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