For awhile now I have been playing 1 hander and no shield and no armour, usually using either the Italian falchion or the Grosse Messer. As most of you know both of these weapons are short. Because of the size of these weapons I started to noticed several things about the mechanics behind the game that I thought would be interesting to share.
Now for a Disclaimer, this will be a long, long post also I am not by any means an expert in the mechanics behind this game, neither am I an expert dueler/fighter that can take out anyone any time or kill whole armies by myself. There are players out there that are much better then myself , but on the other hand there are players that are very much worse then myself.
So why should you read this post? You should read this post because it might clarify for you some of the mistakes you have been making in timing and pacing during fights, that get you killed. Or these ideas might clarify for you concepts that you have been unconsciously contemplating yourself and bring them to the foreground. Whatever you do, do not take these words as bible or law as these are merely concepts that I have been thinking about and are still up for review. Saying all that, these concepts so far have helped me when I remember to use them
Lets start this conversation with discussing the Metaframe of how melee works in the game. For now lets ignore movement and feinting and just concentrate on two stationary opponents. The games melee mechanics work very much in a turn base way:
Lets say your opponent is the first to launch an attack, you block. This is the end of his attack phase and the beginning of yours. You attack and your opponent blocks. This is the end of your attack phase. Opponent attacks and you block, this ends his attack phase and is the beginning of yours. I am sure by now you get the picture. But what happens if your opponent chooses to attack again after his attack phase is already over? Answer, if your opponent chooses to try to hit you after his formal attack phase is over, and swings during your attack phase, you will hit him with your swing since this is your attack phase. Even if he has greater wpf and a faster weapon he will not be able to outswing you during your attack phase. Notice, we are still talking about two stationary figures, we will talk more about how to shift this paradigm of his turn, your turn a bit later.
So now you should understand the basic mechanics behind the game. Its very much turn base: Your turn, His turn, Your turn, His turn and so forth. While this is an important concept that we will return to later, if you have played this game for any amount of time, you know that seeing two perfectly stationary figures fighting without feinting are very, very rare indeed.
To understand the game mechanics in a more complete way, we will let our two stationary fighters add feinting to the mix. How would that look:
Your opponent attacks, you block. His attack phase is over and yours has begun. You feint, feint, attack, opponent blocks. You attack turn is over and his has begun. Opponent feints, feints, feints, attacks, you block. His attack phase is over and yours has begun. You feint, feint attack, opponent blocks. Your attack is over and his has begun. By now I am sure you get the idea. When you feint you are actually prolonging your attack turn in a synthetic way. This has its good points and bad points. Lets talk about them. When you feint your are trying to do one of two things:
1.) Get your opponent to misjudge the direction he should be blocking from.
2.) Goad your opponent to attack during your synthetically extended attack phase.
Number 1 is self explanatory. We will talk about Number 2 at greater depth:
When you synthetically extend your attack phase, you are on borrowed time. You cannot indefinably extend your attack phase, as your opponent can judge your feints and attack you midway feint and hit you. He will be able to hit you while your are feinting in your attack phase because you were synthetically extending your attack turn into his turn.
You can however turn this to your advantage. When you feint, watch you opponent closely if he gets tired of waiting thru the constant feints and decided to attack you and begins to swing you can simply turn your latest feint into an attack and have a good chance of hitting him before he hits you. This is one of those instances were a fast weapon and higher wpf will work for you. This is a maneuver that will not work 100% as it depends on your agility and wpf and the speed of your weapon vs that of the opponent. This needs to be practiced and is one of the ways of shifting the his turn, your turn paradigm.
Now that we have covered the basic melee paradigm and added feinting to it. Lets talk about movement.
This is perhaps the hardest of all game mechanics to explain in words, I hope that I will be able to do it justice. Movement is perhaps the best way of shifting the turn based paradigm of melee mechanics in this game. Noticed I said shifting not breaking, you cannot really break the his turn, your turn paradigm, but you can shift it to work for you.
When I was first explaining to you the his turn, your turn paradigm all I talked about is attacking and blocking. For the sake of simplicity I did not mentioned that during your attack turn you could actually do two things. You could attack and then make a small move all before your opponents attack phase has begun. Now the extent of your ability to move after you attacked is directly linked to the agility of your character and the weight he has on him. The higher the agility and the lower the weight the further your character can move before your opponents attack phase has begun.
Now let us give our two stationary, feinting opponents the ability to move.
Opponent attacks, you block. His attack turn is over and your has begun. You attack and move slightly back, you opponent blocks. Your attack turn is over and opponents turn has begun. Opponent attacks, you block. Your attack turn has begun. You attack and move slightly back. Now you are out of your opponents weapons range. To be able to hit you he takes a large step forward and starts to swing, you attack and he dies. Now why were you able to attack him during his attack phase? You were able to attack him because his attack phase was over when he made a large movement forward to get you into range. When he completed the large movement forward he ended his turn, when he started to attack he was actually attacking during your attack phase, so you were able to outswing him and kill him.
The above example is very important and when you understand it a whole new world will open up for you.
Since this post is already very, very long, lets talk about one more fight and how the turn base paradigm works in the context of distance and timing. Think of two opponents one armed with an Italian Falchion no shield the other armed with a Poleaxe. Since the guy with the Poleaxe has the much longer weapon he will obviously attack first. It might look something like this:
Opponent with Poleaxe attacks first, you block. Opponent moves back slightly. You move forward and begin your attack phase but the poleaxe swings again and kills you. Now why was the Poleaxe guy able to swing and hit you during your attack phase? The Poleaxe guy was able to swing two times in a row without blocking because the size of his weapon in relation to yours meant that during your attack phase you did not actually attack but instead you were forced to move to get him into range. So when you went to swing after moving you were no longer in your attack phase you were in his. For a short weapon to fight a much longer weapon, it might be necessary for the shorter weapon wielder to block 2 to 3 times in a row without attacking just to get into range. Otherwise the short weapon wielder will be violating the turn phase paradigm mechanics of the game and will get hit.
Now I know that the above is allot to cover, but I hoped the above helps people out. Remember the above is theory in progress that can at any time be revised or totally thrown out, we are all human and apt to make mistakes. Before I say goodbye, there is one last topic to cover:
When does the Paradigm described above break down?
I noticed that this paradigm breaks down when there is a huge disparity between two opponents wpf, when there is considerable lag on the server. During high ping times. During high fps times. The better the computer and internet connection the better this paradigm will hold during those times. Sadly I since I am a broke student all the above happen to me regularly.
If, I noticed a further demand for posts like this I might continue this discussion later. But for now, you should know the basic paradigm of how the melee game mechanics work in this game. I hope that you will find this post helpful as you practice fighting.
Cheer, and many happy battles
Formless.
P.S Reapy created two great videos for the vanilla M&B Warband that cover some of what I was talking about in this thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9jHcZjWw9U <-- Very good basic tutorial
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZZnl09qBKM&feature=related <--Shows people dying mostly due to timing problems
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