Welcome back to the second part of my Basic Guide to Multiplayer: Melee. Note that I will be using terms explained throughout the first guide, as well as assume that you are familiar will all the topics covered in it.

For this part, we will be looking into the more advanced stuff. I will teach you about maintaining awareness on the battlefield and how to move about while in a fight. Last time, we heard about the very basics of combat, with little to no coverage of actual gameplay-situations. Two very important aspects of infantry-combat are your ability to deal with multiple opponents and to support your team. I hope to share a few tricks with you that should help you manage both of these cases.

As a special spotlight, we will also learn about two very neat techniques. Many of you are familiar with or have heard about chamberblocking or kicking. I will be teaching you how and when to perform both of these maneuvers.

Without further ado, let us get straight into it!

While in theory and in a straight-on duel it is crucial to focus on your opponent at hand, every gamemode in actual multiplayer will confront you with an array of distractions. Playing as infantry, you will inevitably find yourself right in the middle of the action. It is then up to you to keep track of what is happening, where you might be needed and how you may best survive.

The term "survive" will increase in importance throughout this and following guides, as beating your opponents and getting a high score, in competetive team-based play, is much less significant than your ability to stay alive. We will cover this particular topic in the Dealing with multiple Opponents-section.

Looking Around

You might think "Looking Around" is a somewhat banal headline for a sub-section in a guide that claims to teach you advanced techniques. Take my word for it, though, it is easier said than done and will save your life on numerous occasions as well as increase your performance alltogether.

In order to perceive what is going on around you, you need to see it. Most things can be seen by simply focusing your camera on them, or, in more mundane terms, looking at them with your mouse. When within enemy reach, however, this comes with disadvantages.
Moving your mouse to look around will turn your character as well. If you are using a shield, this will leave you vulnerable to missile-attacks; You need to keep facing the threat. Turning around will also inform your enemies about what you are currently paying attention to. This is easily abused by cavalry, who will wait until you ignore them for long enough and drive a lance through your back.

There is one easy solution for all these issues: The View Equipment-key. Confusingly labelled, this key will allow you to rotate your camera without turning your character. Releasing it will instantly bring your camera back to whatever side your character is facing. Use this key, and use it often. The default key-binding for it is Tilde (~ on English/American keyboards), which is above your Tab-key. Understandably, this is a somewhat awkward key to press while also having to move around, so I would recommend rebinding it to a more convenient key. If you have a mouse with side-buttons, using one of those for your freelook-ability would be perfect.

When should you use the freelook? In order to combat the previously mentioned disadvantages of physically turning around, you can use the freelook in almost any given situation. You could use a shield to ward off some archers in front of you and use the freelook to watch out for prowling cavalry or maybe other archers who are preparing to shoot you in the side.
If faced with an infantry-threat, you can use it to watch your back and avoid being backstabbed. Remember that releasing the button will instantly flick your vision back to your front, so you can react instantly. Use this to get snapshots of what is going on around you. Never linger in freelook for a long time - Jerk your camera behind you, quickly analyse what you see and face your front again.
Lastly, enemies cannot see when you are using freelook. It will not turn your character's head or, in fact, display any animation at all. To some extend, you can utilise this to keep your enemies guessing. Once they realise that you are able to watch your back without turning around, they will be a lot more careful when trying to backstab you. New players are often fooled by people using freelook, lured into a false sense of security they will charge, weapon raised high, only to have the freelook-user turn around in the last second and deliver a slash to the unsuspecting fool. Note that advances players will see through this. Every time.
Cavalry, however, has to sometimes take risks. They will actively be looking out for those not paying attention to them and try to rush in and take advantage. Stopping a horse or steering it out of harms way in the last second is much harder than on foot, so keep this trick in mind.

Note: You can hold Shift to zoom in (any class) and get a closer look at distant things. This will give you tunnel-vision though, so use it sparingly and only if you are not threatened by anything in your close vincinity.

Evaluating nearby Assets

Once you are able to use all of the above to prevent any nasty surprises, you can slowly start taking note of everything else around you as well. In most gamemodes, the battlefield will be littered with equipment. Every time a player dies, he/she will leave behind whatever equipment he was wielding at the time of his/her demise. It is good practise to know what is around you, and what of that can be used by you. If you see a shield lying close to where you are about to engage someone, take note of it. It could very well save your life if your own shield fails you and you quickly need a replacement. Did you forget to bring a spear or have you thrown away all your javelins? Cavalry threatening you? Look around you! There might just be the thing you need on a nearby corpse. Most throwing weapons with the exception of heavier nordic throwing axes and Sarranid jarids can be used by infantry of all factions. Ignore any motherly advise telling you not to pick up stuff that has been lying on the ground and use whatever tools you have at your disposal.

Advantageous assets are not necessarily items on the ground. The ground itself might be an asset worth taking note of. Think about what you will face next and how the terrain around you might help you deal with it. If there is a cliffside nearby, remember it for when horsemen try to ruin your day. Any solid cover like big rocks or walls will shield you from ranged attacks.

Think logically and analyse the battlefield before you engage. Make use of it if you have to.

With all the skills from the first guide firmly within our grasp, we can start thinking about some "pro-techniques".

This section will briefly cover all of the important modifiers of your melee weapon's raw damage. After that, we will look at how you can alter the speed of your attacks through adequate movement and footwork.

Hitboxes

There is a reason for the different pieces of armour you can slap on your character - Mount and Blade actually has hitboxes with multiple components! A character is divided into three parts: Head, Body and Legs. The head is your head (duh) from the chin upwards, the neck counts towards the body! The body ends just below the waist-line and everything downwards from there is counted towards the legs (including the feet).
Every one of these components has its own armour-value, depending on which armour you equip them with. Body-armour may offer protection for your torso only, or in some cases for your legs as well (long coats of maille and such; often used by cavalry). Boots will add to leg-armour and helmets to head-armour. Gloves will count towards body-armour in multiplayer, arms and hands are part of the Body-hitbox.
How armour affects your damage will be covered in another guide. For now, let us look at the hitboxes themselves.
Hits to the body will not have any multiplier, hits to the head will add damage and hits to the legs will substract damage. When fighting, try to always go for the upper body, or centre-of-mass. Not only will this maximise your chance to hit (striking at extreme angles may reduce your reach or not connect at all!), you will also get the most damage out of your attacks consistently. If you feel very confident, you may try to specifically aim for the head, although that will result in a somewhat clunky camera-perspective that might limit your view.
Attack-arcs may be used to your advantage when going to the high-damage spots. Overhead-attacks have a good chance to hit the head as are left-to-right swings with one-handed weapons (if close and angled correctly).
Two especially important uses of hitboxes:
1. Ambushing. If you do get the drop on someone, capitalise and deliver a blow to the head for maximum effect.
2. Armoured opponents. If you notice an unevenly armoured foe, you may try to hit him/her where it hurts most. We already learned that only a helmet will protect your head, so wearing heavy body-armour and a cloth-headdress will make you extremely vulnerable to aimed strikes. Use this to your advantage and show others why the best armour may be useless without a good helmet!

Sweetspots

In the first Basic Guide, we briefly touched the subject of attack-hitboxes. They were also mentioned in the bits that you just read. To illustrate what happens when you attack:
Your weapon will draw an afterimage following the arc in which it was swung. This afterimage is the hitbox of your attack, and if it touches something, the game will decide what happens. You can bounce off scenery or hit a block and be put into blockstun. If your attack-hitbox collides with a player-hitbox, the attack will enter damage-calculation to determine how much damage it inflicted to that player. You will be put into Recovery (both Blockstun and Recovery have been covered in Pt. 1 of this series).
Note that your attack will end at the first thing it touches. As soon as your attack connects to an eligible other hitbox, it will stop being an attack. Swinging through multiple opponents is not possible in Mount and Blade: Warband, although it may look like it. The only exception here are horses, but we will cover this in another part.

All of this knowledge can now be used to talk about Sweetspots. You may notice your attacks bouncing off occasionally, sometimes only doing minimal damage or even no damage at all. This is likely a result of a missed sweetspot.
After releasing an attack, the arc will be painted, as we learned above. During the very beginning of your swing, the attack will not yet have reached its full potential - It is outside of its sweetspot. This "readying-up-period" is less than half a second long and barely noticable in normal fights. If you stand very close to someone, though, releasing an attack with an arc that starts right at your opponent's body will reach him/her so soon that the sweetspot cannot be reached before hitting. This was implemented to prevent extreme closerange-spamming.

Hitting outside of the sweetspot is not completely useless or ineffective, though. It will do less damage (reduction of circa 33-40% damage), but you will still trigger the hitstun on your opponent, which will give you room for a follow-up attack (as covered in Part 1). It is important to mention that attacks at reduced damage are much more susceptible to damage-reduction through armour-value and therefore more likely to bounce off. For maximum effect, try to reach the sweetspots with your attacks.

Charging your Attack

Similar to the sweetspots of the actual attack, holding down your attack before releasing it will also add damage. To illustrate:
If you tap your left mousebutton and release an attack without holding it at all, your weapon will only deal about 70% of its base damage (without any further calculation). Holding down your left mousebutton for a brief period will let that damage quickly spike up to 100%. This maximum is already reached somewhere between 0,5 and 0,6 seconds. Charging it for any longer will not further increase its damage. On the contrary - It will slowly decrease it back down to 70%! Keep this in mind when trying to get maximum damage out of it. Instead of running up to someone with an attack readied up 10 metres before you reach him/her, to it just before you get there.

Holding your attack will also make a significant difference in your stunning-capabilities. We covered heavy weapons stunning lighter ones in the first guide, but you can actually increase your chances of a stun, as well as the duration of it (slightly!). If you are going for a stun, make sure to charge your attack for half a second!

Speed-Bonus

One last thing will influence how much damage you deal: Momentum. A quite sophisticated calculation allows Warband to simulate how much momentum your attacks would carry in relation to whatever you were trying to hit. Another illustration:
Try slapping your hands together. If you move both of them towards each other, you will get maximum impact. This is reduced if only one of them moves. If you move one away from the other, you will get the weakest impact.
Melee in Warband behaves exactly like that. If you move with your swings, you will inflict more damage than if you were standing perfectly still. If your opponent moves against it, it will increase even more. Generally, moving forward while releasing an attack will grant you a slight speed-bonus (about +10%). Cavalry benefits the most from this, racking up damage-bonuses of more than +50%.
Note that for sideswings, you will get a higher speed-bonus out of strafing than moving forward. Try to move towards where you are swinging.

Combine all the knowledge from the previous three parts and you will know how to get the absolute maximum out of each of your attacks!
Example: Someone isn't paying attention to you, you are sure to get a free hit on him.
Sneak up on him, use an overhead-attack to hit his head, charge your attack for half a second and release it while still moving towards him. You will get a boost from hitting the head (especially if unarmoured), having charged your attack perfectly and carrying momentum. You would not believe how powerful your weapon can be.

If you read through the part about Damage Modifiers and tried to put that to the test immediately, you might have run into some problems. Ever wondered why everyone seems to outspeed you, even if you are using the same type of weapon? Or about how sometimes, they just seem to ignore hitstun and hit you after you successfully hit them and should theoretically have a free follow-up attack?
Well, ask yourself no longer.

Speeding up your Attacks

You already know about how attacks are calculated. Your weapon's hitbox will draw a damage-hitbox and the first thing it touched will be... well, damaged. Thanks to Warband's calculation of this process, the damage-hitbox closely resembles the weapon's model ingame, so that you may see what, where and how you hit. Although not without fault, your weapon's model is a good indicator of where your damage-hitbox actually is.
Since this hitbox is tied to the model of the weapon your character is (digitally :) ) physically wielding, every movement done by you will affect how it travels during a swing. For example, if you turn left or right during a sideswing (move your mouse left/right), you can speed up or slow down your attack. This happens because your damage-hitbox will reach its target sooner or later than it would have if you were standing perfectly still.

So, if you notice people outspeeding you constantly, try turning into your attacks to give them a slight speed-boost. All weapons will benefit from you doing this.
Important: Keep it subtle! Never overdo these turns, or you will run into the problems we covered in the previous section regarding Sweetspots. For the best, consistently beneficial effect just remember to add a subtle turn to your attacks, as well as to move with them. Make both of these actions a habit and you will notice a boost in your performance.

Bonus: Turning into Attacks

Adding a subtle turn to your attacks has more beneficial side-effects apart from speeding up sideswings.
Ever tried using a stab-only weapon in close range? That probably didn't work out too well for you, and that is understandable. After all, if someone is right up your face, how will you have enough power to deliver a thrust, not to mention with a longer weapon like a pike?
If you understand both damage-hitboxes and sweetspots, which by now you should, you could manage to find a solution for this problem. Basically, you can trick the game into thinking you are at the ideal range for a thrust, even if you are not.

A thrust will draw a damage-hitbox from your character straight towards where you are facing. If you turn while the hitbox is drawn, however, it will follow your turn while still counting as a thrust. We know that a weapons sweetspot is reached if it was allowed to swing for about half a second before hitting a target. If you start your attack away from an enemy, let it fly for a brief moment, then turn into this enemy, you will be able to hit him/her. From a logical perspective, this does not make much sense, since the tip of your spear is way behind him/her and all you do is turn to touch him/her with the shaft, but Warband translates this into a solid hit.

Try to keep this in mind and always add a quick turn from next to your enemy straight into him/her. Start up your thrusts next to his/her hitbox without hitting anything, then turn it back and enjoy your thrusts working on close range.

There is yet another bonus to turning, which we will cover in the Chamberblocking-section!

As we learn about ways to make your attacks as effective as humanly possible, we ignore the fact that situations occuring during actual gameplay may not allow you to play out each and every technique you learned in theory. To get away from the very limited look at gameplay mechanics, we will cover a few basic tactics that should help you on the battlefield.

Two on One

The situation is as follows: You are alone and two enemy infantrymen are about to engage you.
Before entering combat, you should quickly analyse the situation. Do they both use shields? Do they have archers who will support them? Do I have anyone who will support me? Do they have throwing weapons? How well armoured are they?

Obviously, you will not have the time to busily go through all these points, and some of them might not even apply. But, as we learned in the Battlefield Awareness-section, we must be able to quickly get a snapshot of the situation at hand and be able to deal with it accordingly. For now, let us assume they have no one to support them and will engage you directly.
If you are playing in a team-based gamemode like Battle (1 life per round), your first thought should be to reunite with your team without engaging them. If both players know what they are doing, your chances of survival are very slim and you are no help to your team if you are dead. Let us assume that you have no chance to meet anyone else and are forced into melee.

If you have a shield, your defense will be sturdy enough to last you for quite a while, until one of them manages to slip past it or until it breaks. It is okay to be defensive to position yourself correctly, just take care not to become completely passive.
You have no teammates that you could hurt, there is no need to be careful where you swing. Being agressive in a Two one One situation is a viable tactic, especially if you have nothing to lose.
They will try to lock you down between them, do not let them succeed. Being overly defensive will allow them to freely move around you and lock you in. Stay a threat! Show them that you can very well attack yourself whenever you have the opportunity, even if you know your attack will be blocked. It will take momentum from their assault and allow you a moment to readjust yours.
Fight only one at a time! If possibly, try to position yourself so that only one of them can actually reach you with an attack. As long as this is the case, deal with him/her as you would in a normal One on One-situation. If the other player comes back into reach, shield yourself and try to outmaneuver them back into a One on One. If both of them are in front of you, try to slither past the far left or far right. The easiest way of knowing where to go is to try to keep them in a straight line in front of you.
Again, if two good players are within reach of you at the same time, they will almost inevitably kill you sooner or later.

Three+ on One

The same principles of a Two on One apply with more than two opponents, take care to fight as few as possible at the same time, always aim for a One on One, even if it is just for a second.

The more enemies there are, the more careful they will become in order not to hit each other. Four or more infantrymen engaging a single target will become more dangerous to the group than to the lone target. Abuse this fact, if you are caught in the middle, slip between some of them, always move around. Make them afraid to hit each other and you will notice them cutting back on the agressiveness, allowing you openings on your own.

Tip: Switch your own targets! Never focus on someone, start up an attack, then quickly turn around to hit someone else with it. Keep them all guessing and allow them no room to set up a sophisticated attack.

Assign priorities to your enemies, based on their equipment! If some of them are lightly armoured and maybe do not even have a shield, take them out first. Unexpected attacks will work wonders, and killing one of them can improve your odds drastically. Focus on the turtles (heavy shields, short weapons) last, they might be the most difficult and time-consuming to take out.

In the previous section, we looked at how you could make the best out of a situation where you are completely on your own. We will turn this around and assume you are on the battlefield with an entire team around you.

Vice Versa - Two+ on One

We will turn the examples from the previous section around and put you in place of one of the attackers trying to take down a single target. You already know how to best deal with multiple attackers and where their weaknesses lie - Remember that and do not let it become yours!

Be defensive as you and your teammates move into a good position, keep applying pressure as soon as you all are in reach. If you notice that your teammate is falling behind and cannot hit the target, do not take any risks in One on One. Outnumbering someone is an advantage that should never be thrown away. Vary between a defensive style while you maneuver and an agressive one when you are there.

Lock the target down with correctly timed attacks. As soon as you and at least one other player are within reach, coordinate your attacks with his/hers. You can effectively halve the time it needs to strike the target and make it nigh impossible for it to retaliate at all. As soon as this lock is established, do not let go.
Tip: You can try to force the target into blocking while your teammates moves up by holding an attack and staying in range. This will limit his/her range of possible actions.

Use your weapons accordingly, if you have a sword and a shield and your teammate is taking out a pike, try to allow him/her to maintain some distance and shield him/her. Fighting in teams of two with one tank (shield + 1h) and one support (2h long or high-damage) may speed up the kill, though remember the 2h-user puts him/herself at greater risk.

If your teammates are archers, allow them a clear shot. Try to neither be in front of or behind the target to minimise the chances of a missed arrow hitting you. Do not move unexpectedly and allow the archer to support you.
If you see teammates moving up from behind someone you are fighting and you know that person is not aware of them, be a teamplayer and allow them the kill. Be defensive to get the enemy's attention focused onto you. Do not try to grab the kill just before your teammate gets there - Worst case you will kill your target but the teammate behind it cannot cancel his/her swing and hits you. And that would be your fault. Play with your team in mind.

Group Fighting

If two larger groups of infantrymen clash into each other, awareness will make the difference. Always be aware of what situation you are currently finding yourself in and react accordingly. You learned how to play 1v1, 1v2, 2v1, etc., and knowing what to do in these standard-situations will help you out in bigger fights, as they all break down into those.
Important as ever: Look for openings and opportunities, ignore your current target if necessary and switch it up. Support your teammates where you see them need help.
Always remember to keep yourself alive but still be a threat to the enemy.

Two techniques you hear most advanced players talk about regularily. I found that many people know that both of these exist, but cannot actually use them consistently. We will try to change this.

Chamberblocking

Prominently requested, I will first explain what a chamberblock actually is.
When clicking your left mousebutton, you can see your character ready up his/her attack. When holding down the LMB, you will hold your weapon in a "ready-to-swing" position.
The animation from Clicking the LMB until the Ready-to-Swing-state is called chambering an attack. In simpler terms: Readying up an attack, or pulling your weapon back, is the act of chambering.

Now, chamberblocking is the act of blocking an attack with your chambering-animation. A real-life explanation would be deflecting an incoming attack with your own blade, by smacking it away and immediately counter-attacking.
The immediate counter-attack is the main benefit of a chamberblock ingame as well, because you block the attack while you ready your own, you yourself will not suffer any blockstun, and instead will have an attack ready.

Chamberblocking is directional, you need to ready up the correct type of attack to block. The rules are as follows:

Overhead (Up) attacks can be chamberblocked with an overhead (Up) attack.
Left-to-right (Left) swings can be chamberblocked with a right-to-left (Right) swing.
Right-to-left (Right) swings can be chamberblocked with a left-to-right (Left) swing.
Thrusts (Down) can be chamberblocked with a Thrust (Down) or an overhead (Up) attack.

So, thrusts may be parried with either a thrust or an overhead on your side. This was originally implemented to allow weapons unable to thrust, like scimitars or maces, have an option to chamberblock other thrusts.

Timing is very important with chamberblocks. You need to have your weapon's hitbox touch the enemy's damage-hitbox in order to successfully chamberblock it. Since shorter weapons have a shorter and quicker damage-hitbox, they are more difficult to chamberblock than large, slow weapons with a lot more active frames.

Tip: Chamberblocking swings requires you to do the opposite kind of swing (Left counters right, right counters left), but this explanation can be confusing. Apply the same principle you do with blocking and ask yourself: "Where is the attack coming from?" That is where you will have to move your mouse towards, only this time you attack instead of block!

We learned that the speed of an attack can be modified as well as the arc in which it is swung. This is especially effective with sideswings, so I generally advise to never try chamberblocking a swing. Not only is this risky (missing the block will leave you completely open for an attack), succeeding will yield little to no reward. You will be able to counterattack faster than you would have been if you blocked, but the blockstun you apply will not be enough to get you a free hit. Your counter-attack can still easily be blocked.
The whole point of chamberblocking is to counterattack as fast as possible, however, most of the time you will be unable to land a hit before your enemy is ready to block. Unless both you and your enemy facehug each other, your swings and overhead-attacks can be blocked after a chamberblock. With a little bit of footwork, chamberblocking a thrust with a thrust will land you an unblockable counterattack. Good players will almost exclusively try to chamber thrusts, as they are the only option to get a free hit.
Tip: As you "catch" the enemy thrust, step into him/her when you release your counterattack. The closer you are, the more of a chance you have to bypass his/her block.
Overheads are very easy to chamber compared to the other directions. They have a lot of active frames and a generous hitbox. As said, they are easily blocked, but you can still use chamberblocking to apply some extra pressure with little risk.

To summarise: Chamberblocking will block an attack during your weapon's chambering-animation. The enemy will be in blockstun, you will have an attack readied up. Only chamberblocked thrusts will consistently reward you with a free hit. Chamberblocking sideswings is risky and mostly fruitless. Chamberblocking overheads is easy, but can be blocked.

Countering Chamberblocks

Avoiding being chamberblocked is actually not hard. As said, the only risky move is a thrust. Thrusts have a hitbox that will extend straight in front of you, but you can alter this (as we learned) by turning left or right. Since a chamberblock has to have your weapon touch your opponent's, you can deny a chamberblock by simply not offering the hitbox for him/her to catch.
We learned that you should start your thrusts away from your enemy, then turn into him/her to avoid problems with the sweetspots. Doing so will also make it considerably harder to chamberblock your thrust, as the damage-hitbox will be harder to catch, since you only touch the enemy at a later point of your move.

Feinting will throw your enemies off as well as show you if they are trying to chamberblock you.

Delaying (holding) your attacks will mess up the timing.

Chamberblocking should never be done in a pattern. You should never telegraph your desire to try and chamberblock, as they can easily be baited and punished.

Counter-Chambers

If you have been chamberblocked, you can either try to block the incoming counter-attack or even attempt to chamberblock it. Doing the latter will surprise many players and put the pressure right back onto them.

Through correct footwork, you may try to bait a thrust-chamber. Throw out some straight thrusts at large distance to make your enemy bite the bait and chamberblock you. Counterchamber his/her attack, step in and grab the unblockable!
Be advised: This is an advanced technique and will require a good knowledge of range. We will cover this again in a future guide.

If you hit E (default), your character will perform a kick with the right foot. This is a feature added in Mount & Blade: Warband that allows for a variety of different uses.

But first, let us look at the kick itself. Hitting someone with a kick will inflict a small amount of blunt damage (which is already nullified by medium armour) and, more importantly, stagger him/her. This stagger can potentially grant you an unblockable hit.

Kicking it up

You should only use kicks sparingly, as they do come with a risk. While performing the kicking-animation, you cannot attack. You can chamber an attack, but releasing it will cause you to just lower your weapon and cancel the swing alltogether. While kicking, you cannot turn left or right. This was actually patched to make kicks less powerful. Be careful if your enemy is very close by, as a kick will allow him/her to easily attack your sides while you are still locked in the animation.

You can block while kicking, though with limitations. First of all, kicking while holding a shield will make you unable to block for the entire duration of the kick. You should not kick with a shield in your offhand. If you only have a weapon equipped, you will not be able to block down during the kick. You can block up, left and right but you will leave yourself vulnerable to thrusts. You can attempt to chamberblock a thrust during a kick, but it is still risky.

Kicks are a great tool to overcome shield-turtles as well as agressive ("facehugging") players. They have a very short range and should never be thrown out at random.

Strategies

First of all, never be predictable. Nothing is easier than evading a kick telegraphed by someone who was walking backwards for like five seconds straight. That will not work on anyone who has seen a kick in his/her time. Try to steer the enemy right into kicking-range and, if he/she is strafing to the side, aim ahead.

Avoiding Kicks

Knowing that kicks are only dangerous on a very short distance gives you all you need to avoid running into them. Never just push straight into an enemy. Try to maintain a little bit of distance, not only to avoid kicks, but also to ensure reaching your weapon's sweetspot. When maintaining pressure on a defensive enemy, instead of pushing straight into him/her, try to pass him/her on the left or right.

Congratulations, you have made it through another one of my guides! This time, we learned how to get the maximum effect out of your attacks, stay in control of the battlefield and support your team while staying alive. Being able to do all of this is the essence of a truly great infantry-player and will not only improve your performance while playing on your own, it will also help out your team.

Additionally, we learned some of the ever-so-elusive arts of chamberblocking and kicking. Train them and use them as your "secret weapons".

Join me next time, when we will look at even more infantry-secrets and duelling!

I used to play Native Warband on a highly competetive level and I still enjoy playing it whenever I get the chance to. By this year I will probably breach the 3.000-hour-mark. I hope that I can pass on some of my knowledge to those eager to learn. Feel free to contact me over Steam for questions, feedback and/or suggestions! If you liked this guide, be sure to endorse it and leave a comment.