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In the full circle department: I got a suggestion that I tailor my resume to each type of job that I am suitable for.
For the infrequent readers, I started my resume in the 'functional style' and had about 8 versions of it for each
type of job. Since then I changed to the 'Chronological style' to make life easier for the HR folk out there. Time
to differentiat I guess.
"Resumes that Knock Em Dead" by Martin Yate was quite helpful in getting started and explains chronological vs functional styles.
WAR STORIES AHEAD You've been warned.
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In the Woods Battle this year I was walking up and down the shield wall of our side. I spread people out if they are too
crowded or get reinforcements onto the line on a person by person basis. I was walking down the line and saw a spot that
would benifit from having a spear man. 10 feet behind said spot, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a spear being held by
a fellow wearing purple. I put my hand on his back a gently shoved him forward saying something like, "Spearman, get up on
the line and start throwing shots." The spearman, who I had not taken a good look at, replied politely and loudly, "I'm the
King of the East and I'm commanding this battle!" My first thought was, "That doesn't get me a spearman on the line. I need
to find another spearman for this hole."
In one of the Field Battles, I get seperated from my unit and find myself behind 10-15 friendly men when a hold is called.
Everyone stops, we wait for the marshalls to take care of the problem, and I look around. The unit I'm with is facing 25-30
men with red tape and eager grins. I keep looking around and I can't find any unit that can help in the slightest. The lay-on
is called and we commence fighting. I start pulling my unit (yeah, I adopted them) back slowly. It turns out the hook on my
pole axe is more useful for pulling friends out of trouble then for hindering 'bad' guys. The lines continue to fight, and
the red tape isn't able to get all it's people into contact, so we are doing okay. On our left is a break in the line that
neither side has troups to exploit. On our right, I see my friend Rob in single combat on the open field. He's crazy and
should have died, but the folk in red tape give his fight plenty of room instead of killing him and flanking us.
A hundred yards behind Rob is a sizeable chunk
of the Eastern Army cleaning it's plate. So I keep backing my outnumbered and outgunned unit out very slowly. My guys made the
Midrealmers work for every foot of ground. After a really stressful long time (like 1 or 2 minutes) I see that chunk of
Easterners with blue tape coming up behind our opponents. I step onto our line brandishing my pole and yell "Engage".
My line takes a half step forward and looks tough for a second. The red tape folk get all excited that they are going
to kill us all finally. And then
our backup arrives and clubs them all like baby harp seals.
So?
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A decent small unit commander, a "line sergent", can strengthen about 20 feet worth of the line. This depends on how crazy everything
is of course.
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If you (alone) can get 2 or 3 guys to chase you, you have removed those 3 guys from the fight for 20 or 30 seconds.
The same trick can be pulled in larger engagements. We kept twice our number busy for 2 or 3 minutes.
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Sometimes you can hold stuff together with just hope and ducttape. :)
Two more, quickies:
I stepped onto the line next to a fellow with a large scuta (basically a door with an arm strap). He charged a knot of 5-8 people.
Everyone of them turned to face him. I killed I think 5 of them as they were thumping the guy with the shield.
Our unit spread out too far from it's neighbor unit. This a hole big enough to drive a small army through. Said hole
was guarded by yours truly and my trusty spear. Some clever knight with a shield notices this hole and grabs 3 of his
nearby friends so they can charge me down, thump me and then flank my friends. They form a wedge and start to take the
first step of the charge. Unfortunately, that clever knight leading the charge lifted his guard a little tiny bit too high
on that first step. How do you stop a flying wedge of burly shieldmen when you've only got a spear? Get the point man
in the groin. I'm sorry to the poor but clever knight with the fine idea. It was the only solution I came up with.
Worked great too. :)
