The Echelon and the Approach with Different Levels of Fighters

One of the hardest things I've had to gain an understanding of is that no single approach will work for every group of fighters.  Different abilities call for different tactics.

I used to be a high school boys varsity basketball coach.  In the beginning I brushed up on my knowledge by reading 3-4 books on basketball strategy and was a bit surprised at the varying approaches with regard to different levels of play.    At the high school varsity level, we ran semi complicated plays.  "You stand here.  You go there.  When that guy gets to you, you move to that position.  Now pass him the ball."  etc.  I'd drill them over and over again so that when the game came, everyone knew what to do.  When dealing with 17 year old boys, all of the plays dictated specific coordinated movements by each player, with minimal improvisation allowed by the players.

When you work with 14 year olds, or younger, the plays are much simpler, because they can't handle the complicated plays.  As you get older, however, the plays get less and less rigid to the point when you reach the pro level there are very few actual plays, but rather simple guidelines that the players follow.  Being professionals, the team relies on the players to make judgement calls on the court as they see fit.


What's That Got to do With Fighting?

Certain tactics will always beat other tactics provided that the fighters can handle the level of the tactic that is being asked to employ.  The best fighters on the field know how to quickly read a situation, figure out when to engage and when to stall, can handle themselves out on their own, or know when they need to run and support a friend.  The worst fighters on the field only know how to respond to a person directly attacking them, can handle simple commands like "charge," can't be relied on to perform specific jobs (like hold the left flank), and will die quickly if they are caught on the field with no support.

In a nutshell, lower level melee fighters need to stick together, usually in a shield wall formation, and charge in whatever direction they are told to charge.  Higher level fighters can handle a more nuanced approach.  Below I will talk about these approaches and how they theoretically play out with more advanced and less advanced fighters.


Echelon

This is a form of a diagonal attack.  To be honest, this term was used by a friend I was fighting with today, and I have since looked it up and determined I didn't want to get bogged down with the technical definition of the word.  For this purpose I'm using it to describe a sort of attack directed toward one side, often in a diagonal fashion.

Today we discussed two approaches for this attack.  The first is what I would describe as something that can be utilized by more advanced fighters.  The leading flank of the attack goes fast and aggressive while the trailing flank of the attack merely has to deny the other side from attacking. They do this by attempting to stall the engagement, wheel away from the fighting, going on full defense, or using the feet to draw a bunch of fighters out.  This is what it may look like:

Notice that while green's right flank is attacking aggressively, the left flank is actually refusing to engage.  Why?  The right flank has a significant numbers and positional advantage.  The left flank, on the other hand, is in a very weak position.  If they also press, they are putting themselves in a very vulnerable position.   See below:

Notice how green completely gave up their advantage by having their left flank plow straight into the center of red's shield wall.  Here's another way to visualize the attack:

Every shield wall has a well defended front, with weakly defended flanks.  The goal is to attack the enemy's flanks while defending your own.

When the trailing flank focusses on stalling the engagement in a "deny" role, green is able to attack red's weak flank while keeping its own flanks protected.

If green presses with its entire front, then neither side ends up with a positional advantage.  Green has employed, at best, neutral tactics and hopes to win on skill and initiative alone.


Echelon With Newer Fighters

More advanced fighters should understand the nuances of an echelon charge with one flank on the attack and the other on a deny.  They also should have no problems with controlled aggression.  By controlled aggression, I mean being able to quickly decide when one needs to apply 100% pressure, and when one needs to pause to allow a friend to enter the fight, or to deny a position, etc.

These concepts are too complicated for newer fighters and can cause newer fighters to freeze up.  Getting aggression levels up and committing to the attack are often more important goals for these fighters.  Because of this, we often tell these fighters to "charge right" or "charge left" rather than to bother with the concept of a deny.  As a result, the diagram above represents the lesser of two evils when compared to a group that denies left without ever full committing to the right:

Here you can see red putting itself in a better position to win because of green's lack of commitment to either side.

Think of it this way.  Imagine red and green both as boxers.  Red's commitment is to attack with the right hand and defend with the left hand.  Green, on the other hand, commits only to defending with the left hand, but never commits to an attack with the right.  Its only a matter of time before red wears green down.  With newer fighters, you are basically teaching to just throw punches with both hands.  I don't think that this should be the ultimate goal, but it is likely the best approach if dealing with a group of fighters that all have less than three years of moderate experience.

Besides, if this group runs into an evenly matched situation (ie they encounter another unit with less than three years of experience), they stand a better chance of winning.


A Slightly More Advanced Approach to the Full Charge

Since I began writing this blog post, I had another conversation with a veteran fighter and experienced tactician.  He actually prefers the full charge rather than a press to one side and deny the other approach.  The reasoning is that you still get an advantage by seizing the initiative, and that the fight ends in a quicker fashion and allows you to move on to other parts of the battle.

The problem left, however, is how to deal with an exposed flank on the trailing side.  The answer is to bring fighters out of the back field to support (something that my unit did in last year's unbelted champions battle at Pennsic).

Summary

I've offered some different approaches to handling a small unit charge, though there are many more.  My unit, Anglesey, is a very experienced unit that is very spear heavy.  We tend to take a more fluid approach that involves spreading out and trying to break the fight down into smaller 2 on 1s and 3 on 2s, with the spears cleaning up.

Nevertheless, given the above approaches, I really prefer the first one that I laid out.  Not everyone will be able to master it on the day of the fight, but I really do think its a goal to work toward.  In our afternoon of fighting, it was the one approach that lead to our greatest degrees of success (75% of the unit still alive at the end of the battle).

Approach to Learning at Practice

I actually wanted to open this blog post with some thoughts about how we learn and how it applies to fighter practice.  I have two degrees, the first being in education.  I worked as a high school teacher for a few years, coached some seasons of track and field and basketball, and before this blog I actually used to blog on a triathlon website about how to train for distance running.

When I was early in my teaching career at the turn of the century, one of the things that my mentor's really focussed on was reducing the amount of time that I'd spend lecturing and increase the amount of time that the students are actively engaged in learning.  The old way of teaching was 80% lecture, 20% activity.  The new goal was 20%/80% (numbers reversed).  I carried this with me into my coaching of a high school varsity basketball team, with great success, and a decade later I took a professional class that focussed on training adults and many of the same concepts still applied.

Over the last 20 years I've been to many SCA practices, and the number one critique I've always had was that there was always far too much talking and not enough fighting.  As a fighter with an education background, this is something that I tend to notice.  I can pick up at exactly what point that enough "lecture" has occurred such that nothing more was being gained by the student........and anyone who knows me will tell you, I'M A TALKER!  Yeah.....I have to work to shut myself up as well when at practice.

Having said that, that was a real focus leading into yesterday's practice and we did our best to try and stay on top of keeping the time in helmet instruction to a minimum and focus more on getting repetitions in.  Its especially difficult when you have a lot of experienced fighters on the sidelines who really want to get involved and help.  Each thing said is helpful, but all of it combined while we have our helmets on is cutting into valuable practice time.


The Most Effective Method

If I might be so bold, I honestly believe that the best method of teaching in practice is to simply let them fight and get that experience.  Whatever happens happens, and the first couple of fights are going to be ugly.  While everyone is catching their breaths, you take those moments to make corrections and give guidance.  The goal simply cannot be perfection, but rather picking the largest fundamental errors that can be corrected with the least amount of effort (ie the low hanging fruit).

Now this doesn't mean that drills should be left out, or structure, or even lecture (which is why its 20/80 and not 0/100).

Interestingly, one of the sides at yesterday's practice was very open to suggestions while the other was not as interested in them.  That was largely the result of one team having a handle on what they were doing and wanting to make their own adjustments, while the other team really needed some extra sets of eyes to help them along.


The Set Up

As we had a number of people trying out for the unbelted team, it was requested that they work together on the same team, which seemed like a good idea.  One team consisted mostly of unbelted champion candidates, while the other team consisted of two knights, myself (I was an unbelted champion last year), and then a handful of less experienced fighters (including two that have done only a handful of melees).

The sides turned out to be relatively balanced, with the unbelted candidates having a significant, but not excessive advantage.

We ran 6 field battles before breaking, which gave us the chance to try out tactics, succeed or fail, and then make adjustments.  The unbelted side had the challenge of figuring out how to target key veteran fighters on our side, while also taking out the newer fighters.  Do they go straight for the knights?  Do they avoid them and go after the new guys?  Do they maintain unit cohesion and go after a side, or do they skirmish?  Go on the attack, or wait for mistakes to be made?

Our side offered a challenge simply because of the mix of experience.  Normally we'd fill in the newer fighters with the main unit, but the 3 veteran fighters typically act more in rogue fashion.  Speaking for myself, I tend to look for opportunities and don't do a great job of sticking with the unit.  IOW, I'm difficult for newer fighters to work with.

After the first few series of fights we lost both of our knights, leaving our side at a bigger disadvantage.  As a result, the unbelted candidates took it as an opportunity to work on different tactics.


Lessons Learned

We pretty much agreed that if we had done it all over again, we would have reshuffled the teams sooner.  Though it was nice for the unbelted candidates to get used to working together, they felt they would have found more value in fighting a relatively evenly built team.

The practice was, however, great for the newer fighters.  They each got in about 25 field battles, over which they got to make 25 small corrections along the way.  Sometimes they had to stick next to someone, sometimes they had to keep the shields tight, sometimes they had to charge, sometimes they got left out on their own, etc.

More importantly, what people forget that we get out of practice is training the "lizard brain."  I've had the opportunity over the last 2 years of trying a bunch of new weapon styles, and even got back into melee after a 10 year break.  Those first few times of doing anything are just a blur.  Everything moves so fast that your brain simply can't process it.  If a brand new fighter got nothing more out of this practice than simply getting used to seeing a bunch of fighters swarm around them over and over again, I would consider that a success!

The lizard brain is the part that acts quickly and instinctually.  Its controls the fight or flight mechanism.  When we fight these battles, we are trying to move from a mode where the brain is consciously trying to process everything, which it is too slow to do, to the point where everything is just instantly understood.


Taking the Initiative

Throughout the day the team I was on got better and better at moving and working together.   Our biggest successes came when our team took the initiative before the opponents could.  Our opponents were generally more successful, mainly because they had the experience and the confidence to seize the initiative before we did.

The main reason why this works is because both teams were normally looking to attack on some sort of oblique, which gives a quick numbers advantage to the attacking team.  The side which jumps on this first gets the first advantage.


Failing the Charge up the Middle - Being where They are Not

This is the only real tactic that I can remember that I thought was worth blogging about.  As a general rule, unless there is some obvious strategic advantage in doing so, I don't like to charge up the middle.  Some of our most successful fights were when the other team charged into the middle of our shield wall.

EDIT:  I neglected to mention that the green team did this as an experiment to see how our team would react, which I think was a great idea.  As you follow through the diagrams, you can see why none of us prefer this method.  Its nice, every now and then, to test out tactics which we believe to be less than perfect in order to verify the outcomes.

To be honest, as a pole arm fighter, I fight a lot on instinct.  One of the things I do, and what I do in a battle like this, is I read where the charge is going to hit.  If there's no threat coming at our right flank, I like to come out of the back field and look for opportunities to hit the enemy as they attempt to pass through.

What I'm also doing is an old Anglesey tactic of "not being where they want you to be."  If I had confidence that the shield wall would have held them up, I would have stayed in the back field.  However, I could see that they were going to punch though, so I moved into a better position.

I spoke with one of the opposing shields about that and he said he normally expects to get into the back field and then mop up the poles.  However, when he got there, I was gone.  At this point, two shields had punched through, and seeing no opportunities to their right, they turned left.  As they pivoted toward me, I dropped shots on their helmets.

Anyway, that was one thing that I accomplished on the day that I thought was interesting.  Even without that maneuver, you can see that the rest of the red shields have, more or less, created a funnel of death that green has to pass through.  Green did a great job of punching through, but in a game of attrition, what did this accomplish?

As I'd said, pretty much every other tactic that green employed on the day worked.  This was just a matter of experimenting with different approaches, and I thought this one worked out the worst for them and the best for us.


Last Interesting Note Regarding Pole/Spear Position

I used to do this years ago and had rediscovered it yesterday.  The position that the red pole (me) is in in the diagrams above is a great position to be in provided that the opposing side doesn't have a lefty shield on their left flank.  From here you get a lot of shots across the front of the unit, or at the back of their heads as they pass through with little threat to yourself.  Right handed shield men don't want to turn their open side to the front line to move over onto the flank to attack you, so the pole remains relatively safe.