Joint Kingdom Melee Practice (Atlantia/East)

 We had a fantastic practice this weekend!  I fought until I could no longer hold up my spear.  I had to repeatedly stand up at dinner because my body kept cramping up.  Lots of positive feedback.  We're hoping to do this again in the spring.

What was this?

Lady Teagan of Anglesey and Master Alric the Mad had been working on a plan for quite some time to put together a cross kingdom practice in the Baltimore, MD area in order to bring together different groups of people to test each other's mettle against.  They let me and Sir Arundoor of Anglesey run the scenarios and lead the feedback sessions, with THL Ozwin (sp?) stepping on to marshal the last scenarios.


The Format

1)  Bring everyone together for a SHORT discussion about the format for the day.

2)  Run a short scenario.  Give both sides a chance to work out among themselves what did and didn't work, make changes, and then run the scenario again.  Offer short, simple observations but don't stop and lecture.  Give them a chance to figure it out on their own.

3)  Once everyone is tired, give them a break.  Bring everyone together to talk about big ideas, lessons learned, etc.  Let the fighters give feedback, but keep it short.

4)  Repeat steps 2 & 3 until the fighters are out of gas for the day.  

5)  Give people a chance to do some singles fighting, or work on some specific skills.

6)  Bring everyone in for one last talk where each person gets their chance to say what they liked about the day, and what they thought could be improved.  This really makes everyone feel a sense of ownership of the practice, while giving the people who run the practices some good feedback.  


The Scenarios


1)

2)

3)

Variations on a Theme

Before I get into the details, I want to talk about how different each of these scenarios were despite looking very similar on the surface.

1)  Need for an immediate plan.  Quick execution.  Even quicker reform and reengagement.

2)  Pacing and timing.  Learning how to take and hold ground.  Watching and protecting the flanks.  

3)  Even more pacing.  Making smart, low risk decisions.  Using terrain to establish kill pockets.  Drawing the enemy toward your own resurrection point.

Throughout the day, we went from short, fast battles, toward longer battles.  The length of each fight went from ~45 seconds in the first scenario, to 90+ seconds in the second scenario, to 5 or more minutes in the third scenario.  Throughout the day, the trend went from more immediate action toward more pacing and need for constant communication.  

Scenario 1

When I say there is a need for quick execution, this does NOT mean "charge right into the enemy."  Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't, and the whole point of this exercise is to be able to identify the differences.  

In a nutshell, each team had three channels to cover.

At lay on, each team would normally send a number of fighters through each channel which would result in some combination of numbers, skill, and weapon type.  This would normally lead to some sort of mismatch in one or more of the channels.  Within a given engagement, the team that has the advantage would need to identify that advantage and capitalize on it (attack), while the team that was at a disadvantage would need to "slow the bleeding" as much as possible (deny).  

Examples of mismatches

Once an engagement was won, it was critical for those who survived to reform and move on to the next engagement.  

Reforming after first engagement

Notes on reforming:  Reforms must be done as quickly as possible.  The number of survivors will determine how long it should take to reform.  The two biggest mistakes I often see are fighters who move so quickly to the next engagement that they leave all of their teammates behind, and fighters who take way too long to reform.  Generally speaking, small numbers (2-5 fighters) should be able to reform and run to the next engagement almost instantly.  Large numbers (10, 20, 40 fighters, etc.) will need a slower, more concerted effort to pull the survivors together before finding a direction in which to move together.

Notes on speed to first engagement:  Most fighters over estimate the need to sprint into a fight.  More often than not, a slow walk is all that is needed.  Having said that, why didn't either team wait at their rez point and form kill pockets at the choke points, instead of rushing right into the fight?

Because of the curved shape of this field, it was pretty important for both teams to quickly get to the flanks.  It is usually better to have a front line that is enveloping your enemy, than to have them enveloping you.  Even when taking into account the disadvantages of fighting in kill pockets, it's often better to be in a position to see the whole battle, than to have fighting happening outside of your field of vision.

Scenario 2

Because the control point was going to be scored at 90 seconds, there was no need to rush right into the fight and kill people.  In these kinds of fights, the team with better spears does a good job of slowly taking ground, but a not so good job of holding ground.  The team with the better shields tends to be able to take ground whenever they want, provided that their charges are coordinated, but they only have so much gas in their tank.  They can't charge for 90 seconds straight without resting.

Both teams were able to figure out how to look for opportunities to take control of the middle of the field.  They were also good at looking for flanking opportunities, but not good at defending against flankers.  Often times people were getting into their backfields because no one was watching the flank, nor communicating to their teams about any weaknesses they may have spotted.

By this point in the day, both teams had worked out most of their communication problems and were able to get a good feel for where the strengths and weaknesses were on both sides.  The lack of flanking awareness was the only real soft spot in this scenario that I saw.


Scenario 3

In these 3-life rez battles, being efficient with your killing is critical.  The pace of the fight tends to be slow, with each team looking to take advantage of forming kill pockets at the choke points.  They are also both looking for mismatches, which normally result in either a superiority is spear numbers and skill (get to work, spears!), or a soft spot in the line where there is a lack of shield or pole support that can be exploited by charging shields.  If a shield can break through the line and into the backfield, they may be able to score 3-4 kills before either dying or returning to their side.

One of the key pieces of these battles that one of the Atlantian knights felt their team failed at in the first run through of this scenario was the value of drawing the fight toward your own resurrection point.  When close to your rez point, each death is replenished quickly because of the short walk, while each opponent's death is replenished slowly.

If you ever find your unit overwhelmed, simply back the fight up toward your rez point to help replenish your numbers more quickly.

Why not refuse to fight beyond your rez point?

The problem with this tactic is that it makes it obvious to the other team that this what you are doing, and then they refuse falling into the trap.  The following situation is likely to occur.

If you are familiar with singles fighting, imagine a fighter who keeps backing away from you every time you go to attack.  It becomes pretty clear that that fighter wants you to over commit so that they can counter attack.  If it becomes too obvious that that is their plan, then you can employ the same tactics.

At this point one of two things happens.  Either you both learn that you need to be a little more subtle about baiting your opponent (for example, you might throw a quick, safe shot to bait them into committing), or the marshals step in and explain that you need take a more chivalrous approach toward your fighting ("hey, you two are holding up the whole tournament!").

So, in a nutshell, if your opponent is completely willing to walk into the choke points and fight near your rez, then let them do that.  Just because the opponent SHOULD figure out the obvious solution, doesn't always mean that they will.  Otherwise, figure out how to make sure that good fighting is occurring, while keeping in mind that you can still back out of a bad situation.

2v1 Drills

These never happened.

I had planned on starting off the day with some 2v1 drills and teach newer fighters how to surround a single fighter, but a lot of fighters showed up early and, before I got my armor on, 15 people were ready to fight, and they were mostly veterans.

Teagan and Arundoor made the call to just get the scenarios started.  There's nothing worse than slowing up a large group of veteran fighters by having them stand in line to watch a bunch of people work on some skills that most people already have developed.

THE most critical goal of any practice is to make sure people want to return to the next one.


See You at the Next One!

Overall the feedback for this was pretty positive.  People felt that the biggest improvements on the day was an increase in on field communication.  

We're hoping to do another one in the spring.

-Sir Bari of Anglesey

River War - Weapons Mix, Melee IQ, and the Need for More than One Shield

 Last weekend Sir Sterling hosted his annual River War in South Jersey.  I believe roughly 25 heavy fighters participated with Sir Rory doing a fine job of running the heavy activities with the help of a few others.

Bear Pit Tourney

I've always been critical of mixing melees and tourneys in the same day because what ends up happening is that one often ends up from detracting from the other.  A bear pit tourney seemed like a great way to warm up, make sure everyone got in a lot of good fights, give the duelers a chance to show their skills and meet up with people from other regions, and to do it all without taking up a whole lot of time.

In 30 minutes everyone managed to get in somewhere between 10 and 20 fights.  We had four pits running.  Loser got a point, winner scored 2.  The fighter with the most points won the tourney. 

Capture the Flag Resurrection Battles

In one set of scenarios we needed to capture a flag in the middle of the field, and then move that flag to a "goal" (traffic cone) in the field to win.  Both teams had resurrection points away from the goal.

This is a pretty common scenario which usually looks like this:

This weekend had an interesting twist.  Instead of a resurrection point, an entire side of the field was a resurrection line.

In this scenario, both sides began at their resurrection points with the flag in the middle of the field.  Our team figured out two fundamental tactics to this battle.  

1)  A quick way to lose is to let the other team grab the flag and run right to the goal, so we needed to make sure that a number of us lined up near their goal to protect it.

2)  When you grab the flag, stay to the side of the field where your resurrection line is, as that is where your fighters respawn, while their fighters will have a much further distance to travel and return from the resurrection point (note the "sweeps left" comment in the picture above).

Some more thoughts about this scenario.  One of the fighters described it as a "soccer game," meaning that it favored mobile fighters with foot speed and endurance.  The field was big, and our fighters were sort of spread out in a skirmish.

The way this played out seemed to favor spears and fighters who knew how to skirmish together.  If we had a little more experience with this scenario, I feel like the blue team would have figured out that once they grab the flag, instead of moving straight toward the goal, they should move directly to their rez line.  Then move the flag down the field and set up a coordinated push with the shields.  They also had a couple of pole fighters who could have swapped out and grabbed shields.  I imagine this tactic looking a little like this:

Shields as Hunters vs Shields in a Wall

The latter is when the shields group up together as they are in the above picture, moving as a single block of fighters.  The latter is when a shield fighter goes off on their own, hunting down mismatches (ie killing archers and spears, lower level fighters, or 2v1 opportunities).  While we often teach people to stray away from hunter style fighting, there's really nothing wrong with it when done appropriately.  When facing a unit with 50% spears spread out across the field, a hunter or two would not be a bad idea.  For the orange team, however, all five spears were very mobile and had a great sense of field awareness, so hunting them down would be a lot more difficult.

I'd also like to point out, for those that are fans of the shield wall approach, that may work when your team has the flag.  When the other team has the flag, however, you really have no choice but to spread out and cover the whole field (much like a soccer team, rugby team, football during kick offs, etc.).  Bunching your fighters together provides more channels for the flag carrier to run toward the goal.

Several fighters had asked about forming triads.  Again, while it may be a good tactic for large scale battles, or even smaller scale single death field battles (I worked with one at Pennsic in a 10v10 fight that was great), the problem here is that they get broken up pretty quickly and the person returning from the resurrection point needs to get back into the fight where a fighter is needed (attacking a flag, defending their fighter with the flag, defending a goal, getting a quick kill opportunity, etc.) rather than to find their triad partners.

Resurrect in Groups, or Return Immediately?

Some people are fans of resurrecting in groups.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  One being that single fighters are easy to kill and a lot of less experienced fighters don't know how to avoid threats that they can't handle.  Walking out of the resurrection point in a group of three is much safer.  The other is that we really want to foster this idea of working as a team instead of as an individual in a melee.  A lot of less experienced fighters get caught up in picking out singles fights in the middle of a melee rather than to look for tactical advantages.

The problem is in a scenario like the one laid out this weekend, you really can't afford to let fighters hang out at the resurrection point when simply having warm bodies on the field is so critical.

Broken Field Resurrection Battles
    -Shield Team vs Spear Team

These have become a real staple in our region, especially for melees with 10-20 total fighters.  It's a really great way to work on so many aspects of melee fighting.  Teams were 9v8 with a shield heavy team (5 shields, 2 spears, a 2 weapon fighter, and an archer) and a shield light team (1 shield, 3 spears, 3 poles, and an archer).  Each fighter had three lives.  

Note:  I've been to so many practices where they attempt to make sure that both teams have the same weapons mix and similar talent levels.  Personally I prefer to have different mixes provided that the fights are competitive, as this allows both sides to identify each others strengths and weaknesses and apply tactics appropriately.  

Note:  archers could not fire over the field obstacles.

Given the layout above, victory was completely at the hands of the blue team.  If they allow themselves to get disorganized, or stand around and let the orange spears get to work, they lose.  If they charge in organized fashion, they win.  They did the latter, and won quite easily.  They'd pick a choke point on one of the flanks, bunch up 3-4 shields together, and run down the spears.  Once they cleared the spears out, they'd call a reform and pull themselves back to the choke point.  With only one shield on the orange team, they had nothing to slow down the shield mob.

After losing badly, the orange team switched out one of its poles for a shield (technically a spear went to a shield, and a pole went to a spear).  Just having a second shield on the field allowed the orange to team to manage both flanks well enough to slow the blue team down and allow the spears to go to work.

Remember, when shields assess the field, spears kill.  When shields rest, spears kill.  When shields reform, spears kill.  When shields attack someone else, spears kill.

Spears can't win a fight all by themselves as the shields will just run them over.  But if you can have enough support to slow the shields down, you have a chance to survive and win.  My experience tells me that, at a minimum, you must secure both flanks with at least one solid shield fighter in these small battles.

Hope you enjoyed reading!
-Sir Bari of Anglesey, East Kingdom

Multiple Control Point Battle - Should You Concede a Point?

 Yes?  No?

The answer isn't clear, but I can speak to some things to consider.  


Northern Region War Camp - Three Flags

I'll begin with an example.  The scenario was a broken field unlimited resurrection battle with three flags to control at random time checks, with approximately 21 fighters per side.

The green team's plan (the team I was on) was to begin by sending 7 fighters to take each flag and that we should be, "flexible with our plan as we learn more about the fight."

The red team's plan (based off of my best guess) was to concede the banner on the left (their right), keep the green fighters who are fighting over that flag occupied with a minimal force, and then to focus the remaining fighters on the other two flags.  The basic strategy is to lose one flag, but then control the other two with greater numbers.

Assuming equal prowess on both teams, this will work provided that the opposing team doesn't adjust appropriately.  In the following example, green sends 7 fighters to fight over each flag, while red sends 3 fighters to defend the left flag and 10 each on the other two flags.

Here red gives up one of the three points to green (positions exaggerated a bit to illustrate who has which flag) in hopes of holding the other two points by maintaining a 9 to 7 fighter advantage on those flags.  This has a good chance of working provided that green does not adjust.

What if red occupies one of the flags with a single fighter?  Will this now give them a 10 to 7 advantage on the other two flags, almost guaranteeing that they will score 2 of the 3 points?

An easy win for red provided that green doesn't adjust, which is entirely possible that they won't.  The problem with the single red fighter on the left flag is that the tactic becomes pretty obvious, and it won't take long for the bored green fighters to look around and find something else to do.  In this case, they'll either redistribute their numbers to make a competitive fight on the other two flags, or they'll just shift onto the flank of the middle flag.

Redistributed Numbers

Shifting on to the flank:  Green moves 5 fighters from the left flag
to the flank of the center flag

In the first case, green makes a fair play for both the center and right flags, while in the second case, green makes a strong play for the center flag while making a weak play for the right flag.

Keep in mind, in either case, green already has one point.  Red is just giving it to them.  So in order to win, green only needs to control one of the other two flags while red needs to control them both.

Let's consider the "redistribution" tactic, once again.  

Assuming all else is equal, the left flag goes to green, while the other two flags have a 50% chance (roughly) of going to either green or red.  Given random time checks, this gives green a 75% chance of controlling at least two flags during any time check, while red has a 25% chance*.  This gives green a clear advantage.

*Odds explained:  imagine the center and right flags have coin flips, red on one side, green on the other.  The left flag will always go green because red is just conceding the point.  So there are four possible scenarios, each with an equal chance of occurring.  GGG, GRG, GGR, & GRR.  Only in the 4th case does red control two flags.  

How Did it Go at War Camp?

One of the keys for green is making absolutely sure that they don't lose the flag that the other team is just giving them.  So it is easier to control that flag and concentrate more numbers to the middle flag than it is to do a large scale redistribution across the field. 

Effectively green kept enough people to keep the left flag, with the rest floating toward the middle flag.  Occasionally red would move some fighters toward the left flag to make a play for it, and when that happened, green's floaters would shift back to defend.  One of the key people in all of this was a veteran spear (Sir Gowain) who floated between the two flags.  He was important because with a 9 foot spear, he could easily attack people on both flags without much movement.

 So here it looks like green has the left flag, a small advantage on the center flag, and a little bit larger disadvantage on the right flag.  Again, I want to reiterate, while the center flag is not guaranteed to be controlled by green, they get the left flag for FREE.  

Ultimately green controlled the battle that day.


So What is Always the Right Play?

I keep reiterating that in this scenario, green gets a free point.  That isn't to say that that is a bad tactic for red.  In some cases, it may be the best tactic.  I only want to drive that point home so that people are aware that if they concede a point, that they are taking a risk.  It is much like a blitz in football, or a half court trap in basketball.  Both are great plays when utilized correctly, but there's always a risk involved.

So there is no answer for what is always the right play, only that the risks and rewards must be understood when drawing up the plan, and that people need to read the battle as it progresses and make adjustments.


Remaining Flexible

Duke Edward was the captain of our team and said, "Lets start with the right 7 going right, the middle 7 going center, and the left 7 going left.  This is only our starting strategy.  As we learn more about the battle, we'll adjust."  I was on the planning team for the Town Battle at Pennsic (also a control the flags battle) and I made a similar comment.  "So we've agreed on the strategy, but let's remember to allow ourselves room to adjust as we learn about the battle in the first 20 minutes," which was an obvious statement to make and that everyone seemed to already understand and agree with.

And to be fair, the red team did make several adjustments throughout the fight at the war camp.

Hope you enjoyed reading!

-Sir Bari of Anglesey - East Kingdom

Pennsic 49 Belted/Unbelted Champions Battles

 For those not aware, the war point battles begin on Sunday with the unbelted champions battle, which is a selection of the best unbelted heavy fighters from the East vs those from the Midrealm.  Each year the format is slightly different, but it is always a single death field battle and it is always fast, hard hitting, and usually over in under a minute.  This year had 30 per side. 

The belted champions battle is often a similar format, but with knights instead of unbelts.  This year had 15 per side.  

And then many years they will allow the alternates (those chosen to be available to fill in a spot on the unbelted team if someone can't make it due to schedule or injury) fight an exhibition battle with ~10 on a side.

Additionally there is a rapier battle, a Heroic Champions tournament, and an Allied Champions battle.

For this post I want to talk about one key flaw with how the belted and unbelted champions often fight.  For the sake of showing proper respect to the people who fought that day, I won't say specifically who I saw make this mistake this year.  There were three battles, and two teams in each battle, so I could be talking about only one of the six teams involved.  Additionally, I could be misreading the videos of the fights, so it is entirely possible that no one made this mistake, but I do see it in these kinds of battles a lot so it is worth talking about at least in a hypothetical sense.


Throwing a Bigger Rock

I've been saying this for years.  There are two ways to win in a game of rock, paper, scissors if your opponent throws rock.  You either throw paper, or you throw a bigger rock.

Rock, in this case, is running fast, charging hard, plowing right into the enemy, and swinging as hard and as fast as you possibly can until either there are no bodies left, or you hit the ground.  

This will almost always work provided that your opponent does not do the same thing to you.  And if you are on either one of these teams, you are probably used to this kind of success fairly regularly.  

The problem with the champions battles is that your opponents have a similar skill level to your own. You aren't beating up on the rabble, but rather you are fighting other champions.

Getting Out of a Bad Situation

When identifying a local threat, you often have two tactical options; attack or deny.  Attacking is pretty straight forward, though there are nuances to exactly how you will attack.  You can charge left, charge right, charge the middle, envelop, use range weapons, etc.  When you deny, you essentially want to avoid the engagement while keeping the enemy occupied.  This might be done by simply moving slowly toward them so that the engagement doesn't happen until you get reinforcements from somewhere else on the field, yet fast enough so that they are still focussed on fighting you instead of moving to engage a different unit. 

I personally like to use the "dance and run" approach.  The best way to describe this is to think of a pack of dogs encountering a grizzly bear.  The dogs will get close enough to keep the bear's attention, but will run away when the bear comes at them while their pack mates come up from behind.  Then, when the bear turns, the pack mates run away while you come up from behind.  Etc.

What Does a Bad Situation Look Like?

A bad situation is usually any fight that your unit will lose.  Your best options in these situations are to either stall until you get reinforcements, keep the opponent occupied while refusing to engage, leaving the situation altogether, or dying slowly and away from the main fight (meaning that you try to position yourselves so that when you finally die, it took them as long as possible to kill you, and it will take them as long as possible to reform and get to the next fight).

Below is an example of what often happens in these kinds of battles.

In this hypothetical case, the yellow unit on the right had the goal to outflank the enemy.  The enemy, however, moved to the far border preventing the flanking maneuver.  They also have a larger unit, and were able to get their reserves to quickly assist the main unit.  If yellow charges, they'll be at an 8v13 disadvantage, and they will be hit on their front as well as their flank.

The best decision yellow can make, IMO, is to refuse the engagement, at least until they receive reinforcements.

Instead, what often happens, is that yellow will plow right into the enemy and hope for the best, which is usually a quick death. 

Is it Possible to Deny?

Never push on a rope.

This is an adage that has stuck with me for years.  What it means is that regardless of what you want people to do, there are many times when people are simply just not wired to do what you want them to do.  

I don't have enough experience with these teams to know if it is even possible to teach a unit to deny in these scenarios. They are often a collection of skilled, aggressive, athletic fighters who spend very little time actually practicing together as a unit.  To give them the task of denying might be asking them to do something that is simply not in their nature and will fail even worse than charging.

If that's the case,  then the best solution might be to keep this in consideration when drawing up a plan and understanding that once lay on is called, that the fighters are going to do what the fighters are going to do, and to put them in positions where chances of success are high, and failure is low.

I don't what that would look like, but it might be the best answer.  The other is, of course, to figure out how to train the fighters so that their instincts are different in these battles.

Hope you enjoyed reading!

Sir Bari of Anglesey - East Kingdom

Pennsic 49 Town Battle

 Post Pennsic, Post #2

Welcome back to the Tactical fighter!  Again, much like the field battle, I can only really give my observations from where I was standing.  I was with the East Kingdom Southern Army and Eldomere, on the very right flank of the town battle.  Across from us was Dark Moon and, I'm certain, a handful of other units.

The goal was to occupy a building (controlled with a red/blue flip stick) at 20, 40, and 60 minute check points.  The town looked like this, with my unit responsible for the far right flank:

If we zoom in on just that flank, it looked a little more like this:

There were some discussions leading into this battle about how it would play out. 

Scenario 1:

One side would just be bigger or better than the other side causing the battle front to naturally be beyond the building.  In this case, the winning side would not need to worry about keeping too many bodies inside of the building.

Scenario 2:

Sides are relatively evenly matched and whomever controls the building fills it full of people.  Based on some calculations as well as some small scale test battles, we guessed that whichever side fills the building was going to lose control of the battle front due to having fewer fighters available for the front.  Granted, if the building is full during the time check, then it's a win.  But the fear was that the opposing side would clear the building and take it right before the time check.

Scenario 3:

Sides are relatively evenly matched, but instead of filling the building, you use as many troops as you can to try to push the battle front off of the front of the building.  So, rather than fighting inside of the building, you'd fight in front of it.

Truth be told, we had no idea how this battle would play out, so we allowed ourselves a big degree of flexibility.  Ultimately I believe the battle was mostly scenarios 1 & 3.  Much of the time the East had a good handle of pushing the front line beyond the building, while there were significant moments where the Midrealm was able to make a play for the building.  I only remember one occasion where we were concerned enough to send large numbers of troops to fill the building.  

There were a couple of nuances/tactics to this battle that I found interesting and thought I'd like to share.


Dead Spears Left Big Holes in the Line

I noticed that whenever a good spear would die on our side, the other side would start to press.  It became clear that good spear fighters were very valuable at controlling the front.  I tried to impress upon them that they were more valuable staying alive than getting kills, but I didn't seem to be very convincing.

This is a skill that any spear will need to develop over the course of their SCA career.  

On this note, I'll say that I died in every single bridge battle and every single field battle, despite the fact that our side won 9 out of 10 of them.  By contrast, I died only a single time in the 90 minute woods battle (and I was being kind on that one).  I believe that if you are in a resurrection battle and you control the flag, then your goal should be focussed more on survival.  In single death attrition battles, more risk can be taken.


Organization is Needed to Fill the Right Holes in the Line

There were a couple of times when the battle front near the building would get a couple of holes in it, with no one to fill those holes.  I saw this, and our other Lt Commander, Danx, also happened to see it.  No one else in the line could see it because they were busy fighting the people across from them, and we can't rely on them to have super human peripheral vision to figure out that they need to move to more critical spots in the line.

At one point I started yelling, "Shift left!  Shift left!" to get fighters to move into those holes near the building.  That was not a bad short term fix.  Danx had the long term fix, which was to catch people coming back from the rez point and send them to the right holes to fill.


Pushing is Often Better than Killing

There were a few times when our opponents would make a big press to get into the building.  Our guys did a good job of running into them to stop the press, but they ended up getting focussed on swinging their swords when what they really needed was to push the enemy beyond the entrance of the building.

Again, the fix here is leadership since they are busy fighting.  I yelled, "Push them out of the way.  Go!  Go!  Go!" while I placed a pole across their backs to guide them (a technique I learned from His Majesty Ryouko'jin of the Iron Skies several years ago).

There were a couple times when our opponents would try to get a nice column charge lined up and run down the channel between the two lines.  Again, to stop these, we simply pushed them off line.  This could be done with just a handful of fighters determined to shove the group out of the way.

Hope you enjoyed reading.  More to come!


Sir Bari of Anglesey - East Kingdom

Pennsic 49 - Field Battle

 Hi all,

Hope you had fun and either avoided the plague or are recovering quickly from it.

I've got a few thoughts to share regarding the Pennsic field battles, all from the perspective of where I was fighting on the field each time.

Ultimately, there's always an overall strategy that is put together by the warlord and the general.  Most of us have little control over that, but what we can do is do our job in making good decisions on the field and hope that it helps our side win the overall fight.  The best thing you can do is to kill quickly, die slowly, and and reform and move.  All of this hinges on putting yourself in a good position on the field and making good decisions.

Field Battle 1:

I fought with a spear heavy East Kingdom unit.  We were actually fairly well balanced across the unit, but separated into houses, which left the part of the unit I was in very spear heavy.  What this generally means is that we should be able to move quickly as a mob and get a lot of kills, but are susceptible to charges from the enemy.  These charges can be survived, but not without giving ground.

We were on the East's extreme right flank and moved quickly.  Moving quickly allows a unit to get into the position that they want.  The danger, however, is that undisciplined units tend to plow into their opponents without proper support because they moved into position faster than their supporting troops.

In this case, we were able to gain a really good flanking advantage on Dark Moon by running hard to our right as they marched forward.

Note:  in all diagrams, I'm taking a guess as to what it looked like from memory.  The further away from my unit, the more I'm guessing.

Once we got into position, I saw that they really didn't have the capacity to keep us out of their backfield, so I yelled, "Shift right!  Shift right!" followed by, "Let's curl this line.  Keep curling this line!"  The only thing I would have done differently would have been to call for more aggression in order to finish the fight sooner so that we could move on to other targets.  

You can see below the advantageous position that we were in.

I died before the engagement was resolved, but I know our side won the battle and I'm pretty sure we won this engagement.  My apologies if I remember it incorrectly, but if we lost, it was either due to a difference in skill, or having another unit come to support.  Regardless, I was pretty happy with the position that we put ourselves in.

Field Battle 2:

We were instructed to do something very similar for the 2nd battle, but after our general left, we saw a unit shift to the flank.

 

I think this was a pretty smart move.  Personally, I think you should never give up a flank unless you have some grand plan that can compensate for it.  They effectively had their soldiers on the out of bounds line with no way for us to go around.

Despite our orders, we knew that we had a 0% chance of getting around the flank.  Furthermore, we knew that we were facing a unit who could just run us over.  Sir Klaus, Sir Donnan, and myself had a quick conversation and agreed that we needed to "deny" the flank in this fight, and hope that where ever that new flank unit came from was going to leave a hole somewhere else on the field that other troops on our side could exploit.  We told our unit, "your number 1 goal is to stay alive, even if that means to turn around and run away."

We kept moving backward to avoid the fight, while the opposing unit kept marching forward.  It was actually easy to avoid the fight because larger units tend to move slow in order to maintain unit cohesion.  Notice the spread out nature of the blue spear unit.  The faster, more confident fighters end up in the front because they know that they can easily run away.  The slower, less experienced, or more timid fighters stay in the back to give themselves more room and time to react.  

At some point reinforcements came up behind us and told us to engage, which we did as we then knew that we had the support that we needed for the fight.

Uncoordinated Charges

It's quite common at Pennsic to receive uncoordinated charges from the enemy.  Militia units simply don't have the time to train their troops and the commanders don't have the practice to know how to get a unit to work cohesively.  Uncoordinated charges into a unit of spears often does not end well for them.

Field Battles 2-5:

For the last three battles I moved over to the left flank to fight with Anglesey.  Our unit was of a similar makeup as the East Kingdom unit I fought with on the right flank, but a little bit more cohesive only because we have more experience together.  In each of the three battles we pretty much found ourselves in a gap between two large units where we had the option to turn on either flank.  We always chose to turn left as we'd like to clean up a flank at the top of the hill, and then move the survivors down the hill, coming from the outside and moving in, with an uphill advantage.

Because of our small size, the larger units tended to ignore us, allowing us to get to a flank.

I did make one significant mistake.  After cleaning up the left flank, I headed quickly back down the hill, but the next thing I knew, I was surrounded by our enemy.  I had apparently outrun my allies who were still on the top of the hill.  I had underestimated how long it would take them to reform and get back into the fight.  In the future I will need to really take my time and make sure that I can pull a large unit of fighters together before heading into the next fight.

Getting Out of a Bad Situation

In the 5th battle, a bunch of people switched sides, which gave the opponent a stronger army than they had in the first four battles.  At one point, we found ourselves getting surrounded by a large unit.

Ultimately this was an unwinnable situation, but it's still our goal to make the best of it and hope that someone on our team is doing better elsewhere on the field.

Two parts of our units made different decisions, both of which worked to our advantage to help slow the bleeding.  The fighters to the extreme left of our line were able to run around red's flank, while some of the fighters in the middle were able to punch through a weakness in red's line.

This got us into the backfield, but ultimately the fight was lost.

These were just a few insights from the field battle this year.  Look for more to be posted in the coming days.




Thanks for reading!

Sir Bari of Anglesey - East Kingdom

Melee Practice: Scrimmages, Drills, and Lectures

Introduction

Hello everyone, I'm THL Bari of Anglesey, squire to Sir William MacCrimmon, and one of the Lt Commanders for the East Kingdom.  I've got decades of experience fighting and running melee practices in addition to a former career as a high school teacher and basketball coach.  (Also, welcome to my 113th melee blog post!)

In this post I'm going to talk about methods of instruction, the scrimmage, the drill, and the lecture, and which methods are most useful for different kinds of situations.  In short, sometimes you need to let people figure stuff out on their own, while other times that can be just too overwhelming for them.


Academy Award Winning Lectures

Walk into a school and observe a bunch of classrooms.   The first door you open reveals an exciting teacher in the front of the room telling a story about the Battle of Gettysburg.  The second door reveals a teacher saying, "Nine times seven," and the class repeats in unison, "Sixty Three."  "Eight times four."  "Thirty Two."  And then you reach the third door and see a room full of kids with pencils in their hands scribbling onto paper with a teacher just watching.  Every now and then the teacher will lean into a kid and say something that you can't quite make out.

The first room revealed an example of a lecture.
The second was an example of drills.
The third was an example of guided practice.

Robin Williams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in the movie Dead Poet Society.  It was a movie full of scenes of him performing in front of a class, giving inspirational speeches, engaging students, getting them to think outside of the box, all while standing on top of his desk.  

Would he have been nominated if he just walked around the room and occasionally leaned in and said, "Bill, you forgot to carry the one."  

All three rooms revealed examples of teaching.  However, as scadians, we've dedicated ourselves to a hobby which is centered around living in an alternate universe that we've created.  We are, in a sense, thespians, and there's nothing exciting about watching our protagonist quietly standing off to the side and and allowing his or her class to work stuff out on their own.  Williams would never have been nominated for that!

But it is still an important component of effective teaching.

The Optics of Teaching

The incentive for writing this post is that I've noticed from many different fighters a lack of understanding of the value of a scrimmage.  For those not aware, a scrimmage is "practice play between two squads."  There's this perception that if you are lecturing or running drills, then you are teaching.  You know.....you're putting on the big performance, and everyone can see the teaching and the learning allegedly taking place.  On the other hand, if a scrimmage is taking place, there is no performance by our protagonist, and there is no organized act put on by the students to signal to the audience, "Hey look, we are involved in a lesson."  Despite its immense value, it doesn't LOOK like teaching, and I've noticed that sometimes teachers are afraid to just let their students fight.

Lectures, Drills, and the Value of Scrimmage

Let's take a simple melee concept that, here in the East, we call "forty-fives."  When you have a 2v1 situation, the team of two should split, slightly, so that each fighter is attacking on an angle to get around their opponent's shield.

Do you understand the concept?  I hope so, as I just communicated it to you through expository writing.  If we were in person, I would have explained this to a group in a lecture format.  In other words, the above was an example of the value of a lecture.

Now we can drill it.  I can get a couple of lines of fighters going and have them attempt in engage a single enemy with this concept.  This can be done in armor, out of armor, with weapons, without weapons, half speed, full speed, no contact, light contact, full contact, etc.

And then finally, we can test it in a scrimmage.  In this case, we can run an 8v8 field battle and keep an eye out for whether or not people apply the technique within the context of a battle.

So the concept of 45s can be taught via lecture, through a series of drills, and within the context of a battle.  There is an art to understanding when to use each teaching technique, how much time to spend on it, and which groups of fighters will benefit more from one method versus another.  Some techniques, like running away from a legged fighter, don't need to be drilled at all (people already know how to run away) and only minimal time is needed to really explain the concept.  This is definitely an example of something that can only really be learned through repetition during a scrimmage.  

Lessons From a Basketball Practice

A long time ago a lightbulb went off during a basketball practice.   My athletes were not "boxing out," after someone shot the ball (a technique used to put a player in position to get the rebound if the shot was missed).  Despite running numerous drills to improve the technique, no one would use it during the scrimmage.

I eventually realized that the problem wasn't a lack of skill and technique.  The problem was remembering to apply the technique during the chaos of a game situation.  

The solution was to stop the play during a scrimmage whenever someone forgot to box out, draw everyone's attention to it, and then reset the play.  I did this several times, and in a matter or minutes I was able to fix the problem.  Not only was the scrimmage the best method to fix this particular problem, it was also the only method to identify the problem in the first place.

Application to Melee Practice

Two weeks ago I marshaled at a melee event with 100 fighters.  We had a problem getting the fighters to stop during a hold.  While most would stop fighting, there were often ~10-20 fighters who'd keep fighting after the hold was called.  

The problem was that the fighters were not echoing the call of hold.  A marshal can only yell so loud and needs the help of every fighter to echo the hold call until everyone has stopped fighting.

So, if we were to attempt to solve this problem at practice with instruction, we would say, "Okay, everyone, when I say hold, you say hold.  Do you understand?"  They nod heads, and you move on.

If we were to attempt to solve it with drills, a marshal would yell, "hold," and they'd respond, "hold."  We could do that several times while they stand there in their armor.  We could even correct the technique.  

I'm being somewhat sarcastic.  People already know how to say, "hold!"  The issue is remembering to do it while fighting.

So to solve it in a scrimmage, you simply call a hold in the middle of a fight.  While they are thinking about who they want to hit, and how they don't want to get stabbed, and whether or not they are nearing the battle goal, and while they are yelling commands, you yell, "hold!"  And when they stand there and look at you, you ask, "what are you supposed to do in a hold?"  "Stop fighting."  "And?"  "..........echo the command."  "That's right.  Reset the battle and do it again.  Next time echo the command."

You can apply this to so many things.  Keep in mind, however, that there needs to be a focus.  Don't just call it for any mistake.  You need to pick 1-3 things to focus on, and tell them in advance that that is what you are focussing on.  It could be, for example, avoiding fighting legged fighters, or getting involved in a 1v1 fight in the middle of a field battle, or not echoing commands.  Let them know that you'll be focussing on those three concepts, and if you catch someone doing it wrong, you'll call hold, point it out, and restart the battle.

Additional note:  punishment isn't necessary.  You only need a reinforcer.  Calling hold and resetting the fight is enough reinforce the brain to pay attention to and internalize the practice goal.  


Sage on the Stage vs Guide on the Side

Robin Williams in Dead Poet Society was the "sage on the stage," lecturing from the top of his desk.  The "guide on the side" is the person that takes a step back and allows his or her students the chance to apply what they've learned, and to offer help only when needed. 

Scadians (particularly the experienced ones) tend to be great lecturers.  I mean that with sincerity and admiration as I've heard many great educational and inspirational lectures from long time veterans of the SCA.

But scadians also tend to be bad at sitting back and watching bad fighting.  The fear is that if bad fighting is allowed to happen, then bad habits will form, and the fighters will actually get worse instead of better.  I mean, would a trumpet teacher allow their students to play with bad technique?

Yes.  

That's exactly what they do.  They blow into their trumpet and play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with the most wretched sound you've ever heard.  They don't wait until they've received enough lecture to play it with a good sound, and they don't wait until they've mastered all of their scales (ie "do drills") until they are allowed to join an ensemble.  They're taught a few basic concepts, do a few repetitions on it every day, and then show up to 4th period band practice and play really badly in a room full of other kids playing just as badly.  And then, one at a time, little problems get fixed until, one day, enough problems have been fixed that they've become a good player.

Fighting melee isn't much different.  Give them a little instruction.  Give them some drills.  And then let them go out and fight and make mistakes.  Encourage the successes, fix the most egregious problems, ignore what you don't have time to work on, and take notes so that you can address large scale concepts at the next practice.


Learning by Doing

I've run a bunch of practices where I come in and think a) what these fighters need to work on, b) what are the best ways to work on these things and, c) will the buy into it, or will they revolt.  Every practice will have a different set of fighters that must be carefully considered.  What works for one group may fail spectacularly for another.

Having said that, if I do a good job of setting up the right scenario, I find that I may go through a practice doing virtually no teaching.  I call lay on, and both teams will look pretty bad.  When the scenario is over, I listen to one team and I hear, "we need to fix this and we need to do that better," and then I listen to the other team and hear them say the same thing.  I stay out of their way and call lay on again.  This time both teams do better.  

Rinse and repeat.  If anything, my job is to facilitate the learning and offering only what is needed while letting the fighters do as much for themselves as they can.  The last thing I want is for the fighters to give up thinking for themselves and to just have me tell them what to do.  Having said that, I will step in and fix something if they aren't fixing it themselves.   

Clock Management

People should stop fighting at a melee practice because they ran out of energy, not because they ran out of time or because they stood too long in the sun.  Every high school student teacher (a college student who is learning to become a high school teacher) has the same experience on their first day.  They don't finish the lesson because they run out of time.  We were actually taught to plan out our lesson segments  and to keep a digital clock near us to pace the lesson.  All instruction needs to be short and to the point.  Don't worry if every last student didn't understand it by the end of your speech.  The goal is not 100% understanding, but rather an introduction to the topic.  I used to tell my students, "If you don't understand what to do when you start your problem, ask the kid to your left, and then ask the kid to your right.  If the three of you still can't figure it out, then raise your hand and I'll come and help." 

(Ironically this blog post ended up being much longer than I intended). 

Mix Up the Scenarios

I've noticed a pattern.  When you talk "melee" to a lot of people, they default right to single death field battles.  I think this might be the closest thing we have to a melee version of a tourney format.  

Do different things.  Put all of the spears of one team.  Do some rez battles.  Do some 1v2s and 3v4s.  Put all of the chiv onto the same team and give the other team more fighters.

Right now, our fighters really seem to love broken field resurrection battles.  Sometimes they get 3 lives and fight to the last one standing.  Other times they'll have timed control points.  This is really good for getting them to communicate and adjust tactics during a battle.  Also, it's a lot of fun.

Oh, and of course, feel free to mix in some drills and lecture.

End of Practice Debrief

I stole this from our Northern Region practices, run by our current army general.  At the end of practice, one at a time, allow each fighter to present what they liked about practice and what they think could be improved.  It gets them to buy into and take ownership of the practice, lets them know that they are being heard, and provides valuable feedback to those who run the practice.  

Read the Culture of the Practice

At the end of the day, a practice that no one returns to is not a very effective practice.  That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to steer the practice into a productive direction.  Believe me, I've been to enough practices where culture is centered around people who talk a lot about fighting, but never actually want to fight.  That's not something that I'm really interested in, and I try my best to either steer a practice into a direction of participation and productive learning, or I try to find a different avenue where I can create one.

But having said that, if your group wants drills and shy's away from live melee, then you may need to lean in that direction.  If they feel like marching around the field in big blocks while listening to commands is a waste of their time, maybe decide if that can either be cut out, shortened, or if you can bargain with the fighters.  "Hey, I know you don't like this, but as soon as this is done, I promise we'll run that scenario that you really love."  

Summary 

Ultimately you need to decide if a fighting deficiency is a practice priority or if there's something more important to work on.  Then you need to decide if the issue is an inability to apply a skill, in which case you may need to run some drills, or if it's an inability to remember to apply the skill while fighting, in which case you'll need to figure out how to address it during a scrimmage.  Make any lecturing purposeful, and try best to manage your time by talking while they're resting, not when they could be doing some drills or scrimmages.  

And most importantly, whatever you do, make sure you get them to come back to the next one.  If they aren't having fun or aren't feeling like they are getting something useful out of the practice, then they may not come back.