This concept is, I think, one of the hardest to get across for individuals within a melee scenario. Aggressiveness is a good thing, but you need to be smart about it. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," is something I've been saying a lot, lately. Floating like a butterfly is another way of me saying that sometimes you need to stall the engagement.
I can explain below with the 3 on 2 fight as an example.
How to Engage when Outnumbered
We did several 3 on 2 engagements last Sunday. One of the things we've been working on at the Southern Army practice is how to engage when you are outnumbered. In short, you press the attack to one side.
I'd like to add a few more levels to this. In my opinion, the first thing you do is you asses which side has the range weapon superiority. If you have a spear, and they don't, then you actually don't want to press at all, but rather, lull them into a static fight, if possible.
The other option is not to engage at all. If the odds are against you, it is often in your side's best interest to have a small number of fighters stall the engagement of a larger number of fighters.
Having said that, it is certainly worthwhile to practice taking a smaller unit and pressing the flank of a larger unit. For example, maybe your small unit has all of your best fighters, and the larger unit isn't very good. In this case, you'd want to quickly win the engagement so that your best fighters can move on to other parts of the fight. Its also possible that you might be the last fighters left on the field, or maybe all of your units are outnumbered and you have no choice but to try to take a gamble in hopes to regain the numbers advantage.
More importantly than anything, practicing these engagements teaches tactical thinking and working as a unit.
3 on 2
The 3 on 2 is an interesting combination, and one that I've been putting a lot more thought into recently. I've noticed that this, more often than not, turns into a 2 on 1 and a 1 on 1. I've been on 3 man teams where its been done by design, but even if not planned, they almost always seem to break down into this configuration.
Now the question is, once we end up in this almost inevitable situation, what should both sides do. In this example, lets assume that all fighters are of equal abilities. Provided that all 5 fighters are relatively competent in melee fighting, the green pair against the single red fighter has a significant advantage while the singles facing each other have even odds of winning their engagement.
Green's best strategy: The pair should engage with the intent to win quickly, while the single green fighter should try to stall until his two teammates win and can come to his aid.
Red's best strategy: The fighter with a single opponent should press to win the engagement quickly. Even though the odds are even, and this would violate Arundoor's "never fight a fair fight" rule, it is the best chance of success for red. The red fighter facing the pair should, of course, stall the engagement.
Example from Sunday
A handful of times I faced off against Adam Greatsword on the flank in a 3 on 2 situation in which I was on the team with 3. I stalled the engagement, and he pressed. Since I was fighting with a 7.5' polearm, and he was fighting with a 4.5' greatsword, once he was inside on me, the odds of me winning the engagement dropped to well below 50%. What did I do? I went into full defense and tied him up since that was my greatest chance of surviving and prolonging the fight.
Had we switched teams, I would have had no choice but to change my tactics. I would have thrusted more aggressively from the outside, and if he closed on me, I would have been left no choice but to fight. Though the odds would have been against me, they would still have been greater than for my teammate who'd have been fighting 2 opponents.
Failed Attempt at a 3 on 1
To mix things up, Sir Thorson suggested that our team of 3 try to gang up on a single fighter in a 3 on 2 engagement. We pressed hard to the right. I was on our far left, so it was my job to deny the fighter on their left. I failed my job and exposed my back to Wulf as I attempted to join the others in an attack on Magnus. Magnus did his job of stalling the engagement by circling back behind Wulf, allowing Wulf to get a second kill as the pair moved past him.
I think its for this reason that these often break into a 2 on 1 and a 1 on 1. You simply can't leave an opponent unthreatened
Final Thoughts
A lot of this is very dependent on the space in which you are fighting. Sunday was on an open field, while Tuesday was in a much more confined space, so there was little room to really stall any engagements since there was nowhere to disengage to.
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