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.
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