by Kyrian » Wed Apr 16, 2008 10:32 am
Here's a good article on tactics written by Jester of the Shindar (an old-school Aratari unit):
Rules of Engagement
Adapted from Jester of ------- article on Group Combat
Advantage
Aggression
Awareness
Command
Communication
Teamwork/Unit
Cohesion
Mobility
Basic Tactics
Advantage: Avoid a fair fight! Why? Because there is no such thing as a "fair fight" -- when you fight; you fight to win. This does not imply that you break the rules of the organization to do so.
A "fair fight" is a conflict between two opposing forces of approximately equal skill and size. A "fair fight" has a 50/50 chance of winning or losing and we are here to win. We are going to do every thing that we possibly can to win and still abide by the rules of warfare pertaining to the organization.
We'll pick off two opponents with four of our fighters; or we bring in spears to pick a wounded shield-wall to pieces; or we mob Sir Jackass with three guys while the rest of us wipe out his squires. Some people will argue that this is contrary to the spirit in which we fight. Well, no one criticizes Sir Jackass when he maneuvers his opponent into opening up his guard. We are simply applying the same concept to group combat. We don't have to cheat or be unsafe to gain an advantage; we just have to be smart, quick, and practiced.
Initiative is the ability to dictate the terms of a battle. By making the enemy fight on your terms, you automatically gain an advantage. You know what you are going to do and he has to try to figure that out and react. He has to do two things; you only have to do one. In the military they have a saying: "Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative." Never let the enemy push you around. We are the wolves. They are the sheep.
Tie up, destroy, or render ineffective the enemy's best assets. Examples of this include: pinning a unit that relies on mobility, ganging up on a particularly effective warrior, scattering or killing the archers, separating a leader from his unit, or going around the flank of a unit that relies on a tight shield wall. This will force the enemy to deviate from their battle plan and allows you to seize the initiative.
Battle plans are often built around resources, when those resources are in some way removed the enemy plan falls apart and they are forced to improvise. A good unit, one that practices together on a regular basis, can recover from this, but hodgepodge units formed of groups who don't know each other will be plunged into uncertainty and confusion. Because our plans are based on organization and tactics, we are less susceptible to such actions, and because we practice together on a regular basis, we can recover more quickly.
Aggression: Aggression is one of your strongest weapons on the field of battle! If you hesitate, you die. We must push ourselves to the limit and beyond every time we fight and must enforce this push on our opponents. There are two types of aggression, the expression of it through body language and the physical use of it.
Examples of expressing aggression through body language are grunting, growling, screaming and beating your sword on your shield as you rush into battle. The reason for this is intimidation. Granted, this won't intimidate everyone, but if you could go back and ask a few Roman Legions what was going through their minds (or what was running down their legs) the first time they saw an army of woaded up Picts screaming as they barreled down on the Legion.
The physical use of aggression is pushing your opponent; taking the initiative in combat and utterly destroying them. Remember, hesitation is a definite way to die. Pushing your opponent can often cause them to panic and slip up. You must keep your wits about you even if you are frenzied and know how to look for these slip-ups and take advantage of them. The only good enemy is a dead enemy.
We herd the enemy into groups, separate individuals from the group, and cut them down -- this tactic is called "wolf packing" because like a pack of wolves we pick off the weak links and take the group down one by one. We drive the herd to a location of our choosing and slaughter them. We do this by acting aggressively, by initiating action and executing it ruthlessly and decisively.
All actions on the battlefield should be carried out as violently and as ruthlessly (yet as safely possible). A field battle is not a tournament. We do not greet an enemy, ask him if he's comfortable and then commence fighting. We sweep down on our foes like a pack of rabid wolfhounds. We overwhelm them, knock them down, and never give them a chance to rest or recover. If we can't go through them, then we slash them as we move by or around. When we are gone, the wounded survivors should be unsuccessfully trying to figure out what just happened to them while we are on the other side of the field cutting another unit to pieces.
Awareness: Be aware of what's going on around you at all times! To know when, where and how to execute your actions and act effectively within the team (and especially if you're alone) you must always know your surroundings and what's going on within them.
Where is the enemy? Where are your allies? Where does terrain limit movement? Is that other unit on our flank about to be crushed? Which way are we moving now? Is there anyone coming up on our flank? What are my teammates closest to me doing and how can I effectively become the oil for their gears to make them accomplish what they're doing faster and more efficiently? -- These are all things you must be aware of and will eventually become second nature to you. Do not, under any circumstances, allow thinking about this on the battlefield encumber you or your aggression; do not allow it to make you hesitate. If you hesitate, you die. The best phrase to sum up this concept is the one used by military forces around the world: "Stay alert and stay alive."
Command: Someone has to be in charge! As much as you may love democracy, it has no place in warfare. Time counts on the battlefield, so there's no time to reach a consensus. Listen to your field commander and follow orders. If you don't like the commander: Tough **** -- we are here to win and he holds that position for a reason! Settle your personal disputes and discrepancies off the field of battle. If you're going to be an individual and run off and do your own thing once the fighting starts, then you're going to get some of us killed and we can't have that -- we all want to win. On the field, we are one fighting force with one commander. As Benjamin Franklin said after the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or we will assuredly hang separately."
If you disagree with an order or have a suggestion, the time to bring it up is before or after a battle; NEVER during. Chances are your commander will consider your observations and put them to use for future tactical advantage.
Communication: Talk to the people around you! Let the spearman know that you are coming up on their left to support them. They might appreciate a hint about the four bad guys charging from behind them. Identify targets for them. Let them know when you're dead by dying loudly. If you need help to take out a bad guy, let your dudes around you know. Pass on verbal commands from your commanders. Do not yell out orders unless you are echoing a command or you are in charge, you'll just muddy the waters and confuse people.
Teamwork/Unit Cohesion: Teamwork is the key to winning at anything! You must learn your allies and they must learn you. A unit is a machine and the better the teeth of the gears grip each other, the more oil we have in them and the smoother the gears spin, the more effective the machine will run.
While individual fighting skill is to be encouraged and admired, we fight as a group, not a collection of individuals. By cooperating effectively, we can overcome opponents who, on an individual basis, are more skilled than us. Save the glory of your individual skill for tournaments.
There are many facets to teamwork. Foremost among these is trust. Each individual must trust everyone else to do their part in an intelligent manner. This allows each person to focus on a single task, confident that they can devote their entire attention to that task and not have to worry about their back. Trust is something that is earned over long periods of association and carries over into aspects other than combat. For example: if you can't be trusted in camp, how can you be trusted on the battlefield?
The association that produces trust also allows you to understand people, to know them. Only by talking to people, by being around them can you begin to understand how they think, why they act the way they do. In battle, this familiarity will translate into an increased ability to cooperate. If you know that "Sean" is an aggressive son of a ***** who believes the best defense is a good offense, and you have fought with him before, then you can have a pretty good idea of how he will react in battle. Know the people you fight with, your enemies as well as your friends.
Never fight as an individual so long as one friend remains alive. Work together to get the kills and accomplish the group's mission: to win! No action on the battlefield should be wasted. Use your attack, for example, to create an opening for someone else. You may not kill your opponent, but by moving his shield out of position, you make it possible for the spearman to kill him or the other boardman to gut him like a fish. In the same vein, watch for the opportunities that your comrades create for you. By working together two mediocre fighters can get as many or more kills than a good fighter who fights as an individual. Every action you take should be intended in some way to help the group.
Maintain unit cohesion! It is impossible to define a standard of unit cohesion because it varies according to the circumstances. The order for a woods battle will be very different from that of a bridge battle. In general, you should be close enough that you can support the person to either side of you, so that your group of two, three, or four people can support the other group of people on either side of you. You should be close enough that the enemy can't break your line and split the group. But you should also be far enough apart to avoid losing room to maneuver. Only through constant practice as a group can we personally learn this. The only constant to this concept is, fight as a member of a team, not as an individual.
Mobility: Stay mobile! Mobility is key to success on the battlefield. It allows us to pick where we will fight, when we will fight, and under what conditions we will fight. It can be used to string-out a tight unit or pack together a loose unit. If we can't go through it, we can go around it. All other factors being equal, the unit with the most mobility will tend to win the fight. Once we pin a unit, we can cut them to pieces at our leisure. If a unit can't pin us down, they can't kill us.
Sometimes you have to leave your allies behind. This is a discretionary call. If you have no commander at the time (whether he be dead or somewhere else fighting, if you got split) use your own judgement and exercise it with common sense. Will staying with your gimped comrade get you killed or can he be a distraction long enough for you to get someplace to collect yourself or regroup?
This is a touchy subject for some. We are a unit. If the unit wins, we all win, if an individual wins, the group can still lose. Nobody likes to leave a friend behind, but sometimes it is necessary. If that person has run off to fight on their own or lost their mobility due to a wound then they are on their own. The unit must remain mobile, and cannot do this with a gimp. Better to lose one or two warriors than five or ten.
This also applies to the enemy. Leave the gimps. A man on his knees can still fight and kill. Once the entire unit is dead or gimped, we can leave all of them where they lay and move on to attack another unit. Don't over focus and let a pocket of gimps cripple our force. Leave them, destroy their buddies who can still walk around, and come back to them later when we can take our time and pick them apart with spears.
Some Basic Tactics:
Take small bites and keep chewing! To defeat twenty warriors with ten, we kill two of them with four of ours. Do it suddenly, violently, and above all, quickly. This is known as concentrating our forces to achieve local numerical superiority. The odds are now eighteen to ten. We do it again, and again, and again. We use our mobility, string them out and isolate individuals, gimp one and leave him. Soon the odds will be eight to ten and we will be able to overwhelm them. To do this we must apply all the aforementioned principles. We must be smooth, practiced, aggressive, and fast.
Fight on the oblique. This is mainly applicable in line fighting. The goal is to hit someone in the opposing line when they don't expect it. We do this by attacking on the oblique. Simply put, if you are part of a battle line facing an opposing battle line, then you should not attack the person directly in front of you. Instead, fix the person in front of you, get them to focus on you, and then attack the opponent one or two down from you. If you can't do that, then engage the opponent in front of you and get him to open up to an attack from another member of our group. On a larger scale, this means not hitting a battle line head-on. Hit them from an angle. In this way, all of our forces can engage a portion of their forces. We gain local superiority in numbers, we dictate the terms of the engagement and force the enemy to adjust, and we keep one of our flanks open in case we need to maneuver.
Wolf Packing
As mentioned previously, this tactic is when we separate one or two fighters from their main group and essentially jump them. Eliminating the weak links and down sizing the enemy forces one by one. This is a sure-fire way to obtain and maintain local numeric superiority.
How To Fight To Win by Jester of the Shindar
This is not a guide to individual fighting skills. Those can only be learned through hard work and constant practice and with the help of a skilled warrior. Rather, this is a brief guide to general small unit tactics on the medievalist battlefield. Please bear in mind that not all units can use all of these tactics, and other units may have tactics that they prefer. But these tactics have served me, and others, well and should work well for you.
Work as a team. Every member of the unit should know how to fight as a one-man, two-man, three-man, four-man, and five-man team. Further, each unit of one, two, three, four, or five men should know how to work with another unit of men. This must be learned in practice. Whatever the size of the team, each member works with the other members to help the unit as a whole. A man who becomes separated from his unit immediately looks for a way to contribute to the performance of the unit (i.e. by suddenly engaging the enemy from behind, by assaulting the enemy archers, by rejoining the unit, by keeping three of the enemy busy while the rest of their unit is destroyed, etc...). No action on the battlefield should be useless. Every action should have a purpose. And every purpose must aim at contributing in some way, no matter how minor, to the eventual victory of the unit.
Be aware of what's going on around you. Remember where the enemy archers are. Make sure that body is really dead before you walk near it. Be sure that you are supported before you charge a group of enemy. Look out for the terrain features that restrict movement. Stay alert and stay alive.
Leave the gimps for later. A man on two legs can run around. A man who can run around can suddenly jump you from behind and kill you. A man on one leg cannot do this. A man with two arms and a shield can stand toe-to- toe with another shieldman and slug it out. A man with one arm cannot. A wounded person is by definition less capable than a non- wounded person. So, when you are confronted with an isolated gimp who is doing nothing but standing around, leave him! Don't take the chance of getting wounded while fighting him. Find the rest of you unit and start gimping the healthy enemy. When all the enemy have been gimped, then you engage the wounded.
Avoid a fair fight. Two on one isn't very fair, on the other hand it is very effective. A warrior with his back to you can't put up a very good fight, so he's that much easier to kill. This is a volatile subject as many warriors have codes of honor that do not permit them to participate in actions such as this. I'm not too worried about those warriors because natural selection will eventually weed them out. Even if you feel it is beneath you to take such actions, remember that the success of your entire unit might depend on your killing that one person. And you don't have to go hunting for opportunities to backstab people or double-team them, but when the opportunity presents itself, take it!
All actions on the battlefield are carried out as ruthlessly and as violently as possible. When you attack a warrior, you do not walk up and take a nice, easy swing at him. You get in his face, and scream, and knock him on his * and pummel him until he stops moving. Or you attack him suddenly and take two or three shots (a combination) and move on. And everyone involved in the action does this at the same time. Do not be unsafe, but Dagorhir weapons are safe enough that you can be pretty violent without endangering anyone.
Stay mobile. Maneuver is one of the nine fundamentals of combat. If you cannot maneuver, you lose many of your options and much of your combat ability. No unit is so heavy that it can stand and slug it out against a comparable number of skilled, mobile warriors. A cul-de-sac does not protect your flanks, it pins you in. Terrain that is impassable to the enemy is impassable to you. Once you get pinned to a location, by whatever means, the enemy will proceed to cut you to ribbons with missile fire and spears.
Maintain unit cohesion. This is a difficult standard to adhere to as the degree of unit cohesiveness varies from unit to unit. In general, your unit cannot get so dispersed that a sudden enemy charge can penetrate your ranks or a sudden encirclement can cut off a large group of your warriors. On the other hand, you cannot get so tightly packed that your individual warriors have no room to maneuver. Practice, practice, practice. Only through much trial and error will you be able to determine ideal distances for each situation.
Honor combat comes before the battle or after you've won. Allowing a single warrior, often a gimp, to tie you up in single combat while the rest of your unit is fighting is stupid. Anyone who calls for honor combat in the middle of a pitched battle, while the outcome is still uncertain, has an ulterior motive in mind. This ulterior motive is generally along the lines of: "If I can just keep this guy out of the general fight long enough for my buddies to kill his buddies..."
Tie up or destroy the enemy's best assets. If the enemy has one warrior who is particularly skilled and/or always contributes significantly to the performance of that unit, then kill him quickly or keep him busy. To kill him make him the primary target for archers and javelins, or detail a team of your warriors to jump him. Or detail one of your warriors to harry him and engage him, not kill him, just engage him. As long as that warrior is busy trying to kill your warrior he cannot help his unit. Neutralizing the enemy's assets is often easier than killing them and is almost as effective. In another example, if the enemy has particularly effective archers, detail some fast fighters to harass and harry them. At the very least, this makes their job more difficult and reduces their effectiveness. Or if the enemy has a leader who contributes to their morale, kill him and demoralize the enemy. I know of one unit, small but moderately dangerous, that can be neutralized simply by gimping the leader. The rest of the unit will then cluster about him and take no significant actions for so long as no unit approaches them too closely. There are many facets of this concept. Explore them all.
Sometimes you have to leave your buddies behind. Nobody likes to do this (no one that I'd associate with anyway) but sometimes you have to. If you allow your unit to lose its mobility in order to protect one man you will be cut to pieces, a little at a time or all at once. This is one of those dictums you have to decide in advance. Some units consider it dishonorable to abandon a comrade. For myself, I would be ashamed if my unit lost trying to protect me. But whatever you decide, everyone must agree to it. Few things are worse than watching half a unit get cut to pieces defending a fallen comrade while the other half gets cut to pieces clear across the field. Better to lose one man than ten, or five, or even two. Gimps can contribute little to the performance of your unit.
Someone has to be in charge. "For God so loved the world that he did not send a committee." Democracy works moderately well in time of peace, but is unsuited to war. Unity of command is another of the nine fundamental principles of war. If you don't like your commander, tough! Join another unit. But if you stay in the unit then listen to him and follow his orders because if you don't you will get your buddies killed. As the saying goes, "We may hang together, but if we don't then we will assuredly hang separately."
When encircled, do not give the enemy missile weapons. An encircled unit's greatest threat is being slowly chewed up by missile weapons. When you are in this situation, keep all javelins, rocks, and arrows within your perimeter. The enemy can make better use of them than you can. If you must use missile weapons, ration their use. Assign your best men to use the missile weapons and tell them to only fire if they are sure they can get a kill, because that weapon will be returning to your perimeter soon enough and the odds are that it will kill or wound one of your buddies.
Take small bites and keep chewing. To defeat twenty warriors with ten, kill two of them with four of yours (suddenly, violently, and above all quickly). Now the odds are 18 to 10. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Soon the odds will be 5 to 10 and then you can overwhelm the enemy. Nickels and dimes add up to dollars.
Don't do stupid things. If you forget everything else, remember this.
The Nine Fundamentals of Combat (Courtesy of the US Army):
Offensive: Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.
Mass: Concentrate your forces at the critical time and place.
Unity of Command: All operations are conducted under the direction of one responsible commander.
Simplicity: Give clear, concise, and understandable orders. Keep your plans as uncomplicated as possible. [K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid!]
Economy of Force: Allocate the minimum necessary forces to secondary efforts. [Tying up an enemy warrior is a secondary effort, defeating the enemy unit is the primary effort.]
Maneuver: Place the enemy in a bad position through the application of flexible combat power.
Objective: Have a clearly defined, obtainable [realistic] goal.
Security: Never permit the enemy to obtain an unexpected advantage.
Surprise: Strike the enemy at a time, at a place, or in a manner for which he is unprepared.
"...change requires action, it doesn't just happen. Define your actions by how you think the game should be, not how the game is. The game will follow."--Big Jimmy