Sandy wrote, in response to someone wondering about army formations:
" Since none of us have the opportunity to fight in a genuine
medieval battle including magic, what else can we do, besides make
comparisons to actual ancient formations and then add estimates based
on what we think magic would do?
I don't think the SCA is of much use for us here. First off,
they do medieval, not ancient. Second, they don't really engage in
mass actions. Their grand melee consists of a bunch of individuals
on one side fighting a bunch of individuals on the other side. They
don't even march in step. Nor do they fight on horseback (except
rarely, and then they don't use actual battle horse tactics). "
Hey, Sandy, I can tell it's been a while since you saw a big SCA War. Sure, we still do grand melees and individual combats, but at the Pennsic war each year, each side for the Main Field Battle has at least 1,000 fighters on it. This past year, there were about 1,300 on a side. That makes it about as large as some very important medieval battles.
Also, believe it or not, there are units in the army of my kingdom, Atlantia, that are referred to as "cavalry." I'm part of that unit, in fact. Not that we have horses, but the unit is made up of people and sub-groups known for their ability to move quickly, strike across rather than into another unit, and to roll up the enemy's flank or rear.
Tactics and strategy do come into play. Hotshots trying to do one-on-one in such a battle get cleaned up by squads of mixed shieldmen, polearmsmen and spearmen. The result is not pretty.
However, I am not dumb enough to thing that SCA experience can really tell us a lot about real battles or even real one-on-one fights.
First off, SCA fighting is pretty stylized--no elbows to the face (or body to body contact of any kind), no tripping, no hitting below the knee. This is to keep people from reaally getting injured, but they are all things I'm sure were used in real fights.
Second, though Sandy mentioned how important shields are, I think shields are OVERLY important in the SCA. When I hit someone's shield with my 7 foot long poleax, they get to parry it just like that shield has the RQ spell Great Parry on it. No chance for me to break their shield, or cut their arm off through it, as I'm sure happend in real combat.
I do agree absolutely about the long weapon observations. The difficulty I found in keeping the swordsmen away from me while trying to hit teme with a poleaxe was the inspiration behind the RQ 3.75b "Maneuver" skill.
Apologies if any of that was too far off the Gloranthan track.
Mike Dawson
(known in Society as Sir Corby de la Flamme)
Powered by hypermail