Aethelmearc War Practice: Filling the Gap, Adapting to a Fallen Flank

This is my second post about last week's war practice and this one will focus on two tactical scenarios within the field battles.  The layout was essentially one large single death field battle with ~100 on a side.


Filling the Gap

We fought with the Tuchux and the other non-Aethelmearc groups.  Anglesey and Galatia brought with us 5 spears (four with 6-30 years experience), a veteran pole arm, a veteran shield, and two new shieldmen (one with ~18 months experience, the other at her second event).  We also had a newish archer.

Now it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out what our capabilities are.  If we could find a static place in the battle we were deadly, and had just enough back up to keep the bad guys off os us.  However, if a fresh unit wished to dedicate a charge at us, there was nothing we could do to stop it.

As a result I wanted us to form up behind a large unit near a gap.  The larger unit would protect us, but the gap would be a nice place to shoot out and find some good killing opportunities.

When we initially lined up, the Tuchux were to our right, and a large unit (I believe it was a combination of Cloven Shield, the Mid, and maybe another group) formed up on our left.  Before the battle began, our guys were meandering about on the front line between the two groups.  It was a struggle to motivate them off of the front line as I had to make it clear that I didn't want the two main units to think that we were going to plug that gap.  They needed to know that there was a hole there, because we sure as hell were not going to stop a shield wall coming at us.  Had we moved forward with the main units and saw such a unit come at us, we would have had no choice but to pull out, leaving a hole that they weren't expecting, and possibly leading to a bad field position.

As each battle began and the two sides engaged, we pretty much pushed into that gap looking to exploit a flank or a bad position for the enemy. Last year I saw this many times, however they seemed better prepared this year.  We always seemed to be up against some of the best spears that Aethelmearc had to offer and if I remember correctly, the results were fairly close each time.  We never really crushed through that gap, but we never really lost it either.


Adapting to a Fallen Flank

I don't consider myself to be a great field commander.  I'm pretty good if I know what to do ahead of time, but if I'm given a situation that I'm unfamiliar with, I don't come up with ideas quickly.  A fallen flank, however, if a scenario that I've seen plenty of times and one that I think I'm pretty good at adapting to.

Consider the following diagram:

Here you can see that our left flank is collapsing.  This actually happened several times that weekend, and I'm not really sure why.  I'm a strong proponent of controlling the flanks before anything else.  Maybe the scenario was set up intentionally (it was a practice, after all).  Maybe they just couldn't muster up enough strength to hold that position.  Maybe it was bad tactics.  Either way, our flank kept dropping.

Now I'm not in charge of that flank, but I do have influence over my own group.  In this situation, we really only have four options:

1)  Keep fighting as usual - this is the worst of the four as it would lead us to getting surrounded and dying quickly.

2)  Make a hard push through the people we are facing (we did this in a similar scenario at last Pennsic's field battle).  This is generally the best option IF we can overpower our opponent and come out the other side with minimal casualties.  This was not the case.

3)  Pull out and move left - this attempts to reposition our unit to stop or slow the collapsing flank.

4)  Pull out and move right - this is ideally done either when the left flank is a lost cause, or if there is a small unit to the right that can be quickly taken out once we've moved over there.  In this case its a tradeoff;  give up the left flank for a good position on the right.

In each case at the war practice we did not overpower the fighters in our position, and there was no opportunity to our right (we would have been running into the backs of Tuchux), so we pulled out and moved left to slow that flank.

Slowing a Fallen Flank

I once said, "If you are going to die, then die slowly," to which my friend laughed as if what I was saying was ridiculous.  Not at all.  You don't do anyone any good charging into a death trap only to take yourself out of the fight.  If they have you beat, retreat, draw them our of the fight, or stall.

The video below is a good example.  At the 1:00 mark you can see our left flank completely fall, but then slow a bit.  This was the point where we redeployed to cover that flank.  By 2:00 you can see that the enter battle has rotated 180 degrees with our left falling, but the Tuchux pushing through on our right.

I first appear on the left half of the screen at 2:41.  You can see me and a small group of fighters stalling the fight for about 2 minutes.  We almost won the battle by giving the Tuchux some time to finish up their fight.  We actually ended up doing a full lap around the battle field trying to slow this group up, getting a kill here and a kill there along the way.

Aethelmearc War Practice: Ten Man Tourney

Unfortunately I don't have any big picture ideas like I did last year.  We had a lot of new people with us, which is something I'm not used to, and so much of my attention was directed at how to help them and how to come up with tactics that would work with them as well as how to communicate them.

To put it in perspective, last Pennsic we brought 18 fighters with an average experience level of 15 years.  Only 5 fighters had less than 8 years of experience.  This weekend, on the other hand, 5 of our 9 fighters were very new (~1 year of experience or less....two of them were at their second event).


The Ten Man Tourney

In the middle of the tourney the knight running it asked, "Hey, are you the guy that writes that fighting blog?"  I smiled and said, "Yes, but please don't judge anything I wrote by what you see today!"  We did not make a good showing in this tourney, but it was a great experience and I really learned a lot.

Before I get into tactics, I'd like to quote one of our spear maidens who fought with us in this tourney.  "Fighting in a 10 man tourney requires a completely different skill set than fighting in a 150 person battle."  She's a 5'1" spear fighter who probably doesn't weigh much over 100 lbs.  Her skills allow her to use her size to go unnoticed and poke people in the face in larger battles when they don't expect it.  If she gets into trouble, she can turn and run and usually find someone to use as an obstacle for defense.  In larger battles, one can disengage from one position and go and join up with 20 fighters in another position.

None of that applies to a 10 man tourney.  There's no way to go unnoticed.  There's nowhere to hide.  There's no other unit to run to.  In addition, as my fellow kinsman Seamus, who has fought in many of these tourneys put it, "Its much closer to ACL type fighting."  Fighters tend to be big and strong and they take a hard, decisive hit to get killed.  This places spears and smaller fighters at a distinct disadvantage.

Bringing a bad weapons mix, new fighters, and people we'd never fought with before, it was a real challenge, so we had to adjust our tactics in order to try to find something that could work.


At First

Our first approach was to use our standard system, which is to lead out with the spears and leave the shields back to support.  If the opponent is slow to the attack, we might get a kill or two before the first impact.  I also took it upon myself, being fleet of foot, to run into the backfield and hope to pull at least two fighters off the line.

This went poorly.  We lost the first two battles killing only 4-5 fighters on the other team.  I sat out the third battle and discovered what was happening.  We were spreading wide, as we normally do, and our opponent would send a large crew at one section and wipe them out.  This is actually an example of why the shield wall often beats the skirmish formation.  They amass a group of fighters and send it straight at a smaller group.  The problem was that the fighters who were not being engaged did not react.


The Adjustments

In the last three battles I gave my job up to a fast new fighter and moved myself to the middle of our backfield so that I can watch the battle unfold and call out commands (Badger was thinking something similar).  The commands were pretty simple.  We'd split into two, go wide, and I'd yell at which ever group had the advantage to attack.  I'd then run to wherever I thought I could help.

We started having a lot more success at this point, getting 6-7 kills on our opponents, and even winning our last battle (yay us!).  Adding our two experienced late arrivals helped as well.

These changes accomplished a few things.  It got our stronger side engaged when needed, it allowed someone on the field to watch the battle unfold, and it made better use of my fast footed skills.  I was able to run into a fight unopposed, often getting kills on fighters who were tied up.  In my earlier role, I'd often find myself in a one on one situation, which just took me out of the fight.  This was bad on my part being one of the most experienced fighters on our team.  

Making the Most of What You've Got

I'm guessing that many will read this and think that the tactic shown above is just stupid.  Hmmm....it might be.  Why not just block together into a shield wall and hit the opponent on an oblique?  With spears, new fighters, lightweight fighters, and the fact that we don't ever fight that way, I saw that as playing rock, paper, scissors, and attempting to win by throwing a much smaller rock than what the other team was going to throw.  Why not switch out the spears?  That wasn't really an option, either.  Two of us already did, but the rest had one reason or another why they just couldn't grab a different weapon (like one fighter had a bad back.  Another was only authorized in spear, archery, and siege.  etc.)

So we did the best that we thought we could with what we had.  Ultimately any unit is going to have to make the same kind of decision.  What do you have, and what's your highest percentage play?  I'm a big advocate of utilizing spears in large melees, but if your unit is full of 280 lb sword and board fighters, different tactics would be in your best interest.

If anyone reading has any suggestions for other tactics we could have tried, I'd love to read them!

Southern Army Practice: Rock, Paper, Bigger Rock

I'm winding down before bed and wanted to jot a few of these thoughts down.  First and foremost I'd like to state that I learn a lot from a whole lot of people all the time.  This blog really is about sharing information about melee fighting, getting the conversation going, and getting people thinking more and more about melee.  Some of its about helping me express my own thoughts in a way that helps me get a better grasp of these ideas.  Some of its about challenging standard conventions that I think can be improved upon.  Its certainly not, I hope, about me telling anyone who may be out there what the "right" way is and that everyone else is doing it "wrong."


Today's Scenarios

Due to weather and coming off of a big event (crown was yesterday), we were a little light today.  30 fighters in total, which included four knights, six former unbelted champions, three former alternates, two archers, my own incognito "ringer"(an Anglesey Kinsman down from NY), and a bunch of well practiced fighters of various levels.

Off the top of my head, we fought five open field battles, a bunch of fort battles, a few bridge battles, and a scaled down version of the Allied Champions battle.


General Observations

I just wanted to added this quick note.  Fighters at this practice, even the best, have had the bad habit of fighting legged fighters.  I was happy to see that there was very little of this this time.  The next thing we need to work on is the habit of just running and attacking anything we see.  Once the battles break up, they are not won with 1on1s and 2on2s. They are won with 2on1s and 3on2s.


Big Rock vs Big Paper

Duke Brennan and the unbelt captains were offering a lot of guidance, most of which I thought was pretty good.  They are very big on being aggressive, sticking together, and taking the initiative to win the battle.  The title above is rock, paper, bigger rock because, at least in the southern region, it seems that the strategy is usually to win with a bigger rock.  There's nothing wrong with this approach, as the Anglesey and Bog approach is often to try to win with a bigger sheet of paper, and we found out today that sometimes our big paper was too much for them, and sometimes their big rock would just punch right through our paper.

In a nut shell, sticking with this metaphor, a big rock is a bunch of powerful shieldmen backed up with some hard hitting pole arms that just plows over people.  The approach is to roll over weaker opponents, punch through gaps, and break through doorways.  If you have a unit with a lot of shields and a lot of big guys, this is probably your best approach.  To pull this approach off, the unit needs to be aggressive, take the initiative, and work together.  Like anything, there's a skill to it that one learns over time.

Paper, on the other hand, brings a lot of well practiced spears, mobility, and flexibility to the unit.  Battles are won by picking apart the opponent with spears, breaking up their main units into chaos, and then winning a bunch of smaller 2 on 1 fights.  If rock charges, bigger rock will counter charge.  Paper, on the other hand, will absorb the charge and draw them into a kill pocket.  Again, the victor largely depends on who is better equipped to pull of their unit's best tactic.

Below you can see an example of how the team on the right used the bigger rock tactic to beat our side (this was after Duke Brennan told them to adapt their strategy):

The two spears on the left team (my friend and I ) used a tactic that normally works will with Anglesey and The Bog, which is to get out in front of the unit, attack early, and then retreat when the opposition advances.  It actually initially worked.  He got a quick kill before the lines engaged, we forced them to charge way out in front of our main unit, and got them to break up as they  approached our unit.  The charge actually began about 25 feet out when they would normally be called closer to 10 - 15 feet away.  You can actually see some of the faster guys get out ahead of their unit.

What ended up going wrong for us and well for the other side is that you can see our main unit moving backward as our spears retreated.  That allowed the other side to get us on our heals and overwhelm us with their initiative.  What is supposed to happen is that as the spears retreat, the rest of the unit is supposed to step up and counter.  I believe our retreat sent them the wrong message and they reacted to us.  One of the things that Sir Thorson has been teaching me down here is that certain tactics are hard to pull off when you are working with a mixed group with mixed levels of experience.  Its a lot easier to get a group to work together and move in the same direction than it is to understand the when/where/what/how's of how to move in different directions to achieve a common goal.

Though the above is an example of the success of the big rock approach and might lead one to believe that spears are ineffective in small field battles (I've found this to be a fairly common belief), the side with two spears actually won the other four battles, and the two spears accounted for (at least in the three battles that were videoed) over half of its team's kills (~6 per battle).


Spear in the Gap

In the field battles, we had a main unit on the left with a smaller flanking unit on the right.  All of the shields were up front in a wall formation.  The poles and spears (3 poles, 2 spears) started off in the back and left to support and improvise.  This was decided by our team captain.  I asked one pole to follow me (I had spear) and protect me if anyone tried to jump me.

In general I looked for parts of the units that had the least mobile fighters in them so that I could start off the battle taking free shots on them without too much risk.  After each battle, the other side made a small adjustment, and I'd move to another part of the field.  My buddy with the pole was doing a pretty good job and smashing into anyone that tried to jump me.

For the most part they were doing a pretty effective job of neutralizing me in the first impact.  The fact that I was surviving through to the next stage of the battle without a fast guy chasing me around the field was a big improvement over the last practice for me (shakes fist at Dietrich).

My "ringer" came down from New York and is a very dynamic, athletic, and accurate spearman.  He noticed early on the he could sit in the gap between the two units and fire his spear with no real counter.  After several battles, the other side never picked up on it.  He mentioned it during our debriefing, and those observing didn't seem to quite understand what he was explaining.  The below diagram explains it a little better:

 Below is an example of how this looks.  Notice the green spearman in between the gap.  He takes a shot at the pole arm in the left unit, and then follows up with a shot a pole arm in the right unit.

Why Spears are Effective

I put a lot of thought in this and watched a lot of video and have come to one main conclusion.  Spears can attack from a range where the opponent does not think they are engaged.  A 7 1/2 foot pole is still close enough that a shieldman or pole is going to keep their defenses up against it.  The extra 18 inches that a spear has seems to put it just far enough away from the opponent that he doesn't realize that you are there, not if he's occupied with someone else, anyway.

Look at the two spears coming out of nowhere below and getting two quick kills.

Never Fight a Fair Fight

This is a huge issue that fighters at most levels have.  They see a 1on1 situation and assume that they should go and hit that person.  The only time you should engage someone 1on1 is when you significantly outclass that fighter.

In the gif below, a shieldman on my team had started attacking a knight by himself (bad) before I came over and stabbed the knight (2on1.....good).  I then ran to my left and joined up with a pole to double up on a shield (good).  Meanwhile, you can see the shieldman in the background run into the middle of a pack of four enemies and get quickly taken out (very bad).  He's actually a very good college aged fighter, but sometimes gets overzealous with his enthusiasm to go and hit people.  This was an observation that Sir Tash had at a recent event concerning newer fighters, that they like to "Leroy Jenkins" their way into hoards of enemies.

Notes about Timed Battles

Duke Brennan had made the comment that if you have a timed battle with resurrections, that you can't waste your time playing around with spears.  I mostly agree with him, but not completely.  I only say this because I've commanded charges in the past with exactly this thought in mind, and they failed.  The most recently actually being just two weekends ago.  If your side is spear heavy, you may not have the brawn to successfully mount a charge that will deliver even a single kill.  You may need to whittle the other side down a bit in order to weaken them enough such that a charge is successful.  Exactly what that point is is not easy to figure out (not for me, anyway).  That's where it helps to have an experienced commander.


Sad News

We lost one of our family shortly after this practice.  If you hadn't already heard, Lord Gunnar Alfson was killed in a car accident just two nights later.  Sunday was his last day in armor.  This was is home practice and the community is absolutely devastated.  He was loved by most who had the pleasure of knowing him.  Though we all strive to become better fighters, train to beat other people, and gain recognition for our accomplishments, its not nearly as important as enjoying life, and bringing joy into the lives of those around you.  Gunnar epitomized that and has reminded me that its the time you share fighting with your friends that is most important, not whether or not you win those fights.