Think back to all that crap I said about line fighting. Do you remember a theme running through it? Something about lungng, or, rather, not lunging?
Yeah, well, there’s always an exception. When our lines 12345 and ABCDE encounter each other (remember, You’re Number 1), you at position 1 have a few options. You can push the right, working the flank to move A back in on his own line. Or, if you have the range, it might be a great chance to ignore the “don’t lunge” rule, and instead start munching the right.
Step one: neutralize A’s defense. Your shot is going to be coming in from A’s left. If A’s got a buckler, dagger, stick, or whatever there, you’re going to have to get past it. Take the hand, distract it, whatever.
Step two: neutralize A’s sword. Bind it, whatever, but what you’re about to do is a great way to get stabbed if you aren’t controlling his blade.
Step three: lunge. Don’t lung straight in, or else B will get you. Lunge obliquely to your right, away from B, opening up the off-line attack on A through the defense you’ve dismantled in step 1.
Step four: Don’t recover, re-lunge! A’s dead. He’s wearing your blade. But before he says “dead” and alerts B, he’s a great big human shield. Shift your lunge to the left, bringing B into range, and gut him before he knows you’re a threat.
Step five: re-lunge AGAIN. A’s dead, B’s dead, and you can reach C from your starting point, why not just kill him too instead of recovering back into line.
If all goes to plan, in aobut 5 seconds you’ve turned a 5 on 5 into a 5 on 2. So finish it off, close distance on D and E and kill them.
This will work better if you have a range advantage on A: tall fighters with long blades pull this off better than short fighters, but a shorter fighter can still pull it off, just with more danger of getting tagged by B.
We had three fighters at practice tonight so we put together a drill for this, since the other two fighters were the towers of Kappellenberg. I set up as the left flank anchor of the victim line (A in the scenario above), with one fighter on my right (B) and the other fighter across from me (1). (1) started off with off-line lunges opposed by my short-sword (see the post on armament and my musings on case), so the first goal was to either disarm my left or slip past it. We ran this a couple of times until they were landing consistently without getting tagged by (B). Then we added in the remise of the lunge, moving from landing their shot on me to immediately launching an attack on (B). It worked pretty well, but needs more careful work, with focus on disabling the left-hand defense.