5 Fundamentals of Melee while Eating at Denny's

Who here discusses tactics with their house hold over dinner?  How often?  Is it a regular part of the conversation?

Where I live, tactics are rarely discussed.  Of course, what's to discuss?  Form a shield wall and go right, what else is there to say?  Who ever hits first and hits the hardest, wins.

The Anglesey approach is much different than what standard units around these parts do.  It has its plusses and minuses.  The plus is that its more effective.  It really is, at least more effective than most.  Its like playing college basketball offenses against high school basketball defenses.  The downside is that it takes time and dedication to learn.  Forming a shield wall and going right can be learned in a day.  What I'm about to describe takes years to understand the nuances of more advanced melee fighting.

Stages of a Fighter

There are stages of fighting that one must progress through in order to master the melee.  In my opinion, most fighters never really get past the first stage.

1 - One on One
2 - Supporter
3 - Leader

Most people begin at the one on one stage.  What this means is that if you see a person, you go and fight him with no concept of how it fits into the bigger picture of the battle.  This also means that if you see a friend fighting someone, you tend to leave him alone and either watch until the fight is over, or look for someone else to fight.  Often times in this stage, the fighter will charge at any one person on the field, even if that person has three friends backing him up.  At other times, fighters will actually grab each other's attention and give a little nod like, "Hey, are you ready?  You are?  Okay, lets fight."

For some people, this stage lasts forever.  If you are a unit or army commander with no interest in actually developing these fighters within the context of a melee, the best you can hope for is to teach them to "stick together" and listen to commands (usually either "charge," or some other phrase which means "don't charge").

I've come to expect new fighters, with proper training, to exit out of this stage within 10-15 events (counting each day at a multi day event has its own event).  The next stage is the supporter.  This is a fighter that doesn't really know what to do, but they know who does.  Instead of running out and trying to find a one on one fight, they start watching the experienced fighters drawing attention, and then they run in and kill their opponents when the opportunity arrises.

Great examples would be when I fight with a sword and shield and have either Yangus or Rygus as my wingmen.  Now to be clear, no one tells them to be my wingman.  They just know by now to look for fighters to support, and we often find ourselves next to each other.  Now, since I'm not a particularly great sword and shield fighter, I am often out matched when an enemy shield presses me.  What I like to do is draw him in to me with my body movement and get him to turn the back of his head to my wingman who's fighting with a pole, giving that pole fighter an easy kill.

The final stage is to be a leader.  This doesn't mean unit commander, but rather one who knows how to make things happen on the field.  At this point, he should have other "supporters" watching and helping him out.  Typically it takes probably 50 - 100 events to truly get to this level.


5 Fundamentals

This is what I wrote out at Denny's after practice.

1 - Support the Flanks

This is job #1.  If your flanks drop, you're dead.  So many units make fighting easy because they "stick together," which allows us to form a kill pocket.  Keep enemy fighters out of your backfield, or if they do get into your backfield, contain them.  Personally I prefer having the two best shieldmen on the flanks.

2 - Even Balance of Weapons and Strength

Spread your weapons and your strengths out evenly unless there is some clear objective that calls for a specific strategy (like the gate you need to defend is on your left and they are lining up a big bubba shield wall to crash into it).  Clumping spears together allows the other side a weakness to run over. Clumping shields together in a static battle will give their spears easy targets.  Putting all of your new fighters on the same flank will cause that flank to collapse.  Etc.

3 - Asses Range Advantage

If they have archers and you don't, you need to press the attack before they can pick your line apart.  If you have 4 veteran spears, and they have 2 novice spears, lull them into a static fight and pick them apart.

4 - Push at Least One Flank

Almost always you want to try to get them into a kill pocket.  Ideally I like to use a pincer attack and move at both flanks, but sometimes it makes sense to only push on one side while trying to keep the other side stable.  Sometimes you don't have the ability to push either side, so you do your best to control both sides, or reposition your unit somewhere else.

5 - Can you win, or will you lose?

Not every battle can be won.  If their right flank is stacked with more talent than your left flank, then you have to do your best to draw out the fight and attempt to keep the flank stable.  If you can win quickly, then win as quickly as you can because you might be losing somewhere else on the field.  If you can't win, then try to survive.  If survival is futile, then try to drag out the fight as long as possible and die in a position on the field that sets up the rest of your side for the greatest odds of winning.

When tourney fighting, you have to believe that you can beat anyone in front of you.  In melee fighting, you want to avoid any situation where your odds of winning are not greatly in your favor.  Stall the knight, kill his squires.


Tactics Cheat Sheet

#5 leads to a simple tactics cheat sheet that our warlord, Arundoor, put together.  Its a nice way at looking at the decisions you should make given your tactical situation on the field.

Final Note

Anglesey has been going through a growth phase, which is a good thing.  A lot of this growth has occurred within the borders of the East Kingdom.  "Kinsmen" are our leaders, and lately we've been getting ~8-12 kinsmen fighting at Pennsic.  Ideally we are strongest when at least half of our unit are kinsmen.  We only have 2 kinsmen in the East, and until recently, 5 of our other 6 fighters in the kingdom were in stage 1.  Anglesey tactics don't work well for that kind of mix of talent, but we always believe in the long game.  I fully expect this same group of guys to "hold their own" this year and develop into some real killing machines in just a few short years.

Maze War - Identifying Weapon Strengths

For several years, now, Duke Timothy has been putting on a fantastic event in a corn maze.  We fought from 11:00 to 4:00 with zero breaks, and then many fought again from 6pm to midnight.  As our warlord said, "He seems to have cracked the code for putting on fighting events.  Now if he can only write the instructions to the rest of the SCA and get them to follow suit."

Most of the scenarios mainly played out kind of like a woods battle, and there wasn't much in the way of tactics that presented itself to be of any interest, but I did find one glaring hole in some of the smaller 5 man teams.

Rule number 1, as far as I have always been concerned, is to first identify who has the range superiority.  If your side has more spears and/or archers, then you want to lull the other side into a static fight.  Any shields that you have should stay out of the way and only step up when the other side is threatening a charge, in which case their job is to stop the charge and keep the spears and archers alive.

On the other hand, if your side has fewer spears and/or archers, or if your overall range strength is less due to experience and/or talent, you have no choice but to charge and to do it quickly.  The 5 man teams that understood this rule were very difficult to beat, but there were many who didn't seem to understand (or care).


Warlord Tourney

There were several warlord tourney's that were run starting with 5 man teams.  A 5 man team would seek out another 5 man team and fight it out.  After the fight, everyone instantly resurrects and the losing team gets absorbed by the winning team, who then goes on to fight a 10 on 10 fight.  The final battle was a 20 on 20 on 20 three way fight, which was quite interesting (it actually worked out well).

Personally I feel that the ideal 5 man team in a corn maze would consist of 2-4 shields with some poles and, at the most, 1 spear.  Interestingly, one of the warlord tourney winners was a team of 4 spears and 1 shield.  In fact, 3 of the 5 fighters had less than 2 years of experience, each.  In my opinion, despite the talent of the other two fighters, there's no reason why this team should have won the first fight (some of the team members said as much to me).  How did they win?  The first group they ran into failed to recognize the need to charge.  They stood there and let the spears pick them apart.  After winning the first fight, the team now head a spear heavy 10 man squad which is actually tactically strong.


Spear vs Shield

In one of the 5 man scenarios I found myself across from our warlord Arundoor.  Anyone who knows him knows that he is incredibly dangerous in a melee.  As soon as our two teams met, I got a quick kill with my spears against one of his teammates.  Understanding rule #1, he immediately made a charge at me.  Normally I'd flee and let someone else take him on, but I knew that we had no shields to back me up and that I would not be able to swing out into a position where I could get my spear into action.  So I slammed my body into his shield hoping to prevent him from getting into our backfield.

As a result, I lost an arm, but I made him swing 3 times to get it, and he ended up getting killed by one of our poles in the process.  In this exchange I believe we both made the correct tactical decision.

Being without an arm, I charged their archer hoping to keep him from being able to reload his crossbow.  I was more interested in neutralizing him than I was in killing him.


Unrelated:  Melee vs Singles Practice

So that's all I really had to write on that subject, but while I have the blog open I thought I'd bring up another topic:

A recent conversation came up about whether or not one should practice melees or singles in order to get better at melee fighting.  The literal argument was made that one should practice singles 100% of the time, and that the refined killing skills would translate well to melee.  The context was not practicing singles versus not practicing at all, but rather singles versus melee.

Now, truth be told, I don't really believe that the argument was meant to be taken literally.  I think there are lots of reasons to spend the bulk of one's time practicing with singles, with the top two being 1) its easier to get a singles practice going and 2) you will improve both tourney and melee skills while melee practice does nothing for tourney.  But I can't disagree more with the idea that one should practice singles instead of melee if the goal is to improve melee.

This is my 61st post on melee tactics, very little of which can actually be learned in a singles practice, and I don't think I'm running out of things to write about.  Does anyone think that the players on basketball, soccer, and hockey teams spend the bulk of their practice in one on one situations?  Of course not.  The bulk of the success in a melee comes from positioning, communication, leadership, knowing how to read your opponent, assessing your strengths and weaknesses, knowing what weapon to bring to what kind of fight, knowing whether to press, stall, or run away, etc. and to do all of this while spending the least amount of time thinking.  This can only come from training those specific skills.

Sure, a given fighter with improved singles skills is going to be more dangerous fighter, all else being equal, which is why a portion of practice should be dedicated to fighting 1 on 1 (in fact, I'd probably recommend that at least 50% of a melee fighter's practice be spent practicing singles or pell work).  But given the choice, I'd much rather have a pole arm on my side who's skills are limited to a basic over hand chop to the head who knows his role on our team rather than a quarter finalist in crown who has little clue of how to fight in a melee.  As a friend once said, "I like fighting with you guys.  On Saturday, I couldn't die because your poles beat off anyone who tried to kill me.  The next day, fighting with that other group, they just let people run me down." 

I'm sure some reading this will disagree, and to that all I can say is to trust me.  I've been doing this for over 20 years and have specifically focused on melee.  Its not a skill that can go unpracticed.  Like anything else, you have to pay for your education in bruises.  Its not something you can just figure out by thinking about it on the day of the battle.