Rose Tournament, and a preview of New Blade Magic

Rose Tournament went well. My team won, which is nice. Everybody in my team had more wins than losses, which is also nice.

I was sort of work-hung-over, so my attitude toward my fighting during the tournament wasn't that great. I had a lot of good fights, and so many courteous people. Such courtesy. So fighting. Wow.

My first loss was either my first or second fight in the tournament. I fought a guy who I had seen around, but never fought before. As such, I made the terrible error of assuming that he would not be a skilled fighter. I posted my sword, assuming I'd just be able to ace him quickly. That was not the case. He did the correct thing, gaining my sword deeply. I grabbed some pickups with him later, and he's really good. Victory wasn't a sure thing for me against him, but I certainly handed the win to him on a silver platter.

My second loss was to a guy who I have fought and won against in tournaments before. He's quite good. There was an iffy maybe-push-cut and around the same time, I had a draw cut. I suggested we re-fight it, because he seemed confident that he had the cut and I was pretty confident that I had locked his sword pretty far outside of my head. It was also clearly evident that he did not at all feel my false-edge draw-cut.

We re-fought, and he caught me square in the gorget with a cross-shot over his right arm, after I had taken his blade and I was preparing to stab him. It was fine, it was good, and I'm not 100% sure what I could have done differently. I need to figure out if New Blade Magic has any relevance to cross-shots with case swords. It might be able to teach me a better way to take case swords so that the cross-shot isn't open, so that would be cool.

Aside from that it was a pretty good day. I got pickups with the first guy I lost to, and those were good. New Blade Magic seems to have clicked to the point that I can do neat things. This is good, because I spent the first half of the tournament wrestling with New Blade Magic, instead of being able to just call upon the reactions which I know work. A blog post is brewing, but it's going to take some time to fully explain it. I will probably try to explain it to people at practice, just to see if it makes any sense outside of my brain.

As a preview, New Blade Magic provides:

• An explanation of how and where people can disengage from.
• A way to determine the exact correct area to push on your opponent's sword, and why that is the case.
• A digression on what "back-weighted" actually means in the context of a sword, and what that gains you relative to "front-weighted" swords.

Have a good day everyone!