Hey all, this is a follow up to a question on the SCA Combat page. Specifically asked, "[are there] little stratagems to keep in mind while learning command?"
So I decided to go into a little bit of depth of my FLANKS method (side note, I really need to figure out a better name, but that's another task for another day).
Before going further, I'd like to say that when I developed this nemonic, I was really only trying to come up with a way to describe to our fighters the basics behind celt style skirmish fighting (not the historical celts, but rather the SCA celtic groups of the northern Atlantia and southern East kingdoms). I've since come to realize that it can pretty much be applied to most unit styles.
What Are the Unit Styles?
I'm going to focus on three main styles of units, which I've learned about from various sources but I should probably at least credit a long conversation I had with Sir Ryu Ironskies of the East and a video I watched lead by Sir Billy, Duke Christoph, and Sir Felix of Atlantia. There is a lot better information out there on these definitions, but I did want to touch on them a bit, here.
Cavalry - Fast moving units in tight formations. These are often "fire and forget" units, built out of lots of shields, normally tightly packed into a wall. A commander picks a target, moves toward the target quickly, and then hits with heavy impact.
Cavalry units require a certain degree of unit cohesion that requires at least a little bit of regular practice. Effective cavalry units are normally not a collection of whoever showed up at war that day, but rather a dedicated unit of fighters with a fair amount of experience together.
Infantry - Slower moving, big blocks of troops. Even though you may be in the middle of a mobile field battle, each individual fighter feels more like they are in a static fight upon impact. An individual fighter may find themselves completely surrounded by their friends if they are in the middle of the unit. This style of fighting tends to be easier to learn for both less experienced fighters, or collections of fighters who don't normally practice together in any sort of coordinated fashion.
Skirmish - Loosely organized faster moving troops. I believe this may be the riskiest unit formation and takes the longest to learn, but also has the biggest payoff (this is the way Anglesey fights). I saw a video recently where skirmish units were described as being "good at distracting." I think this greatly minimizes the effectiveness of a good skirmish unit. A good skirmish unit can move much more quickly and be much more flexible that the previous two forms, and if it finds a good spot, can be more deadly. Its biggest strength is finding and exploiting weaknesses in its opponent, while its biggest weakness is holding ground.
I personally think that though a skirmish unit may not be ideal for organizing a new unit for war later that day, it's the most fun to train for over the long term.
The FLANKS Method Summarized
I'll explain each piece in depth further down, but here's a quick summary. Think of this as a quick checklist to go through before each battle.
F - Secure your Flanks
L - Leg'em and leave 'em
A - Assess which side has the advantage with range weapons
N - Never fight a fair fight. Only fight when you have the advantage
K - Know who are your killers, and who should be in support
S - Spread out your talent
F - Secure Your Flanks
The method is called "flanks" and flanks in the first concept in the method for good reason. In SCA melee combat, dealing with your flanks may just be the most important job you need to do. Units that get hit in the flank don't survive long. Regardless of what your experience level is, before the battle begins, think about how you are going to defend your own flanks while looking to attack an enemy flank.
Now, there are many ways to handle this depending on what kind of unit you have and what you are facing. I just want to talk about a few examples here.
Consider the diagram below, with a green cavalry unit on the left, a disorganized green unit on the bottom, and a red infantry unit at the top:
So each of these units actually has a way to deal with their flanks, despite that not a single unit actually has any fighters dedicated to protecting them.
The green cavalry unit is protecting both of its flanks by positioning itself to the far left of the red unit and pointing at the red flank. From this position, red really isn't challenging either of this unit's flanks.
The green disorganized unit at the bottom has its right flank on the field's border, and it's left flank is protected both by having another unit to it's left, but also having its extreme left flank positioned further left than red's extreme flank.
Now red, however, is not in a great position, but if its commander recognizes this early, there are a few things that he or she can do to deal with the exposed flanks.
One is to move hard and fast away from the cavalry unit. The flank protection is dealt with by running away from the enemy.
Is that the best idea? Probably not. Infantry units don't generally move faster than cavalry units, but who knows? Maybe it's a poorly commanded cavalry unit. Either way, this was a better maneuver than to stand there and get flanked.
Red could also have tried to slide to its right to cut off the cavalry unit and hope that the main green unit below responds slowly.
Or, red could hole up in the corner of the field. I've seen this be very successful many times.
Or perhaps red could have set up as two units and protect both flanks with the border.
Some of these ideas will work out better than others, but notice how in each tactic red is dealing with the horribly exposed right flank (to the left of the picture with the cavalry unit pointed at it).
When fighting in a skirmish unit (which every unit becomes after first contact, so it's good to understand this) we tend to deal with the flanks a little differently. We generally like to go wider than the enemy, and make sure that strong, mobile shieldmen are protecting our flanks, as well as having a few people in the backfield who can plug weaknesses quickly.
Notice below that the green skirmish unit is wider than the red unit. Both the left and right flanks are protected by their best mobile shieldmen. When red threatens green's left flank, green has three fighters in the back field respond to the threat.
For my last example, I'd like to show you a poorly executed plan to deal with flanks and how a small three man team exploited it. At this event, the field was bordered by a pond on one side, and some thick woods on the other. The green team spread out into one thin line across the field, from pond to woods, figuring that they would have both flanks secured and no holes in the line.
They failed in two critical ways. First, their left flank was filled with three spears. You never want to "protect" a flank with spears. If you have a mobile spear with a great sense of field awareness, he or she can hang out on the flank, but they cannot be relied on to stop a charging shield, let alone several.
The second mistake they made was having no one in the back field to react to holes being punched in the line.
In this scenario, the three of us walked up to the line, charged the three spears, and had the scenario won in maybe 20 seconds.
L - Leg 'em & Leave 'em
This one is pretty straight forward. Don't waste your time fighting legged fighters, not unless they are a quick, easy kill (like an archer or spear). This doesn't mean to never take a shot at a legged fighter. It simply means that if there's a person in the middle of the field by themselves on their knees, and they're not an archer, ignore them. Go find other people to fight. You can always come back to this fighter later.
A - Assess Who Has the Range Advantage
In a nutshell, a lot of what you'll be doing on the field is either charging, or not-charging. If you've got a unit full of archers and spears, you don't want to charge a unit of shields. Ideally you'd like to form a kill pocket and hope that they stand there and allow you to stab them.
Several years ago at War of the Wings, we encountered exactly this situation. We saw that our enemy had only shields, and that we had a lot of spears. Our commander told us ahead of time, "Obviously they are going to charge. We're going to have to scatter when they do, try to stay alive, and hopefully we can stab them on the regroup."
As we neared their line, we heard their commander say, "They've got a lot of spears." But instead of charging, their team turtled up into a defensive position, and allowed us to pick them apart with our spears. They made the exact wrong tactical decision.
I was at another event where there was a particular unit commander that I knew who thought that there was no problem too big that couldn't be solved with a nice, powerful charge. In their first field battle, they got overrun by a bigger, more talented unit. In the second field battle, he responded by having his unit sprint across the field and charge right into the middle of this unit. The result? They died, again, but this time much earlier in the battle, and in a far less convenient spot. The winning unit then turned and was able to hit the flank of one of our other units.
Above you can see that Unit 1 was just too small to handle Unit A. Charging hard into Unit A just kills Unit 1 quickly, and right in the middle of the field. Sometimes you just need to stall a bigger, better unit or even drag them out of the fight.
Needless to say, as a new commander, start to learn what kinds of situations call for aggressive charges, and which ones don't.
N - Never Fight a Fair Fight
As a singles fighter, the natural inclination is going to be to find a single opponent, give them a fair chance to face you in single combat, and give them a nice 1v1 fight.
Not in melee. You want to fight when you have the advantage, and avoid the fight when you don't. This doesn't mean to be dirty, but rather to look for a flank, or a place where you have the enemy pinned, or you have more fighters than your opponent does.
Consider the following example:
If you are on the green team, you have a 5 to 3 advantage on the left side, but a 5 to 7 disadvantage on the right. In this case, you clearly want to engage and win as quickly as possible on the left, while avoiding the fight for as long as possible on the right.
Always look for advantages when fighting, and try to avoid the disadvantages.
K - Know Who are Your Killers and Who Are Your Supporters
In many cases, as much as half to two thirds of the unit won't really be fighting, but instead will be supporting their teammates while they fight. Often times the spears are doing all the work, while the shields are there to either be ready to charge when called on, or to defend against the charge when they receive one.
Sometimes in smaller units, a knight might be the killing machine on the field, and his squires should follow him around to keep people off of their knight's back.
If you are a shield and on the green team in this picture below, you are not a killer. You are a supporter while the spears do the work.
If, however, the red team gets whittled down to maybe 1/3 strength, then a green charge may be called, in which case the shields and poles become the killers, and the spears go into he support role.
Sometimes you may look around and find that YOU are the killer on your team, and it's time to step up and do some killing! And maybe you have some brand new fighters. Put them in a support role, and tell them to try not to die, or get in the way, but to be there when needed.
S - Spread Out Your Talent
Make sure that everyone is in a good spot on the field. So often, people just fight from where ever they happened to be standing at the time. Don't have all of your spears on the left, and all of your shields on the right. Don't have all of your new fighters in the same spot on the field.
A few years ago my house, Anglesey, had a big influx of new fighters. We were at ~50% new fighters at Pennsic. We went with a buddy system, where every new fighter had someone that they were to follow. Once the first engagement took place, the system kind of fell apart, but what it did that was valuable was it made sure that we lined up Vet, Newb, Vet, Newb, Vet, Newb, etc. throughout our unit.
The focus was simply making sure that we didn't have any large clumps of fighters who didn't know what to do.
Final Thoughts
Keep fighting, keep watching, keep reading, keep thinking. Never resign yourself to simply being told what to do. Ask questions and get involved. I've been watching this game for almost 30 years, and it is constantly evolving. Tactics that I was told were "the right way" 30 years ago are now laughably out of date. Make mistakes, and more importantly, learn from your mistakes. Even today, I look back at some of my earlier blog posts and cringe at how naive some of my thoughts were at the time, but it was a necessary process to get me from there to here.
And most importantly, be safe, have fun, and make sure everyone around you is having fun as well.
- The Honorable Lord Bari of Anglesey
