Get into Action: Two Battles, Different Results

I've spent some time recently watching a series of battles and I found two that really stood out to me.  Each battle had pretty much the same fighters, but very different results.  Some may figure out who, when, and where these battles happened, but my point here is not to call certain individuals or certain groups out for their ineffective fighting, especially when the fight itself may not be a good example of their capabilities (not to mention, I could be completely wrong in my assessment, and that ain't fair!).


Seizing the Initiative

I wrote about this in my last blog.  In a quick moving battle with no limit to the frontage, you need to get yourself involved in the fighting as quickly as possible.  This doesn't mean to charge head first into the first group you see, or to leave a giant hole in your line so that you can run somewhere else and start pounding on someone's shield.  It means that you need to be having an effect on the battle.  This includes:

-  Running over a weaker opponent
-  Taking free shots with a spear or pole when the opponent is out of his range
-  Moving in on a flank and getting the enemy to curl in on itself
-  Holding off a unit of equal or greater size
-  Running to a place on the battle field where fighting can/will occur
-  Defending a weakness that could be exploited if you were not there

What I like about the two specific battles I'm referring to is that I believe a lack of seizing the initiative had a large impact in how the battle turned out, and it happened for each side in different battles.


First Battle

This one was pretty straight forward.  Red team sent its right flank hard and fast into green's left flank and attacked well into green's backfield.  Green's center and right flank pressed forward at a much more moderate pace.  Green's center was expecting to engage red's center, but red's center followed its right flank.  As a result, green's center unit stood in the middle of the field unsure of what to do, all while taking on archer fire.

While some of green's center slowly moved right to get involved in the fighting, a good chunk stayed together in the middle of the field waiting for a fight to come to them.  23 seconds passed until that happened, and that was with both units who returned from the flank at pretty close to full strength.

If 23 seconds doesn't sound like a lot of time for you, sit there and count 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, etc. until you get to 23.  Half of the people on the field were dead by this point.

In my opinion what needed to happen here was one of two things.  That center green unit should have either moved left and engaged the red unit that moved to join the other unit on their right flank, or green should have quickly put a lot of pressure on the unit to their right in an attempt to finish them off before the flanking red units returned.


Second Battle

The second battle is a little more complicated, yet for this reason I think its more important.  The above battle, in my opinion, is pretty straightforward and obvious.  You make that mistake once and then you fix it in the next fight.

Its the subtleties, IMO, that gets someone to really understand tactics.

For this battle, I'll focus on green's left flank (about 50% of their army).  The right flank is not pictured.  Shown below, red begins with a unit of 13 fighters, and a unit of 11 fighters.  Green begins with 18 and 4, for a 24 to 22 fight (red has slight advantage in numbers).  Green began the series of fights with 4 more fighters, so in theory, they have a 6 man advantage on the right flank.  Given the routing of the previous battle, green hopes merely to contain the left flank (though winning would be a bonus).

Green moves out hard to the left and red moves out to meet them.  Red's central unit (pictured in the upper left) begins to move to meet green, which would have put them in a great attacking position with a 24 to 18 advantage plus a flanked position, but green sent a 4 man suicide squad straight at them, causing red's center unit (all but 2) to pull out and deal with them.

Now its hard to say what the better play would have been.  In fact, upon assessing this battle after several times over, I don't think red made any bad plays.  I just think there were small tweaks that could have made the difference.  In this case, I think red would have been better off leaving 4-6 people to deal with green's 4 man suicide squad, and send the other 5-7 guys hard and fast into the flank of the larger unit.  Instead, it took them a while to deal with 4 guys, all while turning their back the the larger green unit.

As the red center unit finished off the 4 man suicide quad, green's left unit slowly started to move in on the backs of red's center unit.  I don't think this was a great idea, but it did keep a sort of slow chaotic mess happening on the left half of the field while the right half was, hopefully, winning their engagement.  Keep in mind, green went into this assuming that it was the inferior unit on the left side.

I'd also like to point out that when this happens, its not usually a commander yelling, "you six, move that way.....but meander a bit and kind of slowly reform over there somewhere."  What happens, instead, is one guy sees someone he thinks he can kill, and then it draws the attention of one of his friends, which draws the attention of two more friends, etc. until half the unit ends up fighting somewhere else.

Something else I'd like to point out.  As this was happening, there were a lot of people on red team that were meandering in the background, not really engaged in the fighting.  There was one point were I saw 4 fighters facing a lone spearman.  It shouldn't ever take 4 people to deal with a lone spearman!

Having said that, red hasn't lost a fighter, yet, so I can't fault them for fighting "poorly."  But I do think they were winning much more slowly than they could have.

Once enough green had moved right, red's right unit made a big charge.  At this point they had a 12 on 8 advantage and probably more talent.

Red's right unit charged as green's left unit retreated.  When the engagement had resolved itself, I don't believe red lost a single fighter while only one green fighter escaped.  As this happened, the toilet bowl continued in the other engagement.

At this point in the battle, red has hardly lost anyone on the left half of the field, while green is down at least 11 fighters.  You might ask, how can I possibly think that red wasn't doing everything perfectly?  Believe me, I had to ask myself that same question.

But here's what I've got:

1)  Red waited a full 16 seconds after green had split off 10 of its fighters to go and fight the other unit.

2)  It took them another 20 seconds to run down 7 of the 8 remaining fighters, which drew them 15-20 yards further away from the fight.

At this point, green's right units had just finished up on the right side of the field.  Unlike red's flank, who fought until the last man was killed, green's right flank left a few stragglers and moved quickly (running) to engage in the bigger fight.  Red's flank was slow to get back into the fight.

As a result, green was able to hit the left flank of red's center unit very hard.  In just a few second, red was completely enveloped, and within 10 seconds, 6 red fighters were killed.

The last mistake that I believed red to make was that when their flanking unit came back to the fight, many ran to the center of the battle field looking for a fight rather than taking a direct line at one of green's flanks to bail out their enveloped friends.

Still, at this point in the fight, red is pretty much even with green.  Green ended up winning with only a handful of fighters left alive, but what allowed them to clean up in the end was having a number of advanced spear fighters left alive, who usually have the advantage once the shieldmen are worn out from the initial charges, and green also had a handful of younger, faster fighters who had the stamina to stay strong at the end.

If you had asked me at the 90 second mark who was implementing the better tactics, I would have said red.  However, red allowed green to stay in the game.  I think red made three small mistakes, any one of which could have won them the battle had they been more assertive about their advantages.

Southern Region War Practice

Just got back from this fine event and wanted to write a few thoughts down.  First and foremost, I don't intend to give away any "secret plans," or call out any particular group as being more effective than another, nor to contradict any of the teachings that went on there.  I really try my best to either stick to what I'm pretty confident I know about, or to address something in a way that is a matter of "thinking out loud," rather than a definitive declaration on a fighting tactic.


The Event

~95 heavy fighters
~25-30 knights, and the rest were mostly well practiced and experienced unbelts.
There were very few easy kills, and those with less experience were always near someone good.

4 field battles
3 bridge battles
a 16 minute Allied Champions Battle


Field Battles - The Toilet Bowl of Death

Both sides had 3-4 units.  I'll call them units 1, 2, 3, and 4 for our team (left to right) and units A, B, C, and D for the opposing team (our left to our right).  I was situated in unit 3 which was 14 fighters with a mix of weapon types (at least 4 spears if not more).

We lost the first three battles, but won the 4th, which tells me that it was likely the tactics that made the difference.  Sometimes a fight is completely won or lost due to the quality of the fighters on each side, but tactics can shift the advantage from one side to the other if the groups are close enough in ability.

As the first battle unfolded, unit A (their right flank) charged pretty quickly across the field while unit 1 (our left flank) waited to receive them in a tight formation.  I didn't know much about unit A's ability, but based on the confidence with which they moved, and the "swagger" that they carried, I believed that they were going to be a very strong unit.

My biggest fear was that our left was going to lose, and that it was going to lose before our right even got engaged.  Even if unit A is at half strength after the engagement, it places us at a big disadvantage because we'd have 8-10 unopposed, probably talented, fighters coming into our backfield.  The only way to combat this is to try to get an advantage of our own on the other side.

After watching the videos, combined with my memory of the engagement, what happened instead was that units 2, 3, and 4 were slow to engage.  Unit 4 did get out faster than the others, but still slower than unit A (the right flankers from the opposing team).

The opposition also seemed to have a pretty spread out left flank, which made it difficult for us to hit them and roll their flank.  In the second or third battle I moved to their unit to try and help them push the flank around, but when we got there, it wasn't clear where we needed to hit.  We were a hammer that couldn't find a nail.

Anyway, the general strategy that both sides employed is an Attack Right, Deny Left, which is what often causes the toilet bowl of death, with the battle rotating counter clockwise on the field.  Being that most fighters are right handed, units tend to be stronger on the right than on the left, which lends itself to this "hard right" strategy.


Seizing the Initiative......Effectively


After losing three battles, it was pointed out to us that the other team was doing a great job of seizing the initiative and we were not.  I agreed that statement, but I think there's some key nuances that need to be addressed. 

Let me explain again what happened.  We went hard right and they went hard right.  They went harder and got their killing units into action more quickly.  When I saw our left under attack, and at risk of folding, I wanted our unit to push harder, but I don't believe we pushed hard enough.  Remembering the time I was on the right, we couldn't find a place to attack.  We should have committed ourselves more, but I'd also like to add that their left did a great job of denying.  In addition, after watching the videos, I noticed that there was a large group of fighters on our center/right who weren't engaged at all. 


After losing a battle, our unit 1 adjusted and ran right into unit A (seizing the initiative).  There's one problem with this;  this is the unit that lost the previous engagement with unit A, so in effect, they may have just been running into battle to die sooner.  Maybe they killed more people this time, and maybe they did it at a point in the fight that put unit A in a less dangerous position after resolving the engagement, but it still wasn't going to win us the fight. 

The way to win that battle is to draw out and drag out the losing fights, and to seize the initiative on the winnable fights.  Die slowly and win quickly.  Die while pulling them out of the fight and kill while moving toward the fight.  Losing units need to stall and draw the fights away from the middle of the field, and winning units need to hit their opponents quickly and turn toward the middle of the field.

And there should never be units standing on the field unengaged.  That doesn't mean you should always be attacking, but that you shouldn't be in a position that has no effect on the battle.  In general a unit needs to be doing one of three things:

1)  Attacking
2)  Stalling/Occupying a more powerful unit
3)  Waiting for a unit to expose a weakness and then attacking that weakness


What you mustn't do is stand in the middle of the field and wait for the fight to come to you when there isn't one coming to you.  If you see a strong unit coming toward you, and you know that standing there and waiting for them to come is what is keeping them from attacking others, then you might be doing a good job.  But if you are simply waiting for units to finish killing off your friends before they come at you, then you are probably not doing a good job.  Your 10 guys standing there means that the opposition has a 50 on 40 advantage and will come at you with 25 guys when they are done.  The exception to this is if you don't think you can take a unit that is near you, you may let them pass by so that you can hit them in a weaker spot, or when they are engaged with another unit.

The two biggest problems I think I see are:
a)  engaging too late
b)  engaging too soon

Profound, eh?  =)


Using the Right Unit for the Right Job

After three losses I remember thinking to myself, "We have a big bubba hard hitting shield wall in the deny position, and a mixed weapon skirmish unit in an attack position.  We need to switch places."  Fortunately someone else had the same idea and we did.

I can only assume that unit 1 was more direct and more decisive than we were once they moved to the right.  We moved to the deny position and actually got out in front pretty fast, but out plan was not to hit the straight on.  We moved out and left, which meant that if they ran through us, they were going to go through us and out the far side of the field, which would give our right more time to clean up.

Once we got there, unit A spread out, as did we, placing us both in a stand off.

At this point I'd like to talk about the rock, paper, scissors approach.  If we come at them with rock, they have the choice to either meet us with a bigger rock, or to play paper.  They spread out, hoping to either envelop us when we charged, or to slow down our effectiveness.  It turns out that we had the same plan, so we both played paper.

I can't be certain who was right in this instance.  They had been winning all day, so we thought we needed to simply slow them down.  They, on the other hand, seemed to believe that they needed to slow us down. 

Ultimately I believe it worked to our advantage.  In the first field battle, unit A attacked at the 22 second mark, significantly before our right side engaged.  In the 4th field battle, they attacked at the 36 second mark, well after our right side engaged.  In fact, over half of our unit had already disengaged and moved on to fight others before they called for a charge.

Either way, I thought it was wise to move our unit into the deny position and utilize unit 1 in the attack position.

Dying Slowly

Quick note here, I noticed on at least two occasions that whatever group I was in was about to get munched.  I don't know that I can describe exactly how to do it here, but there are ways to slow this process down and draw it out.  Usually it involves disengaging, re-engaging, circling out, running around, hitting on the edges, etc. etc.  What it is not, however, is just standing there and taking it, hoping that throwing up your shield or swinging your stick is going to save you.

You have to figure out at what point its a lost cause and to just bail and find somewhere else to be.  It might be joining up with another unit, or it might be making them kill you at the far end of the field.


Bridge Battles

Hind sight being 20/20, I feel comfortable saying these were a mess.  I don't think they were a mess because people didn't know what to do, but rather because bridges require a lot of cooperation between the fighters on a side, and that simply can't happen with mixed units. 

In "to the last man" bridge battles, the strategy is always the same.  Both sides come out swinging until one side starts losing, then they pull themselves off the end of the bride into a kill pocket hoping to draw the other side in, and closer to their archers.

The winning side has two choices:  employ the same tactic and make the battle suck for everyone, or gamble that you can beat the other side despite the disadvantage of fighting on their end of the bridge.

When you have mixed units fighting on a narrow bridge (9 feet, which can fit 4-6 fighters across), is that everyone just crams themselves in the front hoping to get "their spot" and fight there until they die.  Spears up can be a good tactic.  Shields and spears mixed evenly can be a good tactic.  Shields up and constantly charging can be a good tactic.  Shields in the middle, spears on the sides can be a good tactic.

Random people hogging the front line is not.

None of this is to say that it wasn't a good experience and that they weren't good fights to learn from.

EDIT:  after watching one of the videos, it appears that the other team was doing a decent job of commanding on the bridge.  I still think that individual units may have done better.

Bridge Battle Suggestions

1) Sir Manfred brought up something at the end of these battles.  I can't remember the specifics, but I'll throw my own twist into it. The battles really should be fought with units, and each unit employing their own strategy.  At AE War Practice, the Tuchux did not mix in with Cloven Shield.  One battle had Cloven Shield go in first, the next battle had the Tuchux go in first.  I really believe this is a more effective method, both for fighting and learning. 

2) Get the spears out of the second rank.  They either need to be in the front rank and fighting ,or out of the way.  One person told me that their strategy is to have a single line of spears down the middle to feed into the front, which I think is a sound tactic, but to have a large cluster of spears waiting to file into the front after people die is just asking to get run over in a charge.

4)  Right handed spears fight around the right sides of shieldmen, left handed spears fight around the left side.  IOW, just because you see a spot on the front line doesn't mean you should take it.  It may not be a good spot for you.

3)  When people die, let the spears fight.  Shields are there to charge and to repel charges.  When dead guys are piling up in the middle, don't run up to the edge of the dead people and form a wall.  NO ONE is going to charge over those dead people. 


Allied Champions Battle

I thought this went pretty well and the more and more of these I do, the better I understand them.  The only thing I'd like to add is that the endurance aspect of this fight was not really addressed.  Aggressive spear fighting and shield charges are tiring and will wear you out.  In my brief experience, attrition has always been a factor in how this battle turns out.  Personally I have worked on my cardio and learning how to fight more conservatively for specifically this battle.




Finally a Note About the Heat

A friend sent this to me and I told him I'd post it:

The Sun, and why it hates us.

Southern region war camp was held this past weekend, and great renown was earned.  One of my chief experiences that day was... Heat Exhaustion.

'Oh, just suck it up boy-o!  It's part of the game!'

Here's the thing; Heat Exhaustion can quickly become Sun Stroke, which can literally kill you if you do not get treatment as quickly as possible.

If you begin to feel faint, dizzy or just can't focus, then you really need to get off the field and out of the sun for a few minutes.  Popping your top can help a great deal, as can a stiff breeze and cool fluids.  The idea is to keep your CORE temperature as low as possible while you are out in the sun and the heat.  Cool fluids do this well, but the best thing is to armor down or at least get out of the sun with plenty to drink. 

The second component of Heat Exhaustion / Sun Stroke is loss of electrolytes.  These lovely chemicals are what allow us humans to sweat and get rid of heat from our bodies through evaporation.  They also have a hand in nearly every process in our bodies, including how our brain works. 

No electrolytes? Brain no work good.

As a tip, if pickle juice tastes amazing... then you really need to drink the pickle juice.  Sports drinks [no caffeine, that hurts water processes] like Powerade, Gatorade, or the Walmart special will do wonders to keep you at the right levels.

End of the day; Heat Exhaustion is THE most common injury we suffer on the field, and we must think of it as a serious concern.  Drink the water, Pop your top and take a five minute break in the shade.  That's all it takes to keep you healthy, and it's a much better deal then paying for a ambulance and a over-night stay at the hospital.

-YIS

William Martinet

(Dan Krause)