Ok. So I have thought long and hard about what went wrong in the battle. Any of you who have been with us for a long time will know that I am not in the habit of losing. Those of you that know me well will know that whenever we lose people in battle, I take the responsibility for those deaths very seriously in character; after all, we as a people as generous in victory, and selfish in defeat. Therefore, to forestall any claims of ducking my responsibility, the accountability for those deaths lies at my feet. I have already been told that there are inquisitions out there looking for my head. I expect this, its part of the game. People will be angry over the loss of their loved ones, and it all creates good roleplay :) I will not however be just offering up my head like a sacrificial lamb to appease someone’s grief. What happened on Saturday is part of our core brief. We glory in battle; we stand tall and do not skulk from danger! and Warriors seek the good death on the battlefield, but the good death is any ending that comes while pushing yourself to achieve one final act of heroism. So, to the battle itself. The advance through the woods was fairly uneventful until we got near to the field. A force of about 20 to 30 barbarians harassed our rear so that the Brass Coast were slightly inconvenienced, but chased them off for the most part whilst we got arrayed on the field. After a brief conversation with the unit commanders the plan was for the units on the field were to advance on the enemy to attack their right flank. We were aware that there was some form of creature we would have to deal with, and that it was most likely hiding in or near the fort. We were to try and push the units back to the fort until the creature emerged, a small force on our right flank were to engage the creature when it emerged. From reports I received, what actually happened is that some skirmishers had over-chanced their luck, and had been dropped by the enemy. At which point the forces charged the enemy line, becoming disparate groups. The War Rhino emerged on our left flank, and made a swift manoeuvre up the field to take position behind us. The War Rhino was flanked by a large contingent of barbarian troops, too many for the small flanking force to handle on our left. They tried to re-position themselves quickly, as did the reserve (the Brass Coast, trying to move down the field to reform with the main unit. They never made it that far, and got engaged by the very mobile War Rhino, that moved far quicker than we anticipated, and the unit of skirmisher that charged out from the woods. Thus were our forces split into 4 separate groups (I think), the Wintermark main shield unit, the Imperial orcs and the Ybasden, Dawn and the rest of the Wintermark Skirmishers. After that, it was just a matter of time. Cut off with the Ybasden and the Orcs, we tried to flank the skirmishers between us and the other groups to gather us all together. However, by this time the War Rhino was pushing us all around the field. After two circuits of the field trying to get everyone back together, with heavy fighting all over the field, the remnants were pushed towards the fence at the right of the field to where we came in. Towards this point I noticed my hand was pissing blood, and got jumped on by a first aider. The line of troops washed over me and I assumed I was dead. Like many others I was picked up by gloating Orcs and thrown back at our own troops, and limped home with the rest. As far as I know this is a fairly accurate account of what went on. Im sure there are many details I have missed or not seen, but its the essence of what happened. So why did this happen? What are the key learnings we need to take away from this, and where do we go from here. There are several points so Im going to take my time and address them all. Not in any particular order, just in the way they come to my head from conversations I have had all last weekend… 1 - Numbers on the field. In the military council on Fridays we try and get some type of accurate understanding of how many will take the field for each Nation, so we can try and sort the sides relatively evenly for the following days battles. On Friday it was reported to me that the Wintermark would be taking 188 troops onto the field of battle, almost 3 times the size of any other force in the field. With this size of numbers it became impossible to put an equal number of nations in the field together. When the sides were drawn up, we had I think approx. 290 all told on our side of the battle, with I think 330 on the other side. So from the start we knew we would be slightly down on numbers. When we got to the field it was obvious to me that we were more than 40 down. It was much more than this. So Why? Wintermark walked onto the field with less than 150 troops, 38 less than reported. This put our numbers at at least 78 different. I also suspect that more people decided to monster from the monster nations than they said they were going to take into their fight. After all, its a chance to have fun right? So I suspect they gained maybe 50 troops all told from people who just wanted a bit of fun. Putting the numbers around 140 different. This is all supposition apart from the Wintermark numbers but it feels right. Solution in the future – Accurately report numbers (both for fighting and monstering) and underestimate a little due to drinking activities/bad weather/ injuries/scheduling clashes. Going into the MC and saying you have 188 troops looks great until you turn up with less and get your arse kicked around a field. 2 - When we split the forces up in the Generals meeting, we look to put Nations where they want to fight. The current place most people other than us and the Orcs want to fight is Holberg. Its where the money is. So that leaves us scrabbling around for the people that want to fight with us in Sermasuaq. We almost didn’t get the opportunity to fight there as the thought of losing an imperial territory (Karsk) did not appeal to a lot of the Generals. Understandable, as we have only just gained it. What swung it for us was that as a council, we had already decided to pull out of Karsk, but didn’t due to… difference of opinions in what was written in the orders for the armies. (FOIP) My point here is that we essentially didn’t think about the way we fight as Nations, or about the type of fights we would be having (which we normally do). I guess we were all just tired of the arguments and wanted to get out of the meeting. What we ended up with was 2 charging nations (Orcs and Dawn) one support nation (Brass Coast, about 20) one skirmish unit (Ybasden) and one heavy skirmish nation (Wintermark). Solution in the future – Always take at least 2 solid steady units onto the field where possible. 3 – Command of Wintermark. Unfortunately we were down on experienced commanders on the field. People stepped up to the mark and were trying out the positions, but 150 is a large number of troops to command in any situation. I would like to publicly state here I blame none of these people, who had to do an already difficult job in the worst of circumstances. It is due to their resolve that there were any people alive to walk off that battlefield. Lack of experienced in command of our forces did contribute to what happened in the battle, but even if we had an experienced commander in place, I doubt the result would have been much different. Maybe a few more lives could have been saved, but not much more than that. Solution in the future – we need to get people more involved in the command of units, and get that experience starting to be built. Those of us with the experience have a responsibility to pass on what we know, before we die too! Those of you who believe you have what it takes please step forward. Also we need to make sure that our units each have a commander, and they are well briefed, so that if we do get fractured we have a plan of how to get back together 4 – Initial engagement. The skirmishers out the front of the line that got chopped down encouraged our forces to charge. At no point was there an order to charge, or any plan to do so. The disposition of the forces and the catalyst of downed men was an impetus which then could not be stopped, and left us seriously out of position. In my opinion, after consideration and a great deal of debate, this is the major cause of the way the battle went, and the resulting casualties. The armies charged about 2 minutes of myself reaching the field, and I would have hoped for more time than that. I believe there was a bit of panic about getting back to the sentinel gate in time due to things that happened in game earlier in the weekend. This may have contributed to our haste. Solution in future – hold it steady. Don’t charge till we need to (this applies to all our allies forces as well) 5 – Split forces. What was a good idea at the start to hold something back turned out to hurt us later. When the un ordered charge happened, leaving them out of position. Solution in future – I guess similar to above. Hold close till we know what we are facing. This would include moving when the main force does. 6 – Over zealous monsters. I have heard a few complaints around people taking hits, and monsters deliberately pinning people/groups in position so that they died. I will state that these reports are in the minimum, but I have no doubt that it happens in isolated cases, as it always does in LRP. I will also say there are more than a few cases where monsters threw players back alive (which happens in very few systems I have played in, so perhaps it evens out. I have no idea what effect this had on proceedings, but I would imagine a small effect combined with all the others. Solution in the future – teach by example (which most of us do anyway). When we monster, try to remember that people who don’t risk anything (e.g. monsters) can be more ferocious than players. I guess that’s the point in some part, but we should also remember that other people pay to play, so our actions should be IC and fitting the part. 7 – Brilliantly executed monster tactics. Make no mistake, we were owned on that field by a well-planned and well-executed manoeuvre. The way the troops were arrayed we were meant to look for the attack on the right flank, and they meant to flank our left. Solution in future – Better eyes on the battlefield. Scouts, rituals, whatever it takes, we must get better at understanding what the enemy plan to do before they do it. My mistake was not going to the front and really looking at how the forces were arrayed. I have no idea whether this would have told me anything, but I relied on what other told me rather than seeing myself. I have no idea whether this would have made a difference but I can’t help beating myself up about this, and wondering if it could have made a difference. 8 – A hard fight. The troops we faced were elite, so well statted and special. I’ve heard it said that it was like fighting an army of Irontide. This is what the Jotun will be like, so we better get better at fighting them, fast. The monster itself was double hard. From what I have heard (no ref facts here) it was repelling people from the front, may have been immune to arrows, and was surrounded by a full unit or two of troops. The only tactic I could even think about once we had seen it was to get around behind it. We weren’t fast enough to do it. I have been told that the only way to kill it was to attack it’s eyes. No real way for us to know this, and difficult to do when you are repelled from the front of the creature. I don’t really blame PD for this, it was supposed to be a difficult fight. But combined with everything else, it had a significant effect on the outcome of the battle. That’s pretty much it as far as I can figure, but I welcome any other views. I have asked pretty much everyone I met this weekend what we could have done differently, and I know that PD (especially Richard Loveday) would not stat a battle where we couldn’t win somehow. This was probably the hardest battle to date. It just shows we still have lots to learn together. Without the losses, the wins would become commonplace and boring, so we should embrace this for what it is, a chance for good roleplay and to increase our game.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 20:28:44 +0000
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