Drills: etc

The Closing Drill

The closing drill is a sparring session between two people. One person (the instructor) is given a longer weapon. The trainee is given a shorter weapon. You can start with longer and shorter length blues, or you can go right to a red weapon vs a blue weapon as this guarantees a significant amount of reach even in the case when each combatant's natural reach is offset. The match is a first blood competition. The goal of the trainee is to use aggressive footwork to close the gap between themselves and the instructor. Ideally the instructor forces the trainee to block on their way in, taking shots at their legs and torso at the instructors maximum reach. The goal for the trainee is to carefully choose when to engage and then to move directly AT the person with the longer weapon, (many people will dodge around to the side instead of going for a direct engage, I do not know why this is).

The Combat Archery Drill

The combat archery drill is 2v2 fight that consists of 2 S&B's on one side and a S&B and an archer on the other side. The goal of the side that contains the archer is to use angles, similar to how you would with a support weapon in order to get a quick kill on one of the opposing sword and board fighters. The basic layout is setting up a triangle.

Once you've got that triangle set up you've got a number of ways to set up the enemy for failure.  In the ideal situation the archer simply shoots 1 or 2 in the leg and then rotates on the remaining enemy using their sword and board fighter in order to set up a kill.  What usually happens looks more like this though.  Fighter 2 rushes the archer while fighter 1 does a slow engage on 3.

The archer then dodges to the left.  If there's an open shot on 2's shield then they take that shot.  More often then not there won't be, and so you keep an arrow trained on 2 while they blindly rush towards you.  This allows your sword and board fighter 3 to engage them sideways as they run past.

At this point the sword and board fighter 1 will often go hard on your team mate sword and board fighter 3.  In response you can shoot them as the archer, if they pop their shield open.  Hopefully, fighter 1 isn't fast enough and the fight continues.  If fighter 1 is successful in offing your teammate, fighter 3 then it's over.  If they don't then you reset to the first scenario.  If fighter one rushes the archer, then the sword and board fighter hits them in the back.  If fighter one turns to face the flank on fighter 3 then they open themselves up to being shot at by the archer.

If you do this over and over again, eventually you get the hang of it.  In the interim you'll spend a lot of time either watching your sword and board fighter get eaten by the two shields, or you'll be getting run down by the boards.  It's important to use the space around your sword and board teammate to dissuade people from engaging you.  If you do get rushed it's important to either fire quickly for the opponents legs, or to see if there's a shot on the other player as this will open them up to be more free to move.  As an archer you are engaging every enemy in sight so long as your bow is knocked.  Accuracy is obviously a big deal as you lose your ability to inflict damage every time you have to 

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