Joint Kingdom Melee Practice (Atlantia/East)

 We had a fantastic practice this weekend!  I fought until I could no longer hold up my spear.  I had to repeatedly stand up at dinner because my body kept cramping up.  Lots of positive feedback.  We're hoping to do this again in the spring.

What was this?

Lady Teagan of Anglesey and Master Alric the Mad had been working on a plan for quite some time to put together a cross kingdom practice in the Baltimore, MD area in order to bring together different groups of people to test each other's mettle against.  They let me and Sir Arundoor of Anglesey run the scenarios and lead the feedback sessions, with THL Ozwin (sp?) stepping on to marshal the last scenarios.


The Format

1)  Bring everyone together for a SHORT discussion about the format for the day.

2)  Run a short scenario.  Give both sides a chance to work out among themselves what did and didn't work, make changes, and then run the scenario again.  Offer short, simple observations but don't stop and lecture.  Give them a chance to figure it out on their own.

3)  Once everyone is tired, give them a break.  Bring everyone together to talk about big ideas, lessons learned, etc.  Let the fighters give feedback, but keep it short.

4)  Repeat steps 2 & 3 until the fighters are out of gas for the day.  

5)  Give people a chance to do some singles fighting, or work on some specific skills.

6)  Bring everyone in for one last talk where each person gets their chance to say what they liked about the day, and what they thought could be improved.  This really makes everyone feel a sense of ownership of the practice, while giving the people who run the practices some good feedback.  


The Scenarios


1)

2)

3)

Variations on a Theme

Before I get into the details, I want to talk about how different each of these scenarios were despite looking very similar on the surface.

1)  Need for an immediate plan.  Quick execution.  Even quicker reform and reengagement.

2)  Pacing and timing.  Learning how to take and hold ground.  Watching and protecting the flanks.  

3)  Even more pacing.  Making smart, low risk decisions.  Using terrain to establish kill pockets.  Drawing the enemy toward your own resurrection point.

Throughout the day, we went from short, fast battles, toward longer battles.  The length of each fight went from ~45 seconds in the first scenario, to 90+ seconds in the second scenario, to 5 or more minutes in the third scenario.  Throughout the day, the trend went from more immediate action toward more pacing and need for constant communication.  

Scenario 1

When I say there is a need for quick execution, this does NOT mean "charge right into the enemy."  Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't, and the whole point of this exercise is to be able to identify the differences.  

In a nutshell, each team had three channels to cover.

At lay on, each team would normally send a number of fighters through each channel which would result in some combination of numbers, skill, and weapon type.  This would normally lead to some sort of mismatch in one or more of the channels.  Within a given engagement, the team that has the advantage would need to identify that advantage and capitalize on it (attack), while the team that was at a disadvantage would need to "slow the bleeding" as much as possible (deny).  

Examples of mismatches

Once an engagement was won, it was critical for those who survived to reform and move on to the next engagement.  

Reforming after first engagement

Notes on reforming:  Reforms must be done as quickly as possible.  The number of survivors will determine how long it should take to reform.  The two biggest mistakes I often see are fighters who move so quickly to the next engagement that they leave all of their teammates behind, and fighters who take way too long to reform.  Generally speaking, small numbers (2-5 fighters) should be able to reform and run to the next engagement almost instantly.  Large numbers (10, 20, 40 fighters, etc.) will need a slower, more concerted effort to pull the survivors together before finding a direction in which to move together.

Notes on speed to first engagement:  Most fighters over estimate the need to sprint into a fight.  More often than not, a slow walk is all that is needed.  Having said that, why didn't either team wait at their rez point and form kill pockets at the choke points, instead of rushing right into the fight?

Because of the curved shape of this field, it was pretty important for both teams to quickly get to the flanks.  It is usually better to have a front line that is enveloping your enemy, than to have them enveloping you.  Even when taking into account the disadvantages of fighting in kill pockets, it's often better to be in a position to see the whole battle, than to have fighting happening outside of your field of vision.

Scenario 2

Because the control point was going to be scored at 90 seconds, there was no need to rush right into the fight and kill people.  In these kinds of fights, the team with better spears does a good job of slowly taking ground, but a not so good job of holding ground.  The team with the better shields tends to be able to take ground whenever they want, provided that their charges are coordinated, but they only have so much gas in their tank.  They can't charge for 90 seconds straight without resting.

Both teams were able to figure out how to look for opportunities to take control of the middle of the field.  They were also good at looking for flanking opportunities, but not good at defending against flankers.  Often times people were getting into their backfields because no one was watching the flank, nor communicating to their teams about any weaknesses they may have spotted.

By this point in the day, both teams had worked out most of their communication problems and were able to get a good feel for where the strengths and weaknesses were on both sides.  The lack of flanking awareness was the only real soft spot in this scenario that I saw.


Scenario 3

In these 3-life rez battles, being efficient with your killing is critical.  The pace of the fight tends to be slow, with each team looking to take advantage of forming kill pockets at the choke points.  They are also both looking for mismatches, which normally result in either a superiority is spear numbers and skill (get to work, spears!), or a soft spot in the line where there is a lack of shield or pole support that can be exploited by charging shields.  If a shield can break through the line and into the backfield, they may be able to score 3-4 kills before either dying or returning to their side.

One of the key pieces of these battles that one of the Atlantian knights felt their team failed at in the first run through of this scenario was the value of drawing the fight toward your own resurrection point.  When close to your rez point, each death is replenished quickly because of the short walk, while each opponent's death is replenished slowly.

If you ever find your unit overwhelmed, simply back the fight up toward your rez point to help replenish your numbers more quickly.

Why not refuse to fight beyond your rez point?

The problem with this tactic is that it makes it obvious to the other team that this what you are doing, and then they refuse falling into the trap.  The following situation is likely to occur.

If you are familiar with singles fighting, imagine a fighter who keeps backing away from you every time you go to attack.  It becomes pretty clear that that fighter wants you to over commit so that they can counter attack.  If it becomes too obvious that that is their plan, then you can employ the same tactics.

At this point one of two things happens.  Either you both learn that you need to be a little more subtle about baiting your opponent (for example, you might throw a quick, safe shot to bait them into committing), or the marshals step in and explain that you need take a more chivalrous approach toward your fighting ("hey, you two are holding up the whole tournament!").

So, in a nutshell, if your opponent is completely willing to walk into the choke points and fight near your rez, then let them do that.  Just because the opponent SHOULD figure out the obvious solution, doesn't always mean that they will.  Otherwise, figure out how to make sure that good fighting is occurring, while keeping in mind that you can still back out of a bad situation.

2v1 Drills

These never happened.

I had planned on starting off the day with some 2v1 drills and teach newer fighters how to surround a single fighter, but a lot of fighters showed up early and, before I got my armor on, 15 people were ready to fight, and they were mostly veterans.

Teagan and Arundoor made the call to just get the scenarios started.  There's nothing worse than slowing up a large group of veteran fighters by having them stand in line to watch a bunch of people work on some skills that most people already have developed.

THE most critical goal of any practice is to make sure people want to return to the next one.


See You at the Next One!

Overall the feedback for this was pretty positive.  People felt that the biggest improvements on the day was an increase in on field communication.  

We're hoping to do another one in the spring.

-Sir Bari of Anglesey

River War - Weapons Mix, Melee IQ, and the Need for More than One Shield

 Last weekend Sir Sterling hosted his annual River War in South Jersey.  I believe roughly 25 heavy fighters participated with Sir Rory doing a fine job of running the heavy activities with the help of a few others.

Bear Pit Tourney

I've always been critical of mixing melees and tourneys in the same day because what ends up happening is that one often ends up from detracting from the other.  A bear pit tourney seemed like a great way to warm up, make sure everyone got in a lot of good fights, give the duelers a chance to show their skills and meet up with people from other regions, and to do it all without taking up a whole lot of time.

In 30 minutes everyone managed to get in somewhere between 10 and 20 fights.  We had four pits running.  Loser got a point, winner scored 2.  The fighter with the most points won the tourney. 

Capture the Flag Resurrection Battles

In one set of scenarios we needed to capture a flag in the middle of the field, and then move that flag to a "goal" (traffic cone) in the field to win.  Both teams had resurrection points away from the goal.

This is a pretty common scenario which usually looks like this:

This weekend had an interesting twist.  Instead of a resurrection point, an entire side of the field was a resurrection line.

In this scenario, both sides began at their resurrection points with the flag in the middle of the field.  Our team figured out two fundamental tactics to this battle.  

1)  A quick way to lose is to let the other team grab the flag and run right to the goal, so we needed to make sure that a number of us lined up near their goal to protect it.

2)  When you grab the flag, stay to the side of the field where your resurrection line is, as that is where your fighters respawn, while their fighters will have a much further distance to travel and return from the resurrection point (note the "sweeps left" comment in the picture above).

Some more thoughts about this scenario.  One of the fighters described it as a "soccer game," meaning that it favored mobile fighters with foot speed and endurance.  The field was big, and our fighters were sort of spread out in a skirmish.

The way this played out seemed to favor spears and fighters who knew how to skirmish together.  If we had a little more experience with this scenario, I feel like the blue team would have figured out that once they grab the flag, instead of moving straight toward the goal, they should move directly to their rez line.  Then move the flag down the field and set up a coordinated push with the shields.  They also had a couple of pole fighters who could have swapped out and grabbed shields.  I imagine this tactic looking a little like this:

Shields as Hunters vs Shields in a Wall

The latter is when the shields group up together as they are in the above picture, moving as a single block of fighters.  The latter is when a shield fighter goes off on their own, hunting down mismatches (ie killing archers and spears, lower level fighters, or 2v1 opportunities).  While we often teach people to stray away from hunter style fighting, there's really nothing wrong with it when done appropriately.  When facing a unit with 50% spears spread out across the field, a hunter or two would not be a bad idea.  For the orange team, however, all five spears were very mobile and had a great sense of field awareness, so hunting them down would be a lot more difficult.

I'd also like to point out, for those that are fans of the shield wall approach, that may work when your team has the flag.  When the other team has the flag, however, you really have no choice but to spread out and cover the whole field (much like a soccer team, rugby team, football during kick offs, etc.).  Bunching your fighters together provides more channels for the flag carrier to run toward the goal.

Several fighters had asked about forming triads.  Again, while it may be a good tactic for large scale battles, or even smaller scale single death field battles (I worked with one at Pennsic in a 10v10 fight that was great), the problem here is that they get broken up pretty quickly and the person returning from the resurrection point needs to get back into the fight where a fighter is needed (attacking a flag, defending their fighter with the flag, defending a goal, getting a quick kill opportunity, etc.) rather than to find their triad partners.

Resurrect in Groups, or Return Immediately?

Some people are fans of resurrecting in groups.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  One being that single fighters are easy to kill and a lot of less experienced fighters don't know how to avoid threats that they can't handle.  Walking out of the resurrection point in a group of three is much safer.  The other is that we really want to foster this idea of working as a team instead of as an individual in a melee.  A lot of less experienced fighters get caught up in picking out singles fights in the middle of a melee rather than to look for tactical advantages.

The problem is in a scenario like the one laid out this weekend, you really can't afford to let fighters hang out at the resurrection point when simply having warm bodies on the field is so critical.

Broken Field Resurrection Battles
    -Shield Team vs Spear Team

These have become a real staple in our region, especially for melees with 10-20 total fighters.  It's a really great way to work on so many aspects of melee fighting.  Teams were 9v8 with a shield heavy team (5 shields, 2 spears, a 2 weapon fighter, and an archer) and a shield light team (1 shield, 3 spears, 3 poles, and an archer).  Each fighter had three lives.  

Note:  I've been to so many practices where they attempt to make sure that both teams have the same weapons mix and similar talent levels.  Personally I prefer to have different mixes provided that the fights are competitive, as this allows both sides to identify each others strengths and weaknesses and apply tactics appropriately.  

Note:  archers could not fire over the field obstacles.

Given the layout above, victory was completely at the hands of the blue team.  If they allow themselves to get disorganized, or stand around and let the orange spears get to work, they lose.  If they charge in organized fashion, they win.  They did the latter, and won quite easily.  They'd pick a choke point on one of the flanks, bunch up 3-4 shields together, and run down the spears.  Once they cleared the spears out, they'd call a reform and pull themselves back to the choke point.  With only one shield on the orange team, they had nothing to slow down the shield mob.

After losing badly, the orange team switched out one of its poles for a shield (technically a spear went to a shield, and a pole went to a spear).  Just having a second shield on the field allowed the orange to team to manage both flanks well enough to slow the blue team down and allow the spears to go to work.

Remember, when shields assess the field, spears kill.  When shields rest, spears kill.  When shields reform, spears kill.  When shields attack someone else, spears kill.

Spears can't win a fight all by themselves as the shields will just run them over.  But if you can have enough support to slow the shields down, you have a chance to survive and win.  My experience tells me that, at a minimum, you must secure both flanks with at least one solid shield fighter in these small battles.

Hope you enjoyed reading!
-Sir Bari of Anglesey, East Kingdom