Further madness. Or, "Gaining the Blade"

BACKGROUND

I've been working my destreza-variant more, and I think I've finally got "gaining the blade" down to an effective, exhaustive, reproducible process. First - pictures.

This image shows how someone can attack to vital areas of the body. We should, for this exercise, consider ourselves to be the person on the left, and our opponent to be the person on the right. For the moment we are ignoring the third dimension. We will get back to it, but for the moment it would merely hinder our explanation.

The area O is the area in which it is hard for our opponent to do anything direct to us. In order to stab us, they need to bring their sword out of O and into either M or C.

So - the triangle labeled C is the area that our opponent can attack through in order to hit us with a straight thrust. This is the type of thrust in which your arm and your sword all become a single line, with no bend at the wrist or elbow. It is the longest-reaching attack, and the fastest as well. However, if we push their tip outside of that triangle, they cannot hit us without making an additional movement to re-position themselves.

The triangles Mt and Mb, collectively called M, are the area that our opponent's blade must reside in, in order to perform a yielding thrust. Yielding thrusts are characterized by maintaining a bend at the wrist in order to "angle around" an opponent's attempt at parrying. However, there is a limit to how far you can "angle around", defined by your sword and the length of your arm. Because of this, if we push any part of our opponent's blade outside of M, they can no longer execute a yielding thrust.

It is important to note that, as you get farther away, the M-triangles get smaller, because your opponent needs to be able to reach you with their blade. The angulation created by having their blade in M reduces their reach, and so they can angle farther around, the closer they are.

This all seems obvious, but by overthinking, we can strictly characterize the positions from which our opponent can stab us.

A straight thrust is characterized by decreasing the angles contained in our wrist and elbow, while raising or lowering our arm from the shoulder or moving forward with the body. In particular, we use this motion to push our hilt toward our opponent. The line followed by our hilt does eventually intersect our opponent's body.

A yielding thrust is characterized by increasing or maintaining an angle in the wrist, while rotating forwards at the shoulder or moving forwards with the body. This angle means that when an opponent attempts to parry, their parry at-best moves your tip toward their body. Here, our hand moves in a line that does not eventually intersect our opponent's body.

From the hand movements here described, we can see that a straight thrust and a yielding thrust are two separate things requiring strictly different movements. They cannot be done at the same time. As such, if an opponent executes one, they cannot execute the other without first arresting their sword's momentum and moving counter to their previous movement.

"A tempo", if you're into that sort of thing.

Okay but for real though, there is one weird edge-case that could be considered both, in which you maintain a bent elbow and lunge forwards, not moving your shoulder at all. It, however, can be defeated by both things that defeat straight thrusts and things that defeat yielding thrusts, so let's move on with our lives, shall we?

Ahem. "A tempo".

In order to defeat these things, we ought to characterize exactly when your opponent can hit you with either of these.

• An opponent can hit you with a straight thrust when 
• Their tip is in C.
• An opponent can hit you with a yielding thrust when
• One of the following is true
• Their hand and entire blade are in either M or C, with no part touching the other area.
• Either their hand or their tip is in M, and the other is in C.

This means that, to defend ourselves, we can either place their tip in O, or make sure that their blade is folded across C, so their hand is in one M-triangle and their tip is in the other triangle.

As we approach, we want to be defended at every single moment. This is the definition of gaining the blade.

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THE THIRD DIMENSION

Hopefully, the way this applies three-dimensionally should be obvious, or at least possible to extrapolate. If not, perhaps this picture of the same two figures, in slightly different stances and from top-view, will help.

Again, this ignores the length of the blade. The angle made by Ml and Mr would need be wider,  if yielding out that far meant that your opponent's blade would not touch you.

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STRATEGERY

When gaining the blade, the first thing we need to do is make sure that our opponent can't execute straight thrusts, because straight thrusts have more reach than yielding thrusts. We do this by, at large measure, blocking them out of C. This is assisted by the fact that, at large measure, the M triangles are very small.

Once we assure ourselves of that, we want to make sure they can't attack with a yielding thrust. This can be accomplished either by blocking their blade across their body, such that the middle of their blade is in C, or by pushing their blade outside of M.

After or during that, we can attack. This can be accomplished by either maintaining their blade outside of M using your quillons, or using timing and positioning to make sure that your strike gets there fast enough that they cannot respond.

One thing that has not yet been noted - body positioning can influence the shape of C and M. If you lower your body, you can change which zone their tip is inside of, even if they don't move at all.

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TIC-TACS

My current flowchart for executing this is as follows.

1. As you enter their large measure, if their tip is inside of C, use a very shallow version of the blade positioning outlined by last post to push their tip out of C.
1. Use spiraling or flipping your blade, as outlined by last post, to follow them if they disengage. (Maybe? Untested.)
2. Their tip is now outside of C. As you take tiny steps into their perfect measure, extend your blade toward their blade, perhaps leaning forward. You should, with your quillons, block their tip from entering C. If you can, make sure your blade is touching their blade.
1. If their tip is in M and their hand is in C or an opposing part of M, with their blade intersecting C, execute a direct thrust immediately, pushing their blade with your quillons. The approach and push should allow you to either push their tip into O, or at least maintain safety as outlined above.
3. Moving forward, angle your blade outwards in the spiraling fashion dictated by last post to block their blade out of M. They now can't hit you until you abandon their sword.
4. Attack, I guess? Ideally while using your off-hand or timing to neutralize their offensive capacity.

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ASSORTED THOUGHTS

This way of looking at things creates a relatively clear expectation of how to attack from measure. Ideally, you can find a line from your shoulder to their shoulder that pushes their blade out of C, while their hand is in the M on the opposing side.

It also creates an interesting way to define some positions where you would want to keep your blade to attack. Essentially, you want to be in a position that optimizes for the largest distance required to push your tip out of both C and whichever section of M your arm is in, or all sections of M if your arm is in C. If we go back to our first drawing, that means your tip (or the point of contact between your sword and your opponent's sword, if you get the chance to control that) should be along one of three lines, drawn in sharpie in the below image.

This is a touch farther out from your shoulder than your elbow,  which makes sense given how many fencing stances feature a bent-at-90º elbow and a blade pointing at your opponent's center-of-mass.

I also wonder about keeping one's arm extended along the line between C and M. This would place your hand at one of the two X marks, and then you would probably put your tip somewhere along the central line.

This line of thought also yields useful things for people with more reach. If their tip is along one of those three lines, they can more effectively feint in a direction and then strike in the other direction, because either attack would require an equal movement from their opponent to defend against.

Entirely separately - the slowness with which it is necessary to progress from large measure to perfect measure is interesting. It puts new context in the Spanish stepping. After all, if you need to slow the forward component of your stepping, why not use that part of it to move sideways and possibly void an attack from your opponent?

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That's sort of where I am, in terms of using one blade against one other blade. Ideally this takes care of the mid-blade disengage problem I was previously running into, because mid-blade disengages are generally dangerous only when they lead to your opponent's tip being in C.

From here, I think I need to map out how to attack more thoroughly than I have previously, and taking into account this somewhat rigid flowchart. I need to see if this style works correctly. If so, I might be able to effectively bring single 37-inch rapier into K&Q next year, which would be interesting.

But yes. It's important to gain blades, and to stab people, and to do all those good things. Closing an essay is hard.