  The critical formation of low-mass black holes is a historical cornerstone of
numerical General Relativity, with important implications in cosmology for
censorship conjectures and the production of primordial black holes (PBHs).
Concurrent with the surge in black hole observational physics in recent years
has been an increased interest in these subjects. Critical formation is often
suggested as a mechanism for PBH production, but it is possible that the
existence of different types of critical processes potentially accompanying
more realistic scenarios may affect this conclusion more than has been
considered thus far. This paper numerically investigates, as a toy model, the
interplay of multiple near-critical fields in the collapse of spherically
symmetric scalar fields. It is found that a combination of type~I and type~II
near-critical fields results in a kind of competition between their respective
critical evolutions and propose. A heuristic explanation for this phenomenon is
given employing ideas from the theory of dynamical systems.
