River War - 11 v 11 Field Battles

Had a wet and rainy River War, but fun nonetheless.  Captains were determined through a series of Roman melees, and teams were picked.  There were three small units, and a bunch of unattached fighters.  The units were Hrafnox, Bloodguard, and Anglesey.  Though to be more specific, I'd like to call it Hrafnox Travel Squad, Bloodguard South, and Anglesey East.  I say that because anyone of our groups can be amazing or less impressive, depending entirely on who shows up.  In this case, Hrafnox had their most practiced fighters (and they are looking really very good these days), Bloodguard had a mix of high end and newer fighters, and Anglesey had mostly fighters with 1-2 years of experience (plus myself).

Once teams were picked, Hrafnox and Bloodguard ended up being one side while Anglesey East and a mix of unattached fighters made up the other team.  The field was wide enough to do a small amount of maneuvering, but narrow enough that both flanks can be easily controlled (maybe 15 - 20 yards wide?).  There was a slight hill from one end to the next, with a steeper hill from flank to flank.


Strategy/Tactics

The first thing I looked at was weapons mixes and what we could do with them.  Our opponent had, in my opinion....as well as everyone else's opinion, the better units and the better fighters.  Whenever that happens, I think about the game rock, paper, scissors.  There are two ways to win this game.  1)  If their side throws rock, then you throw paper.   2)  If their side throws rock, you throw a bigger rock.  Whatever they were going to throw was going to be bigger than ours, so the only chance we had was to throw something else.  Looking at the weapons mixes, I noticed that they had 4-5 spears, so we went with no spears (something that is very rare to see out of Anglesey).  If we could press them in the fight, then we stood a chance.


The Big Picture with Newer Fighters

I often get stuck in this paradigm trying to figure out what is THE best method, or style, or strategy that is a one size fits all best way of doing things.  Likewise when a lot of people learn to fight in the SCA, they think that the way that they were taught is THE right way to do things.  There are actually lots of right ways to do something (though even more wrong ways) and much of it depends on the makeup of the fighters involved.

This also largely depends on the experience of the fighters, both individually and collectively.  When I used to be a high school varsity basketball coach, I read up on systems of play.  I found it very interesting that at the very lowest levels, the plays were very structured and very simple.  Once you got to the high school varsity level, the structure stayed, but the plays got more and more complicated.  By the time one got to the pro level, a lot of the structure went away.

You see, the least experienced players need to know where to go and where everyone else is going to be, and they need to be able to process this while playing a fast paced game.  An offense might, for example, always have someone standing in the corner.  So you know there's always going to be someone there to throw the ball to.  At the high school level they can handle more complicated plays, and be able to process the movements of their teammates more quickly.  At the pro level, OTOH, there is this very advanced sense of play where each player has a myriad of things that he can do, and his teammates can anticipate which one he's going to do and generally know where to go and what to do, all in a fraction of a second.

Applying this to the SCA, newer fighters generally need a lot more structure while experienced fighters can feel the flow much more quickly and can have room to improvise on the fly.


Our Approach

Opponents who are any good generally come up with one of two systems for what is essentially a 10 man team battle.  They will either set up one big unit, often as a shield wall, and try to steer that mass at a flank or a weakness that they can spot, or they will split off a small flanking unit (usually no more than 3 flankers) and try a hammer and anvil approach (the main unit press forward while the flankers pinch on the outside).  In my personal opinion, I think the former approach is easier to teach and more appropriate for less experienced fighters, but that the hammer and anvil approach is more effective if implemented well.

Lately I've been using a different approach that looks to exploit either of the above approaches.  Instead of a main unit and a flanking unit, I set up two equal strength units that both move onto the flanks.  I then set myself as a floating commander in the backfield between the two units and call out which unit to press the attack based on their positioning.

At this point, its a pretty easy read for me.  If we are facing a single large unit, either pinch on both flanks (giving us the better position in the fight) or charge at the big unit's flank with whichever unit has the flanking position.  If we are, instead, facing a main unit and a flanking unit, one of our units will likely be across from the flanking unit, while the other will be across from the main unit.  In this case, you attack the flankers and stall the engagement against the main unit.  If you allow some flexibility in the units, some fighters can peel off and hit the flank of the main unit as they are pressing forward onto our other unit.

Initial Problems and Improvements

In our very first engagement we got slaughtered.  Our left unit went after the flankers and they plain just ran around us.  The fight was over very quickly.

So we corrected that by moving much more aggressively to the flanks.  Over the course of the next several battles I was realizing that Anglesey East, with very little experience in the unit, was not doing a good job of stalling.  The first couple of fights they charged when the other group charged.  Then, even when they stopped doing that, they would still walk toward the enemy quickly when the other group charged.  It took me a while to get the idea across, but they finally figured out to literally try to stay out of the fight as long as possible and to pull Bloodguard with them.  We went from killing very few people in these fights to killing over half of their side.

Always remember:  Kill quickly, die slowly.

At one point a member of the other team suggested giving us the uphill advantage.  It wasn't much of an advantage, but it wasn't insignificant.  So after switching sides we started doing a little better.  The knight on our team suggested trying a different strategy.  Instead of attacking the flankers, the mixed unit turned down the hill and slammed into the main unit on the oblique.  This worked out well, with one problem.  Anglesey East stalled and tried to stay out of the fight.  I explained at this point that with the oblique attack on the main unit, they needed to charge with them so that we could attack with higher numbers and a flanked position.

By the end of the day we were able to take a group of people who don't fight together, 8 of whom have 1-2 years of experience, and go from getting slaughtered to actually being able to hold our own.  Someone told me we even won 1 or 2 battles.  I don't know if that was true, but if we were close enough to even believe that to be the case, then I consider it a moral victory.  If anything, we were definitely delivering 7 or more casualties by the end of the fights toward the end.


Taking the Initiative

Successes in any of these formats come from taking the initiative when opportunity presents itself.  Anglesey East was struggling because they were committing 70%, both when it came time to get engaged, or when it came time to refuse engagement.


The Skirmish Approach

The eventual goal is to be able to win battles like this without units and commands.  We can fight under that system when we have our veterans on the field, even with 40-50% new fighters.  When the new fighter ratio is literally at 83%, some organization needs to be applied.


Lessons Learned

Two constructive criticisms I got from the other side was that I left Anglesey East leaderless and they both recommended that I should have stayed with the group.  The problem was, our entire side didn't have an experienced leader, so had I done that, we might have had the same problem with the other group.  I'm not certain that *I* needed to be the leader, but that someone should have been.  I think that's going to be the next step in our training.  They didn't need a great leader, they just needed someone to make the calls that needed to be made, and I need to start asking some of the newer guys to take this on.

Having said that, I thought we did very very well given the lack of experience on our side.

Pennsic 46 - 3: Field Battles

This year we had, to the best of my knowledge, ~1200 fighters in total on the battle field to fight the four field battles.  In this blog post I'll do my best to give an overview of the fighting, but its going to be largely from the perspective of my unit and where we were situated on the field.


Anglesey and The Bog

My unit is Anglesey (green and gold), and this year we brought 23 heavy fighters to the field.  Galatia (black and white) brought 6, The Concusare 12, Red Branch 4, and Mountains Keep 9 (rough guesses).

Rough totals (54 fighters):

25 Sword and Board
17 Spears
8 Polearms
4 Archers

~22 newish fighters, and 32 solid veterans (mostly 15+ years exp)

Our unit, for the most part, is a collection of early period celts who fight as free (no fealty to the crown) fighters based mostly out of the D.C. area with a small contingent of Anglesey out of Philly, and Mountains Keep (not traditionally part of the Bog) being an Atlantian Household out of N.C.  Our fighting style is much more wolf pack / skirmish than most SCA units.

In short, we hate politics and we love to fight!


Organization

This was a task for us this year.  Its been a long time since we've really had to worry about this.  In a good year, we'll bring 25 fighters to the field, with at least 20 being long time veterans.  We had a lot of growth this year, which doubled our numbers and brought our inexperienced ratio to over 40%.

We don't fight in a classic SCA style (and we hope to never have to) which means we couldn't just pile then new people in the 4th rank, or intersperse them into a shield wall.  We also like to bring as many fighters to the point of killing as possible, which means our front gets spread very wide which is difficult to command.

To tackle this, we did a handful of things:

1)  We trained our new fighters to fight within our system.  This involved lots of small drills when we only had 3-4 people at a practice, on line guides explaining our system, and a lot of feedback at battles from the new people.

2)  The buddy system.  We gave each new fighter a veteran to follow around and explained to them how to fight with that veteran.  For the most part what we really wanted to accomplish was to have our new fighters spread out evenly within the unit, rather than to have a clump of them creating a weakness somewhere in the line.  I learned this lesson at a Battle on the Bay field battle where three new guys entered the field from the left and stood on the left flank.  In the next fight our left flank got horribly rolled in quick order.

3)  A three commander approach.  Each unit had its own commanders, but we put three key commanders on the left flank, center, and right flank (I was right flank).  The three of us have a long history of fighting with each other, so intentions can be communicated without needing to be vocalized.  Some of it is the way a person moves, some is actual hand signals, and some is simply a psychic link that you pick up from years of fighting together.

4)  Spreading out the talent.  We essentially made sure that we identified a few key veterans and placed them, again, on the right, left, and center appropriately.


Field Battle #1

First person view

There's not really much to talk about tactically in this one.  From my perspective, both sides more or less marched across the field and met in the middle.  It looks like there might have been some good flanking going on on the south side of the field from the allies, but its hard to tell.

On the north side of the field, the Tuchux formed a block on their right flank with two units, about 4 ranks deep.  Across from them was a large contingent of the East Kingdom in a mass that appears to be maybe 6 ranks deep.

The Bog is the next unit over from the Tuchux and in a line 25 wide and 2 ranks deep with some archers behind that.  Behind us was the Atlantian Army and another large group, while across from us appeared to be the Barony of the Cleftlands and Mid Royal along with maybe another group.

In this battle the Tuchux marched up the right flank while hugging the right boundary, and the East Army came down directly across from them and met in the middle.  We moved forward and met the unit directly across from us.

From here it appeared that the Tuchux and the East were more or less holding ground against each other.  We were able to whittle the unit in front of us down as Atlantia came around our left from behind and started pushing hard on the flank.  I didn't see any real tactical plays in this battle, we just simply out fought (Skill?  Numbers?)  the other side without making any big mistakes.


What Could Have Gone Wrong?

As I said, the fight pretty much came to us with an even front.  Had we held back, we would have kept Atlantia (behind us) out of the fight too long, and the Tuchux left flank would have been exposed.  Had we pushed forward, we would have worked ourselves into a kill pocket.  Had Atlantia not moved around us to get into the fight, our left flank would have been exposed.  In this fight, everyone on our side did their jobs well.


Command Errors

I was the Vice Warlord for Anglesey.  Our Warlord and myself were two of the first people dead in our unit.  I can't speak for her, but I got stupidly aggressive, over extended myself, and got hit by a well known spear expert (right at 1:50 of the second video).

After watching the rest of our unit fight well on their own, it gave me confidence that I can let them do the fighting and win while I focus on watching the field and directing traffic.  A lesson well learned.


Field Battle #2

First person view from the left flank (Atlantia)

In this battle we (the allies) were told to reverse the field.  Anyone on the left moved to the right, etc.  That seemed to take more time than we expected.  The Tuchux were still on the right flank when the cannon fired, and for whatever reason we were about three to four units in from the left (no idea why).  Atlantia was hugging the far left.

A veteran in our group yelled out, "prepare to distract the best we can," which was another way of saying we are out numbered and probably won't survive the fight.

Immediately the Plastic Romans (scutums with 6 castles on the front), Darkyard (black tree on a white shield) and Dark Moon (black and gold sun pattern) pressed pretty hard on their right with another large unit pressing forward kind of in the middle.  On the other side of the field the East stayed at the top of the hill while our right flank held off for a bit at the bottom to see the battle unfold.

My unit stayed as far back as we could, and in fact walked backwards a bit, in order to stretch the battle out so that we'd have time for the Tuchux to march across the field and get into the fight.  The initial engagement looked liked this with the fronts outlined and my unit circled, and the Tuchux path marked across the back of our side of the field.

Tacitcal Notes

Darkyard and the Plastic Romans appeared to make un uncoordinated charge straight into Atlantia.  Two thoughts:  1)  If you are going to charge, you need to get your shields together and form a wall and press into the enemy all at once.  2)  Even if you did that, its not going to be effective against an army thats formed up 6 ranks deep.  Charges are only really effective at wiping out a weaker force.  If the force is stronger, you just die faster.

Drawing the fight backward seemed to effectively pull our enemy into a kill pocket.  From the picture above, it appears that a unit is moving in on the flank of whomever is pressing us.

Commanding the charges:  I managed to stay alive through this whole battle.  As a commander, I mainly watched the flow of the battle, and any time I saw we had an advantage on our enemy, I called a charge.  Usually this was when we came up on a unit that started to turtle themselves up with the "deer in the headlights" look.  THAT is when you want to charge and wipe them out so that you can move on quickly to the next fight.


The Result

We out fought our side, no better way to explain it.  The Bog then swept back into our backfield and moved north toward what was left of the East Army.  The Tuchux took a direct route across the field and hit them from the other side.  They took a more direct approach with respect to the direction that the East was fighting, while we came in looking for a flanking position.  We were able to clean up and win the battle by a small margin.


Field Battle #3
The field battles got a little more interesting as the day progressed.

First person view from allies' left flank

In this battle, the Allies stacked the left flank and left the right flank pretty empty.  Maybe they expected the East wouldn't come down off the hill?  Purple, on the other hand, did the same, which meant they had a large force on the north side of the field while we had a large force on the south side.

We lost this battle, and here's what I think happened.  For starters, Iron Lance and another group marched up the hill and engaged the larger East and Mid units and lost without delivering many casualties.  Remember what I said earlier?  Don't charge if you are out matched, you just die sooner.  Right off the bat we lost almost 10% of our forces.  Meanwhile our left flank was really far out of the fight.  In general, you want to hit early where you can win, and delay where you will lose.  This was working out better for purple than for us.

The Tuchux left the right to move around to the left side of the field, only to come back and try to pull the East and Mid armies into the corner of the field.  Had the East and Mid shot through the gap in an attempt to fight the rest of the allies, the Tuchux would have been in a good position to attack from behind.  Instead the East and Mid came down the hill right at the Tuchux, and were able to defeat them in a short amount of time due to a big numbers advantage.  Hindsight being 20/20, if I was the Tuchux, I would have kept going into the fight in the middle of the field and make the East and Mid chase.  Sure, they'd be coming up from behind, but before they got into action, the Allies would have about a 4/3 advantage, and a good flanking position.  If they can mop it up early enough, the battle is won.

Meanwhile on our left, we took too long to get into the fight, and when we did, purple did a really good job of stuffing us.  The Bog ran into the plastic romans, who did a much better job of sticking together than in the previous battle, and it took us way too long to get through them.  If you look at the videos about half way through, there's a line on the South side of the field that is just one big static fight.  The East and Mid were able to charge across the field and clean it up after they had finished with the Tuchux.


Command Mistakes

We needed to get into the battle quickly, so we started moving out ahead of the rest of the army.  I thought this was a safe play because we could move onto the left flank and then allow the rest to come at the front and we'd be in a good spot.  One of our veterans in the back was yelling for us to not do this as he had a different vision of how we should engage.  This caused a lot of confusion in our unit, and we got very disorganized.

I over estimated how fast the unit could move.  I'm a distance runner and often forget that we have a lot of bigger and older people in the group who really can't move faster than a fast walk for any great distances in armor, so a "light jog" across the field doesn't suit us.

We needed to pull out of a bad situation late in the fight, and I yelled "Bog Troopers out!" quickly a few times, and then ran.  No one responds to that name, and its not very recognizable on the field (it sounds kind of garbled and generic).  I also moved much faster than necessary, and didn't take the time to gather everyone.  I forgot that units move pretty slow at the 5 minute mark of a field battle, so I can take a little more time to grab people.  Also, "Anglesey," is a much better word as it has a very unique, distinguishable sound that can be heard over all the chatter.  The non-Anglesey groups will hear it and respond if they want, or not.


Field Battle #4

For some reason this video won't load, but you can easily find it by searching for Renegade Paladin, or Pennsic XLVI - Armored Field Battle 4.

This was my favorite battle, tactically.

The battle begins with the Allies moving fast and early on the south side of the field to establish a flanking position (correcting the mistake from the previous battle).  Our initial set up was the same as the first battle, with the Tuchux, Bog, and Atlantia back on the North side of the field and across from the East and Mid big units.  As the flanking occurred on our left, there was no engagement on the right.  The East and Mid wanted to hold the high position on the hill, and we refused to come up after them.

At this point it appeared to me that we had a good flanking position in the south and what seemed to be a numbers advantage.  With a large gap to our left, a hill in front of us, and what looked like a small numbers advantage for the other side on top of the hill, I was content to stay out of the fight for the time being.  Again, fight them where you can beat them, stall the engagement where you can't.

Early on I think purple was gambling that we'd come up the hill after them, and then realized that we weren't coming.  Needing to get into the fight before their right falls, two units march quickly down the hill to position themselves around our right flank (probably a smart move).

(correction:  I believe Edward stuck with the Mid group)

In response, Atlantia moved out to meet them before they could envelop us.  Meanwhile, we pressed forward to both keep the East from following down the hill and onto our flank, as well as to put flanking pressure onto the East if they were to go straight into the Tuchux.

This placed us in a risky position, but we had a few outs if things got too dicey.  Mountains Keep was protecting our left/rear in an attempt to hold the Mid off of us if they tried to change direction and come straight at us.  The worst that could have happened to us would have been if the East would have come straight at us, but I believe there was a low % chance of that happening, because that risks leaving their left flank open to the Tuchux  (FWIW, Balthazar, our left commander, made the call on this move).

After moving forward, the Mid stopped and changed direction to move straight into our backfield.  Fortunately the presence of Mountains Keep was strong enough to slow them down just enough to allow us to pull back out of the kill pocket and into one of our own.

Ultimately Atlantia was able to push through their opponents as we were able to fight the mid back up the hill with some of Atlantia coming around us, ultimately enveloping the East to finish the battle.

Command Mistakes

Ultimately I don't think there were any major mistakes from either side.  Purple gambled that they could hold the high ground, while Red gambled that they could send the bulk of their army around the left flank.  The final results of the battle was just a matter of not making any big mistakes and out fighting the enemy.


Final Thoughts

I am far from an expert on any of this.  I'd probably fought in field battles in 12 different Pennsics, and this is maybe the second year I'd put any thought into what the units on the field are doing.  Before that, I was a fire and forget kind of fighter.  Show me the enemy and I'll point my spear at them.