Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-28320970-20160427172450/@comment-26388515-20160429015829

You can bring sword types other than tantou and wakizashi into the second stage just fine. The trick is to bring along tantou/waki/uchi with long-range troops so that they'll knock out one or two enemies during the pre-battle phase, and equip horses in a way that'll make your tantou/waki/uchi attack before your heavy swords so that they'll strike out all the enemies before your heavy swords have to face off against them. The 10HP yari doesn't appear a lot (I've only seen him twice throughout my 20-something runs) and long-range attacks from the enemies don't deal much damage.

I used the second stage to train a team of one tachi + 5 tantou and it was a breeze. It's supposed to be an easy stage for basic leveling so you shouldn't have to worry too much about sword breaking.