Small Group Tactics

I've been doing a few posts about leadership and large fields, felt like it was time to do one on smaller groups, as that's primarily the thing that I learned to do well first.  So this one is about working with other small groups (2-3 people) in order to multiply each person's individual skill.

Caveats

Any technique that's designed to work as a multiplier for a small group can easily be turned on it's head by a skilled opponent.  This is particularly true if your opponent is more skilled then each of the individual members of your team.  You can read up more on that in how to beat the odds.  If these techniques/calls are done out of unison then they can turn your strength of numbers into a weakness where you fight one at a time.  Positioning is important, as well as working angles and high vs low shots.  I'll get in to each of those more as I get deeper.

Pre-cursors

I'm assuming for the purposes of this discussion that the people in your group are all of approximately equivalent skill.  I'm also expecting that they aren't complete novices, as a person who is still getting down the very basics, like swinging and blocking tends to not have great situational awareness in being able to work with other people.  I'm also assuming that the person you're going to engage isn't significantly better then each individual in the group.  Most of these examples also assume that everyone in the group is using the same length of weapon, whether that's 3 people with some combination of blues, a set of archers, or 3 people wielding a variety of polearms, for the purposes of being in sync with one another.

Let's talk angles

If you haven't read it yet go check out the post on box and line as it's relevant to he discussion on angles.  The basic gist of taking an angle at an opponent is finding a way to break their line.  When you're fighting one on one this is done by taking 45 degree steps towards them to break either to the left or the right of their line.  Doing so also exposes you, as you've broken your own line by stepping into that position, but, because you took the initiative to do so you are usually more prepared then your opponent.  The same thing can be done with a group of people by holding very similar positions.  Assume that you start in a neutral line to line stance, then, you have a shadow of yourself 45 degree step right and 45 degree angle step left.  This is ideally the position that you want to be in when fighting an opponent with 2 people.  If you have a third person then you simply leave them in the center, square with your opponents center line.  What this does is create angles from which shadow left and shadow right have both broken your opponents center line and as a result their guard.  By keeping a person in the center you can prevent the opponent from moving in such a way that would allow them to escape this scenario by applying pressure to their guard from it's neutral position.  While in a 2v1 scenario the opponent may be able to turn into one of you, fighting you quickly before turning around on what had previously been their exposed back, in a 3v1 scenario the person gets hit the moment they pivot in any direction because of the pressure applied by the person in front of them.  Working angles then, is the goal of setting up shots that come from the right or left of a person's center line.  While learning to do this on one's own is an extremely useful skill, being able to do this with a team of people can be devastating, as it allows you to quickly and decisively win fights.

Let's talk pacing and shot placement

One of the most common mistakes I see when people fight as a group is that everyone throws effectively the same shot to the same area of their opponent making it very easy for that person to block the swings.  Often, rather then swinging something close to in unison they all throw at different times, allowing their opponent to block each successive swing, rather then forcing them to block multiple throws at once.  Part of working well with another person is forcing your opponent into catch 22 decisions, in which they get to choose the lesser of two evils.  Ideally, there is no "lesser", and they just get to choose which kill shot they want to get hit by.  In order to set this up two conditions must be met.  The first is that you can't have everyone swinging at the same target area.  If one person swings on the right, the other person should swing on the left.  If one person swings for a shoulder the other person should swing for a leg.  It's easy to block two shots that are high, as that's where a person's resting guard tends to be, but trying to avoid a high and a low shot means that the outnumbered fighter must drop either their sword or shield low in order to avoid getting hit.  Doing so inevitably leads to getting tagged somewhere else if they aren't able to simply evade the swing entirely.  The other condition is that the shots either have to be deliberately staggered or they have to be in unison.  Deliberately staggered shots are a volley in which as one person swings the other blocks, so that as soon as the person swinging comes back to resting guard the other person begins to swing so that neither person attacking is vulnerable for very long and the pressure that's created by those throws doesn't let up.  Shots that are thrown in sync are thrown to opposite sides to two lethal areas.  My favorite set is to have one person throw a shot on the opponents shoulder and the other person throw a shot for the person's hip (usually a hip wrap).

Onto the meat of the thing...

All the calls!  I'm just going to run through things.

Hip to hip - the idea behind this call is to weld yourself to your teammate(s).  If there are two people you reduce your angles back down to what a florentine fighter would have.  The upside of this is that you can't get separated out and killed that way.  The problem with working angles is that if you get separated you become potentially very fast 1v1 fights.  The disadvantage is that your angles are less extreme, but if you're good at working angles/timing it shouldn't be a problem.

45's - the idea with 45's is the reverse of hip to hip, as described earlier, if you start from a middle position you re-position so one of you is a 45 degree step to the right and one is a 45 degree step to the left.  This creates a triangle, which should allow you to quickly eliminate your opponent.  Typically this is called as an all in offensive tactic, rather then a passive configuration.

180's - Probably only ever a thing to call against a legged opponent.  The idea is to come at a person from completely opposite directions.  This maneuver can be done with up to 4 individuals.  For each person basically add a compass point, with your legged opponent in the middle.  The idea being that no matter how good they are they probably can't guard their front and rear quadrant at the same time.

Swap - if you realize that you aren't going to do any good fighting the person who is directly in front of you, you can call swap with your teammate.  You shift in front of them, absorbing any swings that you take while you cross.  If you do it well together then you're only exposed for a moment and it gives you the advantage of surprise as people swap back and forth because the shot angles are changing.

With You / You're alone - this isn't really a maneuver, it's just good communication.  Telling a person "with you" let's them know that they can be aggressive and call other maneuvers.  Telling a person "you're alone, or just alone" let's them know that they no longer have support and need to be careful.