Previous Entry Postmortem

This post isn't really written for other people. It's written for myself. If you gain something out of it, great! If not, oh well. Assuming this doesn't all collapse under the weight of trying to fence well, I'll probably write a part two for the previous entry and correct the incorrect parts of it. Part two would probably be about "barriers" and second-intention actions.

So, I tried a new thing yesterday! It was pretty great. Problems with it include:

• It is vulnerable to a disengage above, below, or around.
• Maybe the correct way to do the thing is to carry their sword past the center lines, and then form a barrier with my sword?
• So, as an example, perform Action 1, then place my hand in a firm diagonal, my hand in Rada's position 6, my blade in Rada's position 4.
• Stepping through helps, but when my opponent is moving that is hard. 
• People were not generally willing to let me get into the range that would allow me to single-tempo thrust in.
• Maybe advance defensively and wait for them to screw up?
• Maybe chain appropriate actions together, forming the aforementioned barrier in between?
• Maybe perform the one action, then learn common second actions to perform afterwards?
• For example, after action 4 on a left-handed person, disengage from high to low and thrust to the flank, either warding with dagger or returning the sword to a defensive posture quickly thereafter?
• Actions 3 and 6 were almost impossible to perform on Italians because I could not get my tip under their hilt.
• This meant that in hilt-low-tip-high positions, I was forced to use actions 4 and 5.
• However, the Step 2 positioning for Actions 3 and 6, and 3 in particular, was relatively easy to turn into Step 4 or an exaggerated Action 1, completely skipping performing Step 3 in the Process.
• So maybe if I can get my sword "behind" theirs, I can rotate through into the final position of the Action numbered plus two or minus two, depending on whether the action is even or odd.
• Odd actions minus two into taking the blade, plus two into attacking by detachment.
• Even actions plus two into taking the blade, minus two into attacking by detachment.
• I'm not 100% sure about staying fingernails-in the entire time. Action 4 felt much more solid when I switched to fingernails-up. I need to try Actions 5, 3, and 6 in various hand-positions more, to see what feels most solid.

Really awesome things with it include:

• These actions seem to not suck defensively, as long as I exaggerate them a bit and move my hilt over as part of Step 4.
• As an example, when performing Action 2, drop my hilt into Rada Position 7 and put my tip in Rada Position 9, to cover the blade better after transitioning them through.
• That's not quite right, but it's close enough for me to remember what I'm talking about.
• This is similar to the above thing about forming a "barrier".
• I was performing the Actions with my dagger by the end, and it worked decently well. It was essentially an Italian invitation, when I did that. My opponent would disengage, but my dagger is quick enough that I could catch them. I was ending in those defensive positions specified above.
• It was actually very similar to how I used my dagger in my sword-refused stance.
• Actions 5 and 8 are hard with a dagger, just because hands don't bend like that. Work on hand positioning.
• The Actions can be performed at any angle, but it's good to have the results of an Action pre-processed. 
• So, you can rotate the cross from the previous post at any angle, and it is still a valid set of actions. The results will just need to be re-processed.
• Eventually I should probably gain an intuitive understanding of this, so I can just act without thinking about the exact angle.
• Or should I? Because having pre-drilled moves is a good thing.
• This is the first time that I've actually felt like returning to the right angle in the center is an advantage. Especially against opponents who play blade opposition, it felt like returning my sword to the right angle helped me to avoid getting effectively opposed, and helped me to be able to perform the Actions as small movements.
• My Action needs to be much, much tighter in Step 2 if I'm starting at the center, rather than if I'm waiting in Step 2. This is if I want the Action to be a single-tempo action, which I always always always do.
• The first step against Italians seemed to almost always be Action 2 or 4, depending on where their tip was. Action 5 would happen rarely, if they drifted off-line as an invitation or attempted to gain opposition on the outside line.
• Against a lefty, the Actions were still 2 and 4, but he kept his blade far to my right, interestingly enough.
• I think the game here is to take actions to bring them closer and closer to the center, until I can take them out of the center under my control.
• Unless they just give me the positioning to take them out of the center under my control. In which case it would be rude not to.
• Elbow-bent positions are bad for me, because they can just launch the blade up a difficult-to-predict line.
• And unless they refuse their blade in a position that allows me to carry them to a location where they cannot hit me. That's also nice.
• I think that with thinking about positioning, I can get to the point where I can successfully perform the Actions and not get stabbed most of the time, so I can start working on taking advantage of the positioning I gain from the Actions.

Side-note - I tend to think about new things in terms of three "percentages" - how often I can perform them without dying, how often I can perform them and gain better positioning, and how often I can perform them and stab the other guy straight out.

Previously, my strategy has been to look for actions in which the first number is as low as possible, while the last number is as high as possible. I'm unsure how much I should value that second number, but that's apparently what I'll need to work on for this. That is also why I have been working with a shorter sword some - it means I can't optimize for that last number, and I am forced to learn how to take advantage of actions which have a high percentage on that second number.

But really, "success rate" in my book is that first number. If I can do a thing and not die, that's great! I can try something again.

So, that was a practice. Yaaay!