Close your eyes and picture a pine forest. Well, okay, pine and some other stuff. The trees are tall, the ground covered in leaves and needles. Dappled sunlight plays across the ground, across the trunks, across your face, across the shining piece of steel in your hands, and across the mass of Easterners approaching you, their own shining pieces of steel gleaming in your direction. To your left is a line of dense, short spruce trees, somewhere in there is half your army, and half the Eastern army. To your right the rest of your army, formed in a line.
The Easterners, coming back from rez point in a group, move vaguely in your direction, then wheel and head towards your right flank, aiming to punch through and wrap. You have a golden opportunity to run into their backfield, disrupt their advance, and leave them easy pickings for the rest of your forces (chances are that, if there are more than 10 of them or so, you may die before you kill them all).
Of course, your army may be under a general order to “stay the line” and resist Eastern charges. And what about those Easterners in the spruce trees, who could come roaring out and hit your flank? Should you stay there to defend against them?
Good question. Who knows?
“Obedient Foot Soldier” vs. “Free Agent”
Melee needs good soldiers who go where they’re told to, form lines where they’re supposed to, and do exactly as told to. Commanders need to know they can give an order and trust it to be executed.
Of course, melee also needs fighters who can spot an opportunity and take advantage of it. Commanders cannot be everywhere at all times, and fighters need to possess enough initiative to be willing to act on their own, and enough judgment to know when to act on their own.
So, basically, obey orders except for when acting on your own initiative will accomplish more. It’s not really going to become more definite than that.
Knowing when to be which
Before you can make any sort of decision as to whether or not to act on an opportunity, you first have to know whether or not it is, really, an opportunity. Which is the more dire threat: The charge against your right flank, or the potential threat against your left? How actively entertained are those Easterners in the woods? How well defended is your right flank? And, hell, what is the goal?
Remember all that talk about “goal awareness” and “communicating the plan down the line”? This is where it comes due. In this instant, you have to weigh all the facts available, and choose.
What happens if you pick wrong?
Nothing. Well, mostly nothing. Nothing of importance on a cosmological, geological, historical, political, or cultural scale. If you pick wrong, your whole team takes a beating, and you learn. And that’s all.
Of course, the same could be said of picking correctly. Nothing, really, happens. The echoes of your victory do not carry beyond the boundaries of the event site. But if you pick right, you win, maybe not the whole thing but a small victory, and if you win, you have the feeling for just a minute that you are a god of death, that you are king among men.
Advantages of “Free Agency”
As mentioned, commanders can’t be everywhere. Fighters willing to take the initiative can plug gaps and stop problems before they materialize, or jump on opponents’ vulnerabilities immediately. And, to a degree, successful personal initiative gets you the glory. I don’t think anybody’s ever gotten a Shark’s Tooth for staying in line for an entire battle. Of course, unsuccessful personal initiative gets you a dope slap.
Advantages of Obedience
Also as mentioned, commanders need to be confident that their orders will be executed. If the word of the day is “form a line there and stand in that line”, the commander needs to know that line will be formed and stood in. If everybody’s going for personal glory, that line does not get stood in, and the flag gets overrun. Then, nobody gets glory. Just lots of dope slaps. I have heard the phrase “we don’t know how to fight in a line, so we’re going to form up in the trees and take them in the flank” said. It made me cry. It was, at the end of the day, an entire army fighting for personal glory. And they got none.
Need for Both
Ultimately, what is needed is fighters capable of both, and capable of deciding when is the right time for each. If insufficient fighters are standing in line, join the line and stay there. If opportunities aren’t being exploited, exploit them! My favorite order to give is “Rally on the enemy commander”. My second favorite order is “You know what to do.”
So, How do I Know?
I realize up to this point I’ve laid out the cost-benefit analysis of personal initiative, but not actually said how to know when to do which. There’s really only one way: Try it. At practice, run melees with equal teams, no orders given, and in-depth debrief afterward. At events go ahead and give it a shot every now and then. See what happens.
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