Aethelmearc War Practice Field Battles: Motivating the Press

Just got back from the Aethelmearc War Practice and wanted to write about what I saw in the field battles.  I didn't get the official numbers, but if I had to guess, we had close to 100 per side.  I fought with the Tuchux and a smaller contingent from, I believe, the Midrealm.  Across from us was the Aethelmearc army.  I had the fortune of being in a reserve unit which allowed me to watch every battle unfold.

For the most part, I thought the ability levels on both sides seemed fairly well matched.  Aethelmearc certainly had a greater number of top end fighters (knights) from an individual skill standpoint, but the Tuchux even that out with the fact that they are very well trained and skilled at melee combat.

The point being, since both sides were relatively matched at skill level, winning or losing the battles came down to battlefield tactics.  In fact, for the most part, even the strategies were fairly evenly matched.  i.e. I never really felt that either side left a glaring weakness or strength from the start of the battle.


Motivating the Press

The biggest weakness I saw on the field was needless stalling.  There's a time to stall, and there's a time to press.  In short, you stall when you don't have the numbers or the skill to win, and you press when you do.  Too often I saw units that faced a weak opponent who were too willing to just stand there and let the spears poke at each other.  While this is happening, there is likely action occurring somewhere else on the field where your side is losing.

Consider the following example from one of the battles I remember from yesterday:

Shown above is roughly the left half of the field.  The green team has a clear numbers advantage, which means that red had a numbers advantage on the right side of the field.  In fact, I remember looking to my right and seeing that red was in the process of collapsing our right flank.

Take a second to think about what options green has at this point.  Green's reserve unit (where I was) is completely unengaged and out of the fight.  Red is about the roll the left flank of the main green unit in the center of the field (right side of diagram), and we know that red is about to roll the right flank of the main green unit on the right side of the field (not pictured) and eventually win that fight and move toward the center of the field.

Now the green reserve unit could mobilize and move to the right side of the field to stop the collapse of their flank, but its going to take a long time to get there.  The obvious move for this unit is to move straight forward and engage the right flank of the main red unit.

There's still a problem, however.  By the time they get through this unit, they are still going to have too many fighters on the left side of the field held up by a smaller unit, which means they may still have a numbers disadvantage once they meet up with the red unit on the right side of the field.  Also, it may take a while to get through this center red unit, and in order to roll the flank, green will have to potentially expose their backs to the red unit on the left side of the field which, at a minimum, slows the progress.

I felt the key to this battle was motivating the press on the left side of the field.  As our reserve unit pressed forward toward the middle red unit, I actually left the reserve unit to go and yell at the left unit (Midrealm) to press the attack.  Now when I say "yell," that was exactly what I did, but not because they were necessarily doing anything wrong.  They just were not in a position to see the importance of expediency at this point.  By running over and yelling, "we need to kill these guys right now," I'm letting all of the fighters and their commanders know what job needs to be done and that it needs to be done quickly.

After these two presses resolved themselves, the red unit on the left was killed off pretty quickly, allowing the left green unit to move right and continue to roll red's main unit's right flank while killing them.  By the time green meets red's unit that is on the other side of the field, they will be strong and all moving in the right direction toward the fight.

Think about how much weaker this attack would have been had green's left unit continued to stall and spear duel while making little progress.

On an additional note, green's left most skirmisher's who were protecting the flank needed to do very little in this fight.  Since they had an even matchup with the red skirmishers, there was no need to engage.  They only needed to keep them out of the fight.


Find Someone to Hit

So the first tactical key was to motivate the press when you have the advantage.  I use the term "motivate," because its not simply enough to know that a press is required.  You need to be able to motivate those around you to join in on the press.  That is a skill that shall be left for another day to discuss.  =)

The next tactical key is what I call finding someone to hit.  I blogged about this earlier, but that one was focussed more on an individual within an engagement.  I'm now talking about this in terms of large groups of people who are unengaged.  What this means is, if you are in a battle and you are not actively engaged (not necessarily attacking, but involved in someway in the fight), then you need to find someone to hit. And if you don't see anyone, you need to look really hard.  If the battle is not over, your job is not over.

Lets consider the above scenario after the left green unit defeats the smaller red unit.

One of the keys to winning this battle is how quickly the now unengaged green fighters can find a way to get themselves back into the fight.  In this case, the obvious move is to turn right and join the main green unit to help finish off the main red unit.  The more quickly it is done, the more effective it will be.

One of the things that absolutely kills a lot of units is waiting for a commander and reforming the unit before moving.  This takes way to long.  The fighters need to individually start moving to where they can make an impact and gradually reform as they move in that direction.


Getting Reserves Involved Sooner than Later

It was my opinion that as the battles played themselves out, our side generally did better when our reserves engaged earlier rather than later.  This is similar to the concept above.  The side with the most fighters engaged tends to do better.  Having a reserve unit is a great idea, but I think it works best when it finds a tactical situation to exploit, and then quickly moves in to take advantage of the situation.


Spears, Take the Horse Blinders Off

I was playing nice yesterday, but I saw a lot of good spear fighters that were so focussed on the fighters directly in front of them that they never saw me coming from the oblique.


Don't Engage in an 8 on 2 Fight

In one of the battles, one of the Tuchux (Tobar) and I ended up dragging 8 fighters all the way to the edge of the battlefield before I finally yielded.  As this was happening, their other units were dying because they were undermanned.

If you ever end up in an 8 on 2 scenario, either charge them immediately to kill them quickly, or have 5-7 of your fighters leave them to go and get engaged in the fight somewhere else.

Anyway, those were my thoughts on the day.  Overall, I thought everyone did pretty well.  I saw almost no "fish in a barrel" scenarios, so Aethelmearc and the Tuchux seem to be doing a great job of training themselves up!

Guarding or Attacking a Hut & Other Thoughts from the Weekend

I had a busy weekend, fighting in a Markland war on Saturday and a regional melee practice on Sunday.  One thing I can say from the experience is that I'm a much better analyst than I am as a field tactician.

I actually think field command is very difficult for anyone, which is why I prefer an approach that focuses on training up fighters to act as independently as they can on the battlefield.  Once the initial impact happens, everyone is going to be in a situation where they have to decide what the best decision to make is.

One experience that we had on Sunday was a bit amusing.  We came up with a plan of attack, but we never decided who was going to make the calls.  Out of our unit of 6 guys, we had 3 who were all used to making decisions on the field.  Fortunately, we were also good at working together that when a call was not being made, someone spoke up.  If a call was made, we all reacted.


Method of the Practice

I wanted to mention up front that I really prefer the practice method that we used.  It was pretty simple.  You split up to two sides, each side works out a battle plan on their own taking a reasonably short amount of time to do so, and then lay on.  After the battle resolves itself, both sides do the same thing.  They talk about what went well and what didn't, make adjustments, and then lay on again.

This accomplishes two things.  1)  It gets in as much active fighting as possible because of the limited amount of talking and 2) it gets all the fighters involved in discussing and thinking about what happened during the fights.

I find this to be much more productive than to have a commander simply dictate to everyone what they are going to do, or to spend too much time talking about it.  That's what the internet is for =)


Attacking / Defending a Hut

Seamus wanted to spend some time doing this because we encounter these kinds of battles a lot, yet don't practice them very often.  We did practice this some at the last army practice, and everyone seemed a little disjointed.

What makes a hut different than a bridge is that there is usually a door to get through, a side that is defending the hut, and a side that is attacking.  As we fought these, I found a couple of key pieces to attacking/defending.

There seems to be two basic defenses.  Form a wall at the entrance, or form a kill pocket inside the hut.  When attacking,  you either charge into the hut with a shield wall, or you pick the defenses apart with spears.  If the scenario is timed, then you have to find the proper balance of spear fighting and charging.  Charging is always the best option provided that you can actually break the defenders and make it into the hut.  Sometimes its beneficial to weaken the defense with spears before the charge.

During the practice, my team probably had the most difficult time transitioning between a shield wall defense and creating a kill pocket.  In fact, we never created a kill pocket because we didn't think of it at the time.  We had a team of people who like to be aggressive, myself included, and when the other side came forward with their spears, our response was to also try to come forward.

I think we had more of a bridge battle "take more ground" mentality rather than a "hold the hut" mentality.  When we presented a wall, they'd answer with spears.  Though we had excellent spears to counter them, we had a hard time bringing them out.

Two other thoughts on attacking and defending the huts.  The left side of the door is a key spot to defend.  If it is weak, a lone right handed shield man can sink into the hut on that side, while protecting his entire left side with his shield.  We had a hole there at one point and Sir Thorson charged through and killed one of our spears (me) with little problem.

Simple Plans Seemed to Work Better

We tried a lot of different things, but mainly for the sake of trying them and seeing how they'd work out.  What worked out best for us in these 6 on 7 hut attacks was simply to charge right into the hut.  What worked out worst for us was trying something cute and tricky only to have them do something that we didn't expect.  I remember getting killed twice because it put me into a mindset where I had to think about how to alter the plan and how to communicate it to our team, or to wait and see if someone else is going to call out a plan, etc. which caused me to let my guard down.

Of course, this is why we practice.  In hindsight, I think out best plans of attack would have been to either decide ahead of time that we are going to charge, or fight with spears.  Beyond that, we should follow through with the plan and make adjustments as the scenario presents itself.


Don't Fight One on One Unless You Have a Clear Advantage

This is unrelated to the hut fighting, but was a theme I noticed a couple of times on the field.

There were two moments that stuck out in my mind.  One was when we were down to two spears and a shield against a knight with a shield.  Our shield man had gone aggressively on the attack by himself against the knight.  I called him back, but at that point we determined that they were both in the water anyway and ended the battle.

The problem we had was that he was taking the knight on one on one, with a less than 50% chance of killing him.  Had he died, the knight would have had a good chance running down the two spears.

In this scenario, the better plan would be to back off and let the two spears do all of the work with the shield defending against any charges, or looking for a cheap and easy kill.

There was another moment in the day where a shield got legged (me) and the teammate ran in and attacked the opponent one on one, taking the fight away from the legged shield, and then getting killed.  Again, working together with the legged shield would have had a much higher chance of success.

Getting Yourself Involved in the Fight

After watching a bunch of videos from some recent practices, I noticed one key element that separated the most effective fighters from the less effective fighters.  The most effective fighters were always engaged in the fight.  If they had the advantage, they were hitting and pressing the attack.  If they had the disadvantage, they were holding off their opponents.

There is a very important nuance that is hard to grasp.  Most fighters go through two stages of fighting, with the first being a matter of standing around, being too tentative and unengaged.  These are the fighters who will stand there and let spears poke at them until they die.  We do our best to teach these fighters how to be aggressive, which gets them to stage two:  they charge into any fray without consideration for how they integrate with their team, or whether or not where they are charging is tactically the best decision.

So having said that, even without mastering the nuance of swift, but smart and controlled aggression, at the very least I think I can safely say that one should always be actively involved in the fight.  ie You have a purpose and you are serving your purpose, not just waiting for someone to come to you.


The Battle

Here's an example of the way one of the battles played out.  I'd like to say up front that the losing side had a mix of knights and newer fighters while the winning side had all experienced unbelt fighters.  The losing side learned from this battle and made adjustments such that they won the last few battles they fought.

The fight was 17 on 18, both sides starting out in a single line before they started to split off into units.

Green's plan was to have a group covering each flank with a core unit in the middle, see what red presents, and react.  Red had their core group on their right with a plan to do a right hook, with a bunch of fighters dropping off the back to account for the green flankers.  Its hard to say if they had more to their plan than that as I was not within hearing distance before the fight.

Red moved out really hard to the right with a mass of 8 guys.  The other side of red had a small unit move to stop the flankers, with a second small unit that reacted once they saw the flankers expose their side.

At this point I thought for certain that red was going to win the battle.  I thought their core unit of 8 fighters were going to roll right over the small green flanking unit and then on into the flank of green's core unit who were standing their unengaged.

Next comes a two part lesson.


Green Fighters Move to Engage while Red Fighters Disengage

At this point the core green unit realizes that red is splitting in two.  They pick one side and move in to fight while a couple of their fighters peal off to defend their potentially exposed back door.  This was a great decision and they acted on it quickly.

Red, on the other hand, had half of their core unit drop out of the fight.  They mobilized for a right hook, but the lagging half of the unit seemed unable to find people to attack.

Battle Results

Green overwhelmingly won this battle.  Was it because of this one particular field decision?  No.  But it was one of the many small differences that added to the overall result of the battle.  Green reacted just a little quicker than red did, which has the same effect in melee as it does in singles.

Ultimately, green just out fought red on their left flank.  The 3 green fighters in the middle of the field made a good move against a disorganized red unit by enveloping them and picking them apart quickly.  On the right side of the field, green's right flankers were moving into a disorganized unit of red that had an unfavorable weapons balance (only one shield) and the middle right green unit had a more aggressive position on the red fighters than red did on green's far flank.

Having said that, throughout the day I noticed several times certain fighters that were always actively engaged versus other fighters that took a while to find someone to hit.  This is important not just an a unit level, but on an individual level as well.

The ultimate lesson is to figure out a way to get involved in the fight (assuming that there is not a limited front that prevents everyone from getting involved.  Or, in other words, DON'T crowd the spears!  =)   )


Follow Up on the 4on2 Discussion

My last blog post addressed a 4on2 scenario involving poles and shields.  Sir Thorson and I had an interesting conversation about that today where he pointed out that some areas feel its the shields' job to lead, and the poles to follow what they do, and that in other areas its reversed.

My thought regarding that is that clearly there is no single method that is best.  It largely depends on the quality of fighters you have, their specific skills (size, height, mobility, technical skill, etc.), and what they are used to.  I do think, however, that when the fighters get together, there needs to be communication as the engagement is happening, and all fighters need to behave in ways that allow the other fighters to read what they are going to do.

As an example, I like to fight in front of the shields with my pole to get attacks in before their shields are in range.  In order to ensure that my shields understand that that is what I am doing, I make a very aggressive move forward before the engagement.  If two shields want to form a small wall and charge in first, they need to jog a few steps ahead of me to let me know that that is what they are going to do.

Anyway, those were my fighting thoughts today.  Hope you enjoyed.

The Flanking Position and a 4 on 2 Fight

We had a recent practice that I sat out due to a broken thumb.  It was, however, actually a very valuable experience as I got the chance to watch the rest of the army fight.  Overall I thought it was a good practice, and that most of the fighters are gelling fairly well.  At this point its all about tweaking lots of little concepts, which is sort of what I try to attempt to do here.

For this post I thought I'd pick on a single example I saw in a field battle.  And for anyone reading, no,  I certainly don't intend to give away any military "secrets," which is why I'm picking on a small general concept to expand on.  =)


4 on 2 on the Flank

In one of the early field battles, both sides had sent out flankers.  The red team (I'll call them here) sent out two fighters to cover the left flank while the green team answered with 4 fighters (both sides with another 7-9 fighters on their team (not completely shown below)).

So the first question is, which side has the better flanking position?  Neither of them do, actually.  They've both gone wide and neither side has given up the outside position.  One might be inclined to say that green has the better position, but I would disagree with that statement.  Green has the numbers advantage on the flank, but they don't have the flanking advantage until the two red fighters are no longer there to slow them up.  What is pictured above are a bunch of fighters who are fighting straight on.

There is, however, great potential for a flanking advantage.  Its one I talked about in my analysis of last year's unbelted champions battle, and here it is.

Remember, you have two jobs when in charge of a flank.  Either a)  roll the flank or b) prevent the enemy from rolling yours.  When the two green fighters break off to attack the main unit, they'll likely succeed in rolling the flank of that unit.  If they stay intact with the "flanking unit," then they are preventing the enemy from rolling green's flank.

Red is in an interesting position.  Because of the 4on2 disadvantage (assuming similar ability levels), they have no chance of rolling green's flank, so their job is to protect red's flank.  In this position they actually want to stall the engagement.  Their goal is to, ideally, stay alive.  If they can't accomplish that goal, they should attempt to live as long as possible (full defense, back pedal, etc.), using just two fighters to tie up four green fighters.  FWIW, red did a very good job prolonging the fight in this scenario.

Okay, since green did not split off to attack the flank of the main unit, they are performing the job of holding the flank.  The problem is they are using up 4 fighters to do this, meaning that red now has a 7 on 5 advantage in the main unit (they had a 2on2 matchup on the other flank).  If green doesn't split, then they are obligated to win the engagement as quickly as possible, ideally without losing any fighters so that they can quickly rejoin the main unit that is undermanned.


The 4on2 Engagement

In prior blog posts I've covered the 2on1 as well as the 3on2.  I'd not considered covering the 4on2 as it should be a pretty straightforward fight with the team of 4 having a large advantage.  However, there is a difference between wining the engagement and winning it quickly.

The secret to this fight is "lanes."


What are Lanes?

If you've ever watched a football game, every so often one team kicks the ball off to the other team and then runs down the field and attempts to tackle the man with the ball.  When they do this, they are taught to maintain their "lanes."  What this means is that they run down the field and try to keep the entire field covered and not crossing over each other's lanes.  If they all run straight to the guy with the ball, they will obstruct each other and then leave parts of the field open that the ball carrier can freely run to.

When approaching a 4on2, the same concept applies.  One thing I've noticed as a pole fighter is that most aggressive shieldmen will move straight at their target without considering where the pole intends to move.  More often than not, they will move to a position that is slightly to the right of their opponent in an attempt to throw flat snaps and wraps at his shield side.

Notice, for example, what happened in this particular engagement.

Had they maintained their lanes, this is what the attack would have looked like.

Notice now that no one crosses in front of anyone else to get to the spot of the attack.  The two fighters in the middle stay in the middle while the fighters on the ends attempt to turn the corner on the red team.  No one should be thinking about going toward the fighters, but rather going toward their desired end position within the context of the group.

In order to do this, communication needs to happen up front.  The green team had plenty of time to see what they were facing.  I'll say this over and over again, move like a pack of wolves.  Be quick, but be smart about it.  This is one of the reasons why we do a lot of 2on1 drills in our practice.  Every now and then we'll get a new fighter who doesn't understand how to fight with a partner.  We'll call "lay on," and I'll literally stand in my spot and never engage the enemy just to see what my partner does.  More often than not, they run off without me, never once realizing that I wasn't with them anymore.

Small unit tactics requires everyone in the group to move and fight with a good understanding of what the others around them are doing.


How Could Green have been More Effective?

First of all, they should have gotten an idea of what their formation was going to be and who was going to do what job.  A simple, "Who's going to cover the outside?  Who's going to be in the middle?" once the battle was unfolding would have made a big difference.  Shields need to move in a manner that does not cut off other fighters.  Poles need to move in a manner that make the shields understand what they are doing.

As a pole, I personally like to lead out in front of the shields in this scenario.  I'll either go fast and hard to the right while throwing multiple blows at the back of the head and the kidney, or I'll pepper thrusts at the face to blind the opponent.

Another option, especially against the pole, is for the first person there to tie up the opponent's weapon while the other comes in for the kill.

If the poles aren't as experienced, they can also follow behind the shields, but still being aware of what their lanes are going to be.  Who's left?  Who's right?  Who's middle?


Concluding Thoughts

I've put a lot of thought into this scenario and have decided, if the fighter levels are even, that ultimately its best to split two fighters off to attack the flank of the main unit than to attempt to fight the 4on2.  Though the 4on2 should be a guaranteed victory, if the 2 go on full defense, they can really drag out the fight.  On the other hand, two fighters can instantly move on the flank of the main unit and force the fight to happen immediately.

One last piece that I noticed was that fighters were not attacking on the 45s aggressively enough.   The goal always needs to be to turn the corner on the opponent.  That really means to get out and around on them.  You should start at 45 degrees and then continue all the way around to their backs.

Melee Fighting from the Outside Position

Or you might call this Turn the Corner Part Two (electric bugaloo).

No sooner did I post my blog on Turning the Corner (here) did I see a video of a fight that looked like it was going to be a great example of turning the corner.  Instead, however, I saw a handful of critical positioning mistakes that were made that I can only guess were the result of lots of singles fighting and not enough melee experience.

I want to say upfront that the fighters were very, very good, but I did see some mistakes that would serve as a great example to write about (and for what its worth, I make mistakes all the time and have had outside observers point them out, to my benefit).


Fighting from the Outside Position

The concept is pretty simple.  All it means is that, generally speaking, you want to position yourself so that you are outside of the fight and facing in, while positioning your opponent so that his back is to the fight and facing out.

In the above diagram, every green fighter is in the outside position, while every red fighter is in the inside position.  Red is in a very bad position as each fighter has their back turned to the rest of the fight.  Any given red fighter will have no idea what is happening anywhere else in the fight.  Each red fighter is also within striking range of several green fighters, and any attempt to turn to face a different fighter will expose their side to an attack.  Finally, if a red fighter needs to retreat to safety, there is no where to go.

Each green fighter, on the other hand, can see the entire battle, has no risk of anyone attacking them from a different direction, can attack multiple opponents if the opportunity presents itself, and can retreat safely in any direction except for what is directly in front of them.

So now that I've presented this concept, allow me to walk through the battle I recently watched.


The Battle

To begin with, green has three shields and two poles, while red has two shields and three poles.

Already I like green's position better.  They have both flanks protected by shields, while red is holding their flanks with poles.   Green is also a little wider than red, which gives them advantages on the flanks, and green's right pole is in an aggressive position (he'll hit the shields before anyone can hit him).

The position that red is in is what I like to call "turtling up and getting ready to take a beating."  As I said in my last blog post, I only recommend this for new fighters.  When watching the 10 man unbelted team battles last Pennsic, for example, every team that took this position lost, and they lost in short order.  You are just giving the other team the outside position when you fight this tightly.  Unfortunately, its probably what they've been taught (and I know many of you reading this have always thought its the right way to fight.  I'm hoping to convince you otherwise).

Anyway, as the units approach, green begins to flank on both sides.

When I first saw this in the video, I thought, "Great!  This will be a great example of turning the corner.  Green is going to outflank and destroy these guys."

This is what I was expecting to happen next:

Look at the great outside position that green would have had in this fight.  The right side, in particular, could have been won quickly.  The shield is right handed and the pole wasn't moving out to meet him.  Here he'd either get around the pole for a wrap, or the pole would have to leave his right side completely exposed to the green pole.  The right most red shield would have no choice but to turn and face the green fighters on the right, leaving his back completely exposed to the fighters on the left.  Etc.

But instead, the following happened:

At this stage in the fight I'd say that the two green fighters on the left are in decent position.  The right is a different story.  The shield on the far right, instead of turning the corner, did exactly the opposite.  He hit hit the pole with his shield, and then turned his back completely to the rest of the fighting and backed himself toward the rest of the action.  I'd love to give credit to the red pole for taking the outside position, but the green shield literally shoved him into that position.

The shield in the middle was set up to out flank the unit to the left, but instead charged head first into the worst possible position that anyone could be in in this fight.  He charged right into the middle of a triad of two shields and a pole.

The pole on the right didn't do poorly, but he could have done better.  Instead of continuing to move around the flank with his shieldman and doubling up on the red pole, he stopped to fight the shield.  There was no pressing reason to do this as the shield had already established that he was going to stay back in the "turtle" and was not being aggressive.  In fact, green had every opportunity to turn this into a 5 on 2 battle, but instead charged themselves into dangerous positions.


So What Happened?

I have to do a little guesswork here, but it appeared to me that as soon as the two sides were about to engage, 3 of the green fighters went into singles mode.  By that I mean that they matched up with a fighter on the red team and fought them in a 1on1 fight with no concept of what the others around them were doing.  The 4th green fighter, on the other hand, wanted to crash through the shield wall, so he charged between the two shields.

Instead of doing this, I believe each team should have focussed on working together, maintaining the outside position, and looking for 2 on 1 opportunities to exploit.


Other Mistakes

The key mistakes in this battle were covered above.  Red began in an inferior "turtle" position, and green gave up their advantages by charging into the middle instead of around the outside.

There were some other mistakes that I witnessed after this point.  Though the green shield on the left began in a great flanking position and ended up killing the pole, he then charged into the middle of the fight leaving another red pole floating on the outside.  Fortunately for green, the pole stood there until people came to fight him.

On the right, the green pole had the opportunity to attack the side of the red pole, but he stayed focussed on the shield in front of him even though that shield was not putting any pressure on him.  Having said that, the red pole also had an easy attack to the side of the green pole, but never took it.  He stayed focussed on the shield in front of him.  To be fair, both poles corrected these mistakes quickly and attacked each other at the same time.

The last mistake I saw is one that I see time and time again.  The green and red poles were fighting each other.  A red shield ran into the fight and completely cut off the red pole, which was especially bad because he's right handed and was coming from the right.  He should have been able to step into the fight without disrupting his teammate and get an easy kill.  Instead, his teammate got killed while trying to maneuver back into position.

Summary

I think the biggest take aways from this example are simply to avoid charging into the middle of a battle (unless there is a clear advantage to doing so, such as an exposed weakness) and look to gain the outside position as much as possible.  Learning how to control the position of the battle will actually do wonders for your melee fighting.  This battle being an example, even most seasoned veteran fighters know very little about positioning within a melee.  As a result, they are very easy to steer into exactly the position you want them to be in.

Turn the Corner! - Lesson from Tuesday Night Fighter Practice

When you get the chance, turn the corner.  Turn it, turn it fast, turn it aggressively, turn it now!

Most SCA groups teach their guys to "stick together."  This is what I consider lesson 1.   Lesson 2 is to turn the corner.

Let me expand on this point.


Lets Build a Raft

I like the raft analogy as its one I learned in a philosophy class in college.  Sometimes we need to do things in our lives that are not the end result, but rather a tool to get us to the next step.

"Sticking together" is a tool to help fighters who flail about on their own in a melee.  A loose, disorganized group of fighters will get destroyed by a tight unit that knows how to stick together.  I've been watching a lot of newbie fighters at the last few practices, and they really do just get mowed down when they hang out in the field on their own.

So in order to solve this problem, you teach your fighters to "stick together," as this is the easiest way to build an effective unit out of a pack of ineffective fighters.

So we've got a bunch of fighters flailing about in the river and drowning.  Now we've pulled them all to shore and we got them to build a raft.  Great!  Now what?  Is that it?  One day at war camp and they teach you to stick together and move as a group.  Is that all you can ever hope to achieve as a melee fighter?

Once you've mastered "sticking together," you need to start to learn how to make an impact as an individual on the field.

You've Built the Raft.  Now Use It!  Step 1:  Turn the Corner

Turning the corner essentially means to get around the flank of whatever fighter, or groups of fighters you are facing.

Here's an example of a 4 on 4 situation that occurred last night:

The pole on the right actually has a fair amount of melee experience and felt very comfortable going a little wider than the front his opponents were setting.  Before I go any further I want to point out the perspective that I'm aiming for.  Maybe green could have charged, or maybe red could have charged, or maybe one command or another could have been called.

None of that happened, and often times none of that will happen.  Even if you drill your squad over and over again to have some sort of consistent unit tactic, you can't count on always fighting with that squad, and after initial impact, the command structure will always break down.

Regardless of what happens within either unit, the green pole fighter will always be in a position where he has the ability to think about how to handle the circumstances he is presented with.

In this particular case, the green pole went wide and the red unit allowed him to do it.  He then stepped just a little to the outside and attacked around the shield, and then right back into his unit.

This is actually a step in the right direction.  What he should do, in my opinion, is actually "turn the corner" of the red unit.

When this is done, red has three responses.  They can do nothing, which means that the red shield will quickly die (believe it or not, this is the most common response, which is why I'm such a big fan of turning the corner).

The red shield can rotate to defend against the green pole.

Though this is certainly better than just allowing the pole to hit him in the back of the head, this is still not a great position to be in.  Green is herding red into a corral such that their backs are facing each other, and they are exposing gaps that are hard to defend.

The best option for red is simply to deny the turn.

But Now They are Fighting One on One

Yes.  Yes they are.  Most SCA groups have a way to prevent that from happening.  They tell the red team that they are not allowed to leave the unit.  The problem is, then green will turn the corner on them and collapse that flank every time.

This problem is "solved" by telling green that they are not allowed to leave the unit, either.  I put the word "solved" in quotes because its not really a solution.  Whenever you restrict both sides to exactly the same tactical limitations, neither group will have the ability to exploit the other group's weaknesses.  If you remove the limitations of sticking together for one of the groups, which ever one is effective at turning the corner will have a big advantage in every battle.

The Big Picture

In order to turn the corner, you have to have fighters on the flanks that are experienced enough to do so.  There is a not so fine line between effectively working off of the boundaries of your unit, and flailing out on the field by yourself.

I'll contend that most SCA units would be best served by keeping the slower fighters (heavy troops) and the less experienced fighters in a tighter mass, but allowing faster and more experienced melee fighters to go out and attack the edges of the enemy (see my post on Advanced Jobs here.)

Anglesey and the Bog Troopers will often go with no core unit at all as we are all very experienced melee fighters (15-30 years for most members).  However, we had a recent event where we had a large enough number of newer fighters that we had to create a small unit of 2-3 new fighters with an experienced pole commanding them so that they could avoid "drowning in the river."  It took us a good several rounds of combat to recognize that they were just not able to pick up the flow of our skirmish tactics quickly.

Additional Note:

I should add, sometimes I will practice 3 on 3s, which often break down into 3 one on ones. Though this might be the most effective way to resolve the combat, it is not very good at learning how to work together. We will often restrict either side from leaving the group, but purely in the interest of trying to get used to fighting together, not because its the best tactic for that scenario.

Why We Win: Fifty Battles in One Day

I wanted to grab your attention.  I try hard not to use this blog to brag about my own skills, or that of Anglesey and the Bog Troopers (including Galatia, The Concusare, Head Clan, and often Clan Prechain who reside in northern Atlantia, among a few others), because it really doesn't accomplish much and it isn't the point of the blog.

I'll simply leave it at this:  we do very well for ourselves in melee, and we have a way about fighting that tends to be successful.  We also have a way that is radically different than just about any other successful melee group in the known world.


Who's Their Commander?

The names will remain anonymous, but I'd like to relay this story.  We were at an event and faced a household whose job is was to move through our unit.  They came up on a seemingly disorganized group of fighters in a loose formation, if the word "formation" can even be used.  Hmmm, they saw no shiny hats, no white belts, and not even a large number of shields.  They did what any group would do.  They charged.  They charged left, and failed.  They charged right, and failed.  They charged center, and failed.  Maybe if the knight could spot the commander and take him out, these fighters wouldn't know how to avoid the charges anymore.  But, he never could figure out who the commander was.

So after the day was over, he walked up to a very experienced knight who had been around forever and who was familiar with our group.  "Sir, can I ask for some advice?"  "Certainly, Sir.  What can I help you with?"  "Can you tell me who their commander is and how to pick him out on the field."  "Oh, of course I can.  You see, that's easy.  There is none."

Now some of you might be reading this and thinking, "Ahhhh, yes.  I know where he's going.  Everyone's a commander."  No.  No one is a commander.

And of course, this requires further explanation.


No Commander

What this specifically means is that there is not a person on the field who gives the order.  Of course we have people who yell out, "Watch the archer in the back," or, "Who's covering the left flank," or, "We need to worry about the guy in the blue," but that's not the same as being micromanaged and waiting for a play call to be made.

Think of it this way.  I work for a large engineering company.  I'm a grown man, have skills, experience, and an education, and have earned the trust of my managers.  Lets say I get an email with an important issue that comes up.  Do I wait for my manager to tell me what to do?  Or do I handle it in the best manner possible?

Now keep in mind, there is a huge difference between simply deciding to wing it with no commander or no plan, and actually building a unit of warriors who are capable of fighting this way.  We've been doing this for over 30 years and raise new fighters within our fight culture like a pack of wolves raise their pups.  This isn't something you can simply do at the next event.


Fifty Battles in One Day

First a little background on myself.  I currently work as an strategic business planner, but my education is engineering.  My former career, however, was teaching high school math as well as coaching basketball and track and field.  One of the things I learned through that experience is that teachers have the natural tendency to over explain the concepts they are trying to teach.  The more time you spend explaining, the more that cuts into time they could be working on math problems, or running through basketball drills.  Over the years I got my explanations shorter and shorter, and my teams got better and my students got smarter.  As an old physics professor once told me, "you don't learn physics with your ears.  You learn it with your arm," (i.e.  doing problems).

This weekend we had a practice war with about 25 fighters in total.  We fought from 1pm to 330 pm, taking breaks as needed.  We did exactly one scenario; an open field battle, and we did it about fifty times in that 2 and a half hour period.  How do we do this?  We don't start the day off with a tourney or any singles.  When we get 8 or more fighters on the field, we call lay on.  We fight until one team is dead, we get back to our sides, take about a minute to huddle and make adjustments, and then we call lay on again.  We do this until people start dropping out, and then we take a break.  Rinse and repeat.

Now let me try to put into context the effect that this has.  One of the fighters that fought with us that day wasn't particularly experienced.  In a normal sca practice, he'd be stuck in a shield wall and would get maybe 15-20 fights in.  Each time he'd be told to keep tight with the other shields and wait for the command to charge in one direction or another.  In essence, he would do fewer than 20 fights, and not be challenged to think for himself one time.  After a few years of this, I'd expect him to still not be very good.

Instead, this weekend we put him on the right flank and his job was to hold the right flank.  Sometimes a top level fighter would try to out flank him.  Sometimes two fighters would come right at him.  Sometimes a spear would try to poke at him at range.  Sometimes the entire unit moved away from him.  Etc. etc.  Each time he was challenged to think about what the best course of action would be.  He failed and he succeeded.  Each time he failed, a veteran fighter would tell him what he could have done differently.  If he succeeded, he was offered positive feedback.  I'll contend that he learned more about fighting in a melee in those 2 1/2 hours than he has in the last 3 years combined.

And when you do this, you learn a lot about yourself and a lot about the people you fight with.  You know what the big strong guy can do, and what the little fast guy can do, and what your spears can do, and what your poles can do, etc.


So What's This Look Like?

At the end of the day, we generally go wider than the enemy.  Tightly packed units are the norm in the sca, and we generally counter by going wide and enveloping.  Because of the kind of experience we have, each fighter can quickly figure out if a charge can be stopped, or if ground should be given where the chargers intend to hit, and we'd instead pinch on their weak points.  There is absolutely no way to do this if you need a commander to tell you what to do.

This weekend we started off in a line, and as the day progressed, and each side constantly made little adjustments to try to do a little better in the following battle, the flanks got wider and wider until we pretty much split into two units.  This is something I've harped on in many of my posts.  You simply can't let people around your flanks, and I believe that any unit that would fight fifty battles in a row against a team that's not forced to stay tight will eventually figure that out.  "Why do we keep losing?"  "Well, those two guys that keep running around our flank kill a lot of people in our backfield."

Ultimately there were two main strategies on the day.  Side A looked for the biggest weaknesses on side B and attack them.  Interestingly, side B looked for the strongest fighters on side A and tried to neutralize and kill them.