Bad War: Pike combat around 1500

Last weekend, the Harnischfechtensymposium took place at Lauchröden in Germany and I had the absolute honour to teach a conceptual workshop on early Landsknecht pike combat there. The idea is that many Landsknechte would already have been formidable fighters when being mustered into a unit, and then would spend some time training coordination in small buddy groups, that would in turn be woven into the full pike square. During the workshop we put this theory to the test, by first learning a simple technique, then training that technique in a 3v3 group and finally pitting two lines against each other to see whether it would start looking like period images. There’s loads more to be said about this, and I will eventually do a full video series on fighting with pikes and other Landsknecht battlefield weapons, but for now I think this looks pretty cool. :D