Recent Fencing

I've been unhappy with my fencing recently. This almost certainly is because of two things.

1. I became Carolingian Baronial Marshal and we've had new people every three weeks or so, which has caused stress at my "working-on-stuff practice"
2. I became Pennsic Champs Coordinator, and have not been delegating except when truly necessary, because I want to see this whole process through for my first year.

As such, I need to do one of the following.

1. Accept that my (lowercase p) peers will pass me up.
2. Do more work on my fencing than I am used to.

Since I do hate the idea of other people passing me up, that leads to this post, which will be work. This work will take the form of posts focused on how the things that I did worked or did not work, rather than a retrospective of "oh hey, I fought these people, here's how that went".

*****

I have had several things which haven't been working as I want them to.

• I've been successfully adopting 45º angles against people, but they haven't been working out in my favor. Either they void and I lose my line against them, or they manage to place my weak on their strong.
• This has been exacerbated by people hanging out at long range, then waiting for me to act. My game is much stronger when I act first, but knowing that I will act first allows my opponent to dictate the distance by ceding the tempo.
• It almost feels like they are going for a tighter angle than I am. Perhaps I'm just not using good, well-defended angulation?
• My dagger-forward stances haven't felt good. 
• Maybe I need to widen the target angle to 90º?
• Maybe I should give in and get a sail guard.
• I haven't been extending my hilt toward their hilt when gaining the 45º angle.
• Last time I felt good about my fighting, I was doing this.
• This does mean I have fewer angles that feel well-defended.
• But I think that the ones that just feel well-defended without this principle are just bad.

So, the answer is to drill specific things which work on that. I think my focus will be on the last point, with a minor focus on the second point.

Also drilling at home.

So much drilling at home.