Practices Continue to be Good

Tonight, I fought a bunch. Instead of a play-by-play, I thought I would concentrate on how I'm trying to develop my game.

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My game for the last while has been concentrated on cutting through my opponent's opposition. Swords in collision are an edge case that I have studied pretty thoroughly. However, in order to gain the sort of cutting thrust I want, I have to throw that cut from my wrist, from a position in which my opponent has somewhat-strong opposition. That is a useful tool, but every new tool I add to my tool-set increases the effectiveness of every other tool.

I have watched through the Academie Duello series on opposition. In this video series, Devon Boorman talks about how to perform opposition correctly. And the videos I've watched thus far are So Good.

Today, I was working to try to fight even more safely than usual. I was trying to perform opposition from the elbow, not the wrist. The problem I ran into is that whenever I applied strong opposition, my opponents would disengage. Or they would put their tip far enough below my sword that I couldn't effectively oppose. Or other things like that, which neutralize Good and Proper fencing. As such, it was possible for me to defend myself in that way, but not for me to actually stab my opponent with my current knowledge.

In order to stab my opponents, I had to revert to my tactics from about a year ago, even before the cutting-opposition that I have been using recently. This meant that I did a lot of tiny twitchy mind-games type feints. It's the sort of thing that relies on my opponent reacting to me, which some people don't do until I present an actual threat. I could probably integrate cutting opposition into the new tactics, but I'm going to need to fight a more "pure" Duello-esque fight for a while so that I can learn how to blend things in without losing the essence of these new techniques.

One thing I noticed is that this type of fighting is far, far less tiring on my wrist. This means that I was able to pull off better twitch-angle-shots when I had to. Unfortunately, this form of opposition is one that the longer-time fencers in practice seemed to be very familiar with. As such, I ended up just sort of flailing when my first or second intention didn't work, and things did not go well for me.

Really, what I need to do is binge on Academie Duello videos. I'm sure that the Duello.tv website covers what to do in their fight when someone disengages and suchlike. I could guess, but I don't want to make assumptions based on the period manuals I have read. I also need to think harder about what to do when someone has a buckler, because frikkin' bucklers. Maybe I need to actually poke their buckler to get them to think, and then proceed accordingly? It's a start.

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I also played around with my longsword. I stitched together a leather wrapper for the handle, and it feels so good in my hands now. There is now an integral shim to improve blade stability, and it actually stayed in place when I took the sword apart. It is so easy for me to swing it around and do horrible, terrible things with it. I don't like the color of the leather of the handle in contrast with the metal of the sword, but that thing is intended to be an atrocity which will do horrible things on the melee field at Pennsic. As such, it shouldn't be pretty. Part of me wants to put a nice splatter of red on the handle, to properly express the horrible things that this longsword is capable of.

As a minor bonus, the integral shim means I can actually fully take apart the longsword and get my extra-heavy blade for drilling back on my standard hilt. Yay!

I want to make a new longsword handle for a second, shorter longsword. This is to see if I can replicate my success with this longsword's handle. I have probably spent upwards of 20 hours on research and work to make this handle, and I would like to see if I can do it faster this time. I started from basically no knowledge or skills, which is why it took so long. This new handle will be rounded and about 10", so it can be used with almost any blade and still be within SCA rules. I will see if I actually prefer the rectangular handle, or if my love of the rectangular handle I made is just some complex form of Stockholm syndrome.

Maybe I should leather-wrap a rapier handle I own which is too thin for my hands to use comfortably. That would be a good trial for leather-wrapping a cylinder.

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In order to keep myself accountable, I have the following action items:

• Before next practice, I want to:
• Watch through at least another series of Academie Duello videos.
• This can just be in the background while doing another thing, like sewing or some kind of leatherworking or something.
• I have a sheath to finish for Carolingia - perhaps that?
• At home, drill more. I've been slacking lately, because work-stress.
• Drilling is a good thing to do.
• It improves my ability to stab a person.
• It is vaguely aerobic.
• Next practice, I want to:
• Fight a buckler-user if possible, because bucklers are A Problem For Me. Poke the buckler and see how they react.
• In the future, attempt to generalize reactions to poking buckler. Do all buckler users react the same way?
• Try using my rotella. Do I react the same way when someone pokes my rotella?
• Continue working on direct opposition in the method outlined by Academie Duello.
• Don't try integrating cutting-through opposition yet.
• Try not to use too many feints yet.
• Probably this will be more detailed when I walk into Thursday practice, because of the above directive regarding watching more videos.

Until next time - have fun fencing!