Kingdom Melee Practice Report
Ix posted his thoughts and Dietrich von Andernach made some comments that I replied to, but I'm going to expound on the practice itself here. Ix's post is here: http://aztecknight.livejournal.com/382442.html, with commends below.
The practice was, all at the same time, enlightening, exhilarating, frustrating and confusing. Which really doesn't make it all that different from any other kingdom level practice, honestly.
I was frustrated with the turnout. I really-really-really wish the Von Brandenburgs had turned out in force for this event. I understand that there was Chaos Caravan, run by members of the household, but it was really unfortunate that we didn't have more people. From my "I have no real stake in anything, I just wanna fight" perspective, the Von Brandenburgs are one of the two lynchpins for the region, the other one being Terrae Finis. Each balances the other; Von B's are the tanks, Terrae Finis are the Hum-Vees. You can't be an effective army without both. This weekend, we were a series of effective units, but not an effective army.
So, Sir Caveron, who is Heavy General of the Kingdom Command Staff, came out. We had about 18-20 people, including Denewulf, from Constellation -- one of two people from out of region. After the tournies were finished, we counted off, and seperated into teams. When I got a good look at things, I was... intimidated isn't the right word, but I was worried. The Red team probably outmassed us by 50%, and most of them had big shields, whereas most of our team -- Yellow -- carried poles, with only three or four shields. We started out with some basic field scenarios -- kill them all type things -- and then moved on to hold/capture the flag scenarios, and then a single bridge.
I remember a Pennsic perhaps four years ago, where in the field battle, the midlands' job was to delay the Atlantean army; we ended up hitting the left flank of the column and were chewed up pretty badly. We did accomplish the objective then. Saturday felt like that, except Yellow rarely achieved its objective. There are valid reasons for that, and I think some non-valid reasons.
The first field scenario, we did the standard shield smash, and we were pretty much taken out in a matter of seconds. It was pretty clear that Yellow could not stand toe-to-toe with Red and hammer it out. The second scenario, the poles swung out to the right, and swirled around them, closing the flank and chopped them up to a degree; Killian, who was on the Red team, was a constant spoiler; no one person could kill him, and when we tasked two or more people with him, the deficiency was enough to tip the balance against the rest of Red team, and we'd get taken that way. It happened all day. Point I learned here: Smaller units can confuse larger units; shield-heavy units can be slow to react to flanking.
When we moved to the flag scenario, the Red team was holding the flag first, and it was Yellow's job to break them and take control of the flag. The plan was to split into two units and make it look like we were going to attack two seperate points, but converge on one point and blow through there. Unfortunately, we hit out of sync, and that led to Yellow hitting like a stream of individuals, rather than a solid hammer, with predictable results. We were dead in 30 seconds or so. Point I learned here: timing is everything.
Then we switched -- Yellow was to hold the flag, and Red was to take it away from us. This led to the first major injury of the day -- I think Duncan the Monster and Vargas were already experiencing elbow and arm problems, but Denewulf came in with a beautiful three step charge, and landed like a ton of bricks on a new girl who had just authorized that day; she was screaming before she hit the ground, and then Denewulf landed on -top- of her. We all hollered Hold and waited for her to be taken off the field. It -probably- wasn't the best place for her to be, but we only had four shields at that point, and well, you fight with the army you have, not the army you want, right? Part of the problem was that she's so new, Vargas didn't know she was new. On the other hand, the injury was due to bad luck -- she said she was planted. Point I learned here: Know your troops. It's not easy, but it has to happen.
We ran it again with Red attacking and Yellow holding, and actually, I think we did pretty well -- one of our guys went and got another shield, and we held them off for at least 90 seconds. Considering we were completely surrounded at one point, I don't think that sucks. I think a big part of that was that we sent off part of our unit to harass them, and keep them from having a cohesive charge. So point I learned here: just because you're outnumbered and outgunned doesn't mean you can't reduce your static numbers to go skirmish, and blunt the enemy's power.
At this point, I needed to take a moment and reset myself -- I was losing my concepts of engagement and perhaps hitting people when I wasn't really in their attention arc. Thanks to Sir Guerric for pointing that out to me.
We moved on to the bridge, and again, it looked bad. At this point, people on the Yellow team were pretty unhappy with things -- we were outgunned when even, and now we were three and half people down -- and we asked to have the teams re-calculated. Caveron refused, based on the presumption that we won't be able to pick new teams at Pennsic. I understand the rationale behind it, but it was tough.
At this point, Yellow had achieved objectives in one scenario, and put on a good showing in one other; everything else had been a bad loss. Morale was not good. We went to the bridge, and I suggested that the three shields go out, plant, and let the spears and poles try to whittle them down before they could charge. Instead, the poles and spears went out first, with the shields in reserve. It went MUCH better than I thought -- for the life of me, I don't understand why Red didn't charge the moment lay-on was called and crush the spears and poles and blow through the shields behind. Instead, it settled into a long-range thing for a few minutes; we killed more spears then they did, and then I could -hear- Denewulf saying "ok, let's go". I called "THEY'RE GOING TO CHARGE!" and braced myself, and WHAM, they were on me. Someone (later, I found out it was Mei-Li) slammed into me from behind, and amazingly enough, I found myself face to face with Denewulf, blocking shots from him and his wingman, and... Not Dead. And for another 60 seconds, I was still not dead. Then someone else (It was Michelle, eeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEE!) hit me from the side and pushed me off the bridge.
So, we'd proved that we could hold a very small bridge against overwhelming odds. I don't know if it was me calling for the counter charge of the shields behind me or not, but point I learned here: even experienced shieldmen will sometimes stop at pole-arm and spear distance when they could easily rout you.
Unfortunately, after that, Tuge went down for the count. He's a newly diagnosed diabetic, and we're working out his intervals and food plans, and he just ran through the calories he'd had for lunch much faster than we thought he would. Better here than Pennsic, I say. We did suffer a lot of injuries, and I'm hoping that as we learn to condition better, that will improve.
Once Tuge was out, Yellow was FOUR men down, and three of them were our most experienced fighters. Time to be done with Red and Yellow team. We did some three-on-two drills, where the objective was to kill one of the pair, and that was fun, and then we were pretty much done.
It's been suggested in other places that we're not doing enough training -- my response is that a Kingdom Practice is not for that; it's for demonstrating what we know. Given the low numbers we had, I'm not really sure we would have been able to do that; also absent is a single, unifying figure for the region. We just don't got one. Training should be happening at practices; I hope all groups are spending some time on melee drills. I'm going to start going to local practices again much more often. I want to fight at least once a week, if not twice.
But, I think we showed that we -can- execute tactics (the SCA doesn't really do strategy, but we -do- do tactics) and we showed that we can buck up under the strain, when we have to. In a way, I wish this practice had been in two months; I think we might have been able to show Caveron a lot more. We -must- figure out a way to motivate people to go to the other big regional events we have, and work to be an army.
The gorilla in the room is bruised egos. No one likes to be passed over, no one likes to feel ignored, no one likes to be rejected for whatever reason. No one likes to be demoted. But we have a problem that other armies don't -- we live forever, and new people like to get a chance to do the things that old people do so well. Commanders are forced to step down instead of retiring. But we cannot groom new generations of leaders without making room, and we cannot depend on the chiv to do this for us. White-belt =/= leader, as much as we might like to pretend that it's so. There are two people in the Midlands I will follow into fire and smoke and ice and snow. One has a belt. One doesn't. In neither case does the presence of belt or lack thereof make a difference.
Events to push to people, HARD:
JUNE
1-3 -Ragnarok Rampage: The Geats Strike Back {Carraig Ban} [Kingston, IL]
http://carraigban.org/cbevents.html
15-17 -Jubilee Olde English Faire {Illiton} [Brimfield, IL]
http://www.illiton.org/special/Jubilee/index.html
22-24 -Border Skirmish {Ravenslake} [McHenry, IL]
http://www.ravenslake.com/events/bs/skirmishes.html
JULY
7 -Midsummer War on the Moor 2: Conflict at the Crossroads {St. Carol on the Moor} [Effingham, IL]
http://stcarolonthemoor.home.mchsi.com/event.htm
14 - The Feast of St. Ethyl {Swordcliff} [Taylorville, IL]
http://home.insightbb.com/~swordcliff/ethyl.html
20-22 -A Simple Day in the Country {Sternfeld} [Ninevah, IN]
http://www.midrealm.org/sternfeld/simpleday2007.htm
Is there any way to have a practice maybe the weekend of May 18-20? There's no events in Midlands between now and June 1! We NEED to get together. We NEED to fight together. We can BE an army. We only have to do it.