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