This is an imperfect transcript of a really good Melee tactics video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K9bc5uUPVI&t=251s the audio isn’t very good and with Covid giving me some freetime, why not? It has good info for those getting started in melees. The best way to get the most of this is to let the video play in the background while you read, there’s no visual elements in the video as it is a lecture so itll work out pretty well. (brackets) or ??? is a word I wasn’t able to make out, but youd get the idea.
Catherine: Hi am Catherine of the Red Company company so that’s a something and more importantly the Pentamere Regional Commander, which you will be fighting under my arm of fighting this year. Probably because you have to fight the Legion, I believe most of you but there is some thought of the Legion and Pentamere actually fighting together. And there are certain events like where we pretty much share commander. So there’s a chance I’ll be telling you where to go, what to do. So I’m going to tell you a little bit about small unit tactics. Although if you guys were all fighting together, I wouldn’t even consider this a small unit. This is a good size unit.
Catherine: So if you were all fighting. So quick show of hands, who here has never fought in a melee before? Okay, well excellent. That’s good. That means that I bought before you really basic stuff. So in the middle kingdom we fight basically, large mainly events. We fight three times in battle, we fight open field scenarios, we fight close front scenarios, and we fight times scenarios, which can be either of the above. We’re very good at this. Now we’re getting better at this. The thing about this type of battle is that your opponent isn’t the other fighters you’re opponent is the clock. So that changes all of your tactics in the way you’re going to fight your battles completely. So we will talk about this one later in the year. It’s my favorite. The way that the middle kingdom army is a kind of, each region is autonomous in how they decide to command there groups. And Pentamere which is Michigan and Michigan except for the dark yard so I mean, that’s not a geographical section for Michigan, so it’s kind of hard to explain, but mostly Pentamere is all of Michigan.
Catherine: That’s right exactly but because if you think of Michigan, it’s a wide and diverse state and therefore also a wide and diverse region and far the distance to it and far between. When you get to some of the other edges of the state in other regions like Constellation, which is pretty much Kentucky, they have a much easier time because it’s a much more focused group of people. They all live kind of easy driving distance and they all sort of think the same way. In our area it’s very, like the people out in Kalamazoo are a completely different () from the people around Detroit. The people in Ann Arbor, are only 45 minutes away, are completely different from the people who are near Detroit and different.
Male Voice: We can still, we can still
Catherine: Yeah we can but they’re, they’re both like, they hit a lot harder, believe it. They’re not even very far away. It’s just the way Michigan is. And so because of that, I’ve tried to build the, this relates to small unit tactics don’t worry. Because of that I tried to build up the region, I call it like Lego blocks in a sophisticated eastern sort of the () theory, but I like to think of it as Lego blocks each level group () and individual part () is a Lego block, a whole unit in and of itself. And when we come together at something like Baron Wars or Pennsic or golf no you don’t have to go to a golf course to make it, I get to take all as the big commander person, I get to take all the Lego blocks and click them together into a unit.
Catherine: But in order for us to be able to fight that way, each Lego block has to be autonomous. I cannot, there is no way that, especially for windsor that I’m going to be able to train all of Michigan to fight together, it’s just never going to happen. Other, other regional commanders have tried. And what you end up with is a whole bunch of resentful, little groups all fighting their own way. You can tell me what to do and it doesn’t work. We’ve had a lot of success under my Lego block theory over the last couple of years, which is why they let me do it again third year. And I have heard they want me to stay here forever. I did not want to be here forever, but hopefully I can pass on the Lego building theory, that I can do. So the deal with that though is that each group needs to be able to function as an individual unit.
Catherine: So I’m going to teach you guys how to do the same sorts of things. Right. So, oh, one of the things about close front scenarios, becoming two varieties I’ll call it a single death last man sort of thing, but not very often, but more often they are resurrection scenarios, which means that when you’re killed, there’s some sort of a resurrection point down here and you go back and you rejoin the army. Now, how this relates to small unit tactics is that you need to have a very clear idea of what you’re doing, where you’re going. Because when you die, you can’t, you’re going to be resurrected and you’re not going to be resurrected with all of your friends. And in an ideal world you might wait for some of them. But in a very ideal world, many of them are dying, going want to rejoin with them.
Catherine: And be able to fit back into your unit, which means you need a very, very clear idea of what your place is in your unit. The way we try to train in the mid round is that you can, as you progress up sort of the martial ladder, you also progress up your ability to have initiative and do things on your own. But you know, this perspective peoples own initiative. I’m a big fan of the command structure and less thinking why the majority of people are more opening. Because if you don’t have individual initiative in a melee situation, you can’t necessarily convey to everybody else what your great idea is and then you’re going to go off and do it on your own. And I’m going to be doing my initiative over here and it’s not going to work out. And my initiative was the right idea because I’m your commander. So, so we started off with this idea of understanding your role in the unit. The majority of you are probably going to fight with a sword and shield for the rest of this year. No, you’re not planning to okay. Who plans on fighting in their first three to five melees with the sword and shield? So shield men, come in, in two varieties, first fight and second fight, pretty much big and smaller. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but it’s a good place to start. If you think of any engagement that you’re going to do, a shield wall is called a shield wall for a reason because it’s a wall. It provides a wall to protect everything that’s happening behind it. Sometimes that’s aggressive fire with longer weapons and both that was a cost between a (???) right. And, and sometimes it’s to protect against decision-making that’s happening, reassessing of the (???), changing of plans. And sometimes it’s protect against retreat or just holding ground, whatever we need to have that shield wall up and functional. Many of you will, will be front shield wall people because it’s not a place that people like to stay for very long in their SCA career. I did nine years in a shield wall because I thought that, well, first of all, I think it’s kind of fun.
Catherine: Yeah. But I also think that it’s good to have some experienced people in there because really what tends to happen to people do a couple of years in the shield wall and then they move onto something bigger and longer usually and more like a spear. And I have to admit that when I finally went to spear. I never waited around (???).
Sir Ragnar: Are these open to discussion or are we just…
Catherine: Oh yeah, this is just like.
Sir Ragnar: Okay.
Catherine: That things are…
Sir Ragnar: I started in the shield wall couldn’t wait to get my six foot axe going.
Catherine: Right
Sir Ragnar: That’s where the action is.
Catherine: Yeah.
Sir Ragnar: You may not stay alive as long and you may not be a spear in claiming 60 kills. Not talking about all the guys. That kept you alive when you got your 60 kills. But there’s two ways to look at a shield wall. One is the melee way, which is like we see in the Scottish movies. You basically just come out, you bang into each other or this is basically what we do. You stand off a certain distance, you let other people kill you. Now if you’re going to shield wall, that’s it. I’m going to stand here and other people kill me.
Catherine: Well, I was that was sought of leading into the reason that people like to leave a shield wall, it’s because but I can guarantee you that you’re not going to kill very many people and it’s not your job. Your number one job in a shield wall is to keep the people beside you first and behind you alive. If you’re the reason beside the first is if you imagine a wall, and we’ll do this with a shield some day.
Male Voice: I brought a real shield.
Catherine: Yeah. If you do this, if you have a wall and you have a nice solid front and this guy dies, there’s an opening. And in this opening is like this line of death, the right spear person who’s going to clink, clink, clink, clink. And kill all of you before this guy has a chance to fill the gap. So your job in a shield wall. It’s really important and it’s to keep yourself alive, to keep your buddy next to you alive. We tend to worry about the person on our sword side because then they’re like, we’ve tried to kind of match people up so that we have sword sides alternating. Some like we’ll give you your own little place to go. We’re all left we can play together. Yeah. So keep, keep your sword friend alive, keep yourself alive. And then the people behind you who are ideally going to do the killing a lot. And so people think it’s boring. They also, now that is one function of the shield wall. One of the things that we will definitely try to train this year throughout the whole kingdom is changing the shield wall from being the wall into a charge unit. And then once you become a charge unit and hitters will (). So you are, I, since I picked up a spear, I haven’t done a charge and that’s sad, right? I mean when a charge happens coming towards us, I run away. And that’s sad when the charge happens and the other direction I stand there like this and I yell, take the ground, take the ground, come back you’ve gone too far and I don’t do anything
Sir Ragnar: By the way, you’ll hear spear men all (???). You will hear spear users all the time talking about the wonderful kills. Right? But the minute they don’t have a shield in front of them, the first thing you hear them screaming is shield up to the front shield up, shield up.
Sir Ragnar: With so many people not wanting to be in the shield wall quite often there is no one to come up.
Catherine: Yeah. We, we, we have a, a balance problem with a good unit. We need to have spears and we need to have shields and we need to have (???) and actually (??) that are really lacking in our kingdom because when.
Catherine: Well axes are like shield ) chopping thing.
Catherine: Choppers we need pokers and choppers. Spears are great I mean honestly like if you get (???), I am in no way a spear god. However, it doesn’t matter, like crappy days, spear you killed 12 people. I mean it’s just like it just doesn’t sack at all. But, but that, that, I mean most of us 90% of spear people, we at least nine feet of space to work, ideally 12, you know, so when presses closer then that’s when we chopping people like.
Sir Ragnar: True because you like spear too. But could I say, okay, there’s a number of things. One, the media, with shield wall sort of what they do, people don’t bring a war board. They bring their tournaments shields alright and the spear men like guys that war with tournament shields. Yeah. Because they are nothing but open targets. Okay. The other type of shield wall is the roman and that’s not where you are there to protect people in the back. You are an active offensive unit that goes out and kills people. It doesn’t just stand there and let the spears have fun.
Catherine: In case you’re looking for a comparison with a (???) shield or a shield, I have a war shield that’s like, because I’m a (???) century (, I also have this big, I have a war shield, that’s a heater shape, but it actually does go all like all the way down to my leg. So I can (???)
Male Voice: So basically which target do you see?
Catherine: Yeah. There ain’t nothing.
Catherine: Here’s a little history lesson for you on the development before (???). In the old days because I don’t even think we’re all that old, but actually they’re really old now. We didn’t have face thrusting and it took a really long time. The middle kingdom was a, amongst the last kingdoms to get face thrusting and because the middle kingdom did not have face thrusting, we didn’t have face thrusting dependent. I don’t know the exact date, but it’s within the last 15 years. I think that maybe, no, it’s got to be 15, because I was an authorized fighter as well and I fought in wars without, without a face thrusting. When you, when we didn’t have face thrusting I can stand like this with my sword here, blocking the top of my head and look out and you can’t kill me. Right. And so there was nothing for a spear to do. We had very little, there was zero spear doing. Spear doing is when a line of sphere gods stand in front of the shield wall with their big egos and their nine foot spear. And they just play spear fighting with each other. And honestly, it’s incredibly important for us to watch because it’s pretty…
Male Voice: Might I add something?
Catherine: Yeah.
Male Voice: That’s the one popular shield wall (???) we letting them do that.
Catherine: There are times in a time scenario, first of all, a lot of these guys are Knights and Dukes and you can’t control them anyway. So they’re going to do what they’re going to do and what they want to do is practice their prowess with other people, people skill. And you know nothing wrong or right. So…
Sir Ragnar: So does that mean they should be in charge?
Catherine: Well they’re not in charge they are just out there killing each other. Yeah.
Male Voice: When you’re doing (???) you know from my background.
Catherine: Right.
Male Voice: You single right throw or do you throw the right throw?
Catherine: I am not sure I can answer that question.
Catherine: We’re not very effective with them at all, actually. We can do them.
Sir Ragnar: Most people…
Catherine: If we want.
Sir Ragnar: Most people because of our hand requirement protections really not good at throwing javelins.
Catherine: And, and the safety requirements of the size of them. They’re not very accurate and they don’t hit very hard because we have to have them. We make them out of golf tubes with a tennis ball thing and they’re just, I mean, I gather that you can walk out the way with your sword before it hits you is (???) I have seen the more like there are individuals who are very good with them, but we certainly don’t have units.
Male Voice: So you don’t have the mask?
Catherine: No, not with that with archery sure but.
Sir Ragnar: It’s at the point now where someone says you just got hit with a javelin.
Catherine: Yeah you have to play the role.
Male Voice: Should you like take it?
Catherine: Yeah.
Male Voice: I mean I didn’t even feel it.
Catherine: Feel it.
Catherine: Yeah. So anyways back to spear doing. So we didn’t have any of that spear stuff because a spear against a shield wall is to be incredibly ineffective. When face thrusting came in, all of a sudden the spear became a much more effective weapon because you cannot, I mean, you can try in a grounded shield wall, you can do this, but if you’re moving at all have to see where you’re going. And so as soon as you look over your dead, right a spear can kill you. So we’ve gone through much more fluid steeled use. There are certain situations where you can use a grounded, a grounded shield wall and they can be very effective. We fight at least one bridge battle a year. And for those who don’t know, a bridge battle tends to be 18 to 27 feet cross, which might sound like a lot, but it’s not. If you think a person is like three feet across of space, I mean, you know.
Male Voice: Five
Catherine: Normal person.
Male Voice: Probably six
Catherine: Three feet or not right? So you’re only looking at like six or seven people across really to across. And that’s a fixed (???) there are always thought as times scenarios because the basic rule of the ship on the bridge battle is (???) cross loses. So if there’s no time, then both army sit on either end of the bridge and wait the, when this tactic was finally figured out, there was a famous pennsic battle where they ordered pizza on the field and it was delivered and served because nobody would cross.
Sir Ragnar: The battle will be an hour and a half long. We’re fighting over the middle of it. Nobody’s going to do anything until the last 10 minutes because that’s all that counts.
Catherine: when it goes to a last man.
Sir Ragnar: So it’s like an extra hour and a quarter of basically letting spears just play around. And then for the last 10 minutes we all get serious about it and most people complained enough about it that they finally said, okay, instead of having one battle in a hour and a half we will have three.
Catherine: Depending if there is enough people out in the field that it takes a certain amount of time just to move onto a bridge. But some smaller wars, you’ll have 7, 10, 12 minute bridge battles, possession of the (???) after 10 minutes, we’ll have some hard fighting because we want to get in there and fight. But in a situation like this where you’re not going anywhere, that’s where you could have a grounded shield wall or a gate if you have a castle and you’ve got a gate, any fixed front where you’re going to be there for awhile is a place where you can grab your shield and then that’s not expected for spears. But for the most part the development of face thrusts in SCA fighting has completely changed the battlefield. But about five or seven years after face thrusting came in came effective combat archery, which fell off the sides back up. Because when you’re having your fantastic spear, spear of death as you will notice who can spot the target area, I’ve got nothing. I pray regularly to Saint Sebastian, who is playing for it safe against being killed by friendly fire. And I do quite well with blocking me an arrow accidentally with my spear because I go like this what it’s like, it’s, I’m very, very lucky. But I mean really you just have to hid behind the shield. So I guess the whole point of that whole thing and that full, we’ve managed to balance out fighting the both shields and one weapon use effective and problems on the field. We need the mix so we need a good shield wall for sure, because in everyone of these scenarios on an open field when you’re moving a lot. I almost always at now I commanded (???) , but I take my shield even though I have converted to the cult of the spear, I take my shield out on the open field. Because it’s so fluid you’re moving so much, you’re very barely, just stopped long enough that I don’t have the skills to be quick on my feet and accurate with the spear.
Male Voice: Just for, for benefit of some of the brand new people, what would you feel like it’s just face the open field event you have two lines, two lines and a last man standing.
Catherine: Last man standing.
Male Voice: So…
Catherine: Great. Unless it is a resurrection battle the victory conditions will tend to be.
Sir Ragnar: The last man standing on one side or the other.
Catherine: Or the other yeah.
Sir Ragnar: You don’t start killing your own guys until there’s one man standing.
Catherine: Right.
Sir Ragnar: So that’s precisely what we do.
Male Voice: It happened once. Okay.
Catherine: Yeah.
Male Voice: Again different time.
Catherine: Great.
Male Voice: Individual initiative is not encouraged.
Catherine: Well, I hate to say to anybody, I hate, I hate to tell anybody that you know to quell your initiative because that just because it just feels wrong.
Catherine: it kind of goes back to what we were saying about tournament fighting before, I want you guys to have fun. But winning is fun.
Male Voice: From a (???) working on the line of the shield wall at the briefing before battle we have to () as a group. But if I see, targets, targets of opportunity or like if you can flank and you’re the only unit between flank, as my commander, you better make a decision for you’re either going to get flank or you going to stop the flank, or die trying to stop the flank. So that’s where those little things are. But you got to be clear your objective first and then you might be given, like I might have I might recommend to say look keep an eye on (???) you see that break loose hit it or that might be part of a plan or they might see something else break loose.
Catherine: One of the things…
Male Voice: That’s the initiative.
Catherine: One of the things that we talk about a lot in daily command, and this is way more, more technical, is main intent. Now, in SCA fighting, in SCA fighting one day I’ll bring you one of the booklets from our command symposiums and stuff so you can see. We are at a level of really high, fairly sophisticated command in the fighting that we do. I, I, my bosses have me reading like water tactical and strategic command treaties by you know, hackers and all these like people from the last hundred years of tactical event really boring military history a lot of it. But we’re at this like high sophisticated level of battle planning. I don’t even know why but we do. But a lot of the time you in the line we try to communicate what the main intent is because knowledge is power. Clarity equals strength. So if you know what the main intent is, that will hopefully help you. However, there is no way that in your first couple of years of fighting with everything that’s going on, you’re going to be able to keep track of the grand strategy and the tactics of, of, a battle, you’re just going to know what your job is from your commander. So we ask that you have faith in the commands you’re being given. Because even though it may not seem to you that what you’re doing at the most efficient and effective place to be, ideally it’s supporting some (???) thing that’s going on, on the battlefield. Saying that a lot of the fighting you’re going to get to do between now and say Baron Wars, which is in May or June, depending on the year, is going to be very small unit. Ideally groups of five, now, in a group of five people, you have a lot more room to do your own initiative and ideally if you decide to be a hero and you’re in charge, hopefully your other five people are going to be able to quickly take advantage of whatever chaos you’ve injected right there. So in, in really small unit tactics, it’s almost like five individuals with a plan together, but you know, things get very fluid in five to ten man, mainly units. And in all things, like in all things in life, in any group that having and identified the year, the year helps keep group cohesion. But, yeah, it definitely, you know, if you don’t want to be ever caught flat footed. So if you’re standing there and you’re in the middle of fighting and you’re like, well I’m not sure what to do, far better to be swinging at something than not.
Sir Ragnar: You got a shield side sword side, once you learn how to work as a five man unit, any other unit that we have, you can just drop out of one go into the other, you’ll know what to do. Okay. But that’s where the shield walls the shield wall. That’s where they become aggressive and they start picking on smaller things. Remember if you’re in a group of five, don’t pick on a group of tens you’re going to die. You’re in a group of five pick on a group of two or three. Wipe them out and move on.
Catherine: I’m throwing out a whole ton of random information at you tonight and my goal is to, is to do a few more of these over we will focus in on specific things and better to do it like in armor practice actual thing. This is sort of like a general overview of all before that there is out there and mainly effective okay. So in a unit there are a few basic maneuvers that you will have to learn. The, call it your standard formations.
Catherine: Your standard formation, your standard formation are just going to be basically how you line up in a closed shield wall in a open order shield wall. Open order means enough for a spear to be in between two shields. And in the call standard formation, there are two kinds of charges we use in the middle kingdom and especially if people are going to be in the front and second right people with shield, this is what you do for glory and you are vital because people without shields, except for heroes. And although we’re all heroes at some level only like big heroes you know, people. Like, there are some people who are, there are people, there are men with the (???) especially who I will follow a charge , charge, you know, but not as many as there are people that (???). Yeah, so there’s two kinds of charges. I’m not going to tell you what they’re called right now, but that is still under debate. There is a linguistic issue with what charges are called across the kingdom.
Sir Ragnar: Its okay we only been working at it for twenty…
Catherine: Yes.
Sir Ragnar: Five years
Catherine: Every single year. We have had this argument about, there’s a kind of chart where you go up and you harry, the people across from you and then you retreat.
Sir Ragnar: That’s roll calling.
Catherine: No except for the people in the class doesn’t call it something different and they keep getting in charge.
Sir Ragnar: Fancy what do they call it? Because I like to know
Catherine: Exactly but they think that the other one I don’t know I don’t understand. But because of that, because of that I think is that (???) grounded. Because of the (???) problems that we can agree that this is a pause for them. We’re coming up with some new terminology every year we come up with some new terminology.
Catherine: Yeah, so there’s the charge where you carry people who are new and you come back. The point of that is to mess up whatever that they’re doing.
Male Voice: Most of them
Sir Ragnar: Hope they get them right because we have been in too many with similar results and half the people the other half don’t.
Sir Ragnar: And half of the people usually don’t come back.
Catherine: Either things that are done a lot of time on these things is in the middle of and we want to take it. So we’re looking at the time, we’re looking at how many people are left and we’re trying to decide where we want the front line to be. And if you do a go and come back kind of thing, you can sometimes draw their line, to you, and they would cover they will come forward. Maybe you would kill pocket. It’s if you’re manipulating your line in that, in that way. The other one, I call it ground shaking because I don’t read a single word to explain what I’m doing on the battlefield and I find that lovely descriptive term. A ground shaking charge is where you charge forward and take the ground and all the army follows you up behind you and, and helped you keep it. And that’s a charge where it’s okay to die because ideally live, but if, but the goal for that one is to get six feet further up. And so if you throwing yourself into the line means that the people behind you can come and we can reform take six feet further up and you have helped us achieve our so yeah, so two kinds of charges that we do. Well three because there’s also a penetration kind of a charge, which we use to break pockets. Where you basically inside gentlemen and ladies we say the word penetration a lot We penetrate very deeply hard and fast and if there is something you know you just have to get it over.
Catherine: Well ) And that kind of charge, it’s being used to break up something that’s happening on the other side very tactic because we can send one in this way and send one in this way and they sort of meet and then we can break all that up and just kill them all, kill them all. That’s a great tactic. So three kinds of charges that you will practice () a penetration charge, a call charge in a, in a situation like this because you just don’t have the depth of to go. All that you’re really doing is lining up and going and not stopping. You don’t need to practice running in a straight line. We can do that its when a whole lot of people are trying to hit you and that’s key.
Catherine: It’s a slow; it’s an old man’s job. So standard formations charges and this is something that you will drill and drill again, reach for that is doing something and getting back to your formation and it’s hard. And this is where this is incredibly useful and needed in any of the situations that we fight five and ten man mainly units. We always have an initial plan no matter what we’re doing, even if the plan is good, you always have, an idea of what you’re going to do in the first 30 seconds of the fight. And whoa what a to start the first 30 seconds of the fight is still something to do. Well, you’re not really necessarily all sophisticated enough to have step C and D in our head. So you have to be able to reform so that you can all move together and do whatever is next. And ideally your leader can have plan B, C, and D. And of course those are completely relying on what your opponent has done. You can’t do that. You can’t necessarily plan that in advance because you have to see how many of you are still alive and where everybody is. But if you’re a five on five and you’re over here and you’ve got your three guys over here and they’ve got four left, you have four less, but you’re one in three and your four together, you’re in trouble. Reforming is key, in all the fighting you do you are underdogs you are champions of melee fighting and we spent half our time practicing reform drills. When we get together, what do we do first? We do reform drills and we’re still on all that so.
Sir Ragnar: Remember that is the most () because it’s a big open everybody is running around. Most battles we have like different sides but if you find yourself alone don’t go pick on one on one total waste of your time, okay. Form up with some other guys like if you’re like a unit of four () ones. That is why you don’t stick as one, two or three find your unit. It doesn’t have to be your unit but it’s only what twenty minutes of actually fighting back.
Sir Ragnar: That’s it you can go and fight for twenty minutes. So if you kill a guy and you’re still alive don’t stand there and congratulate yourself. Don’t, talk to your buddies start jogging. Find some guys from your team form up with them. Find some guys from the other team and kill them and form up again, and again and eventually when there’s nobody else on your side to kill then you can stop.
Sir Ragnar: And that’s only going to be about fifteen twenty minutes. So do it.
Catherine: We value, we value battles and individual battles on the field and you know a great fighter on your team is a real benefit. But when you’re, when you’re in a melee numbers, numbers count, whether it’s three on one or twenty five on six or whatever, you know, you’re, if you’re together in a unit fighting together, you can do one, one. It’s, it’s, exponentially better and your chances of surviving are much greater. I mean, yeah, like it’s fun to watch when I stake out three people, three on one, but really three on one. You, you should be able to get anybody to be able to get three on one if you’re working together because you got one, one or two that hit him and one guy is down. And if you tied up all of his offense and all his defense and then you’ve got another person there to hit them, we’re looking good. So reform is very key if you’ve done one of these things once, but you can’t do this, you can’t do this again. Some of the other things that you absolutely need to learn in terms of general , and this is one of the completely hardest thing to learn.
Catherine: Hard, hard to learn especially in these five to ten men scenarios. The rules are right now, and I’m sure before you you’ve all thoroughly read the convention. But you can read them all day long, but until you fought a bunch of scenarios, you, you can’t understand this. You are not allowed to hit people from behind and you are not allowed to hit people if they’re not aware that you are marital friend. This is an absolute, there’s no gray area on this. This isn’t codes of courtesy the rules of our. When you are, it gets a bit tricky and melee fighting because when you’re engaged with a line and the definition of a line is also somewhat difficult borderline for example, I’ll post together the other. But if you’re engaged, if you’re fighting a line of people and you managed to engage this person, you are engage to follow these people, which mean they have notice you hitting them. But it also means he can come over here and meet you as long as you know. So there are as many different ways of understanding engagement and there are situations on the field, which means it so, go practice for sure over the year, and we’ll talk about this a lot. And when you’re fighting, you’re going to get into some arguments with people be cool it happens. You’re going to yell at each other and say, Hey, we weren’t engaged and you probably weren’t.
Catherine: First of all, if you hit somebody and you’re not engaged, it’s not ). And get included in the back of the head when you’re not engaged. It’s getting in the back of the head and finding out you are actually engaged and you’re angry. I’m also of a firm belief that you should never hit anybody hitting anybody from behind in any situation is not correct. But there are times when you’re engaged with some behind,
Catherine: The quick thing, sneaking into the backlines, pretending you’re in their army and then hitting them, you are not engaged. It sounds like a really good tactic. But one of the key things is they don’t have to see you. They have to acknowledge you as a martial threat before you’re engaged with them. So if you’re steering at them and they think you’re ) buddy, they are not acknowledging you as a martial.
Sir Ragnar: Look them in the eye still their eyes drip up and notice you the red tape on your helmet.
Catherine: Or you can go even like this and they go huh.
Sir Ragnar: Yep.
Catherine: Then they acknowledge you on the side and then you can quickly hit them. So you know just, I mean you’ll spend a lot of time on this and as I said, I guarantee you when you go into war in () that kind of situations where understanding and engaging is very difficult here really, really easy. The people over there are engaged with you. You don’t need to worry about it. If you’re standing on a bridge and they’re on the other side, if they don’t acknowledge that they are against you, they’re . Even in a field battle like large groups of people anything where you have more than like twenty or thirty on twenty or thirty it’s pretty obvious for the most part, whether you’re engaging or not. Because if you’re swinging at each other you’re engaged. It might be like ten man mainly situation where you’re in a line and then this line ) over here dealing with something that’s happening. And then he comes back in. Well, (or you’re deciding to do all in a line, and then as you’re moving backwards, you’re spreading out and hopefully the line become individual people. There’s no relaxer for that every spinning around and hitting each other. You think you’re engaged with somebody and they don’t think you’re engaged with them. And there’s maybe having those replay so we don’t know who’s right ).
Male Voice: from behind and has I turn I got wet.
Catherine: Yeah, it all depends.
Male Voice: He was letting me know he was on the shoulder.
Catherine: Yeah. It depends. It’s like were you turning around like this.
Male Voice: No I was turning too
Catherine: ( you have to like it, it’s kind of funny because your in a higher system of fighting is a honor based system. There is no way of telling, you don’t have sensors on our helmets or on our body armor. There is absolutely no way to tell if a blow is suspicion except for if you decide it is or not. So what are these completely automated system of fighting. Nobody from the outside, it’s actually illegal for martial to tell you if you say I’m not dead from a blow in a tournament fight a martial can’t say no you actually are. Face thrusting are different because that’s about target. But if you say, if you hold your ground and say that wasn’t good, they can’t tell you it was, they can pressure you into believing that it was good. And they can’t give you (), no longer fighting on the wall conversation with you about whether it was good or not.
Sir Ragnar: Asking you to explain that big dent in your helmet.
Catherine: But it’s an honor based system and it works. It really does. We were having a very long conversation about () and how it should be done. You know what, there’s a lot of theories and a lot of stuff, but the fact that you were not far off fifty year celebration of the society, there are tens of thousands of people playing this all over the world and for the most part we can all get together and fight and it works. So that’s pretty impressive really. Seeing if quantifiable way truly of assessing each other’s acceptance or than their personal thought.
Sir Ragnar: And whatever you do don’t lose control. Someone didn’t take the shot. I got hit one time in the head walking off the field and I realize my was killing me. Why? Because somebody hit me really hard and I hadn’t acknowledge it. And he thinks am by it no its testosterone and adrenaline and I didn’t feel it.
Catherine: There’s going to be, there’s going to be thought taking () that you’re going to go off and even in a tournament, even if it’s (, there’s going to be a ) and you’re going to go home and you’re going to look at the mirror, you’re going to go, ah that really wasn’t good enough.
Sir Ragnar: Or some say nobody die in the first five minutes first time.
Catherine: Or what’s worse is you’re going to make, take a () and say, Hey, no, you keep fighting and you sleep and wake up. The next day you’re going to say, you know what.
Male Voice: Am bruised.
Catherine: Yes absolutely and then you have to live with that you know, that, that’s, that’s part of the path of chivalry. It’s learning to you know, no offense ladies, myself included. But you have to man up and acknowledge that you’re going to make mistakes and that your opponents are going to make mistakes and you have to ). But, but strangely they said this honor system that we have, that we’re so very well calibrated seems to fail also engagement, a lot of the time. I’m not quite sure why it is. I think it’s something to do with, with just that we are not educated enough about it we don’t talk about because really if you use a sense of courtesy, don’t hit people if they don’t know you’re there, you know. Yes, you want the advantage in the manly, but you can take it without, excuse my language, being an asshole about it. That doesn’t happen as often as it ought to. excellent () and proper engagement and through the less problems that I am foreseen. Because if you know what you’re doing and you’re confident about it it’s strange when you end up in fewer situations of
Male Voice: What’s the engagement if you’re, if you’re actually behind somebody, there’s other stuff that you ) weapon.
Catherine: Oh yeah.
Male Voice: Follow the shield.
Male Voice: Yes exactly that way your friends…
Catherine: and you’re working with other people. Or if you’re in the process of reforming and they’re fighting somebody and you come up behind while you’re not engaging, those people are fighting. But if you start playing, first of all, you’re going to make it possible for your friends to kill them and you’re going to make the person you’re behind realize you’re there and ignored you as a minor threat so you will be engaged again. Yes. And as you pointed out saying, Hey, you weren’t engaged is acknowledging that you’re a minor threat so that’s ) engage just saying
(
Sir Rangar: You’re not engaged if somebody kills you.
Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. Hey you weren’t engage yeah now we are and afterwards (i) that’s not necessarily courteous, but it’s certainly effective. So, okay so) yeah, there’s a lot to say about non formation things that are for, for . So I’m going to stop talking now. This is sort of a very, very basic overview of what a, what a melee unit is in the SCA. I can not promise what your experienced on the field will be because you’re not fighting my (). If you want to you can more than ( But I know that the dark () and the Legion has a, more formal setup for their units. So you’ll actually have, if you do fight them, (i) with the, with, with the Legion, there are you’ll actually experience, watch more solid, a set of small units (and the sort of mishmash (. But I can promise you that, it will be fun. And the more you know the more fun it’s going to be. So I liked ) stick and I much prefer to fight than talk, believe it or not. The, the more education that you have so that you’re a smarter fighter will make you a better fighter and a better team player. And really that’s what a unit is, is a team. So how about it folks?