Orcs and Goblins

This is a post that I've been holding onto for quite a while that I somewhat affectionately wanted to call "Simon's Command."  It's based off of a series of small field battles that we had at an EK Southern Army practice last Spring.

I ended up changing the title to "Orcs and Goblins" because I think this often describes the mix of fighters that we have to work with.  This isn't to say that certain fighters are big, beastly orcs and others are puny little goblins, but rather that any group is going to consist of a variety of ability levels and that one of the better tactical approaches is to be able to adjust your strategy to the array of talents that you have.


The Setup

We fought a handful of open field battles with roughly 15-16 people per side.  The other team did exactly what was expected, because its what everyone does.  They lined up with a big shield wall and put their pole arms in the back.  Simon was put in charge of our side and decided to go with a "hammer and anvil" strategy.  By this, I simply mean that we had a strong unit take the shield wall head on, with a second group of people to wrap around on the flank.

As he started picking up people on his team, he began putting them into positions that suited their talents well.  He built up a shield wall of about 6 veteran fighters, put a veteran left handed pole arm on the left side of the wall, a right handed pole arm on the right side of the wall (that was me), three mobile melee savvy knights off to our right, and then filled in the back of the shield wall with a few remaining poles.

The plan was to hit the middle of their wall with our wall while a small group of elite troops swung around the right flank.  The result was pretty successful.  The shield wall stayed in tact and our left pole arm was able to stave off or slow down any attempts to get around our left flank.  I moved into the gap between our shield wall in order to secure our right side, while our knights rolled around the flank and into the back field.  We won our first two battles very decisively.

A point to reiterate throughout this blog:  controlling the flanks is a main key to winning melee battles.

Above is the initial lineup with the "key melee veterans" circled (three knights and two unbelt melee champions).

The red team stayed together and moved to hit green's left flank.

Green protected their left flank while sending 4 skirmishers around the right flank.  Three knights went fast and wide picking apart whatever was in their path while I (the 4th fighter in) filled the gap in order to hold off a potential breakthrough on our right flank.

Our side one decisively with this plan twice in a row.  One of the knights on our side thought it was a bad plan and that a better plan would be for all of us to stick together and move in the same direction rather than to divide our forces.  I disagree (though admittedly, I was not savvy enough to pick up on the strength of Simon's strategy at the time).


Pro's and Con's of a Shield Wall

A shield wall is effective for essentially four purposes:

1)  Taking an objective that is directly in front on them (like capturing a flag, breaking through a gate, etc.)

2)  Defending an objective that is directly behind them.

3)  Quickly killing a loose collection of troops who don't know how fight in an open field without being in a wall.

4)  Giving your troops a simple structure to keep them from becoming a loose collection of troops who don't know how to fight in an open field.

The downsides to shield walls is that they maneuver very slowly making them easy to get out flanked (they are also easy to avoid frontal engagement with), and they limit the effectiveness of high end melee fighters by limiting their ability to out position the opponent.

In the scenario above, Simon took the best of both worlds.  Those who fought better in a wall were put in the wall.  Those who were more effective skirmishing out on the flank were put out on the flank.  In each battle, green's wall hit red's wall.  If this was a game of rock, paper, scissors, both sides through rock, giving neither the advantage.  While red had all of its fighters tied up in the same spot, waiting for the walls to break down, green had five of its most effective fighters freed up to wrap around the flanks.


The Third Battle

Taking the advice of the knight, Simon changed the plan to everyone sticking together and moving left.  We lost with about 8 red fighters still alive.  The comment was that we "did better" because we "stuck together."  Though I agree that for novice fighters, sticking together might be the more important goal, I think that often times SCA groups limit their effectiveness by not recognizing some of the potential that they have within their units to fight outside of the shield wall paradigm.  A shield wall is the best way to fight for some fighters, but I don't think it should be the end goal for most fighters.