New Distance, Old Tricks

This post is going to seem very very similar to my previous Touch, Small Angle, Large Angle, Renegotiate entry. It's a refinement of previous understanding, which is pretty cool and worked decently well in its first trial at practice.

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On the right, we see the Fabris stance that everybody has done at least once.

Fabris and "true" Destreza both have a blade-extended stance. In particular, the canonical "I'm doing Destreza" upright, arm-extended stance is difficult to start using. It is worth noting that there are many ways to do Destreza - the stance people recognize is not the only stance which exists.

Destreza, as per Thibault. Yes, I know, it's different, but it's close enough for our purposes.

In order to understand why this is difficult, let's imagine two people moving toward each other, as if on a conveyor belt. Both are in the straight-backed and straight-legged "Destreza stance".

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In the first range, they are completely out of measure. No contact can be made with the blades.

In the second range, tips can touch. Small advantages can be negotiated here, but nothing major. The main thing that one can do with a tip is bait people into attempting opposition on it, since that tip isn't going to be exerting any strong opposition.

In the third range, the far-middle of blades can make contact. The part between 1/4 and 1/2 of the way down the blade. Stronger opposition can happen here. One or the other person might feel the urge to pull their sword back, in order to get contact with a weaker part of their opponent's sword.

In the fourth range, you can place your quillons on your opponent's weak. If you can establish this type of blade dominance, it is extremely advantageous. The movement to get around quillons is very large, especially if you have your opponent locked between your strong and your quillons.

In the fifth range, you can extend to stab your opponent, but it requires all of your reach to do so. An alternate thing you can do here is push your arm out to the side, up, or down, if you have established that quillon-based blade dominance. This places their sword farther away from your body, making you safer.

You can come back to this small-font text later. It is a brief aside to explain some things which will be relevant later.

Pushing their sword out to the side also does some subtle things. First, if you can break the straight line from your opponent's shoulder to you, that decreases their range by definition. They might be able to point at you again, but it requires them to bend parts of their arm, meaning that they don't have a long, straight line any more.

Pushing their sword out to the side also places you more strongly "behind" your sword with respect to their sword. This makes you far, far safer. This is very, very good. It's the principle behind getting "past someone's tip". If you're past their tip, they have to take two tempi to stab you - one to pull their arm back, and another to re-extend. If you're both past their tip and have your sword in the way, that's just bonus.

In the sixth range, you can stab your opponent with your sword even with your arm at a weird angle.

In the seventh range, your opponent is past your tip even if you're at a weird angle. If you have daggers, you have probably already stabbed each other. Maybe you can cut your opponent with your sword here?

In the eighth range, you are hugging your opponent. Good game everyone.

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The arm-extended Destreza stance is difficult because of what happens in the second and third ranges. In those ranges, your opponent can and is required to act on your sword. In an Italian stance or a German stance, you still might be denying blade contact at those ranges. But especially in the case of an Italian versus a Diestro, the third range presents problems. There, you are basically giving your weak to your opponent.

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You can play disengage-games with them, you can keep your tip around their hilt to confound their ability to take your blade, and all kinds of good stuff like that. But in this case, you are generally reacting to them gaining an advantageous position. I could see an argument that circling helps to overcome this, but I am not prepared to address that argument at this time.

What I tend to hope for is to bait my opponent into gaining my blade, and then perform a disengage or top-quillon parry as I transition into the fourth range. That allows me to go from a slight disadvantage into a large advantage, into stabbing the other guy.

However, there are a lot of things that my opponent can do to take away my advantage, if they initiate that transition into the fourth range. If they use their off-hand, they can just take away your sword, in a similar way to how placing your quillons on their sword would take their sword away. That is bad.

I could try to bring my off-hand into the mix, but if my sword is already extended, I don't gain much by doing that. In theory, I should already be taking away their sword with my hilt, because safety matters more than stabbing the other guy.

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So to sum up - I feel like, for my game, having my arm extended is a disadvantage in the second and third ranges, but an advantage in the fourth range.

Forward arm extension becomes a risky proposition in the fifth range because a fully-extended arm can lead to a double-kill if you don't absolutely own your opponent's tip. And even if you do, it's not unlikely that an extension will lead to your opponent being able to take your tip with their hilt. This becomes a wrestling-game, and nobody likes that except the Germans.

In the sixth range a fully-extended arm means your tip is past your opponent, unless your arm is extended in a particular direction other than forward.

So, why not keep my arm un-extended when in the second and third range, then extend in the fourth?

 There are a couple of ways we could do this. We can point our swords away from our opponent and cut in, which is a tactic I have used for years. But that creates a large cut that my opponent can parry, and then we're playing disengage-games again, and that's no fun. There's a different way!

The plate on the left

Look at that beautiful, beautiful plate. That guard looks so awkward. But it is exactly what we need.

What I propose is to only have our arms extended when it would be advantageous to us. So, we walk forward in a standard approach. We keep our hand back in that Plate 15 guard as we enter through ranges one, two, and three.

As we step forward smoothly into the fourth range, we shoot our arm out, pointing directly at our opponent.

Once again, the plate on the right is the relevant one.

This blocks off the only place that they could put their tip which would be relevant to grabbing their tip with our quillons, which is the end-game we want here. Because safety is key. As a secondary concern, we make sure to keep our tip at liberty and deny blade contact with disengages.

We move forward into the fifth range, and rotate our arm from the shoulder, pushing their sword outwards.

Either plate is relevant here, depending on which direction we're pushing their sword.

If they are refusing blade contact, we push toward their tip anyway to give ourselves a bigger "shield" from our hilt and quillons. We keep our tip pointing toward them, because we want to eventually stab them. We also want to lean in a direction away from their blade, to void as a just-in-case measure and to make sure that we are even safer.

We continue walking forward, having ideally caught and neutralized their sword with our hilt and quillons, riding up their sword.

Coming up an opponent's sword to stab them. This assumes you pushed them down.

At this point they should be thoroughly stabbed, unless they aborted to sudden backwards movement. If that is the case, then extending your arm forward again might be a priority? But only if you're safe. A lunge might also be useful here, because you need to catch them at this point.

That's the whole of the game-plan. It's pretty great, and seems to work decently well.

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A metaphor might be useful here.

The image which has been in my head for this is that you walk forward.

When you get close enough that they could touch your hilt with their tip, you jam your hilt forward.

Then you walk forward, prying their guard open with your hilt.

When you get close enough, you ride their blade up toward their body with your hilt, until your tip stabs them.

So, you "pry them open", in a way.

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So this is actually somewhat similar to some of the more obscure Spanish things I've heard about. For example - that against Italians, a Diestro should keep bent at the wrist until in a good position. Knowing not-really-enough about the issue, it seems like this would deny blade contact in a similar way. Then, as you transition from the second and third range into the fourth range, you can extend your arm and do the things you need to do in order to pry them open and stab them.

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Capo Ferro advises something relevant, actually. He advises that you remain leaned backwards, until you are close enough, at which point you lean forward. To me, this transition in leaning allows you to move from the third range to the fourth range without moving your feet at all. As you perform this lean, you can extend your arm and put your quillons on their tip. This then lets you ride it in with a lunge and stab them in the left eye, as per Giganti.

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This post was inspired in part by reading this article, which compared various methods of "walking fencing". This got me thinking about how when I do Destreza, I use my hilt quite a bit and how Fabris must be similar, given that he sometimes gets called a practitioner of Destreza. Thinking back, I remembered Plate 15, and how many of his stabbing-the-other-dude plates show a strong lock with the hilt, and the arm pushed far away from one's own body.

(Images are from http://www.faegtekunstensvenner.net/SalvatoreFabris/Index.htm, Wiktenauer, or the obvious link)