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