After doing some singles fighting all afternoon, trying out different weapons, working on techniques, philosophy ,etc. we opted to do some 2 on 1 drills. We went with one right handed shield vs two great swords. There were a number of reasons for picking this combination (including the fact that I had two great swords and only one pole), but ultimately the most important part is making sure that the battles are competitive and that the tactics work out in a fashion that is not uncommon on the battlefield. The goal is not really to win the battles, but to learn how to work together in a 2 on 1 situation.
What Most Fighters do Incorrectly
I have done this drill with countless fighters, and I've found that most fighters do this drill very poorly. Partly this could be due to a lack of talent, but I think the larger problem is simply a lack of experience or exposure to good tactical awareness. I also think that a reinforced tourney mindset hurts the melee awareness.
Newer fighters:
1) Waiting for the fight to come to them
These are the fighters that will stand there and wait for the opponent to come to them. In a 2 on 1 situation, the single fighter will move to engage one fighter by pulling him away from the other fighter, while the second fighter just stands there and watches the duel resolve itself.
2) Avoiding a 2 on 1
I've really been noticing this over the last couple of years with newer fighters. I call it "Bruce Lee-ing the fight." If you've ever seen a Bruce Lee movie, he will fend off a mob of bad guys as they charge at him one at a time. I've seen new fighters win 1 on 4 engagements against other new fighters as they charge in one at a time. It seems to be some sort of natural instinct of fairness, or taking turns, where a person will wait until their friend is finished fighting as if they don't want to get in the way.
Veteran fighters:
1) Charging in as fast as possible
Veteran fighters tend to be less timid and are under the delusion that charging at an opponent as aggressively as possible is the best way to win a numbers advantage engagement. This is more or less a hold over from the kingdom unbelted team training. This is where you train a team of good tourney fighters to fight another team of good tourney fighters, both teams which really have minimal experience working with each other. Within that context, the best method is really to get them to charge quickly and aggressively in the same direction as they don't really have the opportunity to learn how to work more complicated tactics together, but also that they can generally rely on matched aggressiveness from their teammates within the 40 second battle.
The problem is, this is not the most effective way for two fighters to take out a single fighter in some format other than an unbelted champions battle. An example that comes to mind is when I was in a battle that left us with two spears and a shieldman facing a duke. Instead of working together, the shieldman charged ahead to fight the duke by himself instead of allowing the spears to work on the duke at range while setting up a better killing opportunity for the team.
When fighters charge in as fast as possible, it isn't difficult for a good single fighter to maneuver in a way to turn the fight into a 1 on 1 while leaving the slower fighter out of the fight.
2) Cutting off your teammates
In addition to the quick charging, I've noticed that fighters have the tendency to charge toward the middle of the opponent rather than the side ,which causes them to cut off their own teammates and turn the fight into a 1 on 1.
The Single Fighter
The goal of the single fighter in these situations is pretty simple; turn it into a 1 on 1 battle by trying to isolate one fighter and take the other fighter out of the fight. This will often require some sort of sprint in one direction or the other, usually away from your shield side, and try to get one fighter in between the other. If either fighter makes any of the four mistakes listed above, your chances of success are much greater.
When I fought as the single shield this weekend, I had two goals in mind. I'd either charge at the new fighter hoping that he would pivot in place and cut off Rygus, or I would charge at Rygus hoping that the new fighter would be slow to react. I had success early on, but it wasn't long before they both figured out how to work well together.
The Two Man Team
Since we had no time limit on how long it would take to win the fight, we both moved at a very moderate speed. The ultimate goal was for the two of us to be right at striking distance, but outside of the single fighter's range, regardless of where he moved. This required us to constantly move together, as if we were two legs of a giant who is facing the single fighter, always forming a triangle with our swords. Sometimes one fighter would have to move faster than the other. Sometimes one fighter would move backward while the other moved forward, always keeping this triangle on the opponent.
At some point the single fighter would have to commit toward sprinting at one fighter, and that fighter would swing at him, while also trying to maneuver to get the other fighter into position to maintain that triangle of attack.
Ultimately you want to be able to do this as quickly as possible, but since we had a new fighter, we did it as slowly as necessary to be able to work together. Quickness comes later.
Variations
Occasionally we'd secretly decide that one fighter wasn't allowed to move to see if the second fighter can force the single fighter to come into the triangle. Sometimes we'd have a goal of trying to corral the single fighter like a sheep dog into an area that we'd want him in.
The biggest failure/learning point with these variations was that the new fighter wasn't quite experienced enough to be able to work Rygus back toward me, and would sometime misjudge how quickly he could back pedal toward me for help, or he might backpedal in a direction that wasn't close enough to me. I also learned that I needed to be more vocal to let him know when he was getting to far away, or so that he could hear my voice and know where to run to.
Rygus was far too clever to allow us to trap him in a corner, so good for him on that.
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