[Steppes] Joint War Practice - Elfsea/Steppes - 12-05-2004
Mike
meggiddo at netzero.net
Tue Dec 7 18:25:12 PST 2004
Heilsa,
The second official Joint War Practice was held in Veterans park over in
Arlington. The day dawned gray and overcast with rain in the morning,
tapering off to a light mist by 12 PM when I ventured out upon the
trails to make my way to Veterans park. Along the way, the mist did
indeed turned heavy, looking through the windows it seem to be
increasing in a drizzle and then a light rain a scant 5 miles from the
park. Upon arriving at the park - the light rain had turned back to a
medium mist and slowly stopped.
There in the park lot of Veterans park stood - Chris, from DFT, with
Hrafn, and Hosey. Then slowly over the course of an hour more people
arrived and those who intended to fight don their armor. While the armor
was being donned, the sky cleared and the sun shone down upon those who
did not placed their trust in their local weatherman.
The old saying still holds true - "If you do not like the weather, then
just wait awhile - it will change!"
In attendance this day:
Baron Armand Dragonetti - Elfsea baron
Sir Baron Qadi 'Abd al-Mahdi Jamal ibn Hakim - Baron of Steppes
Centurion Stella Silvana
Centurion Tomas Niallagain and his lady HL Rixende de Rouen (Seneschal
of Elfsea) - Tomas is a squire of Sir Duncan. Lady Rixende fighting rapier.
Hrafn Olafsson - Steppes Knight Marshal
Daire da Haya - Elfsea Knight Marshal
CinaedOHosey and his children - Tori, Jon, and Nikko
Alvin and his lady - Lady Maili Donnel MacGregor - the Deputy Earl
Marshal for Youth Combat
Chris from Dragon Fire Tor - I believe this is correct. Do not remember
is SCA name.
Lady Allessandra di Giovanni - Steppes Equestrian Marshall - being
escorted by Justinian, man-at-arms to the Elfsea Knight Marshal, Daire
Mike and his son Mikey
Josh
I know that there was 7 more individuals on the side lines and can not
remember who they are.
and myself - Michael Fray
There was a number of one-on-one fights as a warm-up to the main war
practice.
HL Rixende with Don Alaric and I believe three others were practicing
with rapiers.
People in armor:
Sir Mahdi, Baron Armand, Centurion Stella, Centurion Tomas, Hrafn,
Daire, Hosey, Mike, Josh, Justinian, and Chris.
Total of 11 fighters.
Plus two youths fighting - which occurred after the Youth Marshaling
authorization class was held by Lady Maili Donnel MacGregor.
Justinian attended this class and missed approximately half of the heavy
fighting. There is now one more Youth Marshal available for the future,
I for one, applauded his decision to become one.
Children: 7
Total in attendance: 27 or at least from what I recall.
Scenarios:
1. Do you know how to defend against a flanking maneuver?
If you do not, then you missed the opportunity to learn how. The end
individual is responsible in staying with the flankers and remaining
alive. Lead these flankers away from your unit, while remaining just in
sword reach of the flankers. The flankers must deal with this defender
or else turn their backs on him or them, which places them between two
groups of fighters. The main objective here is for the defender to
actually draw the flanker(s) away with them into the "bushes", thus
removing them from the actually main battle. The main unit can them deal
with what is facing them or if there is no unit threating actually go to
help the defender who has lead the flankers away if necessary.
2. This lead into the next scenario - How to stay alive while facing a
superior fighter?
In this case, Sir Mahdi and Centurion Tomas. How well and more
importantly, how long would you be able to stay alive against fighters
of this level? The object here is stay alive while engaging one of these
fighters on a one-on-one fight, until help arrives. There will come a
time when each heavy fighter will have to face a superior fighter during
a melee battle, just the luck of the battlefield. Two units come face to
face on the field and guess what, you see facing you on the opposing
side is a knight. And you will have to engage him/her. If there is an
opportunity, then you jump out and engage this fighter yourself for a
few seconds with your fellow fighters coming to your aid.
The actually practice for this, those of us who played football in high
school, recognizes this method - place on individual in the center with
all the others in a circle and as coach called out those on the outside
would rush the one in the center.
Taking the above and applying this to heavy fighting - either Sir Mahdi
or Centurion Tomas was in the center, with the other fighters formed a
circle around them. Only one at a time was in the center. Remember this
is NOT fighting to win but to stay alive against a superior fighter.
One fighter would rush in to fight and after 5 seconds, a second fighter
would rush to the 1st fighter aid and so until either the one that was
in center had "killed" all or he had been killed all.
3. Third scenario - how to form up and accomplish a column charge, such
that when the column actually makes contact there is huge impact upon
the target line. One problem with a lot of charges is that they come in
burst of 200 hundred pounds at a time. Such that the target shield wall
just has to deal with one fighter at a time. A 2nd problem is the
distance from the opposing shield wall that some units will call for a
column charge, if it is too far away, then those who can run the fastest
will strike first, with the rest of the those charging hitting at
various times, thus allowing the opposing shield wall time to adjust and
prepare for each of them.
The column charge - line up each fighter front to back, touching each
other and move in lock step with each other straight into the opposing
point of that shield wall. So that, instead of having to fend off 200
pounds, it is now 1000 to 1500 pounds that is hitting that one point.
The last scenario - sides were divided up and a center point was
selected as the main objective. Which ever side held the center for a
count of ten was the winner.
The next Joint War practice will be January 2nd, 2005 at Mary Heads
Carter park in Carrollton at 2 PM. There will be combat archery for this
practice.
CinaedOHosey set-up the scenarios with Sir Mahdi providing additional
instruction along the way on various issues that arose. In fact, each
and every one of the fighters present had the opportunity to speak up
with either a suggestion or a question or relaying actually battlefield
experiences. Be they from within Ansteorra, Gulf Wars and even Pennsic.
Centurion Stella pointed out the word "Halt" could be misunderstood to
be the word "Hold". And that never use the word "Hold" in other than
what it is used for on the battlefield - which is to stop all activity
on the field. Plus, she also stress that each individual fighter needs
to know what the conditions are to win the either the battle and/or the
war point.
Michael Fray
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