The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

Gawin here again to finish up the postings about the Pennsic melee battles.

Woods Battle:

After winning the town battle on Monday, Atlantia lined up with the East and allies Tuesday to take part in the Woods battle. The new woods are fairly thick with lots of poison ivy (that I still have) and is mostly uphill in all directions. There was a nice bowl just outside our rez point that meant we had to go uphill both ways. I don’t know what the other side looked like.

There were 3 flags laid out in the woods. From our rez point, the flag on the right was fairly close and across level ground. It was situated pretty evenly between rez points and the East chose to assault that flag. The center flag was allowed to be moved by the Mid (due to their loss at the town battle) and they moved it closer to their lines (obviously). The flag on the left was about a quarter mile from rez uphill and Atlantia’s Dragoons (or was it Gardiner’s?) were initially charged with taking that flag and defending it.

Letia and I were again placed under Raph’s command in the Southern Atlantia unit along with Thomas, Michael, Iain, and Greylond (sp?). We were initially to advance to an intersection in the road, but halfway up the hill we were redirected to help stop a Mid kingdom attack first towards the bottom of the hill, then near where I think the center flag was (I never actually saw it, but we were fighting in its general vicinity according to the map).

After repelling those attacks, we proceeded towards the intersection we were initially supposed to take, but again were redirected to attempt to close in behind the Mid’s attack on a group of Atlantian and Ansteorran fencers. That didn’t go so well. Our unit was surrounded and we all died.

So, we all wandered back to rez, returned from rez and reformed as best we could and again pushed up the road towards the middle flag. I was killed again during this, and went back to rez. After this point, I never really was alive at the same time as the rest of my unit, so I ended up reforming with whatever group of Atlantians was at rez at the moment and rejoining the fight for the center flag.

I think I ended up in the small rez group because pretty much every time I returned to the fight, I joined a group that was outnumbered something like 3-5:1 and it was never very pretty. For the most part we managed to delay them until the rest of Atlantia arrived, but I spent most of the fight wandering between rez and a vastly outnumbered line.

On one of these occasions, I returned from rez to find that the Mid had punched through and was coming down the road towards our rez (and our commander). I joined up with Dom and a few others and I spread off to the right into the woods to threaten their flank and divert a few (4 of them) to pay attention to me. It was then that my best NSTIWAP stories happened. There were 4 of us and about 15 of them and Dom was standing a little forward of the rest of us looking threatening when their commander shouted “Kill him, that’s an awful lot of points for one little guy!” I then got to watch as Dom killed all 4 of them in quick succession, starting with the commander.

I might have rezzed a few more times and returned to similarly outnumbered lines, but towards the end we had lost the far flag and I joined up with Mateu and Giacomo to head up to the top to retake the flag. When we got there we found the King of the Middle holding the flag with a group of fencers and we charged up, killed them all, retook the flag and set up defensive lines as our reinforcements arrived.

The mid tried to counter attack with like 5 minutes left and I went with a small group to defend the road behind the flag (I’m really forgetting who I was with). There were about 3 of us and 3 of them and a fairly wide open space and the fighting got scattered into a 1 on 1 situation. I killed my first guy and went to the aid of another of our fighters and during that fighting, his quillion got caught in the guard of the sword in my left hand. I then got yanked into a gut shot on his blade while stabbing him. The guy apologized for pulling me off balance onto his sword and told me not to take the shot, but the yanking on my left (sprained) wrist pretty much finished my day for me. With 3 minutes left I began the long walk back to rez. The battle ended soon after.
After the battle, I learned that our planned deployment was based on the assumption that the mid and allies would concentrate on the flag on the right (at the bottom of the hill guarded by the East), but instead they had sent only Aethelmearc for that flag while the rest of their army had gone to fight us for the middle and left flags, which left Atlantia and Ansteorra locally outnumbered 3:1. We still managed to win the battle 6 to 3, and we even had possession of the center flag a few times.

That evening I overheard an E. kingdom talking to a Drachenwald fencer about how they felt they outnumbered the mid in the woods battle.

Plateau Battle:

Since the plateau battle was pretty short, I figured I’ll add it to the end of this post. It lasted a whole 7 minutes, and since I was rushing back from the airport to make it in time, I apologize for what will be a very brief commentary on tactics. I spent most of the battle in the second or third rank and didn’t get to fight much.
Basically the plateau battle was a big rectangular field with two long rectangular boulders situated astride the center (basically a bridge battle with 3 bridges). We were lined up behind the boulder on the left, the rest of the East was to our right.
At lay on, the Mid attacked down the center channel to attack the East. Atlantia went left, cut down the opposition pretty quickly and moved around the other side of the boulder. For a moment, we had a clear path to the Mid’s backside, but Aethelmearc noticed and quickly moved to close the gap.

There were a bunch of Aethelmearc fencers with identical bucklers and I ended up facing off against them. I managed to kill 2 or 3 of them by hitting the bottom of the buckler and letting it move like a door, simultaneously blocking their sword and admitting mine. On one of these occasions, I died and walked off the field. The remaining fighters quickly sandwiched the Mid allies in the middle path and killed them all.

The battle was the last necessary war point to seal victory for the East, so we all gathered together for a thank-you speech from Their Majesties of the East. A bunch of us got together and ran the plateau battle again for fun with similar results.
After winning the pickup melee, Atlantia gathered in the kingdom field tent for a brief court. HRM asked the rapier army to escort her into court that evening, Thomas was given a shark’s tooth for his prowess in the 5-man melee tourney, the Dragoons and Gardiner’s co. were given the Vexillium Atlantia (whose name I didn’t know, so thanks to Michael for providing it), and the entire rapier army was granted an augmentation of arms.