Polearm from a Melee Context - Basic Bayonet Stance

Hello.  I just threw a video together because one of our newer fighters was asking if there was anything out there that covered the basics of bayonet style.  I couldn't find anything, so here's mine.  It more or less covers the basic starting stance and your two main blocks:

Having said that, since this blog is about melee tactics, I might as well throw in a little something about it from that perspective.

Poles are, in my opinion, the finger in a dike that is built largely of shields and spears.  Shields form the foundation that your unit is built off of, spears are the killing machines, and poles fill in the cracks between the two.

The polearm's job is mainly to hang back, watch, and wait for an opportunity.  Opportunities present themselves in a couple of manners.  As shields that are too far away to hit you, or as opponents who are preoccupied with one of your allies.

90% of your kills will come in one of three fashions:

1)  A light, quick stab to the face

2)  A hard, heavy stab to the gut on the sword arm side (usually their right) of a sword and shield

3)  A hard shot to the left side of their head

If you don't find one of those three shots open, then swing anyway.  It will blind them and keep them busy.

By and large your best defense against a sword and shield is going to be to swing at them as you back away and run toward your guys.  Once you are with your team, you should be able to find opportunities where you can attack a shiedman who is engaged with another fighter.

If you are in the middle of a static battle, your best bet is usually to stand in the second rank and wait.  If the lines press, you need to follow from the second rank and swing over top of the shields.

That's it in a nutshell.

Don't Leave your Spears on the Flank - Leg 'em and Leave 'em

Its been a while since I've posted, but this video came up in my Facebook feed and I wanted to share these two thoughts.

VIDEO


Spears on the Flank

One of the fundamentals behind standard SCA tactics is creating a shield wall.  I write a lot about the ineffectiveness of shield walls, but its not because they are ineffective in and of themselves.  If done properly, they are very effective.  The problem is that they are often used ineffectively.

The real value with a shield wall is in the game of rock, paper, scissors, if the other side presents paper, you cut right through it with scissors.  That is, if the other side presents a bunch of spears, or a loose skirmish line with no clear organization or back up, form up your shield wall and punch right through them.

What happens, more often than not, is that both sides will form their shield walls and then slam into each other, center on center, as if its a sumo wrestling match.  What about the poles and spears?  They end up sitting in the back field, and often drifting off to the sides.  There's really only two places that spears can go in this situation (not the sides!).  They can either sit behind the shield wall and wait for gaps to open up in order to attack, or they can start in front of the shield wall and initiate the attack before the other side charges, and prepare to slip between their shields and into the backfield when the other side presses.

Leaving them on the flank just gets them run over (unless they are quick and crafty).  Notice in the video above that the near flank of the team on the right left two spears out on the end, who quickly got run over.


Leg 'em and Leave 'em

Near the end of the video you see two fighters spend a bit of time trying to kill a legged fighter.   Meanwhile there's a 3 on 3 battle at the far end of the gym.  Had they left this fighter, they could have had a 5 on 3 advantage, win the fight, and then come back to take on the legged fighter.

Orcs and Goblins

This is a post that I've been holding onto for quite a while that I somewhat affectionately wanted to call "Simon's Command."  It's based off of a series of small field battles that we had at an EK Southern Army practice last Spring.

I ended up changing the title to "Orcs and Goblins" because I think this often describes the mix of fighters that we have to work with.  This isn't to say that certain fighters are big, beastly orcs and others are puny little goblins, but rather that any group is going to consist of a variety of ability levels and that one of the better tactical approaches is to be able to adjust your strategy to the array of talents that you have.


The Setup

We fought a handful of open field battles with roughly 15-16 people per side.  The other team did exactly what was expected, because its what everyone does.  They lined up with a big shield wall and put their pole arms in the back.  Simon was put in charge of our side and decided to go with a "hammer and anvil" strategy.  By this, I simply mean that we had a strong unit take the shield wall head on, with a second group of people to wrap around on the flank.

As he started picking up people on his team, he began putting them into positions that suited their talents well.  He built up a shield wall of about 6 veteran fighters, put a veteran left handed pole arm on the left side of the wall, a right handed pole arm on the right side of the wall (that was me), three mobile melee savvy knights off to our right, and then filled in the back of the shield wall with a few remaining poles.

The plan was to hit the middle of their wall with our wall while a small group of elite troops swung around the right flank.  The result was pretty successful.  The shield wall stayed in tact and our left pole arm was able to stave off or slow down any attempts to get around our left flank.  I moved into the gap between our shield wall in order to secure our right side, while our knights rolled around the flank and into the back field.  We won our first two battles very decisively.

A point to reiterate throughout this blog:  controlling the flanks is a main key to winning melee battles.

Above is the initial lineup with the "key melee veterans" circled (three knights and two unbelt melee champions).

The red team stayed together and moved to hit green's left flank.

Green protected their left flank while sending 4 skirmishers around the right flank.  Three knights went fast and wide picking apart whatever was in their path while I (the 4th fighter in) filled the gap in order to hold off a potential breakthrough on our right flank.

Our side one decisively with this plan twice in a row.  One of the knights on our side thought it was a bad plan and that a better plan would be for all of us to stick together and move in the same direction rather than to divide our forces.  I disagree (though admittedly, I was not savvy enough to pick up on the strength of Simon's strategy at the time).


Pro's and Con's of a Shield Wall

A shield wall is effective for essentially four purposes:

1)  Taking an objective that is directly in front on them (like capturing a flag, breaking through a gate, etc.)

2)  Defending an objective that is directly behind them.

3)  Quickly killing a loose collection of troops who don't know how fight in an open field without being in a wall.

4)  Giving your troops a simple structure to keep them from becoming a loose collection of troops who don't know how to fight in an open field.

The downsides to shield walls is that they maneuver very slowly making them easy to get out flanked (they are also easy to avoid frontal engagement with), and they limit the effectiveness of high end melee fighters by limiting their ability to out position the opponent.

In the scenario above, Simon took the best of both worlds.  Those who fought better in a wall were put in the wall.  Those who were more effective skirmishing out on the flank were put out on the flank.  In each battle, green's wall hit red's wall.  If this was a game of rock, paper, scissors, both sides through rock, giving neither the advantage.  While red had all of its fighters tied up in the same spot, waiting for the walls to break down, green had five of its most effective fighters freed up to wrap around the flanks.


The Third Battle

Taking the advice of the knight, Simon changed the plan to everyone sticking together and moving left.  We lost with about 8 red fighters still alive.  The comment was that we "did better" because we "stuck together."  Though I agree that for novice fighters, sticking together might be the more important goal, I think that often times SCA groups limit their effectiveness by not recognizing some of the potential that they have within their units to fight outside of the shield wall paradigm.  A shield wall is the best way to fight for some fighters, but I don't think it should be the end goal for most fighters.

Good Melee Drills and Breaking SCA Paradigms

Last night I went to the local University to fight with a handful of relatively new fighters.  In total there were 8 of us ranging in heavy melee experience from 1 practice to 3 full years of experience (myself being the exception, having started in 1993).  We started off with a bear pit, then did a bunch of 8 man melee fights, and ended with some melee drills.

Overall I was really impressed with the melee instincts that this group had.  I mean REALLY impressed.  The least experienced fighters out there picked up on what to do pretty quickly.  The most experienced fighter and myself discussed how rare this was, and I pondered on it since yesterday, and have come to the following conclusion.

These guys had good instincts because they did NOT learn standard SCA tactics.  Instead, they've had to figure it out on their own by doing lots and lots of foam weapon fighting with no instruction, with the final result being that they learned how to fight, rather than how to be told where to stand, how to follow instructions, and how to be part of a wall that protects the veteran fighters.  


The Standard SCA Approach
I'm a huge fan of letting fighters figure out melee fighting mostly on their own.  Much like the best basketball players in the world started on the playground, I think its best for melee fighters to begin with unstructured team play.  I

I've found that the SCA takes a much different approach which is centered more around developing a basic system, and then cramming everyone through that system.  The cultural structure of the SCA reinforces this "do what I say" approach.  In education, we call these the "sage on the stage vs the guide on the side" approaches.  I find the sage on the stage more effective for singles, much like one would prefer to learn to play the piano this way.  For melee, however, I prefer the guide on the side approach.  Let them fight, see what went right and reinforce it, and see what goes wrong and offer suggestions to fix it.

I mean, I understand why the SCA often trains their fighters to work in shield walls.  In many case, they only get a few practices in before a big war and its the best that they can really hope for a bunch of inexperienced melee fighters to be able to accomplish, but I think it has become a flawed paradigm of how to fight.  I want my fighters to become bishops and rooks, not pawns.


Those Rebellious Spearmen

I thought this historical example could offer a little perspective.  My group, Anglesey, along with our sister celtic clan, The Concusare, did a lot of Markland fighting in the late 80s and early 90s.  Unlike the SCA, Markland allowed face thrusts, which greatly improved the effectiveness of spears when approaching shield walls.  While in the SCA a solid shield wall was almost impenetrable, in a Markland battle, it was only a matter of time before the shields got picked apart.  This created an environment for a completely different set of tactics.

Sometime in the mid 90s, the SCA started allowing face thrusts in their battles, and as you can imagine, we were well ahead of the game tactically speaking.  Us, along with Calontir, were among the small minority of groups that would bring their spears out in front of the battle lines to face off against the other side, and were very effective with it.

One day, not long after this shift in rules happened, a friend and I drove 45 minutes to an SCA practice that he had heard about.  I was in my mid 20s at the time, and had a horrible looking set of gear.  We brought our greatswords and our pole arms and our spears, and sat in on the practice.  At one point in the practice, I faced off against one of their commanders with a little spear duel.  After beating him a few times, he proceeded to tell me everything that I was doing wrong, and that I wouldn't be able to do those things standing behind a shield wall.  When I told him that I do them from in front of the shields he told me, once again, that I was wrong and that if I did that, the shields will just run me down and kill me.

Anyway, life moved one, a few years later I dropped out of fighting only to return after a decade off.  In my first event back I joined in on a bridge battle, and what do I hear?  The commanders on both sides yell, "Okay everyone, lets bring our spears to the front."

The point here is that if you constantly restrict your fighters to sticking to paradigms that you are used to, and to only follow commands, they are never going to learn how to fight, and your unit will always be behind the curve on melee fighting tactics.  Here I was, ahead of the curve and being very effective, and yet the commander was trying to break me of what he considered to be bad form, simply because he was not open to a new approach to fighting.


Practice Scenarios

We tried something new, which I thought went over very well.  When doing a 4 on 4, its common to match up the teams by spreading out the teams as evenly as possible.  We tried something different.  We put the 4 most experienced fighters onto one team and the 4 least experienced fighters on the other.  The result was, as you could imagine, the experienced team won rather easily.

The way this scenario works is that the team that wins gives up one fighter to the other side (the least experienced if the more experienced team wins, and the most experienced if the less experienced team wins).  So after the first battle we fought 3 on 5.  The 5 won, but barely.  In the next battle the more experienced team won, but it was a closer fight, and then the 5 won again, but more definitively than before. We went back forth like this for several rounds.

The reason why we did this was to create a completely different dynamic than what we're used to.  When teams are evenly matched, the strategies are often the same.  The better guys end up facing off, and the newer guys face off.  Or, sometimes the better guys on each team roll over the newer guys, hoping to do it faster than their opponents do.

This offered a different dynamic.  As I told two of our newer fighters recently, "I don't need you to be able to beat a good fighter.  I need two of you to be able to beat a good fighter, and I need you to know how to adjust your tactics so that you can make that happen."  Likewise, our better fighters don't need to be able to kill new fighters.  They need to be able to kill multiple new fighters.

Being on the veteran team, it really pushed us to work to figure out how to fight when outnumbered.  The newer guys, on the other hand, eventually learned to merely attempt to survive when in a one on one situation, and how to overwhelm their opponents when they had a numbers advantage.  In the battle that they won by the largest margin, they left one fighter to occupy two of us, while the other 4 attacked our 3rd fighter.


Don't "Bruce Lee" the Single Fighter

I've now seen this happen several times.  The fighters will be in a 3 on 1 situation, and they start charging at the single fighter one at a time.  It literally looks like Enter the Dragon.  One guy runs in, the single fighter side steps and kills him, then the next guy, side step and kill, and then the 3rd guy.  The phrase I started yelling out that seemed to have the best effect when we had a numbers advantage was, "Be smart!"  Be smart means, stop, think, and work together.  When you have a numbers advantage, you are totally set up to win.  Slow down and think about who needs to go where.


2 on 1s

If you get nothing else out of these blogs, remember the following two pieces of advice.  1)  Practice your spears and 2) practice your 2 on 1 drills at every practice you can.

For these I sat out and went into "basketball coach" mode.  It was really simple.  They'd do a 2 on 1 fight and I'd watch.  When they finished, I would point out one thing that someone did poorly, or I praised one person for doing something very well, and then we'd move quickly to the next group to fight.  More often than not, the mistake that they'd make is that one person from the pair would run at the single fighter, cut off his own man, and fight him by himself.

Remember, in a 2 on 1, one person needs to commit to staying to the left half of his opponent, and one needs to commit to staying to the right.

One thing I noticed is that the newer fighters like to charge at their opponents at full speed, and they aim for the center of their opponent.  This is why the single fighter is able to side step like Bruce Lee.  This also sets them up such that their momentum takes them past the fighter, and places them directly in front of their partner.

One thing that helped at practice during this drill is before every fight I would say, "Okay, who's on the left and who's on the right?"


2 on 2 on 2 Free for all Resurrection Battles 

I learned this from a Tuchux a couple of years ago and find it to be an incredible drill.  Normally we do it with 5 fighters, but this time we did it with 6.  You pair up and fight.  First person dead goes to the resurrection point.  The second person dead goes to the resurrection point and you have a brand new team of two fighters come in, immediately!  You keep doing this until people are exhausted.

This drill gives you a constant mix of different 2 on1 and 2 on 2 situations that that you have to think very quickly on.  I've found this to be, hands down, the best drill you can do to teach people how to work together and react quickly within a melee situation.


Final Thought on Spear Fighting

On a side note, I find that the spear is still a very misunderstood weapon.  I just watched a video where an SCA commander was giving a class and pointed out that there are some "spear gods" that will walk out front with their spears and their giant egos and rack up 50 kills.  When someone in the class asked, "why do we let them do that," she replied, "well, no one can stop them.  They don't listen and just do their own thing."

Shouldn't the answer have been, "because they kill 50 people when they do that?"  I mean, is the point of the battle to follow a plan that someone drew up 30 years ago?  Or is it to kill lots of people and win the battle?

100 Minutes War

Hello everyone.  100 Minutes was a blast!  It was my first battle fighting with spear since September, after having gotten some bad tendonitis in the bicep attachment of my thrusting arm.  The good news is a) I fought pretty well despite the limited practice and b) two days later the arm still feels pretty good!

Lots of thoughts on the battle, but first and foremost, here's a video that gives a good aerial view of the fighting.  Really cool stuff!


Aerial View Video


Spears

If you take a look at the video, you can see that there are spears everywhere.  This kind of battle, a limited front resurrection battle, is always going to come down to the number and effectiveness of spears and archers, yet so few people put much time into practicing their spears.  A well practiced veteran spear in a battle like this can have a 5:1 to 10:1 kill ratio.  Not only that, he can get well over 50, or even a 100 kills.  I say this all the time; if you want to get better as a unit, practice your spears!

A friend of mine said he wanted to watch what I did on the field to get a sense of how I find good places to fight.  As a result, I made sure I took a mental note of the kinds of things I look for.


Find a Safe Spot to Attack Spears on an Angle

So here's an example of a good fighting spot that I found pretty early on:

I'm represented by the white spear in the middle.  To my right were a handful of spears stacked up against each other with a handful of shields straight across from me.  Essentially I had a really good position where I could attack these spears on the oblique while not really being in any danger of having someone attack me.


Find a Bunch of Unprotected Poles and Shields



In this situation you can see that I'm really unopposed.  I can take unlimited shots against the pole and shields without any concern for getting killed.  If they charge, which always takes a bit of organization (which I can usually pick up before it happens), and can just sink back behind my line and let our shields and poles engage them.  Also, something to note, the charges are few and far between in a 100 minute resurrection battle (its too tiring), so there's less threat here than, say, a single death field battle.

Challenge the Spear God

If a "Spear God" goes unchallenged, he or she can really rack up a lot of kills for the other team.  If you see one on the other side, it might be a good idea to put a spear on him in order to slow up his kills.  Lets say, for example, he's a "level 10" spear and you are a "level 5" spear (I'm using made up D&D levels to illustrate a point), if left alone, he might get 10 kills for every 5 kills that you get somewhere else.  However, if you challenge him by standing within range, you might slow him down to 1 or 2 kills within that same time period.

When engaging a "Spear God," however, you really need to come in with your top focus, and top defense.  I'm about as experienced as any spearmen out there, but I have a list of about 10 spears that I remember that when I see them, I absolutely bring my A+ game to the field. 

From the other end, I also noticed that after having a good run of kills, a veteran fighter would step up from the other side and put a spear on me.  Every time it happened, it really slowed down my progress.  One friend of mine who is an excellent fighter, but not an extremely experienced spearman, did just this many times.  He was smart enough to drop out of my range every time I faced him, but would creep up on me every time I turned to target someone on an angle.  I only managed one kill on him for the day, but he kept me from getting many kills because I couldn't ignore him.

Look for a Bulge in the Line

Any time you can see a bend in the line, you can often find good kill opportunities right at the peak of that bend. 

Here would have been a great spot for a spear to stand in order to get some good attack opportunities on the two fighters at the peak of this bulge. 

Learn how to Handle Archers

I learned much of my spear fighting from about 1994 - 2004, before I took a decade off from fighting.  One of the biggest changes when I got back into the game was the increase in archery.  It used to be that if you were a good spearman, you could just get right up in the front line and stay there as long as you knew where all of the spear threats were.  For the most part, those days are gone!

I've really worked on my archer defense over the last 9 months.  I really got lit up at 100 Minutes last year, but still thought that getting hit by an arrow was just something that happened to you.  It wasn't until I got about 20 minutes into the ravine battle at Gulf Wars (which was just swarming with archery) that I decided that I really needed to change my whole approach.  Did I improve?  Well, in the last month I had three different archers tell me that I'm really hard to hit.  I don't think they would have said that a year ago.  And I can say confidently that I probably got killed 1/10th as much by arrows this year than I did at the same event last year.

The biggest thing I learned about archers is that they like high percentage shots.  You don't have to make yourself impossible to hit,  You just need to make yourself harder to hit than some other target on the field.  There's a few ways to do that.

- Always note where they are.  They will watch your eyes and know when you are looking at them.  If they know that you are aware of them, they are less likely to shoot at you,

- Get into a defensive position when they aim at you.  Again, if they take aim, pointing your spear at them and getting ready to dodge will often make them pass on the shot.  It'll also get you ready to block or dodge if they do shoot.

- Don't move in predictable patterns.  This is actually a good thing for fighting against anyone ,let alone archers.  Some spears will move almost like ballroom dancers.  Target, step, shoot, recover.  Target, step, shoot, recover.  1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.  Target, step......crap, I got shot. 

- When ever you need to step back and take a break, look for the archers.  If you get on a really good run and kill 2-3 guys in quick fashion.  Stop and look for the archers.  If they aren't there, get back to work.  If you see one, try to see if he's paying attention to you.  If he is, wait until he shoots at someone else.  If he won't leave you alone, find a different spot.

Fighting with Sword and Shield

In battles like these, there is one major flaw that at least half of the shieldmen have.  They have a habit of coming up to the line and standing just inside of spear range.  Most shields would die far less often if they'd stand 12" back from where they normally stand.  There are rare exceptions to this, Duke Edward being one of them, as well as a handful of guys in Anglesey, where the shieldman can stand in the front rank and defend himself while preparing for an attack of opportunity.  If you have no plan for that, then you shouldn't be on the line (additional note, Count Thorson is also really good at making himself a target on the front line to occupy other spears, but his defenses are good enough that he can pull this off). 

The exception to this rule for all shields is that if your side runs out of spears, you have no choice but to hold the line and try to weather the assault.

Look at this video.

Just after the 50 second mark you can see 3 shields on the right side standing right inside spear range.  Eventually one gets legged, while the other gets popped in the face.

Now you might wonder, if not standing on the front line defending spears, what should a shieldman be doing?  Well, there are a few things.  One is to back up your spears.  Early on in the war, I got run down by a shieldman and killed.  When I turned to resurrect, I saw that no one was standing behind me.  Had there been some shields and poles back there, that guy never would have charged.  And if he did, he would have paid for it!

Another is too stack up a bunch of shields and then column charge into the other side.  This is very effective at taking ground in most battles.  The problem is, in a resurrection battle such as this where there is no banner to capture, the shields that do this need to ensure that they are creating more kills than they are taking.  Most shields that charge in this manner will charge until they die.  I think it is more effective to charge, get a few swings in, and then recover to a safe place (a pulse charge).  This accomplishes a few things.  It gets a few kills, it opens up a few opportunities for the spears, and it makes the opponents wary of future charges, which hinders their effectiveness.

When this is done, however, the shields must clear out after the pulse is over.  Too often I've seen shields pulse, and then clog up the front rank after they've finished. 

The best thing a shield can do, however, is to do a solo pulse and run down the line.  Duke Edward was doing this a lot, and I'd often see him get upwards of 7 kills in the process.

Look at this video.

At about 2:30, you see the shieldman on the left in the foreground step right up to the front line within spear range. I would normally say that this is not a good position, but he started putting pressure on the flank and eventually moved in to attack.  I'm not sure if he got the kill, but he did die in the process.  The result may not have been the best, but he had the right idea.  Maybe he'll be more effective next time, or maybe after some more experience he'll be effective *most* of the time.

Right after the 3:10 mark, the other side stacks up their shields and charges.  I can't tell from the video, but I didn't see a lot of dead people coming out of the back.  Again, the key here is not just to charge into a kill pocket.  You need to get kills and stay alive! 

In the previous video (here), right at 21 seconds you can see a solo charge coming from the middle of the uphill team.  Notice how he finds his opportunity, dives right into it, and then runs down the line.

The Learning Process and Having Fun

Its not all about winning.  We didn't have a lot of veterans come up to this event.  I had a handful of new guys who each had 0-5 events under their belts.  Anglesey is a strong, cohesive unit, but we also pride ourselves in having a lot of autonomy and individual abilities in melee.  Rather than have the whole group stick together, I really think it was more fruitful for them to go out and play, find different areas to fight in, try different things, etc.  The last thing I want is for a shieldman to come to his first event and be forced to follow me around to all of the spots that are best for me.

As for myself, I saw that Sir Moe was at the event at about the half way mark.  He's an amazing spearman, and I really wanted to challenge myself, so I went and fought across from him for the second half of the battle, taking a small break to go and get a sniper kill on a friend of mine over on the left side.  =)

All in all, it was a great day.  Thanks to everyone who made it happen!

Broken Field Rez Battle as a Teaching Tool

I just got back from a small friends and family fighting event that consisted mostly of the Bog.  As per usual, most battles were on the order of 10 on 10.  As you might have figured out by now, we don't block up into shield wall units as we've found that they lack flexibility and are, in my opinion, easy to beat.  Instead we adopt a much more fluid skirmish approach.

One of the difficulties of the skirmish approach is that your fighters really have to know how to work with each other.  Compare that with, say, a shield wall unit where you can tell a bunch of new people to "stick together" and they simply have to follow the group and hit something if it gets in front of them.


Broken Field Rez Battles

Our first 14 battles were single death open field battles. I really like these, and think they are a great way to get a group used to working with each other, but they can be a bit of a challenge for newer fighters.  So much happens so fast, and its difficult to for them to process what's going on.  Its also difficult for veteran fighters to call out commands.  It all just happens so fast!

Once we came back from break I had set up three "ponds" on the field with resurrection points at either end.  The battles were three lives a person with the objective simply being to kill each person on the other team three times.

What worked out really well with these battles was that there were constant tactical maneuvers that happened at a pace that was manageable and easy to process.

"Okay, don't let them punch through the middle."
"There's a guy flanking, you need to hold him off."
"They've got four to our two.  We need to back up and wait for reinforcements."

"Okay, lets jump that guy before reinforcements come."
etc.

I highly recommend this style of battle for any group of fighters looking to improve their melee skills!

Some Lessons Learned

- Press when you have the advantage, especially when you are out gunned by missile weapons.

There was once battle we fought when two of our veterans moved off on the right side and were headed off by four fighters.  With two archers in the backfield, that meant we had a six on two advantage on the left.  The six never seized the advantage and we ultimately lost the battle.

- Practice two on ones.

There were several scenarios where I saw two on one advantages, and the newer fighters were hesitant to attack.  A two on one needs to be taken advantage of quickly.  I've written about the two on one fight here extensively, but in a nutshell, the two fighters need to attack on either side of their opponent.  They need to move at similar speeds so that they get there at the same time, and it generally works out best if the fighter on the left attacks low while the one on the right attacks high.
If facing a pole or a spear, one person should tie up his weapon while the other goes for the kill.

One success that I had with our newer fighter was a charge on a spear.  I called the charge, and as he ran at the spearman, I attacked his spear and held it down.  One failure was a charge against a two handed sword.  My partner sprinted at him faster than I could react, and cut me off so that I couldn't engage in the fight.  Regular practice of the two on one can minimize mistakes like this.

- Don't fight someone who's better than you one on one.

This is a hard one to digest.  In singles practice we do so much to build up a person's confidence.  You simply have to go into a fight thinking that you can beat your opponent if you are smart about it.  And never, ever back down from a fight.

In a melee, however, you want the exact opposite.  You rarely want to fight a person better than you.  What are your realistic chances of winning?  30%?  10%?  Even if you were slightly better than that fighter, I still don't think those are very good odds.  There's simply no point in going out and getting yourself killed.  Even if you need to hold a flank, there are ways to do it that don't involve you leaving yourself open for an easy death.

Spears vs Shields - Battle on the Bay

Its been a while since I've posted anything.  I'm getting killed at work and with home improvement projects, even though I've been sitting on a handful of thoughts I've been wanting to blog about.  So here goes.


Battle on the Bay

Battle on the bay had ~50 fighters or so fighting three different scenarios.  Our side consisted mostly of The Bog (Anglesey, Galatia, The Concusare, as well as some Head Clan, Prechain, and sometimes the Order of the Lost Boys) while the other side contained standard Atlantian heavy fighters with two knights (Sir Tash and Sir Jocelyn).  The Bog won all but one scenario.

Why did I call this Spears vs Shields?  Take a look:

Ultimately our side had 14 fighters who are primarily spear fighters, while Atlantia had 3, none of whom seemed to have the experience that our spears had.


Scenario 1:  Resurrection Bridge - get to the other side
The first battle was about taking ground.  Being very spear heavy makes this kind of scenario a real challenge, so the first thing we did was to have a handful of our fighters switch to secondary weapons.  The bridge was narrow enough that it could only really contain ~ 5 spears in the front rank, so 14 spears would really have been over kill.  In addition, the biggest concern we had was being able to repel a charge, which is done with poles and shields, not spears.  So 5-6 of our spear fighters switched to poles or shields.

The tactic for Atlantia was actually pretty simple.  Charge!

The challenge was really for our side.  We did our best to repel charges, but ultimately every charge resulted in Atlantia gaining ground.  To counter that, we had to rely on killing them when they charged, pushing them off of the bridge, killing them with our spears in between charges, and then slowly pressing forward and recovering ground while they regroup.

This is something that I notice that the Tuchux are very good at; taking ground with a steady press.  We needed to make a concerted effort to make sure we weren't just killing and holding ground, but killing and moving forward, one step at a time.

Scenario 2:  Resurrection Field Battle - capture the relics

This was a standard open field resurrection battle with a twist.  We needed to capture two of their relics while preventing them from capturing ours.

Battles like these tend to favor the side with spear superiority.  The only real note I'll make about this battle is that positioning on the flanks is a real key to winning these.  Most local SCA heavy fighters are taught to "stick together," which makes it very easy to corral them into a kill pocket.  I find its better to spread out and hit them on their flanks than it is to stay bunched up.




In the photo above you can see that we have Atlantia corralled into a kill pocket.  The two fighters facing the camera in the middle of the picture are on the extreme left, while the fighter in the plaid pants in the foreground is on the right.  All fighters from The Bog can see the entire battle, while each Atlantian has to fight without knowing what is going on on at least one of these flanks.


Scenario 3:  Resurrection Bridge - Get more kills than the enemy to win

This is a variant of the first scenario where instead of taking ground, you must get kills.  These bridges were wider, so we actually went with more spears.

The Bog really went in with no clear plan, other than to adapt to what the other side was doing.  Our tactics are pretty simple; kill them with spears if they stand there, or absorb them into a kill pocket if they charge.

If there are any two lessons I can give to most SCA fighters in these scenarios, it would be these:

1)  Learn to fight with a spear, and practice it often.

2)  Learn how to charge with purpose.

The first tip is pretty straightforward.  As for the second, I've noticed that most heavy fighters don't really know how to charge effectively.  Most will simply put their heads down and push forward until they die.  We have a lot of experience with this and we have simply learned how to draw them into a kill pocket and then kill them when they are surrounded.

The diagram above shows the results of most charges that we face.  A bunch of people plow into us, we give ground, or push them into the middle, and then kill them once they are surrounded.  Too many people treat heavy fighting like a sumo wresting contest.  Sure, that'll work if your opponent does the same thing, and you are better at pushing than they are.  But ultimately one should learn how to charge, take ground, kill people, hold the ground, etc. rather than to simply put the head down and push.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately I wouldn't say that our side won due to tactics.  Our side simply had a lot more experience and had been fighting together for decades.  The other side was a collection of everyone else.  I don't think there was a single unit on the other side that practiced together.

They did, however, have the advantage of having our friend, Sir Tash, who's been fighting with us for decades and knew exactly how we fight and where our strengths and weaknesses were.  He put forward two key strategies on the day that allowed them to get a win in one battle, and really narrow the margin of victory in another battle.  Both involved coordinated charges that were targeted at specific points in our lines to try to gain achieve the victory condition.

And, as always, thanks to Ursus for taking photos (seen above).  Check out www.bogpages.com