it, if you can't find something to throw at every 3-6 seconds in a battle that will last under a minute, then you need to just throw at something.
Finally, our last battle was lost ("our" being the Anglesey team after I joined) because Sir Ryu initiated a successful charge on our left flank that we did not respond well to. We talked about this afterward and I pointed out that charges are often good ways to win an engagement, but they must be done intelligently. Charges don't guarantee victory, but they do guarantee a quick end to the engagement, so if you are going to charge, make sure its winnable.
Given the specifics of that scenario, they way I typically like to deal with a charge like this is to roll away from it and press hard on the other side. Imagine the chargers being a bull and your unit rolling out like a matador. If they can pull this off (provided there's no banner behind them to defend), they are in a better position. If they freeze, they get rolled over and die.
Needless to say, we failed to do this and, instead, got pressed into the corner and died.
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