That's a Terrible Plan (yet everyone does it)

We fought at an event this weekend and finished off the day with three single death field battles.  One side was a unit of ~9 fighters who practice together somewhat regularly and consisted of a range of experience.  On the other side (our side) we had one unit of 5 who practices together regularly (myself and 4 fighters from the Philly practice ranging between 1-3 years of experience) and 6 unaffiliated fighters with limited experience. 

The organized team of 9 had 4 shields, 4 great weapons, and 1 archer.  Our team had 4 shields, 3 spears, 2 great weapons, and 2 archers.  Despite shield being my worst form, I took it as my biggest concern was getting run over by an organized heavy unit who likes to charge, especially given that we were fighting in a small rectangular field with no room for mobility (~15 yards wide).


"That's a Terrible Plan"

When I showed up someone had already come up with a plan.  It had something to do with dividing ourselves into left and right flanks and funneling the army into the middle, which I wasn't opposed to.  But then when we lined up, he wanted all of the shields to form up in the middle with everyone else behind them.  I took one look at them and said, "That's a terrible plan."  Yes, I was being a jerk.  I didn't mean to say that out loud, and truth be told, maybe there was someway to implement what he was thinking that would have worked, but we just weren't able to figure it out in the 30 seconds of strategizing that we did.


What was Wrong with It?

There were two main problems.  The first was that it was confusing.  Complicated plans NEVER work, not within the context of a mixed group of fighters who don't practice together, and the ones who do only get together a couple or few times a month.  People who come up with these crazy plans need to understand that they aren't commanding a bunch of troops in a tabletop miniatures game.  While they may understand what is going on, in order to execute it, you need 100% of the people involved to understand it as well, and then you need the enemy to cooperate. 

The second is something that a vast majority of heavy units do wrong.  Unless you are protecting a specific objective point, never turtle your shields up in the middle of the field.

Why?

This isn't to say that shield walls aren't effective, but the lack of protection on the flanks is a major weakness.  To make a shield wall work, either the flanks need to be well protected either by strong fighters floating out away from the wall, or by a boundary like a castle wall or thick woods.  Or they need to be moving quickly at their target so that they can run the target over before the weak flanks can be exploited.


The Other Issue
I've said this a billion times.  There are two ways to win a game of rock, paper, scissors when the other team throws rock.  You either throw a bigger rock, or you throw paper.  In the first battle we met their rock with our rock.  We had two archers and three spears while they had one archer and no spears.  We had young, fast, mobile guys, while they had big, old guys.  We had a bunch fighters who don't practice together (and the ones who do fight skirmish style) they had an organized unit who has years of experienced running people over with a shield wall.

We could have run that scenario fifty times and would never have won a shield wall versus shield wall battle.


The Fix;  Spears to the Front

If you ask heavy fighters what would happen if you put your spears in front of your shields when facing an impending shield wall charge, 9 out of 10 of them are going to tell you that the shield wall will just run them over.

Yet this is exactly what we did, and we won the last two battles (again, that's not to say that we were the better unit.  We still had a numbers advantage) despite losing badly in the first battle.


How Does it Work?

The spears run out in front, way out in front, so that everyone else in the unit is at least 5 full feet behind their spearmen.  Best case scenario, the spears get get a kill or two before the enemy can initiate their charge.  Worst case scenario, the enemy begins their charge 15 feet away from the main unit.  As they are worried about face thrusts from the spears, they have to charge blindly, allowing the rest of your unit to freely maneuver into good killing positions while your spearmen backpedal out of harm's way.

As a shieldman, instead of being on the front line, I sat in the back on the right flank making sure that no one got into our backfield.  I then looked for opportunity kills, and they did present themselves.