[Steppes] Joint War Practice - Elfsea/Steppes - 12-05-2004

[Mike]

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