Had an excellent practice in the humidity yesterday and wanted to give a quick thank you to everyone who made it happen!
Just a few thoughts that I wanted to highlight here.
Allied Champs Capture the Flag Battle
We've done a lot of these and I really like them as it slows the fighting down enough and the situations end up repeating themselves such that it gives everyone a chance to learn what does and doesn't work, how to communicate, send out commands, etc. In fact, many of the scenarios I run at our Anglesey East practice are very similar in nature.
Case in point; I've noticed that a weakness we have as a unit right now is that we don't have a good left flank shieldman. What does that mean? Generally speaking I put shieldmen into four categories. Left flank, right flank, middle of the unit, and special teams. Middle of the unit guys are often your big guys who can lead or repel charges and can push people around, but also lack the mobility to play the other roles. Right flankers are your killers. They need to be able to move out fast, get around some people, and win 1v1 fights if necessary, or doubling up 2v1. These guys need to be mobile but also have great sword skills. Special teams is a catch all to fit anything not covered in the other three categories, including sitting in the backfield and looking for holes to plug, sneaking up on the front line and looking for a pulse charge opportunity, or leaving the unit altogether and creating chaos.
The left flanker, however, needs to be able to keep people out of the back field and survive. If they can kill as well, that's great, but the most important job is to secure the flank and stay alive.
Having said all of that, this battle was a perfect opportunity to work the left flank and let Knuter (aka The Jolly Green Giant, aka a handful of nicknames that are not family friendly) hold the outside position. The job was simply to stay alive, keep anyone from getting around his shield side, and to hit or kill anyone who tries to get to his spearman (me). 100% of the fight he was the far left flank. (My belief is that 95% of the time, the extreme flanks should either be occupied by shields, or have a shield ready to replace a spear if there's a press. I will often take that position with a spear, but everyone around me needs to know that if I get charged, I'm not holding the position).
We did very well with that position, also being backed up by Rygus, our pole arm fighter. We often had them curled back toward their resurrection point. I was told by several people that they tried to mount charges on me, but that they failed because one of these two would take them out, so good on them!
The downside was that we often could get them down to a 3 on 2 advantage, or even a 3 on 1, with the 1 curling us back in toward other fighters in the middle of the field. This was where a lack of individual singles fight skill became a problem and something that we will work more on in our next practice. If anything, we will work on how you can jump a single sheildman who posseses a good defense.
As for everyone else, some critiques I heard on the battle were that people were coming out of rez points and not really coordinating as teams. Instead of groups of 2-3 fighters coordinating together, there were a lot of single fighters working alone. This is something that everyone will need to work on and I think will only get better by practicing these scenarios.
Not Really an Allied Champs Battle
This is a great scenario, but it doesn't truly reflect an Allied Champs Battle (nothing wrong with that) except for maybe the final stages of a round right before the flag is captured.
Typically an Allied Champs battle is a grand spear fight with one side being whittled down faster than the other. Often both flanks will gradually fall (each side pushes their own right flank), one falling faster than the other. As the line approaches one of the flags, there's a quick coordinated push toward the flag usually lead by a couple of shields and followed by a pole or shieldman with a gauntlet who will grab at the flag. The typical starting position is pretty packed, however, with lots of spears (pictured below):
Bridge Battles
The bridge battles were a bit of a mess. That's not to say that they weren't run well, or that they didn't have value. I think we all got really great practice in these scenarios. Personally I've been working the left flank a lot more, though historically I've always been more comfortable on the right flank. As a left handed spearman, I'm noticing an interesting tradeoff. On the right I've always had a really good line on all of the spears toward the center of the bridge and am able to get off shots without sacrificing too much defense. From the left side I have to throw across my body, which is a little slower, a little less accurate, and leaves me more vulnerable to spears directly across from me. It does give me some really good opportunities on the guts, hips, and legs of shieldman in the front rank which is something that I'm not used to, so its been fun going at the shieldmen a little more.
I also think that others got some great experience defending against spears, fighting with spears, charging, calling charges, reading charges, learning to push people off the bridge, etc. The reason why I say it was a mess is that we were little light in terms of numbers yesterday which I think really takes away from the experience. Maybe if we had narrowed the bridge up it would have helped.
But then again, sometimes that's what you get in a bridge or pass battle, so it is worth working on.
3v3 Battles
We finished off the day with a series of 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 fights before the humidity killed us. There were a couple points that came up. One was that each side should always come up with a plan. It doesn't have to be a grand plan, but there needs to at least be some discussion about what is going to happen. "I'll take the left, you take the right." "Lets jump these guys." "I'm going to go far out to the right." "Bob, you take out Fred." etc. It needs to be something so that you are all at least on the same starting point.
Lead with the Long Weapon
If I know I won't screw up my shieldman, I've been using this tactic successfully for two decades, and its one I rarely see used. It won't necessarily work for everyone, but I've managed to make it work for me.
I lead out with the pole in the front, making it super clear to the two shields to let me start off a full two steps in front of them.
What ends up happening is two things. The first is that because the other side generally begins with their pole behind the shields, I get a free shot before anyone else at the beginning of the battle, one with which I land with a high enough regularity that it makes this tactic worth it for that reason alone (only one of the three people up front needs a weak defense or a lack of situational awareness).
The other thing that happens is that I become bait. Each person on the other team individually sees me as a threat with not a strong A range defense (because I don't have a shield) so all three of them try to jump me, allowing my teammates to get good attack opportunities on them. (One of the knights watching had commented that we won our fights because everyone was trying to kill me allowing our shields to get to them).
Work Together
One of the biggest negatives I saw on the day was a lack of people working together. All I mean by that is if you have a 3v1, all three fighters need to try to surround the one fighter and attack at the same time. What I see a lot is a basic instinct to follow the most aggressive fighter and let him attack first. People will, in fact, hold back if they see another fight go on. I call this "Bruce Lee-ing the fight." I have seen, literally on multiple occasions, a single fighter with only a few years experience beat four fighters by himself because they will all run in one at a time, often overconfident because they assume that they have an advantage.
Also, if one of your fighters is a spear, he needs to be the most aggressive and run way out in front in these number advantage fights because he gets free shots from range. Don't stand in the back and wait for others to do something. Get out there and throw shots with your 9 foot buffer!
In a nutshell, stop following each other and work together.
The biggest improvement I saw in a lot of fighters is that they've been better about finishing a fight and IMMEDIATELY looking for the next person to hit. This has been a weakness in the past and I certainly saw at least a few fighters doing much better about this.
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