Melee Fighting from the Outside Position

Or you might call this Turn the Corner Part Two (electric bugaloo).

No sooner did I post my blog on Turning the Corner (here) did I see a video of a fight that looked like it was going to be a great example of turning the corner.  Instead, however, I saw a handful of critical positioning mistakes that were made that I can only guess were the result of lots of singles fighting and not enough melee experience.

I want to say upfront that the fighters were very, very good, but I did see some mistakes that would serve as a great example to write about (and for what its worth, I make mistakes all the time and have had outside observers point them out, to my benefit).


Fighting from the Outside Position

The concept is pretty simple.  All it means is that, generally speaking, you want to position yourself so that you are outside of the fight and facing in, while positioning your opponent so that his back is to the fight and facing out.

In the above diagram, every green fighter is in the outside position, while every red fighter is in the inside position.  Red is in a very bad position as each fighter has their back turned to the rest of the fight.  Any given red fighter will have no idea what is happening anywhere else in the fight.  Each red fighter is also within striking range of several green fighters, and any attempt to turn to face a different fighter will expose their side to an attack.  Finally, if a red fighter needs to retreat to safety, there is no where to go.

Each green fighter, on the other hand, can see the entire battle, has no risk of anyone attacking them from a different direction, can attack multiple opponents if the opportunity presents itself, and can retreat safely in any direction except for what is directly in front of them.

So now that I've presented this concept, allow me to walk through the battle I recently watched.


The Battle

To begin with, green has three shields and two poles, while red has two shields and three poles.

Already I like green's position better.  They have both flanks protected by shields, while red is holding their flanks with poles.   Green is also a little wider than red, which gives them advantages on the flanks, and green's right pole is in an aggressive position (he'll hit the shields before anyone can hit him).

The position that red is in is what I like to call "turtling up and getting ready to take a beating."  As I said in my last blog post, I only recommend this for new fighters.  When watching the 10 man unbelted team battles last Pennsic, for example, every team that took this position lost, and they lost in short order.  You are just giving the other team the outside position when you fight this tightly.  Unfortunately, its probably what they've been taught (and I know many of you reading this have always thought its the right way to fight.  I'm hoping to convince you otherwise).

Anyway, as the units approach, green begins to flank on both sides.

When I first saw this in the video, I thought, "Great!  This will be a great example of turning the corner.  Green is going to outflank and destroy these guys."

This is what I was expecting to happen next:

Look at the great outside position that green would have had in this fight.  The right side, in particular, could have been won quickly.  The shield is right handed and the pole wasn't moving out to meet him.  Here he'd either get around the pole for a wrap, or the pole would have to leave his right side completely exposed to the green pole.  The right most red shield would have no choice but to turn and face the green fighters on the right, leaving his back completely exposed to the fighters on the left.  Etc.

But instead, the following happened:

At this stage in the fight I'd say that the two green fighters on the left are in decent position.  The right is a different story.  The shield on the far right, instead of turning the corner, did exactly the opposite.  He hit hit the pole with his shield, and then turned his back completely to the rest of the fighting and backed himself toward the rest of the action.  I'd love to give credit to the red pole for taking the outside position, but the green shield literally shoved him into that position.

The shield in the middle was set up to out flank the unit to the left, but instead charged head first into the worst possible position that anyone could be in in this fight.  He charged right into the middle of a triad of two shields and a pole.

The pole on the right didn't do poorly, but he could have done better.  Instead of continuing to move around the flank with his shieldman and doubling up on the red pole, he stopped to fight the shield.  There was no pressing reason to do this as the shield had already established that he was going to stay back in the "turtle" and was not being aggressive.  In fact, green had every opportunity to turn this into a 5 on 2 battle, but instead charged themselves into dangerous positions.


So What Happened?

I have to do a little guesswork here, but it appeared to me that as soon as the two sides were about to engage, 3 of the green fighters went into singles mode.  By that I mean that they matched up with a fighter on the red team and fought them in a 1on1 fight with no concept of what the others around them were doing.  The 4th green fighter, on the other hand, wanted to crash through the shield wall, so he charged between the two shields.

Instead of doing this, I believe each team should have focussed on working together, maintaining the outside position, and looking for 2 on 1 opportunities to exploit.


Other Mistakes

The key mistakes in this battle were covered above.  Red began in an inferior "turtle" position, and green gave up their advantages by charging into the middle instead of around the outside.

There were some other mistakes that I witnessed after this point.  Though the green shield on the left began in a great flanking position and ended up killing the pole, he then charged into the middle of the fight leaving another red pole floating on the outside.  Fortunately for green, the pole stood there until people came to fight him.

On the right, the green pole had the opportunity to attack the side of the red pole, but he stayed focussed on the shield in front of him even though that shield was not putting any pressure on him.  Having said that, the red pole also had an easy attack to the side of the green pole, but never took it.  He stayed focussed on the shield in front of him.  To be fair, both poles corrected these mistakes quickly and attacked each other at the same time.

The last mistake I saw is one that I see time and time again.  The green and red poles were fighting each other.  A red shield ran into the fight and completely cut off the red pole, which was especially bad because he's right handed and was coming from the right.  He should have been able to step into the fight without disrupting his teammate and get an easy kill.  Instead, his teammate got killed while trying to maneuver back into position.

Summary

I think the biggest take aways from this example are simply to avoid charging into the middle of a battle (unless there is a clear advantage to doing so, such as an exposed weakness) and look to gain the outside position as much as possible.  Learning how to control the position of the battle will actually do wonders for your melee fighting.  This battle being an example, even most seasoned veteran fighters know very little about positioning within a melee.  As a result, they are very easy to steer into exactly the position you want them to be in.