- I was in shape, but wished I had done more walking up hills for exercise instead of cycling
- I'm 46, which means I'm slower than I've ever been
- I was also more wise and a better commander than I've ever been
- Anglesey brought over 20 fighters with another 10+ from our allies in the bog
- Our old guys got older
- Our young guys got better
- We were missing a lot of our veterans
- This year we were very spear heavy
- Our ballista teams have gotten better
- I spent the last year talking to East kingdom commanders to make sure they understood how our unit worked, and it seemed to have paid off. Communication and cooperation was very good this year (thank you Vachir, Sir Ryu, Master Dimitri, and Duke Tindal! Also thanks to Dagar of the Tuchux)
I think the overarching point here is that every year is going to present slightly different challenges that you will have to work with. Tactics are not a one size fits all concept. Looking at a group picture from two Pennsics ago, we were missing 7-8 of our most reliable veteran fighters. In their place were fighters with less than 3 years of experience, and a whole lot less aggression, situational awareness, and brawn. Two years ago I was 11th in seniority in our group. This year I was 5th until Tuesday, and then bumped up to 3rd due to injuries.
Times are a changin'!
Saturday - Kamikaze Battle
We use this battle every year as a warmup. If you aren't familiar with it, it is a broken field endless resurrection battle with no objective. You just fight. People come and go as they please, and will sometimes switch sides. Back in the way back Anglesey used to have a kinsman versus swordbrother battle (think knights versus squires), but war has gotten so busy that its been hard to fit it into our schedule. It was easier when kinsmen were in their early 30s. Now we are in out 40s and don't want to risk injury. Also, they used to only run a single bridge battle and single field. Now its 4-5 of each, sop we are more worn down from the fighting.
This year we used the Kamikaze Battle to accomplish the same goal and put our kinsmen and swordbrothers across from each other to see how the swordbrothers do. For the most part, they were doing fine. There's really not much more to say than that. Our approach is to exploit their mistakes and hope that they learn from them. If they don't, then we teach them.
Note: One of our newer fighters commented that there was a lack of leadership and direction. In this battle that was true, and it was by design. The newer fighters have to learn how to lead themselves.
Sunday - Allied Champions Battle
We got our butts kicked.
I think this battle came down to four key issues:
1) Not enough fighters
We had 15 subs instead of 25. That means each fighter had to, on average, fight 15 minutes before taking a 3 minute break, while the other side only had to fight 9 minutes before their 3 minute break.
2) Less talent
The Allied Champions Battle includes 200 fighters out of 1,000 at Pennsic. Remove the East and the Mid, who are ineligible to fight, and you are left with maybe 600-700? So theoretically a champion would be in the upper 3rd of talent and experience. If my observations and the rumors I heard were correct, we had to dip well below that 67th percentile mark to field 100 fighters, and we still came up 10 fighters short. the East Allies just didn't have the depth.
3) Not enough shields
This was a rare year where it was the shields that won this battle and not the spears. I normally tell people that this is a spear fight, but you can certainly have too many spears. It was also not a particularly hot Pennsic and we had unlimited substitutions, which pushes the battle at a faster pace. Generally speaking, the faster the pace of the battle, the more valuable shields become (they have the energy to charge). The slower the pace, the more valuable spears become.
4) Tactics
I can't tell you what happened on the left flank as I was never over there. On the far right flank, we had 5 ranks of Tuchux and Cloven Shield stacked up. I didn't think this was a bad idea, and it actually paid off early in the fight. They rolled over the Mid/Aethlelmearc spears in the first handful of engagements and scored a point or two. As the fight wore on, however, the charges became less and less effective as fatigue set in, and we were covering the far right flank with ~20 fighters 5 ranks deep which meant we were fighting a 55 on 65 battle across the rest of the field.
I'm not sure what changes would have helped, especially considering the top three factors. Again, its not that it was a bad plan, but rather that the plan stopped working as the battle wore on. I think it might have been interesting to try the following: use that group as our hammer in every other series and have them sub out in between. That would give us a very well rested set of shock troops every other series. In the alternating series we could do our best to play defense with a 75 v 75 matchup.
Final thought on this, my general approach to fighting these battles is to load up with good spears and whittle down the other side with them until there is a distinct advantage and then make a hard push for the banner. I don't think the Tuchux or Cloven Shield are built that way, so the options are to either replace them with low end fighters who are accustomed to the plan I just mentioned (low end because we've already got all the high end guys. I don't think this is a good plan), or to utilize them in a manner that they are best suited for, which is what we did. As I said, I think since they were doing the heavy lifting early on, we may have needed a substitution plan to get them recharged so that they could perform at their best.
Truth be told, I'm doing a lot of guess work here.
Monday - Field Battles
We lost these pretty decisively as we were greatly outnumbered.
I don't have much to say on a strategic level other than that the smaller side needs to figure out a way to find fair or even advantageous fights, and get into those fights quickly while stalling everywhere else on the battlefield.
Every unit is going to be different. Here's what we had to work with:
14 spears (48%)
11 shields (38%)
3 poles (10%)
1 archer (3%)
To me, this is a pretty solid spear skirmish unit that needs to find a static battle, one that it can win, with a lot of inexperienced fighters. An exposed flank is something that this unit can quickly chew through. Hitting a unit head on is risky, especially if it is poised to charge and is heavy with shields.
FB 1
In our first battle we keyed off of an East Kingdom division and the Tuchux, waited until they drew some attention, and then pounced on an exposed flank of a large unit. What we saw was what I would describe as "fresh meat." While the front on their unit was engaged, we hit the back end of their right flank and started chewing through inexperienced fighters who were back on their heals.
The initial idea was that our far right flank was getting rolled due to a lack of numbers. We had hit the inside of that flank and were hoping to push through it and follow the back side of red's far left flank. I got killed before we could accomplish that and am not sure how it played out.
I was criticized for getting us into a bad fight, that we would have been better off staying mobile, and that we needed to lead with our shields. While I don't disagree that it would have been ideal to stick and move, I didn't see any good options available and had to react quickly because a couple of units looked like they were quickly getting behind us with no resistance. The theme for the day was "bad positions, or worse positions." When numbers are even, there's more time to find a really good position to exploit. When you are outnumbered, I believe you need to capitalize on any good opportunity that you can find before getting surrounded. I'd also thought that our current configuration was better built for a more static spear fight than to lead in with our shields. We had a lot of spears, have a bevy of smaller sized fighters (Half were under 190 lbs. Half were under 5' 10". Your typical fighter is 6' and well over 200 lbs), and the experience was largely in the spears, not the shields.
As I said, we saw an exposed flank full of fresh meat and jumped on it. The post fight feedback leads me to believe that we ended up with a really high kill ratio, so I was satisfied with the decision.
One critique I heard from the sideline was that our less experienced fighters seemed a little lost and unengaged. I'm not sure how to train for that, other than to get them more Pennsic experience. Our best commanders were our best killers, and we were short on experienced killers, so the hope was that we could lead from the front and that our newer guys would jump in with us.
FB 2
We were in a similar position as before with the Tuchux, Cloven Shield, and a couple of other units to our right, this time fighting from the north side of the field and facing south (a new set up this year). As the battle began, it was clear that our right flank wanted to stay on top of the hill and force the Midrealm to come up and fight us. This isn't a bad plan except that the Mid never came up and was happy to wait while our left flank got demolished by Atlantia.
My thoughts on this as a strategy: Either you roll the dice and hope that the other side is dumb enough to walk up the hill and fight you, you place all of your units at the top and play a game of chicken (please God, no.......too many standoffs in the 90s that took hours to resolve), or you have to reduce the numbers on the top of the hill and deploy them elsewhere hoping to improve your chances elsewhere in the fight. If the opponent still doesn't climb the hill, then at least your other guys are fighting with better numbers while you stall with fewer. If they do come up to fight, hopefully it takes a bit of time and energy to get there, and that the uphill advantage helps even out the fight.
Anyway, as our left collapsed, we eventually went down the hill, a little too late. As a skirmish unit of 30, we had no choice but to wait for the bigger units to initiate the push. We found ourselves in an unmaneuverable position (ie no gaps between the units), so we fought a straight up fight. At some point I was called over because "we need spears." I ran over to find 8 spears against my lonesome. I pulled back, surveyed the situation, and saw that they were one thin line. I yelled out that we needed to charge. Someone responded and lead a charge to take out the spears.
Again, that was a bad option but better than the worse option. Instead of getting picked apart by spears, we (an Eastern unit) took them out, but then we ended up getting surrounded on three sides. Our only chance was to punch through those spears, out the other other side, and then try to maneuver to an exposed flank. It never happened.
I eventually yielded once the battle was beyond hopeless.
Side note: I fought 6 days this Pennsic and didn't get whacked in the head once. If you are worried about concussions, get better at learning how to avoid unwinnable situations.
FB 3
This went a little better. The East decided to run most of its forces to the left leaving a smaller force to defend the right. We were in the gap between, which I think was a good position for us, and had the option to go left or right depending on how things developed. Ultimately our job was to cover the flank of the Eastern unit that was to our left.
I can only assume that the Midrealm decided to push most of its forces in the same direction as we ended up in a big empty gap. Ultimately we decided to push to our left and clean up the exposed left flank of a unit that the East engaged with. After that, we found ourselves with no one to fight. This is always a bad position to be in. You always either want to be engaged with an opponent, or stalling an opponent. If you are in an empty field, that means that somewhere else out there, your allies are fighting against bad odds. We rallied and turned up the hill to find more red, eventually dying (well, everyone on our side eventually died).
FB 4
Same plan as FB 3, except this time we found ourselves across from two big shield wall units in Dark Yard and a roman unit (please correct me on the name. They have the rectangular shields with the 6 castles). We stalled them a bit and kept them from targeting the flank of the Eastern unit. They eventually came right at us. Our veterans are used to this kind of fight, but our newer fighters were not. Normally these units can be strung out and picked apart if you know how to pull them into a kill pocket, but you have to know what you are doing and have good timing. If you don't, then a unit built like ours will just get run over.
Ultimately I was happy with how we did. I think we lost the engagement, but took a lot of them with us and forced a long fight. If anyone has numbers on those two units, please send them my way. I believe they had maybe 30-50% more fighters than us.
EDIT: I just saw the video and did a head count. We were outnumbered 2:1.
Side note: before the engagement, a bunch of archers started firing arrows from a distance. I warned everyone that we were within range. One of our kinsmen got shot. I'll say this much; 4 years ago I was a pin cushion against archery. I have gotten a LOT better. It is a skill that can be improved, but you have to actively focus on it. As an example, I let the East Kingdom archers shoot at me instead of targets when they gear up for Pennsic. I've learned how to better dodge arrows, how close I can get to an archer before it becomes too dangerous, and to see the archers on the field as you fight. I only got hit once this war, and that was because I had stopped to let my opponent help a guy up off the ground.
Photo by Andrea Nichols
Additional note: I believe we fought well in this battle. One thing I'll never understand is why units like to block up and go straight at the enemy. If one of these units had split in half (let alone both of them) and flanked us, we would have quickly perished. Our only chance of surviving was for them to stay directly in front of us, which is exactly what they did.
Having said that, I don't know anything about their training logistics, so maybe they just went with a conservative plan that kept their units cohesive.
This harkens back to a previous thought that I had, which is that Anglesey, Galatia, and the Concusare are built a certain way and have certain kinds of experiences year in and year out, so when we get to Pennsic, we fight the way that we are best suited. I would assume that that is what most units on the field are doing.
FB 5
This was a very fun battle and I hope they do this scenario again. It was a "kill the king" scenario. Whomever loses their king first, loses the battle. Our strategy was to have our king run to the top of the hill and we'd defend him while other units went after the Midrealm king. At least that's what I thought the strategy was. At some point I saw our unit wandering down the hill and I followed, having no idea what we were trying to accomplish. At some point we found some fighters and, lacking better options, fought them to try and take them out. Again, this is something you do if you have a clear advantage, and something to avoid if you don't. We then turned back up the hill, chewing through small units of stragglers (we had some fun trash talk along the way with Duke Timothy, Wally of the Gaggle, and Sir Beatrix Aethelmearc). At this point I was focussed on getting back to our king as I thought I had seen a bunch of enemy troops moving in on him.
To be honest, I think I screwed up and saw the Midrealm banner run right past us, hardly protected, and it just didn't register. Live and learn, I guess.
Field Battle Summary
Our newer fighters need to learn to be more aggressive when the enemy is on its heels. Most of the year we do a lot of what I would call "chess match fighting," which is where you try to slowly out position your opponent and wait for good shots. Pennsic is mostly about avoiding bad situations and aggressively capitalizing on good situations.
The best advice I'd heard from a fellow kinsman years ago is that you need to be able to recognize a bad situation and quickly get out of it. If Pennsic can be dumbed down into one simple statement, that might be it.
Tuesday - Woods Battle
The Midrealm has a reputation for having a light turnout in the woods. I assume that this year was no different as we won the woods pretty decisively, though we did have to work for it.
The 2019 version of Anglesey and the rest of the bog celts is built pretty good for a woods battle. We have a lot of younger, lighter fighters who fight with spears and skirmish. While this isn't great for defending a gate, it's fantastic for a 90 minute battle on a hill in the woods in August.
I want to preface this with the fact that my tactical awareness in the woods has dramatically improved over the last two years. Truth be told, I've now fought in 15 Pennsic woods battles. In the first 12 I didn't even know what a flag was. I just aimlessly wandered through the woods looking for people to hit. Two years ago I actually focussed on the left flank of the center banner with the goal of trying to capture it. Last year, I sat back and watched the fighting for periods of time, talking to the commanders, while occasionally moving in to try to take out a knight who was causing us problems. At one point I even assessed the the fighting on the line and made my first command decision to roll a flank using random SCA fighters.
This year I assessed the battle lines every time I came up to the front before engaging, and stayed in constant contact with the other commanders on our side.
The job handed to us was to create a distraction on the left side of the woods so that the Midrealm would keep sending troops in our direction rather than toward another flag. Our side conceded the left flag and focussed its fighting on the other three.
I told our liaison up front that we would likely pull people away and send them to more important spots if needed, and he understood. What I found were two things; The Tuchux like to resurrect as a group, which means when they get to the front line, they generally can punch a hole in it, but once they are all dead, there is a clear weakness in the line. The other was that there was a gap between the Tuchux to the right of the road that they were controlling.
Many of us often found ourselves either filling that gap, or holding the road until the Tuchux returned, while most of our younger fighters stayed on the far left (it was better fighting if you are only interested in racking up kills).
I found myself constantly surveying the landscape and moving to where the problems were while calling them out to our side. On onc occasion one of the commanders had his back to the line and was sending everyone down the hill and to our left, as I'm guessing there was a unit initially coming up from there. When I got to him I told him that I was going to survey the situation first. When I did, I noticed that a large unit at formed up the hill from us and was threatening to hit our flank and create a big weakness in our line making the center flag vulnerable. I pointed this out and he adjusted the commands.
My favorite moment of the war was when I found ourselves surrounded and managed to not only pull out of the bad spot, but to also turn our flank on them.
As you can see above, Red's right flank had pushed us far enough back the we got surrounded in the middle. This is a horrible position to be in as they will generally have more numbers than us in that location when the line is contoured this way, but also they will have some really good angles of attack on us. If we don't fix it, it goes from being bad to very bad.
One of the Galatians, Titus, pointed it out to me and I followed him as he bailed, calling out for others to do the same.
What I was most concerned with, however, was that once that pocket collapsed, red would make a push for the flag with numerical superiority as all of the fighters surrounding the pocket would cram into it doubling the typical amount of troops in that amount of space.
My instincts told me that if that many people were crammed into that small space, then there must be another spot in the woods where they were thin. I pulled out and started walking to the left until I found the end of their flank. Once I got there I did a quick count and noticed that we had a clear numbers advantage. I started pressing on the flank and called out, "If we don't push this flank right now, we are going to lose the center flag. This is where the battle will be won," or some other overly dramatic phrase that scadians seem to like. I might have even yelled, "mi'lords and ladies!."
Anyway, not only did I notice that the line was thin, but so was the talent. All of the better fighters were fighting up the hill for the banner. We started walking that flank back but then got stuck behind a big defendable log. I had almost given up until I heard Ying of Anglesey shouting, "Hey! Hey!" to my right. Not only did it draw my attention, but it caused the pocket that he was fighting around to start walking back on its heels. This is when I knew that we had them. I called a charge and we cleaned up the flank. The impact worked its way up the line and we managed to secure the flag.
I'm certain that there were similar moves being made further up the hill that helped us defend the flag and that this was only one piece of it, but I was rather satisfied with the moves that we made and that I wasn't simply trying to kill random people in front of me without purpose.
Note: Last year in the woods I prided myself with only dying once. This year I died somewhere between 5 and 20 times, yet one of my friends didn't much at all this year. I also remember my 3rd or 4th Pennsic being almost impossible to kill. Truth be told, the number of deaths (or kills) often has more to do with circumstances than anything else. I wasn't an amazing fighter in my 3rd or 4th Pennsic. Last year I remembered never seeing two knights next to each other. This year, I rarely saw one by himself. Two knights are a lot harder to kill than one.
Summary note: The takeaway from all of this is that you have time to think in the woods, so do it. Stop before you get to the line, look around, and think about your situation. If this a good spot to get kills? Kills are good, but are they the best kills? Will this help capture or protect a banner?
Wednesday - Bridge Battles
We were assigned to be reserve units. I'll be blunt, the first two battles sucked. The other side just had too many fighters.
BB 1 & 2
In the first battle we moved down to support a unit protecting the southern bridge. Our ballista was doing some damage firing right at the knights and royals of Atlantia, but they were firing back with archers and whittling down the unit that was capping the bridge. They then made one big push after our side had thinned out and broke through the end of the bridge.
I would much rather have attempted to stuff them on the bridge than to give them a chance to break through, but that wasn't our call. We would have lost anyway, but it wouldn't have been so disastrous. One thing I found really annoying was just how much impact 2-3 cheaters can have. Most of Atlantia fought very honorably, but 2-3 guys pushed through and blew off countless shots. Unfortunately, each one manages to create a hole and pulls off 4-6 fighters with him. We just didn't have the numbers to afford that. Additionally, as I said, we have small guys. The only way we can stop chargers is by killing them. If they don't take their shots, then we're screwed.
BB 3
After losing two battles, a contingent of about 50 fighters opted to switch sides. As a result, we managed to (I think) win the next two battles, but barely. Obviously the reason we won was the shifting of the numbers, but we still had to work for the win.
This time our task was to lead out in front of the Tuchux with our spears. Across from us was a unit of romans (the guys with 6 castles on their shields) and Dark Yard, both shield heavy units. We knew they would charge right into us and that we wouldn't be able to stop them.
After several conversations with Dagar, the Tuchux commander (I assumed), we agreed that we'd only send one rank out and that the rest of us would be filed on the sides to allow for a Tuchux column to repel a charge. The idea was that our front rank would just filter back into the ranks of the Tuchux.
Anyway, there's not much more to talk about here tactically. The Tuchux are hard to work with, not because they are difficult people, but because they have a very aggressive system that works best when its Tuchux working with Tuchux. Every now and then one of our guys would find a good spot on the edge and rack up some kills. Two Galatians in particular were doing some good spear work on either side. Basically, when the Tuchux are up front and working, its best just to get out of their way and let them do what they do.
As I watched our side getting whittled down and pushed toward the end of the bridge, I noticed that we had a numbers advantage on the next bridge down. I thought about moving down there and calling a charge as it looked like maybe 30 on 15. BUT, I've made that mistake before. Our side had a lot of spears, while their side had very few. To me this means aggressive spear work. REALLY aggressive. I moved down there, found a spot up front and fired as many shots as I could while encouraging others to do the same. I feel I did well, but eventually died. Soon after that, our side walked them across the bridge and finished them off, and then came around the back side of the north bridge and finished that fight just as our last remaining fighters on that bridge died.
If I had to throw out a rough number guess, our unit of 25 fighters probably netted 25-50 kills (maybe more, maybe less). Had we been bunched up and caught between the Tuchux and Darkyard, I think we would have lost a lot of key fighters and gotten far fewer kills. When a battle is that close, little decisions like that count for something.
Note: I counted the kills in the video during the charge. We did much better than I had thought, but still not in an ideal position to maximize our potential.
BB 4
This was a fun battle that didn't allow range weapons or anything over 6 feet long. It was fun spearing with a 6 footer, and occasionally back handing someone charging past me.
The only tactical comments I can make was when we cleaned up the top two bridges, everyone stopped fighting and cheered. I yelled that the fight wasn't over and that we needed to go and finish off the other bridges. More importantly, I checked each bridge to make sure we had at least one person occupying it.
........I think that was the victory condition. If I was really savy, I would have read what the victory conditions were ahead of time. ;)
Friday - Mountain Pass Battle
This was a fun MOAB style battle. In a nutshell, there were four passes; the goat path, the hot gate, the mines, and the catacombs. Two were narrow (2 fighters wide) and two were wide. Two allowed the use of spears, two did not. There was something for everyone. The way the battle works is that the attackers get unlimited resurrections while the defenders get three lives. There's a time limit, and then you switch sides.
Tactically speaking, the wide paths are shoving matches. The attackers need to send their heaviest guys in and keep charging and shoving people off the sides. If they can get some killing in, go for it. The defenders, OTOH, gain very little by killing people, except if its to stop a big aggressive charger. Every kill is just replaced by the guy behind him.
We were on the goat path. I'm not sure what the best tactic is here, but my gut says that it largely depends on how each unit on the path is built. If you are big shieldmen, then you probably want to charge and push people off the path. If you are small spearmen, then you may want to just fire away.
The path we were on had a lot of archers and we struggled dealing with them. I actually managed to avoid getting shot (the exception being the time I stopped to let a dead guy get out safely) and I think that was due to a lot of focused training against archery over the last several years.
In my opinion, here's the key to avoid getting killed by arrows.
Step 1) Stay out of range, or at least far enough out that you can more easily doge incoming arrows.
Step 2) Watch the archers, not the shields. If you are more than 5 feet away from the shields, you don't need to look at them. They aren't going anywhere and they aren't going to do anything. The archers will.
Step 3) When its your turn to fight, run up to the front and keep throwing shots until you die.
Toward the end of this battle, one of our fighters (Boagrius of Galatia) grabbed three shields and convinced them to charge ahead of us to shield us from arrows. When they got to the front, they charged right into the mass of fighters (why not, there's unlimited resurrections) and quickly died. However, they pushed us past the end of the path and allowed a mass of our unit to break through and get to the banner that they were protecting. Score!
Note: A few years ago a local Duke (Duke Brennan) told us at a practice that when you have unlimited resurrections and a time limit, that you need to be aggressive and continually charge. I think his advice was good enough in that it applies to 90+% of the situations, but technically it isn't correct. I only know this because I have called charges in the past that didn't lead to a single kill, and have since gotten better at quickly analyzing our troop makeup before calling the charge.
In a nutshell, if your unit is 100% spears and archers, calling a charge isn't going to do diddly. Here's my rule of thumb; if you have more fighters than them, and at least as many shields, then you are probably ready for a charge. This assumes that they don't get bonuses for being better fighters, in a defensible position, or they calibrate higher than your guys (maybe they cheat? Maybe your guys don't throw hard shots). Otherwise, you may need to use your spears and arrows to weaken your opponent before charging.
Hope you enjoyed reading!
