Destreza Thoughts

Given that my previous destreza attempt failed, I have put in some serious thought about why and how it went wrong. I have come up with the following issues.

• The strong atajos I was performing, while seemingly nice, allow for my opponent to push in toward my weak and gain strength, requiring me to respond by parrying.
• My attacks all were based on the position of their tip, which meant that they could position their wrist in a bent fashion and convince me to attack in ways that are easy to parry
• My attacks were easy to parry because they all involved an active push and then a movement that was not necessarily in a place that was hard to parry.

Upon some degree of meditation, I came across the following ideas.

• If I keep my blade in or near contact with their blade with my arm straight, it suddenly requires a larger, remissive movement for my opponent to increase their strength on my blade, which creates tempo for me to act.
• The center of the opponent's blade is the point which is most likely to need to move toward me in a predictable fashion for my opponent to stab me in the fastest possible way, as per my post on Triangular Thrusts.
• In order to stab my opponent, I either need to push through a weak part of their blade, OR I need to move away from their blade in a way that they can't sweep my blade with strength.
• This latter point means that, ideally, you will move at least perpendicularly away from their blade, to make putting the strong of their blade on your blade as difficult as possible.
• The circle didn't feel quite right - it felt too large. The standard circle is centered about on the center of the opponent's blade, which is what we're trying to defend ourselves from anyway.

So, this results in a few different strategic choices.

To take a brief interlude - my standard way of doing things is to try to implement what the period masters specify. If that doesn't work properly, I try to figure out what works. After that, I try to work backwards and see if what I do can be justified by the original text, even if it's a stretch.

So, with that in mind.

The previous insights have led to me to the following:

• Keep my arm outstretched and point it at the center of their blade. My intention is to match the center of my blade to the center of their blade.
• MAINTAIN THE RIGHT-ANGLE-ISH POSITION
• If my opponent attempts to perform a thrust with a disengage, bend my wrist just enough to catch their blade with my quillons.
• If I am not in a position to attack, perform a disengage from my shoulder to switch from one side of their blade to the other, always ending at the center of their blade.
• Step in a circle with the center of the mutated circle on the center of their blade, and the circumference on their sword-arm's shoulder.
• There are three types of attacks:
• Thrust, where I can simply step forward with opposition and stab them.
• This requires an obvious line through to their body.
• Push through, where I take a circling step which opens up a line connecting my sword through their weak and into their body. This thrust is performed by sliding the center of my blade along theirs toward their tip, while stepping in to stab them.
• This requires a place where one can step and get "around" to a position where this sort of push through is available.
• Detachment, where I detach my sword from theirs in a perpendicular line, while stepping away from their blade. Ideally this is done by moving my blade in a line perpendicular to the line which is their sword. Immediately twitch my hilt back to cover the center of their blade, after touching them, to defend myself.
• This is possible when very far "around" their blade.
• Face completely sideways. Don't point your front foot at your opponent. That restricts your movement.

The simplification of the circle is a beautiful thing. It means I have to perform half as many mental calculations. Instead of trying to figure out where to defend and also how to step, both the defense and the stepping use the same circle.

There are some possible permutations and complications. For example, when my opponent has two weapons or uses their off-hand, I might need to cut around their hand. 

The key here is to maintain blocking off the center of their blade from thrusting directly in, which also seems like it should be true for performing other cuts.

As well, when another person adopts this position, it becomes a good idea to start going for thrusts by detachment at their hand and arm. Lastly, I'm not sure how to deal with a German-style Day Guard, where the sword is above the shoulder and the mutated circle is thus small enough to be non-existent.

So, I'll try all of this next practice I am at. We'll see how it goes.

AFTER-THE-FACT EDIT, SAME DAY: Maybe if I'm trying to hand-snipe, I should act on a circle centered on their hands, and switch to the one centered on the center of their sword if I have to make any blade contact? Or maybe hand-snipes are just a shot thrown from the sword-centered-circle, to which we immediately return? Maybe Weak Over and Weak Under are just the same thing as Line in Cross and Narrowing, but the former have a circle centered on the hand, while the latter have a circle centered on the center of the sword? TOO MANY QUESTIONS.

DOUBLE-PLUS AFTER-THE-FACT-SAME-DAY EDIT: There is one more type of attack.

• Disengage through, where we go directly from the middle of your opponent's blade, disengage around their hilt, and then stab them. This one is performed when their sword is far enough off-line that your sword and their sword are at a 90º angle, while being on the same horizontal plane. This ignores the perpendicular departure of Detachment, because there is literally no other way to attack, and they are far enough off-line at this point that you don't really need to worry about them getting their strong on your weak.

OK, I think I'm done now.

Notes from Practices

There were a couple of practices. I write down what happened in them here, so I will remember them better in the future.

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First, I spent time using my old style, described here. It was interesting. As expected, it worked better against people who had not spent time fighting me when I started using that style in the first place. This makes sense - if someone has never had to deal with that extremely specialized game, then they won't necessarily know the specific techniques and principles necessary to counter it.

This makes me wonder if my modern fencing game (vaguely outlined here, though I've never gone through a full description, looks like) is just the latest in a series of finding new things which work against the current meta-game. If so, it means I would need to synthesize my old style and my new style, and figure out more specifically when to use one or the other. Perhaps I should just tack my old style on as what I do in my blade-forward stance. It does, however, show promise in positions that, in theory, I would use my dagger-forward stance against. So that might be a thing.

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After the dismal failure of my simplified bargain-basement destreza at Pennsic, I started thinking about what I could do differently. One primary issue I ran into was that people would instantly respond to large Line in Cross and Narrowing atajos. As such, I wasn't able to attack effectively from them. And sadly, my bargain-basement destreza doesn't take into account the idea that you might push through their sword.

Additionally, the mutating circle seemed like it kind-of worked out. It always felt like I was spending too much time calculating where the circle was in relation to their sword, given that halfway through Pennsic I realized that it would need to resize based on how close to the right-angle position their sword was. This, combined with the fact that in my old fencing style I pay attention to the division of weak and strong in people's swords, led to a minor breakthrough.

The thing I have been trying recently is to center the circle on the middle of their blade. This means that as they lower or raise their blade, the circle gets smaller or larger. Additionally, instead of using Line in Cross or Narrowing as initial positions, I have been using Weak Over Strong and Weak Under Strong as positions. Only instead of trying to keep my tip hovering near their guard, I have just been trying to maintain the middle of my sword against the middle of their sword. This allows me to more effectively control the position of the weak of their sword.

So again - everything I do happens to and centered around the middle of their sword. This is not necessarily the exact middle - this is the division between the "weak" and the "middle" of their blade, as I have described in previous posts that I do not care to hunt for. This just happens to be in the center of many blades, given that many blades have more weak than strong. But that conversation is not super-relevant here.

This new operation of weak-under and weak-over as being things I do to the center of their blade has allowed me to control their sword much more thoroughly. If someone attempts to attack, I twitch my hilt up or down to Narrowing or Line in Cross, and then proceed accordingly. If they don't, then I proceed to attack either by moving my sword toward a weaker part of their sword while I thrust, or by detaching my sword from theirs while I step away from their sword. It is fun times.

tl;dr: I've started using both the point of blade-contact and the center of the circle as the middle of their blade. This has resulted in good things.

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That's all I've got for now. Ciao.

Pennsic Post?

I haven't done a Pennsic post because honestly, I didn't have enough time to really get out there and fence during this Pennsic. It was always far too hot, so even when the field wasn't closed I wasn't really able to put forth my best effort.

There are only really a few points worth mentioning.

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First, my champs fight. I lost against an opponent who out-played me. My head wasn't in the right space, and he has some real estate in my brain from previous encounters. He kept his sword offline up and to the right in a way that my current Fencing Game couldn't deal with. There are two things I could have done to overcome this.

1. Revert to my two-years-ago Fencing Game, in which my response would be to approach slowly with my blade farther off-line to the outside. Then, if he came on-line, I could thrust through his blade. If he remained where he was, I could perform a lunging giarata.
2. I could have brought out my longsword, knowing that he would probably not really have much experience dealing with people who have longer range, and knowing that my Effingham-style longsword techniques are rare to encounter in the wild.

Instead, I attempted to play my current game against him, and my current game apparently doesn't have a good way to deal with an opponent who keeps their sword off-line in that particular way and outranges me. I'll probably over-analyze the fight more when video happens, but that's all I've got for the moment.

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By the Book tournament was interesting. I tried to apply my new Bargain Basement Destreza, and it largely didn't work. I lost my first match soundly and firmly. My second match went 1-1, if I remember correctly, as did my third. My fourth went 2-0 in my favor, and then the tournament was called due to heat.

(Keep in mind that I'm using questionably-incorrect terminology defined in last post here, when I talk about Destreza Things.)

At the start of the tournament, I was trying to step based on a circle centered on my opponent. This didn't work quite as I expected - my opponents were relatively easily able to counter my Line in Cross -> Weak Over Strong and Narrowing -> Weak Under Strong. I think that this is because the "hole" in WOS and WUS is in the same place as the corresponding LiC or Narrowing - this means that moving to the attack would widen an already-existing hole that my opponent could start to exploit during my atajo, and then continue to exploit as I moved forward.

BEGIN DIGRESSION

As an aside, the Mutating Circle was stuck in my head all war as a brain-worm, so the above is applicable to my pickups, too.

I think the correct way to fix this would be to switch Weak Over Strong and Weak Under Strong in my default sequences. That is to say, change my sequences to Line in Cross -> Weak Under Strong and Narrowing -> Weak Over Strong. If I maintain some sort of crossing with my blade and theirs on the attack, this would allow me to plug the opening left by Line in Cross and Narrowing, while simultaneously attacking.

This is essentially the same insight I had about Destreza a while ago, which resulted in me performing windshield-wiper atajos. But I'm dumb sometimes, and I sacrifice correctness on the altar of idealogical cleanliness. Lesson learned.

END DIGRESSION

As the tournament went on, I started migrating more and more toward just using Weak Over Strong and Weak Under Strong, only using Line in Cross and Narrowing as last-ditch parries. I ended up with several victories due to hand-shots, which seems super correct and period given how cup hilts became more and more of A Thing in Destreza as time went on. I also was more and more patient, waiting for my opponent to mess up somehow so I could capitalize on their mistake.

I feel confident that if I had another shot, I could have performed far better in that tournament. I would make sure to warm up this time.

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Lastly, the Mutating Circle in my Italian game. The Mutating Circle was a brain-worm all war. The idea is that, depending on where my opponent's tip is in relation to their shoulder, I should be able to approach and attack in a set of particular ways, as dictated by the circle of Destreza. This is a mixing of historical styles, but it comes with good reason.

Essentially, Italian opposition and blade-coverage doesn't work properly when your opponent has their sword far off-line. This leads to double-kills. Far, far too many of them, if your opponent is good at bringing their sword offensively on-line from an off-line position. This becomes a semi-viable game plan if you happen to be good at defending with your off-hand or off-hand implement. In fact, it's the way I used to fence. Past tense. When I first moved out to the East. It's also an extremely common way to fence in the Midrealm.

The circle of Destreza, as I understand it, is a defensive tool. If you keep your sword toward the center of the circle, covering your opponent's sword and walk around the circumference, you are increasing the distance your opponent's sword needs to travel to stab you, while decreasing the distance between you and your opponent and how far your sword needs to travel to stab them. Since the circle doesn't rely on any particular movement from your opponent, you should be able to step in at any part of the circle and continue as if you had started from the outside.

Image stolen from Black Birds and Blades, which is the second result on Google when I search "viedma circle".

Also, seeing the actual physical version of this that Doroga made was super great, and we nerded out over it for a long while.

So, if my opponent's sword is off to the side, I can step on to the edge of the circle and defend myself as though I have walked around it. Instead of assuming that their shoulder, tip, and my shoulder all lie on the line from A to A, I assume that I'm somewhere off to the right of the circle and step from outside of the circle directly on to point C to the right, imagining that their shoulder and the tip of their sword lie along that A-to-A line.

The problem I have run into is that my opponent can force me into a bad choice, if I step onto the circle at C when my opponent is far off-line, they can thrust with opposition through my sword at my face. This is obviously a bad thing, so I am required to throw a cut or thrust that raises my hilt to defend my face. This opens up my belly, which they can then thrust at.

I *think* that one of two things is happening here.

1. My mental model of the circle is wrong. I think I'm stepping onto C, but I'm actually stepping somewhere in the vicinity of D, but not quite reaching the circle. This means I would need to fix my distance, and perhaps perform a cut while stepping away.
2. My understanding of how I can defend myself is wrong, as per my previous thoughts on Triangular Thrusts. That is to say - the placement of my blade can either defend me high, or it can defend me low, but due geometry I can't defend both.

So, I'll try to work through both of these and see what happens. If the problem is 1, then I need to change my stepping patterns somewhat. If my problem is 2, then I need to start doing Destreza in a Fabris stance, to minimize the amount vertical profile available to my opponent. I've noticed that doing Destreza things in a leaning-forward Fabris-esque stance does make things Just Work Better, though, so I might do that anyway.

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So, those are all of the things I was able to work on at Pennsic. Other topics of interest include:

1. Dealing with huge shields using long swords in singles fights.
2. Dealing with people who understand how to appropriately avoid blade contact when fighting Fabris-ish.
3. Dealing with that position used by my opponent in my Champs fight.
4. Dealing with left-handed people who perform a rising low-line shot.

That's for-realsies all I need to cover for this post. FOR REALSIES.

Lupold's Simplified Bargain-Basement Destreza

Greetings! Yesterday, we had no practice because of imminent Pennsic. As such, I've got nothing to write about! Oh no!

I feel compelled, however, to write about something I've been working on in my head for a while. The gist is that Destreza is written about in an over-complicated fashion. I want to simplify Destreza into a set of clean, easy principles. As such, I plan to herein write a clean, simple, easy pamphlet describing how to fight like the Spanish. I intend to divorce it from the mysticism and geometry that the Spanish use to try to legitimize themselves - this same geometry which over-complicates things and emphasizes the wrong principles.

Yes, this will be an opinion-laden piece. But hopefully, this will either work as an easy intro to Destreza, or it will expose flaws in my understanding. This also serves as a syllabus for a theoretical class that I might teach some day, "Destreza in an Hour".

(As a side note, there should be a few pictures that I make for this post. Due to Pennsic prep, I haven't had time to make them, so we must do without.)

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THE STANCE

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, pointing your arm and sword straight at your opponent's shoulder. You should be profiled with respect to your opponent - that is to say, if you draw a line through your shoulders, it should connect to their sword-arm shoulder.


THE SUMMARY

To win using The True Art, you want to approach your opponent on an arc, as though you are walking around a circle which has you on one side and your opponent on the other. While doing this, you need to offset your opponent's sword to the left or right of your body - this will require subtle adjustment of your blade.

When you get into a safe position, you should attack. There is a range at which you should thrust, one at which you should cut, and one at which you should grab their hilt and perform a movement of conclusion, in which you use your off-hand to neutralize their sword and threaten them with the tip of your sword. If you have a dagger, perform a thrust with your dagger instead of a movement of conclusion in all circumstances.

As you approach, you will need to put your blade from horizontal to more and more vertical, in order to create a bigger "wall" for your opponent to have to get around, to hit you. This vertical width corresponds to the various attacks you can perform at those distances.

Circling your opponent allows you to expose an angle above or below their hilt for thrusts, and allows you to use body movement to get out of the way your opponent's sword's tip. This is why we circle.


ATAJOS

An atajo is a way to keep your opponent's blade to the side, to prevent them from hitting you. There are two main ways to perform an atajo -

• Line in cross
• This simply means lowering your hilt and raising your tip, in order to push them aside or hold them aside with the bottom edge of your sword.
• Narrowing
• This means raising your hilt and lowering your tip, in order to push them aside or hold them aside with the top edge of your sword. This is generally done by loosening your grip, though you can do it by rotating your hand from terza to prima and then using the true edge of your sword.

Masters of Destreza will say that there are eight atajos - this is far too much detail. The eight atajos are line in cross and narrowing when stepping left or right, and when you are on the inside or outside of their blade, for a total of 8 different combinations of these three properties. For the moment, just keep in mind that line in cross means to take with the true edge, and narrowing means to take with your false edge.

Generally, your opponent should only be able to disengage under your hilt for line in cross, and over your hilt for narrowing.

RANGE

Generally, actions in Destreza start from just outside of lunge measure. That means that if you remain standing erect, you should be able to touch your opponent with your tip if you take three shoulder-width steps directly toward your opponent. Some people start doing things slightly closer - two steps away from their opponent. It shouldn't matter in the end - in the end, you should know what you can do no matter where you are positioned, in relation to your opponent.

STEPPING

When taking steps in Destreza, you should move like a knight in chess. So, each step should move you one or two shoulder-width steps to the left or right, and two or one steps forward.

Generally, instead of moving backwards one just steps out directly to the left or right, which increases distance by about one shoulder-width step.

Some Destreza masters close from three-steps-away to two-steps-away with a single shoulder-width step, which then flows into a circling step one way or the other.

DEFENDING

You will move forward, cross your blade next to theirs to perform line in cross or narrowing, and then take a step one way or the other. This will mean that you will either be pushing your opponent's blade, or walking away from your opponent's blade. If you are walking away from it, you should keep your blade toward the center of the circle - Circling around allows you to move closer to your opponent, without coming closer to their blade. If you push against their blade, you should be pushing their blade toward the edge of the circle.

If your opponent moves their tip around your hilt in a disengage above or below your hilt, switch which atajo you are using and push your opponent's blade to the other side of your body than it was on before, while stepping away from their blade's new destination.

You can also step toward their blade's new destination, but I do not prefer this, because it is not as safe.

As an example - you place your blade to the right of theirs, and then use line in cross while stepping around the circle to the left. If your opponent performs a disengage under your hilt, you would continue stepping to the left, move your blade across your body, and take their blade with narrowing. The reason you switch which atajo you use is to prevent your opponent from thrusting below or above your hilt.

This might take you off of the circumference of the circle. This is fine. I will explain how to deal with this in a moment.

CUTTING

In general, you want to perform as much of the cut as possible from your wrist, keeping your arm extended. Sometimes you need to use your elbow a bit - this is acceptable.

ATTACKING

There are two ways to attack. They are:

• Weak above strong
• The last half of your blade is above theirs. At their face, generally, though sometimes at their chest.
• Weak below strong
• The last half of your blade is below theirs. At their flank or gut, generally, though sometimes at their chest.

AFTER-THE-FACT EDIT ON 2016-08-22.

The following is somewhat incorrect. I've been finding that using Weak Over Strong and Weak Under Strong as a stance to remain in is more effective than going for Line in Cross or Narrowing right off the bat. Line in Cross and Narrowing seem to be better to abort to as a defense. As well, the best way to attack seems to be weak-over-strong=>thrust in weak-under-strong or weak-under-strong=>thrust in weak-over-strong. This can be further generalized to line-in-cross=>thrust in weak-under-strong and narrowing=>thrust in weak-over-strong. 

END OF AFTER-THE-FACT EDIT.

Thrusts, cuts, and movements of conclusion can all be performed in both ways. Generally, you want to transition from line in cross to weak above strong, and from narrowing to weak below strong. This allows you to maintain a bit of crossing with your opponent's blade, so you remain safe while attacking. In general, after your opponent parries, you will need to transition to the opposite atajo to foil their counter-attack. So, the flow would be line-in-cross=>weak-above-strong=>narrowing, or narrowing=>weak-below-strong=>line-in-cross. If your opponent doesn't parry, you will probably want to instead return to the atajo you had previously.

There is one special case of the flow in attacking. If you are switching between line in cross and narrowing in order to foil a disengage, you can instead progress directly to the associated attack. So, to foil a disengage, you could go from having the line in cross directly to a weak below strong attack, to strike while they are disengaging.

In general, you should be stepping away from their blade while you thrust, can be stepping away from or toward their blade when you cut, and you should be stepping toward their blade when you perform a movement of conclusion.

In general, you want to avoid blade contact when attacking. This means that when performing a thrust from narrowing, you might have to perform a small disengage with your tip under their hilt. If you are preforming a cut from narrowing, your sword will need to rotate in a full disk-shape above your head to avoid touching their blade. If you are performing a cut from line in cross, you can just lift your tip backwards and perform a cut with half of the disk shape. Again, you want to maintain the crossing of your sword over theirs with the cut, to provide some amount of defense.

To maintain this defense, your hilt should be slightly to the direction of their blade. So, if their blade is to your left, your hilt should be slightly to the left, to force them a little farther away from your body.

For the movement of conclusion, you want to grab from above for weak above strong, and from below for weak below strong.

MUTATING THE CIRCLE

Generally you should consider the circle to be oriented on your opponent, rather than necessarily having it oriented between you. So, the circle is positioned based on your opponent's shoulder and the direction of their tip from their shoulder. This means that if your opponent has their sword pointed straight leftwards, you are not on or in the circle.

In this case, take a step to place yourself on the circumference of the circle. From there, you should already know what to do.

This is true for any position - consider the circle drawn based on your opponent's sword positioning, and act accordingly. If their sword is particularly low or high, you might need to close to a closer range in order to be able to attack safely, simply because that range is the range at which you should be performing an atajo tall enough to defend yourself.

One secret to keep in mind - if you push your opponent's blade with an atajo, you are mutating the circle yourself. This means that you go from one side of the circle to the other, and should proceed accordingly.

GAME PLAN

This is my game plan, when fighting Destreza-against-Destreza.

1. Step forwards until my opponent and I are on my chosen circle. I prefer the two-steps-away distance.
2. Take a 2-left/right-1-forward step, while performing an atajo.
1. If my opponent is performing a disengage, step away from their sword and perform the appropriate attack or atajo.
2. If my opponent is far enough off-line for me to feel safe, step away from their blade and thrust.
3. OTHERWISE, take a 1-left/right-2-forward step and widen my atajo.
1. If my opponent is performing a disengage, step away from their sword and perform the appropriate attack or atajo.
2. If my opponent is far enough off-line for me to feel safe, step toward/away from their sword and perform the appropriate cut.
3. OTHERWISE, take a 2-right/left-1-forward step and widen my atajo again.
1. If my opponent is far enough off-line for me to feel safe, step toward their hilt and grab it, performing a movement of conclusion. Alternately, perform a thrust with my dagger.
2. OTHERWISE, move sideways to get back to a farther-out measure.

My game plan when fighting against non-Destreza is similar, except that the first step is to figure out which part of the circle I am stepping into, based on where my opponent's sword and body are. Then, I skip to the part of the above list corresponding to the range I have entered.

It helps to think of range in terms of what you can do while taking one step toward your opponent, around the circle.

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That is the sum total of how I do the Destreza at the moment. It looks so simple, written out there like that. If you want me to go over this post with you at Pennsic, let me know. I'd be happy to teach my understanding of Destreza to people.