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.

A story

I'm going to do away with the normal pre-amble and cleverness.  I'm mostly writing this one for me.  On the off chance it's helpful to someone else though, it'll be here for you.

I have dyspraxia.  It's one of a number of neurological disorders that tends to cluster with ADHD and Dyslexia (I have those too).  Dyslexia is a condition where information in your brain gets flipped, reverse or otherwise distorted while it's in your head.  Sometimes 2 + 3 is 6 and sometimes 2 x 3 is 5.  Dyspraxia is a similar except that instead of mangling information in your head it mangles information that your brain transmits to your nerves.  Functionally, it's not having hand-eye coordination because the sequence of commands your mind gives to your muscles to move them to where your hand is gets mangled, and so it gets in that general vicinity but doesn't actually line up with where you want it to go.  Over the years my brain has learned the shorthand of basically chunking up those instructions into series of muscle movements so that each step is harder to have get mangled and fires more consistently.  So instead of 1 series of complex instructions that get mangled you have 20 sets of instructions that tend to fire correctly because there's not much information there.  Even then, sometimes it doesn't line up.  As it turns out though, "close enough" tends to work just fine for the majority of tasks even when it means I spend my mornings walking into walls because I'm not awake enough to compensate for my brain giving bad instructions to the rest of my limbs.  If I see that something has gone wrong in the instructions I've tried to give I can correct them, thanks to having spent a bunch of time trying to make my brain faster most of the time I can compensate for this particular neurological disorder, to the point where, unless you're around me all the time to see the times I don't compensate, or you've spent enough time interacting with me when I'm tired, you probably have no idea that this is a thing, or that it's the case.

Dyspraxia is probably why I haven't stuck with any other kind of physical thing.  In my youth I did basketball, tennis, soccer, karate, rolling skating, roller hockey, street hockey, and sailing.  I was moderately good at most of those things, although karate, being composed mostly of series of complex instructions I never got far with because it was mentally the most challenging thing.  I've also never gotten the hang of a layup in basketball, apparently that's too complex relative to simply taking a shot.  What I have wound up sticking with was Belegarth.  I think it's in part because I've always felt like there wasn't a consequence in failing.  If I fail to make a block, if I don't get that swing I needed to in, I don't have an entire team giving me grief, I'm losing the championship or anything like that.  It's just one isolated mistake.  It's meant that from the time when I started where I stood still as the shock of combat washed over me and my brain attempted to think and move only to do nothing and I died by being hacked to pieces before I could so much as process that I'd been hit to now I've been able to improve in bits and pieces.  It took probably 6 months in order for my brain to get over the shock of "lay on" and actually begin to move consistently when that happened.  After about a year I could move, swing and block when lay on was called, even if I wasn't capable of any kind of fancy motions.  I spent the first few years learning to not do stupid things like, block with my head or punch block red weapons.  Long story short, it's been a painful and painstaking process to develop to the point where I have, to the point where, when lay on starts my mind is simultaneously checking the person in front of me, looking for projectiles, tracking people out on the field, taking note of the way folks move, looking for flankers, noting the locations of good fighters, noting the relative strength of the line, and noting where the polearms are up from, "omg, omg, things are happening, I should do something".

Having spent 12 years at fighting, and at ACTIVELY working on it to become better, to sharpen my reflexes, expand my shot selection, speed up my eyes, my hands, my feet I feel like I've really gotten somewhere.  Rather then pick up a tower shield when I started, knowing that having a high set of defenses would likely keep me in the fight longer, I picked up florentine, knowing full well what I'd do was die over and over again, until something in my brain finally clicked and those muscles moved instead of stood still.  I was content to embrace my failures and simply chunk away at it because I felt like I could fail without getting chewed out and because success in having my body respond to my brain meant I was doing therapy for my head.  Hell, someday maybe I'd even have some approximation of hand/eye coordination, even if it meant spending a ton more time processing.  That also instilled it's own kind of honor.  Any noob can pick up two swords and flail at an opponent, alternately taking hits late, or not taking them at all until they get something to connect.  To become a good florentine fighter you need to be able to hit your opponent and ALSO SURVIVE.  That's the difference between a novice and a vet in that arena, just the ability to be able to block shots so that you can kill more then one person.  Anything else and it doesn't matter.  Anything else and that kill doesn't count in my eyes.  I'd much rather lose then win dishonestly because for me, that success or failure is tied into actually having control over my own body, my own limbs.  If I needed to block and didn't then it's my own retardation that still stuck with me.  If I get that block and it leads to a kill... great, but that's more a side effect of learning to suck less, not a goal in and of itself.

The fun thing about dyspraxia (or whatever else is wrong with my brain that's clustered with it) is that it's two directional.  In addition to having my muscles not move the way they are supposed to I'm also stuck with a situation where sometimes my nerve endings don't actually report back information in a way that makes sense.  In the morning, if I'm tired/out of it, I can walk into walls without really feeling much of anything but a sense of impact, conversely, when I'm awake enough I can be holding onto a cup of coffee and feel like it's burning my hand, but to anyone else it's just warm.  I'd bitch and moan about it, I'd get angry, but it's pointless.  This isn't a thing that can be cured or fixed so the best I can do is try to cope with it and move on.  As far as I know there aren't meds that will do anything for me either since it's my brain just having inherently faulty wiring.  This is just what it means to exist for me, every day, for the rest of my life.

People have complained about my honor since the first day I picked up a sword.  I can't think of a time when that's ever not been a thing.  I've learned to live with it for the most part.  Some of it is probably me legitimately just missing shots, some of it's communication, some of it's bad will on the part of my opponents, often coupled with either low skill or slow eyes.  I don't mind all that so much since I've just sort of assumed that it will be constant.  I've had people talking shit about me for some or other reason for as long as I've been alive, but I think that comes along with having a dysfunctional mind.  It hits you hard when you're younger, but as you grow older you learn to just tune that shit out and ignore it.  One of the downsides of having picked florentine, and having developed fast hands is that many people don't actually see the blocks that I throw in the same way that many people can't see the shots that I throw.  It's just that when I throw a shot they can't see and hit them, they can instantly recognize what happened, but when I throw a split second cross block, they only know they hit something, I haven't called anything, and I'm not dead.  If you've never seen this half second cross block before it's either sorcery or cheating.  The problem is that as a culture we rarely call "weapon" to communicate that's what it hit, since it's assumed that you can see another person's weapon, or at least get feedback from your own weapon to know that you didn't hit something squishy (though that's very much a high level fighter skill).  I'm also super bad at communicating because for the first 4 years at the time when you establish those sorts of habits, I lived with all of my realm mates and fought only them.  If a person had a problem with a call of yours, or had a question they talked to you about it and you worked it out, either on the field or later when you got home for the evening or over a party or some other social gathering.  It meant that on the field most people didn't communicate anything because they inherently trusted the other fighters to be honorable, and when there was any question it was dealt with one on one.  I would love to return to a culture like that but unfortunately in most cases it's just not feasible.  You won't have time to spar every person you fight at an event who isn't 100% on what happened with their shot, so we have to be good at communicating in the moment exactly what happened.  *sigh* So, I'm working on that.  My favorite thing of all is when a new sword and board fighter covers their face with their shield, swings wildly at me, misses, and then emerges from behind their shield to tell me what a shithead I am for not having taken their shot.  It happens all the damn time and has at least in one instance almost started a fight on the field where the sword and boarder in question was ready to throw down their gear and come at me.  It emphasizes the importance of actually looking to see where your weapon goes, rather then just assuming things went as planned.  The reverse of that particular behavior is also just as fun, where a person responds to a wrap shot by throwing their face behind their shield so that you can no longer tell where their face is.  In a perfect world you'd intuit it's location and avoid hitting them 100% of the time but more often then not that person gets hit in the face because you a) can't see where you're about to hit them b) can't pull the shot if it's going to be in their face and c) are swinging blindly at a moving target.

What vexes me is not that people talk shit about my honor, it's the attribution that people give to that shit talking.  The assumption is that it's all about my ego, that in order to win I have to cheat because otherwise I wouldn't be any good.  The assumption is that I'm actually good enough to feel 100% of the shots that hit me and any lapse in shot taking is the result of malicious intent to sluff that guys shots.  If I'm getting attacked by multiple people (because of course, that never happens) and fail to communicate effectively then regardless of whether or not my honor was good, flawless or terrible it's assumed that I'm totally cheating.  And that... that aggravates me.  All of my conditioning is from a place where the people giving me feedback lived with me, knew me, where my friends, and so I'm conditioned to accept without questioning any time a person gives me crap about some aspect of my fighting.  Over the years that's shifted somewhat, but that's at least where I've started from, I assume all critiques are heartfelt.  So when I get wind of people talking shit about my honor, or read on Bel Confessions "does anyone think R--t has shitty honor?" it gets under my skin some.  Not because someone thinks I have bad honor, but because it's so rare that anyone is having that discussion with ME.  Talking shit about a person's honor behind their back is almost certainly never going to go away for any of us in any of our foam sports.  It's just too easy to get away with.  But on my end it means that either I'm not taking my hits because my body has been betraying me as it sometimes does and I'm losing out on the opportunity to work on and try to fix those things so that I get something closer to "normal" or I am taking those hits because I've done everything correctly but I need to work with that individual so that they can see the blocks, etc that are being thrown to thwart them.  In the former case it means a decade of trying to fix something fundamentally wrong with me is thrown in to question, and that is incredibly demoralizing.  In the latter case it makes me sad because it's possible that if I'd simply sparred with this person perhaps it would flip, and if they are missing blocks that I throw then that kind of behavior is probably cascading into other fighters which means that the person in question is helping to breed a toxic environment for everyone.

I don't expect folks to understand or empathize, and I don't want people to look at me differently just because they gain this knowledge, it's part of why I normally don't share it with other folks, I don't want it to be some kind of excuse, I don't want to let those problems have any more sway over my life then they already do by fucking up every day of my life in the ways that they already do.  But I guess I needed to vent, I had to tell someone, somewhere for my own sanity because my struggle to become the fighter I want to be has so much more at stake then just whether or not I win or lose.  It's not about my ego, my pride, my reputation, it's about mastering myself.  When things get in the way of fighting, failing and learning I start to feel warped/twisted because that's why I'm in the sport, that's the part that provides me with joy and meaning, that's the thing that keeps me here and coming back.  If you made it this far... thank you for reading.  I'll sort myself out soon enough, just needed a moment to breathe.

Keep it simple (battle calls)

On the heels of the post about making your voice heard I thought I'd take the time to give everyone a bit of ammunition and do a bit of a deep dive into the battle calls (page 15) that I've listed out in "The book of Rift".  Rather then just talk about what they are and how they work, more of an idea of why they exist, what I hope to accomplish with each one and when you might want to use one of them.  I'm not going to cover all of them as just the descriptions of what they are already take 3 pages.  ...and I may need to go back and revamp that list with some of my more current knowledge.  As it turns out I keep learning things so even my best efforts to write it all down get out of date pretty quickly.  I am but human :-P.

Pacing

The first set of commands is for moving a group to basically set the speed that you move at.  The commands are forward,  easy forward, double time and crush.  Forward is for moving a line at a steady pace in any particular direction.  This is usually equivalent to a groups walk.  Easy forward is a very slow roll in which the group is moving very cautiously in some direction.  Double time is a pace at usually a jog.  Crush is a call designed to get your team to move as fast as possible in one particular direction which usually means into another team.  I've used through as another word to mean the same thing but in a different context.

Using the call to move slow is useful because sometimes you want to just get the people around you to react without actually moving yourself.  In this case by threatening to move somewhere very slowly you can see how the rest of the field will react.  If they don't react at all, it may give you the opportunity to position your group to either be an anvil (catch a team that's being routed) or give you the opportunity to move your archers into position.

Forward is the default movement, which you need, it doesn't really have any special application.  Double time is used when you need to get somewhere in a hurry, but don't want to let the cohesiveness of your group disintegrate.  By having everyone go at a jog you'll get away from any group not at some kind of a run, sometimes catching overzealous enemies out, but are less likely to have the group suffer from leaving people behind by going too fast.

Crush / Through are used to move as fast as is humanly possible.  Since that differs from person to person using those commands means allowing your groups cohesion to fall away.  When used offensively (crush) you're trying to hit a unit that's in a compromising position (like having their backs turned to you, or being routed).  When used defensively (through) the assumption is that you can't continue to hold the ground you're standing on and your options are to either be cut down slowly or to try to kill your way into open space.

Big Group, Small Maneuvers

Not every command necessarily involves cause the entire group to traverse in some direction.  Often success or failure is predicated on a bunch of smaller movements.

My favorite command for this situation is "step".  Step is called out as part of the line.  Ideally it's performed by everyone on the team in unison.  The idea is that everyone on the line takes a step forward and swings.  The 'and swings' part is important, because if everyone just steps up they're likely to get picked off if they aren't applying pressure as they move.  Generally speaking, in a line, people are standing where they are relative to the range of the weapons around them.  Moving up alone gets you killed from angles, but moving up as a group often gives you access to shots that you did't have before.  When done in unison against a disorganized team it's hard to react to.  Recently Juggernaught did a version of this where he called "step" and then a number to cause a faster rolling advance.  In that one instance I've seen it work well.  It's more dangerous, because it relies on more teamwork then a single step but the effects are also more devastating.  So, as an example "STEP 3!" meant, take 3 steps and swing 3 times.  Your mileage may vary.

Of course calling step only works if you're going on offense.  In some cases what you'll need to do is go on defense instead, or give up ground without completely crumpling.  That's when I use "back" as a command.  It's different from trying to tell your people to run though, for that I use the command "out".  Anytime that you, or your force buying time on a section of the field is valuable, use the word back.  This means stay away from where the opposing force can hit you, but stay JUST out of reach.  This way they aren't going to just run forward as most teams lack the coordination to do this as a cohesive group, and running in one person at a time just gets them killed unless they have a significant enough numbers or skill advantage.  If you can buy time on your side of the field by denying the enemy team any kills and denying them an engage then its likely that somewhere else on the field you're winning and, assuming you can hold out, help is on it's way.  Sometimes you're just screwed but it's a good idea to try and do good math when the situation allows.  If you happen to know in advance that you're in trouble then using "out" is a good way to let your team know that standing in front of the opposing force is going to get them killed.

Regaining Cohesion

During the course of a fight your forces will inevitably scatter to wherever each individual wants to be standing.  As a person leading the group it's your job try and keep your forces organized.  The easiest way is to have calls that reconstitute the group.  The standard ones that I'm used to using are "form up" and "close ranks".  Form up is used to try and get people who have separated from the group to return to it.  By being the person yelling the calls you give a disorganized group of people a thing to rally around so that they can form a cohesive shape again.  Close ranks is a call that's usually used on a line in response to seeing some gaps you think an enemy can get through.  Close ranks can also be used if you find that your line is becoming more of a squiggle.  This is especially helpful if you're about to push your group into another group as having a solid line as your shield wall stops people from getting picked off by polearms with angles.

Sneaky shit

If the basics don't get you where you're going, you can always try the fancy stuff.  When done correctly these maneuvers can have a devastating effect.  But when done poorly they mostly just get your team murdered, so! use with care.  The first one is "reverse".  Basically, you convince your entire team to pull a 180 and turn around on whoever happened to be pursuing you.  Ideally this is done in one footstep, ideally this is also done while someone is chasing you.  Best case scenario you do this as a way to flip a fake retreat if someone else has called "crush" because suddenly the enemy team is no longer in a cohesive shape and is spread out.  This means that they can be picked off rather easily.

"Scatter" is possibly one of my favorite calls.  Back when I ran the blades we called it "leeroy jenkins".  As it turns out, most of your enemies aren't coordinated enough and don't know your team well enough to know everyone who is apart of it.  Often when someone goes on the offense against you they aren't so much targeting individuals as they are the largest formed up group in the area.  The call scatter is the call to disperse the group so that an organized enemy line no longer has anything to fight, and must instead spend their time trying to run down whoever they can remember isn't on their team.  In the best case scenario for you, everyone makes it out and goes in a different direction.  While at first this may look like a retreat the idea is that you then turn on the enemy forces who are now confused by not having something to attack.  If you can catch them out while they are confused by suddenly not having a target it's often easy to rack up some kills by getting behind the main force, or picking off some of the fighters on the ends of the line.

A kill pocket is a shape that you can make with a line of fighters whenever you have a constrained space to fight in.  I've also heard the smaller version of this shape called a "death triangle" by Bhakdar.  The idea is that instead of fighting line to line, you let the opponents advance while lining people up to their left and right behind some kind of barricade.  As the enemy comes forward they get hit from the sides, but because of the constrained space they can't get around the edges to deal with getting hit from the sides.  It's been my experience that shouting "kill pocket" to your teammates doesn't do much unless you've taken the time to explain what it is beforehand.  That having been said, if you pull it off in most cases you can win against overwhelming odds.  The main problem with any line is that a person who has enough weight and momentum can break through even if they're just a corpse by the time they hit the line.  The problem for them is that if you've designed your shape to let them in, crashing further into a trap doesn't really help that person or their team much.

Do what works for you

In the end field commanding is more about getting a group of people to move well together.  There are no hard and fast rules to make that happen.  Hopefully though between this post and the last one you've at least got some tools in your arsenal to try and get started on that path.  As always, do what works for you and your group.  Use the commands that you all instinctively understand and keep your maneuvers simple and straightforward.  Unless you're training diligently most groups of people won't be able to pull off complicated maneuvers in the midst of a fight because of all the extra thinking involved.  Additionally you don't know who you'll be fighting with so even if you've got some advanced maneuvers you may not be able to use them based on whoever you've got around.  The more you practice, the more prepared you'll be, and unfortunately there's no substitute for experience.  So get out there and start making mistakes, the sooner you do, the sooner you can learn from them.

It's not the size of the thing, it's how you use it.

In other words, a short treatise on the value of short vs long weapons.  I've long said that you can be good with any set of weapons.  It doesn't matter how long or short they are, how light or heavy they are, or what shape they are.  If you spend enough time mastering a particular weapon set you can make it work for you.  Let me start with two extreme examples.

Belegod (just kidding)

As one example of this you can fight with a tower shield and a flail.  For some people that's not an extremely uncommon practice.  The tower shield gives you a ton of coverage which protects you from most swings.  The flail means you don't have to know how to wrap to go around blocks/guards/shields so most of your swings will connect assuming you can get close enough to throw them.  But this setup isn't without its drawbacks.  The size of the tower shield means that if someone does actually get around it it's going to be very difficult to move a shield that size to block at a new angle.  Additionally since the tower shield is heavy it's going to discourage you from using proper footwork to the point where, at least for most people, proper footwork disintegrates completely.  Having a heavy shield also means that you're less likely to run since you'll have that extra weight.  A flail is also not without it's downsides.  While a flail is good at going around guards it doesn't throw swings very quickly and in order to actually throw a shot that will land you need to reach your hand out from behind your shield.  This means that a person who knows how to block your swing will have a few shots to try and pick the arm you threw with.  It also means that if someone gets up in your grill and you haven't immediately killed them with a wrap shot you're going to get ruined.  Finally a flail isn't good at counterblows because if you've got it in a blocking position it's going to take you too long to throw a full shot before your opponents next shot comes in.

If it looks stupid but works... (it isn't)

On the other extreme side of things you can have a person wielding two daggers which seems like a ridiculous thing to do.  A person wielding dual daggers relies on getting a shot to the torso to kill someone and is going to have a much tougher time with armor.  Since they're using daggers they have 0 reach, which means that anyone with any kind of range is going to get a bunch of free swings on them before they get to even attack once.  Archers, reds, spears will all eat them on the line, and anyone who can work an angle is going to have a field day with all the openings their lack of gear provides.  However.  A person who uses only 2 daggers is going to have ridiculous hand speed.  Since both weapons weigh next to nothing they'll be able to block incoming shots faster then most eyes can track.  If they've fought with short weapons their whole career it means they'll also have to be able to close on their opponents who have more reach then they do.  This tends to mean they have excellent footwork in order to accomplish that.  Their defense/blocks also have to be on point since the only thing they have going for them is their reflexes to block with.  Additionally if they ever manage to close on an opponent they'll be able to throw shots much MUCH faster then their opponent and probably take them apart piece at a time until they can land a shot on torso.  Finally, most people will underestimate a person with two daggers and underestimate their foot and hand speed.

Goldilocks

Most people who wind up fighting choose to be somewhere in the middle, although I've actually known a guy who only fought dual daggers and I've seen plenty of people fight big board and flail.  Most people favor a sword of varying lengths which gives them neither absurd hand speed nor slow swings.  Most people favor a medium sized shield which gives them protection from arrows and spears but can also be moved around quickly.  This sort of middle ground gives you the greatest flexibility when you have no idea what you're going to be fighting against since the gear you may want to pick up will be highly dependent on the context (IE, what kind of battle? bridge battle, open field, 10 man) of the field.  You'll want a bunch of boards/reds in an enclosed space like a bridge battle whereas you'd want more archers and mobile fighters on an open field.  In the end it's up to everyone to figure out what works best for them.  To that end, part of this discussion won't be force profile (light vs heavy weapons/swings).  You can go look at what I've already written on that here.

Short and fast

The shorter the weapon you have to work with the faster you can make it go.  This is comprised of 2 pieces of information.  The first being that the less material your weapon is made up of the less it will weigh which will make it faster, the second piece of which is that a weapon with less material has less air resistance making it easier not only to move but to change directions with.  The faster your weapon can go the more actions you can take with the weapon, whether those are swings or blocks.  I've found personally that switching from 33" bats to 24" clubs has allowed me to go from about 1 action per second per hand to about 3 actions per second per hand.  It means that I go from a volley of 4 swings in about 2 seconds to a volley of about 12 swings and 4 blocks in that same space of time.  If you don't believe me I have some people you can talk to but this is why I sound like a machinegun out on the field.  In any case enough about me.  Moving from my long set to the short set means that I have to get much closer to my opponent which requires me to spend more of my actions blocking swings, but because I get so many more actions per second I'm actually still at an advantage relative to my longer sticks.

The other advantage I have using shorter weapons is that I can now cross my body without getting tangled up in my own weapons.  The advantage doesn't just end with my own gear though.  Having smaller weapons also means I can more easily work them past an opponents defense, by either reaching over or around whatever defensive gear they have.  Punch blocking also becomes more effective as crossing becomes less of an issue and hand speed increases compared to a longer set where crossing means getting tangled and slower hand speed means greatly limiting my offense to block.  Having short weapons tends to make me more of a "brawler" (see, rock,paper,scissors) because I can become really comfortable being right up in someone's face, since I don't have to worry about getting bound and losing my ability to swing.

Fighting with a short weapon is also, honestly, just harder.  If you have to close with your opponent you need much better footwork.  If you can't just swing back and forth at range it means you'll also have to spend some time learning to have better blocks so you live long enough to get the engage that you want.

Long

Long weapons are most favored by "snipers" (see, rock,paper,scissors) because those weapons allow them to take shots without retaliation.  Being able to throw at range, especially if you can be deceptive with exactly how far you can throw, will often get you free kills.  Longer weapons are the reverse of short weapons so they're strengths and weaknesses are flipped.  Long weapons relative to short weapons are slower moving because they have more material and catch more air resistance.  Longer weapons are also more likely to get bound in your gear or your opponents gear meaning that it's harder for you to land shots if you can't get a clean opening.  Longer weapons however do have more reach which means that not only can you potentially snipe the person in front of you safely, but on a line you may get the opportunity to take out the person to your left or right not just the person in front of you.  A longer weapon is more favorably in a line whereas a shorter weapon is going to be better in a duel or at the edges of the field.  Having a longer weapon means you're much more vulnerable to being rushed, as once a person is up in your face, having a weapon that gets bound in gear makes striking your opponent much harder.  Fighting with a longer weapon is also easier at first because that extra reach means you'll always get to throw at least one swing before getting mowed down.

Skill floor, skill cap

As long as I'm here... There's an idea of a skill floor and a skill cap relative to the gear that you're using.  A skill floor is basically the minimum amount of skill that you need in order to be efficient with a particular weapon set.  Skill cap is the limit of how good you can be with a given weapon set.  So, to reference my previous extreme examples, tower shield and flail has an extremely low skill floor since it does most of the work for you, but the skill cap of these weapons is also very minimal; besides their inherent advantages of high defense and wraps they don't offer much else because you can't really improve as a fighter while using them.  Dual daggers has an extremely high skill floor because in order to actually do anything with them you must first develop good enough footwork to close with your opponent and good enough blocks to be able to not die in the process.  However, since the weapons give you a crazy amount of mobility and hand speed your skill cap with this weapon set is very high.  Something like sword and board generally has a low skill floor but a high skill cap as you can almost always improve.  A spear has a slightly higher skill floor then sword and board but also a much lower skill cap because the weapon isn't terribly flexible.  Florentine has a brutally high skill floor, since until you learn to block shots using an active defense you just get murdered, but an even higher skill cap then using a shield because with two weapons you can aggress with you have even fewer restrictions on what you can do.

Design Decisions

Eventually everything comes down to design decisions.  Long weapons aren't inherently superior to short weapons though in a given situation they may be more advantageous.  Similarly short weapons aren't inherently superior to long weapons but depending on context can be the better choice.  It all just depends on context.  I've found that it's best to carry a few weapons with me on the field if I'm fighting with a shield.  If I think I'll need to do up close work I'll use a short stick, if I'm on a line I'll use a longer stick as my primary weapon.  As a florentine fighter I prefer two sticks of the same length so that they're interchangeable which means that weapon diversity stops being a thing.  With a polearm it's a good idea to carry an in close weapon since your primary weapon already has reach.

Making your voice heard

After spending nearly a decade running a unit and being part of the initial surge of the Anduril Empire I've learned a thing or two about making my voice heard when we're out on the battlefield.  While having a loud voice certainly helps, there's a lot more that goes into having people listen to, and respond, to the things that you've got to say.  In an attempt to impart some of this wisdom, largely because after so many years I'm tired of doing it, I thought I'd write a post on doing that bit well.

Have fun... don't die

The first piece of learning to command your forces out on the field is realizing that you are not a part of them.  A dead commander gives exactly 0 commands or direction out to the rest of the group.  That means that if you choose to command you need to be standing in a place where you are 1) not easily picked off and 2) not directly engaged in combat.  If you're close enough to melee with other people then you should be focusing on the fight in front of you.  If you fail to do that you'll often get killed while shouting instructions to someone else.  I can no longer count the number of times I have seen someone turn and shout at a teammate only to immediately get hit by the person in front of them.  The second piece of that is having protection.  Once it's clear that you are actually controlling your forces you will become a magnet for arrows.  While it's always good to have a shield yourself to knock those aside it's not a bad idea to have a few bodyguards whose job it is to make sure projectiles don't make it to you.  After all, you can't be looking in every direction at the same time.

Reading the field

If you've got yourself protected this should allow you to spend your focus looking at the field around you.  There's a few things that you're looking for; gaps between lines (yours and theirs), any flankers or shock troops that are looking to make a play, a section of the fight where your team is winning or losing significantly and any support weapons that are making a big impact on the fight.  Let's take those one at a time.

Gaps

If you see that there's a gap in your line then you need to redirect some forces to fill it.  If you don't that small gap will let people through and once they get through that gap it will curl your lines and lead to their destruction.  A flanker who shoots through a gap can also be a bane to your back line, cutting down arches and taking out polearms on your line as they go for backs.  If you notice a gap in the opposing teams line then that's your chance to strike and apply pressure.  You can do this in one of two ways.  You can either take a group of shields and simply run them through the gap, or, you can pull on the gap to make it bigger by apply more pressure on either side of the gap and then let your flankers take advantage of the opening, curling the two sides around that gap.

Shock Troops

Of all the people you'll see out on the field it's commanders, archers and shock troops that are most taking the time to read it.  Commanders move their forces so they need their eyes open and archers are searching for shots that they can make often on distracted enemies.  One of the hardest jobs though is being a melee fighter and trying to find a way though to the enemy backlines.  Unless there's a giant gap between lines you're going to have to force your way through, quickly executing one or more enemies while quickly closing the distance between your side and your enemies side.  Even when a gap exists it often doesn't exist for very long, meaning that you have to make the call to go in decisively since you don't know how long any particular opportunity will last.  Given these attributes shock troops are a field commanders worst nightmare.  In addition to preying on momentary lapses of cohesion they'll also destroy important parts of your force by picking off archers or turning winning sections into losing sections.  As a result make sure that you have eyes on an shock troops your enemy has and make sure that wherever they wander to you have a strong force there to oppose them.  Shock troops tend not to be high in number; in addition to the experience required to read the field and the skill to close the gaps, being a shock troop also requires a fair degree of cardio that most people aren't up for.  So, if you can stack enough people in front of them most shock troops won't directly engage - they're far too smart for that.

Winning and Losing

If you notice that on some section of the field your team is winning or losing significantly this will also be important for making plays.  If your team is winning on one side of the field, it's often the case that they are losing elsewhere, so it's not as though each condition is separate.  These things can also happen quickly, or can happen slowly and how that plays out will change your response.  If you have a side that's winning, and doing so quickly, then you need to start pulling bodies off that section as fast as you can to reinforce other areas of your line.  As discussed in the previous paragraph, if that winning section has made a gap then you can pull some of it off and use it to smash into the side of a section of line where the opponents may have briefly had the advantage.  If your team is winning slowly on a side then you don't have to do much.  Simply let them continue rolling and make sure that they're protected from either side.  A winning flank can quickly become a losing flank if a flanker finds their way in.

Assuming that your looking at a part of the field that's losing you have basically two options.  The first is to try to buy time.  You do this by retreating slowly and trying to work angles on your opponents.  If you can convince them to overextend or spread themselves thin you create opportunities for flankers.  Assuming that they are using polearms to win, the more time you can buy that side the more likely it is that the polearms deciding the fight get picked off by archers.  What I've seen people do time and again is try to hold a straight line in response to an approach rather then start using angles.  This always means that the side in question breaks eventually.  What I recommend instead is slowly angling, convincing the enemy team to step too far forward by inviting them in.  You do have to be a little bit careful with this as anyone not paying attention to this tactic is likely to get speared in the side.

Assuming your team, or section, is losing quickly, then it's time to scatter.  There's no sense in trying to stand in front of a force that is mowing you down.  Run, scatter and deny the enemy a form to push at.  If you aren't standing together the opposing team may often lose focus.  You can use that moment to hit however isn't being protected as their formation also loses it's coherency.  Back when I ran the blades the battle cry for this was either "scatter" or "leeroy jenkins" because it became every man for themselves.   Once your team doesn't have form it becomes a skirmish, or battle of attrition.  Take legs, don't stand together, and back whatever you can.  Split up your archers by pairing them with shields and stay mobile.  If you've got good veteran fighters this is often where they come into play, by convincing the opposing forces not to rush them outright.

Support Weapons

Some support weapons matter more then others, and can single handedly decimate the forces across the line from them given enough support.  Out here in the west the person who immediately comes to mind is Batman, though there are plenty of other fighters that when applied to a line with support will simply trash whats in front of them and create pressure.  If you've got one of these on your side it's important to make sure that they've got enough cover in the form of shields to make sure they don't eat projectiles.  If you're facing down a polearm like this then there's two steps.  The first thing is to deny them their swings.  This means keep retreating slowly every time they swing so that they can't get any kills.  The second piece is to line up archers to shoot at them.  If you deny them their opportunity to get kills while simultaneously trying to kill them, eventually one of those arrows is going to connect.

Once more with feeling

Assuming that you've got the basics down as far as 1) staying alive for the engagement and 2) knowing what pieces of your forces to move and when you also have to make sure that everyone can actually hear you.  In the middle of a pitched melee it's very very loud and even a person with a booming voice is going to be drowned out amidst the rest of the noise.  What this means is that you need to have people who will repeat what you say.  Having a bunch of people echo your orders means that your voice can reach down along the line so that everyone on your team can hear you.  It also has the unintended side effect of making it so that people are more likely to do what you tell them; if you establish yourself as a voice to be parroted then you've given yourself authority over the group.  If you're working with people you already know, then try to get everyone to echo your voice.  If you're working with a group you aren't used to, then grab 3 people and send one to the left, middle and right side of your line.  If the lines too big, recruit more individuals to parrot your voice.  While it's better to have everyone involved having specific people will mean that you know that your voice will be heard.  The only downside to this is because those people are shouting commands they may be perceived as leadership and catch arrows.

The other piece of making your voice heard is having the respect of the people around you.  In a big field with lots of noise, any direction at all is better then no direction and it means that if you say anything at all people may still listen, but the smaller the group gets, the more important it is that they aren't just SOME commands but YOUR commands.  In this case the respect of the people around you is pivotal because even if you make perfect calls, sometimes bad things happen and the battle won't go according to plan.  If you can, establish a leader before the fight starts and have everyone buy in.  That way even if there are mistakes you at least cohesively moved together.  To steal a bit of strategy from league, if you make a good call but it's only followed half-heartedly it may become a bad call because it didn't have the follow through.  Similarly, things that are bad calls may become less bad, if the whole team acts decisively even if it ends poorly.  Knowing what calls to make and when to make those calls comes with time and experience.  But the only way to get there is to actually do it, and that means knowing you'll make mistakes ahead of time and getting everyone onboard anyways.

Marshalling your forces

Once you're alive, focused and being listened to it's important to make sure you have the resources you need on hand to execute on whatever plans you may make once the fighting commences.  While it's ideal to have everyone able to operate independently and simply win without oversight, it's been my experience that reserving a little bit of your forces to be deployed later can have dramatic impacts on the fight.  To be clear, I'm not talking about having a percentage of your force in reserve like shock troops, I'm talking about selecting specific individuals who you know will do work to have listen to your voice.  Typically, I'll grab one or two polearms that I know can apply pressure on a line (mobile siege), I'll grab two archers (snipers) that I can use to assassinate problems at range, and about 4 shieldsman (honor guard) who act as both my personal honor guard and also who can be used to fill gaps in the line, run gaps I see the enemy leave or fill in a losing line and start shouting orders at them to maintain group coherency.

Having a set of self-organized groups is also valuable as you can move them independently.  In most cases you'll have a group of people who respond to right flank, left flank and middle simply based on their location.  Shouting commands at these groups can get them to move and act as a group even without having organized them before hand.  In most cases you'll also have groups based on either weapon type or job and call for archers, polearms, line or flankers and expect that some people will respond to your call.  You can also combine the two sets and say something like "polearms, right side, push".  If you have people designated by other groups beforehand, either organized by unit or designation (shock troops, reserves, etc) then you can also call on those groups.  I've found that generally speaking keeping it as simple as possible so that 80% of the troops are the line, 10% are backline and 10% are flankers or people waiting for an opportunity works best.

More then just words

In the ruckus of a battlefield it's important to be able to communicate efficiently.  Whenever possible use single word, single syllable commands.  The longer you make your commands the more likely they are to be misinterpreted, the more likely they are to not make it across the line as a command, also, screaming lone sentences at the top of your lungs is super tiring, and if you've committed to being leadership you're going to be doing it all day long, so save your vocal chords.  Yelling out, "right side could you please apply a bit more pressure" is super time consuming and as a result super ineffective.  Yelling out "Right side, PUSH" is going to get you much further.  If that seems too direct you can always go with "Right side, apply pressure / pressure them / press".  Again, the important part is not so much what you say, so much as making sure you say it quickly so that it can't be misinterpreted.  Also, generally speaking, the psychological impact of single word statement is far greater then short sentences.  While I wouldn't employ this strategy in the rest of your life out on the field when the battle is going it's fine to be a bit more intense, it just means that being friendly to people before and after the battle has started becomes more important.  You don't want to be seen as overly aggressive or mean.

Prefixes your commands with who and where first is also very important.  You want the first thing that happens when you start barking orders is to get the attention of someone.  If you've gotten everyone onboard to listen and you have folks repeating what you're saying down the line then you should be able to ensure that each part of the line can hear you.  Once you start shouting you want your voice to make it to the relevant people and THEN you want to give the command.  If you start with the command and then the group of people, often they'll only hear you calling out their names, which is of no help to anyone.

Intel

Having your own voice heard is great, but leadership is actually a two way thing.  In addition to being able to send out orders along the line and have it respond decisively when called on, it's important to have each piece of the line communicate back whatever information they have.  That can be anything from "we're losing over here" to "we've got this, put people somewhere else".  As the fight goes on have each section of line constantly talking back, and use your repeaters to shout this information back to you as leadership.  This way you know in advance if someone has gotten around the side and is about to wreak havoc, giving you more time to respond to that situation by using your snipers or honor guard to zone them.  If you know that a side is losing before it starts to break then you can either call for reinforcements from other parts of the line or use the mobile siege that you've pulled off to reinforce while calling on your snipers to try and execute the polearms on that lane.  If you're informed there's a gap you can use your honor guard to fill it while you get your forces to form a cleaner line.  Whatever the issue is, if you know what the problem is ahead of time it's going to make dealing with it much easier.

Keywords

If you're in the context of a unit, or other group that you can organize beforehand, having a bunch of pre-baked command words can be very effective.  As it turns out, even if you use obvious words that everyone understands having your team prepared to respond to them effectively will mean that things still end well even when your opponent knows exactly what you're about to do.  My favorite example of this was the blades 2-1 call in which one person yelled out "two" and then when they called "one" everyone swung at the same time.  The fact that you could see it coming made no difference whatsoever as you still had to deal with a set of strikes coming at you from multiple angles all at the same time.  In my experience the most useful set of command words are used to set the pace of your forces like, forward, easy forward, double time, push, crush as well as maintain coherency of your forces like, reform, form up, together, etc.  I've got a complete list of the stuff that I've used in the book of rift if that's something that you're interested in, but by and large it's best to use words that make sense to you and the people you work with, rather then someone else's set of things.

Fin - 

As you can see... there's a lot that goes into commanding a group of people you fight with.  Some of it's learned over time, some of it is sort of inborn.  If you've got a good voice most people will listen instinctively and that helps.  If you don't have the kind of voice that everyone listens to instinctively then you can find someone to shout for you, or you can practice doing voice work and lower the tone of your voice so it starts to sound deep and commanding.  In any case, hopefully this vague sketch from a commanders eyes will help you on your path.  Good hunting friends.