Gunning for Melees

Ever since RBGs were first introduced, fencers have been trying to figure out the best way to use them. The probelm with determining the best use has always been the limitations placed on them. In many melees, RBGs are either not allowed or are limited in number of weapons or number of rounds (at Estrella War this past year, sides were limited to a total of 1 round for every 10 opponents). I can see why they do this: they're trying to keep the melees from being straight gun-battles.

And in our period, gun use was limited. Compared to swords, guns were expensive and slow to produce. In addition, they had a long list of disadvantages: theycouldn't match the accuracy of a crossbow or a longbow, they were incapable of firing in the rain (the Battle of Villalar was won because the rebel's arquebus' would not work in the rain), they were prone to blow up in the user's hand, and the amount of smoke they produced made it hard to even see the enemy after a few salvos. Of course, they did have a few advantages: they were easier to learn than the longbow, they were faster to reload than a crossbow, and a soldier could carry more ammunition than with either a longbow or a crossbow.

It was these advantages that did bring firearms to the field, but the severity of the limitations kept them from occupying a large percentage of the armies of the times arsenals.

I have to say that in the SCA, I do like the idea of limiting the number of guns (and the 1 in 10 ratio from Estrella works quite well), but I'm not so sure about limiting the number of rounds. The reality of a soldier is that he/she will carry as much ammo as they can (the standard load for a U.S. Army soldier is 210 rounds, but most carry more into combat). For myself, I try to carry at least five rounds for my RBG when I bring it on the melee field.

Of course, this still leaves the question of how to use our RBGs to their greatest effect in melees. Which means we have to look at the various types of melees we do.

Probably the most common type of melee we do is the open field battle. Currently we normally line up our gunmen behind the line in open field battles with instruction to shoot commanders and other high-value targets (HVTs). And this does work, but it has some weeknesses. The first is that it doesn't take full advantage of the RBG's range. A gunner can only reach the front line shortly before his/her own line can and can't reach behind the lines until the front lines engage. The other weakness is that going after HVTs doesn't generally do anything to relieve the pressure of the front line. Most HVTs (commanders, White Scarves, etc.) hang out behind the lines so that even if you do get them, your front line is still fully engaged.

The Swiss didn't use their gunmen this way. In fact, they did the exact opposite. Their gunmen were placed in front of the main line. Once the opposing army came into range, they would stop and begin firing at the enemy's front line, poking holes in it and taking away its momentum. As they'd fire, their own lines would pass through, engaging the enemy before they could reach the gunners. The Swiss infantry would then be facing a stalled, weakened line and the now-protected gunners could switch from volley-fire to the more traditional (for us) role of sniping and supporting.

We actually do pretty well in bridge battles. Our standard tactic is to set up the gunmen to the sides of the bridge where they can harry the enemy forces. We still focus too much on HVTs for my taste, but at least we've figured out how to give our gunners a good depth of range without interfering with our own lines.

Ressurection battles are probably the easiest to figure out: in all but a few situations, RBGs are useless. Because of the length of resurrection battles and their never-ending supply of reinforcements, it is pointless to waste ammo on thinning out the lines or eliminating HVTs: they'll just be back in 30 seconds or so. Their only use is in a capture-the-flag scenario to remove defenders from the objective from a distance or to kill an opponent who has captured your flag. Anything beyond that is a waste.

Keep battles are the opposite of the ressurection battle when it comes to RBGs: gunners are so useful and the field is so limited that it's hard to screw it up. A perfect example is the Defend the Baroness battle from this last Uprising. Even aside from the canon, the defenders did everything right. They had gunners in the door, punching holes in the attackers line, and gunners on the wall, draining their reserves. That was about as textbook as you could get. And with only the single point of contact and the limited number of visible targets, its hard for the attackers not to use their gunners effectively: if you've only got one or two gunners, have them snipe the kill pocket and if you've got four or five, a volley-fire can wipe out an entire rank of defenders.

Yes, I suppose RBGs take away from the fun of melees (at least for those who are shot), but when you think about it, so does getting legged and left. So I figure if we're going to use them, let's see what happens when we use them right.

Melee fighting

In my run-up posts to Uprising, I failed to cover one small detail, and it was pretty much shoved in my face Friday at Uprising. That little item was that the goal of a melee is different than that of a tournament. In a tournament, the goal is to take out your opponent without getting taken out yourself (and if you can do it with style, all the better). In a melee, the goal is to achieve your objective.

Sometimes, yes, that means kill everyone (like the keep battles or the battle of the sexes), but usually there's more to it than that. Thursday's bridge battles were a good example of that. In the first few (at least until the Marshal got tired of his 10-minute res battles lasting thirty seconds), the goal was to control the bridge. That simply meant get everyone from the other side off the bridge. In abattle like that, all you have to do (and all we did) was to keep advancing until you're standing on the far side of the bridge.

In a similar vein, the objective of the beer barrel battles was to get the beer and bring it back to your side. These ones were actually won by fencers who were not armed. Their whole job was to grab the barrels and run.

The family battles were where it became obvious that the majority of the fencers there were in melee mode. Yes, some of the objectives were to kill an entire family, but most were more selective. And when you think about it, why take on a dozen people when you're only trying to kill one person?

The big one, though, was the penultimate family battle, when the hero and heroine were trying to escape the father and all the father's troops had to do was catch them. Okay, it may be that I wasn't explicit enough when I explained the objective to my troops (I was the fater), but I have to give the hero's troops kudos on that battle. They presented my troops with a line far ahead of the objective and, in spite of multiple commands and haranguing to do otherwise, my troops chose to fight the line rather than go for the objective. In short, the hero's troops distracted mine from the objective and, in spite of any losses, won the battle. He picked the better tactics for that battle.

Of course, I got even in the final battle (and didn't even have to pay off the priest in the end), but that was because I did unto them what they'd done unto me and exploited a weakness in their tactics. Okay, here's what I thought was a no-brainer. If you're escorting a person and their death means you lose, don't put them in the front line. I suppose on paper, the hero's tactics were sound, almost, but they didn't adjust for the reality of the battle.

Their basic idea was to put the hero and heroine near the back of the line as they skirted the edge of the world. In theory, that put them as far away from the keep (and our troops) as possible while limiting the angles we could attack from. But we didn't come from the keep, we came from the ravine. This basically gave us a line-on-line battle, with the hero in the line. Needless to say, he died quickly. What would have been a better plan would have been to hug the edge of the world (as they did) but instead of forming a line, form a square, with the hero and heroine against the edge of the world. That might just have required me paying off the priest.

The Trinity of Action

With Uprising on the horizon, I thought I'd talk a little bit about melees. Try to get us in the mood, as it were.

In the modern army, there is a standard doctrine for when you are ambushed. When you first come under fire, you should do three things: move shoot and communicate. Once you've done these three things, you can try and figure out tactically what should be done. A while back, I was thinking about that, and how (or if) it applies on the melee field. And you know what, even though ambushes are rare in the SCA, the general principle still works. After all, an enemy trying to roll your flank is does have its similarities to an ambush.

The first part is to move. When that hot-shot team comes barreling in, trying to roll the flank, don't just stand there and let them, move to engage them. Yes, they'll be expecting it, but it still forces them to react, instead of merely acting. And it allows you at least some say on the ground you fight over. Nine times out of ten, flankers will slow down considerably when you move to intercept them.

Since the majority of us don't go onto the field with rifles, we can't literally shoot, but that doesn't mean we can't throw shots. As you rush over to defend that flank they're trying to roll, throw shots at them. Don't go for the kill, just attack. At least for the first thrity seconds of the engagement. The modern equivalent is suppressive fire: throwing bullets at the enemy so they'll duck. When you start throwing shots, those flankers you slowed by merely standing in their way will stop dead in their tracks, buying you (and more importantly, your commander) time. Once you've stopped them in their tracks, then you can start getting fancy and going for the kills.

So far so good. By simply moving to intercept and throwing a few shots, you've stopped the advance of their flankers. Now comes the most important part: communicate. Now, even though it comes last in the trinity of action, you should be doing it all along. When you first spot the flankers, sound off. Yell something like, "Flankers left!" which, of course, you follow up with, "Moving to engage left!" and "Engaging left!" and the oh-so-important "Dead!" if the unfortunate happens. And don't be afraid to use your outside voice. If your commanders can't hear you, they can't send reinforcements.

Like any set of rules, the Trinity of Action has its exceptions. If you're not on the flank being rolled, don't pull out of the line to intercept them without orders, just sound off and know someone will deal with them. Likewise, if your orders include the phrase, "at any cost" but aren't to "defend the flank" or "keep them from getting through" then sound off and drive on. You'll notice that, even if you can't move or shoot, you should still communicate. I can think of only one time when you shouldn't communicate, and that's when you're trying to sneak up on the enemy. Other than that sound off.

I know it's all pretty basic stuff, but it is the heart of melee: Move, Shoot, and Communicate.