Southern Army Practice: A Few Thoughts

Just finished our first practice of the year and came away with a few thoughts.


What to do in a 4 on 1

We started off the day doing 3 on 3s and eventually graduated to 5 on 5s.  The team that I was on managed to get ourselves into a 4 on 1 situation after some people died in a 5 on 5.

The 1 we were facing was Sterling, who in a 1 on 1 situation could easily kill anyone of us over 90% of the time.  What he wants to do is to get people to fight him one at a time.

Now you might think, "Who cares?  You've got four fighters.  At least one of you should be able to land the kill."  Yeah, you might think that.  In fact, I would normally be inclined to think that as well if it wasn't for the fact that I've actually seen 1 fighter take out four before, on several occasions.  And I'm not just talking about amazing super dukes.  I've seen guys with three years of experience take out four fighters before, because the four fighters did exactly what they shouldn't have done.

So today Sterling danced around and made a few plays until he could find someone that he could sucker into taking him on.  On our far left was one of my guys, a relatively new guy with a lot of spirit, Tacitus.  Sterling started to move at him, and Tacitus accepted the challenge forgetting that we had three other fighters on our side.

After calling him to back off, we reset and faced Sterling.  We had two shields (the lefty set up on the left flank and the righty set up on the right, as they should), a pole, and a spear.  The correct play here was to go at Sterling with the spear and pole, and use the shields to hang back and only step up if Sterling pressed.  From here its actually impossible for him to get any of us into a 1 on 1 fight.

Now, a big piece driving this tactic is that the most experienced person on the 4 team is the spear, and the two fighters on the left have ~1 year of experience.  Had they been more experienced, I'd be more inclined to have them force the situation in the 4th frame above by moving out on Sterling and trying to corral him into a kill pocket.  

Leg 'em and Leave 'em

I saw too often people were beating on a guy who was on his knees while the battle had not yet been decided.  Just as important as "leg 'em and leave 'em" is for everyone else to take responsibility to yell, "Leave him!!!!"

Having said that, I feel I should point out that I did just that only to be hit in the arm by the legged fighter as we were leaving him.  My bad!  So...uh....make sure you defend yourself when leaving them.  =)


Don't Get Outflanked

Again, controlling the flanks is the key to victory.  In one of our battles, the other team moved out much faster on our left flank than they had been doing all day, and it threw us off of our game.  As a result, our left unit curled back, which put red in a great position to fight from.

In this situation, green team really needs to try hard to either slide out left, or to roll people out of the back field to contain that flank (thanks to Rory for pointing this out).

Definitely looking forward to more fighting now that its gotten warmer.  Later!