LUPOLD'S CREATE-A-STYLE RECIPE SHEET

My intention here is for you to use this to create a style for single rapier or rapier and dagger. I honestly like the idea of using rapier and dagger, because daggers remove a lot of messy infighting situations. Also, a lot of sword-and-dagger styles are more universally-applicable. But single rapier is more basic option which is more educational.

This process will create a static "style" or "stance". An opening position and a set of techniques which "hang together" well. As a note - one master might have multiple of what I'm calling a "style" in their book. But there isn't a good word for an individual one of those, so I'm going to call it a style.

Before we create a style, it is useful to consider what we like to do. Most people have specific actions or positions that their brains and bodies enjoy more than others. Furthermore, our subconscious minds can have a lot of opinions about the correct way to do things, and it is useful to try to take them into account. In my experience, this is usually expressed in a "this feels wrong" way, even when you think that the thing is correct.

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1. EXERCISE: What feels "natural"? Guard and First Technique.

So, as the first step, grab a sword-like object like a ruler or something, stand up, and figure out three things.

a. How do you like to stand in guard?
b. What is the first action that comes to mind to do, from that guard?

As a note, These are intended as quick, rough ideas rather than end products.

Unless you have a very strong ability to visualize an opponent spatially, I suggest taking a photo or video of yourself in each of those positions or movements, with your camera facing you, at head-level or maybe a bit lower.

From there, we start exploring the philosophy of the style we are going to create.

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2. EXERCISE: Consider the above.

a. If the action in 1b was an attack, is it the sort of attack that you would throw while approaching an opponent, or in response to them approaching you?

b. If 1b was not a direct attack, do you imagine it as a response to their action, or as an aggressive movement you perform to take up space?

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Based on your answer to this exercise, the style we are creating will be classified as approaching/receiving, and attacker/defender.

So if the action from 1b was an attack where you take their sword with your dagger, the style we are creating would be an "approaching attacker" style.

If the action from 1b was to gain your opponent's blade hard and see how they react, it would be an "approaching defender" style.

If the action from 1b was a retreating lunge where you parry their sword with your dagger, it would be a "receiving attacker" style.

If the action was to let them come to you and then parry them, it would be a "receiving defender" style.

I personally tend to favor "approaching attacker" and "receiving attacker" styles, but other styles definitely have merit. There are also ambiguities about these classifications, but we're just going to use them as a starting point, so don't worry about it too much.

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From here, the next few steps fork based on the approaching/receiving attacker/defender classifications. At a high level, we're just taking the stance and the first technique, and trying to figure out things which would compliment that technique.

If you don't want to read through this heinously long section, just consider the following:

1. What do I like to do?
2. What can my opponent do about it?
3. What can I do about the thing my opponent does?

If you want to skip all this bullshit, go down to the "SKIP ALL THIS BULLSHIT" section.

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3. EXERCISE: A Second? (and Third?) Technique

A. Approaching

a. Attacker

If you find yourself tending to want to attack, you should consider what positions you expect your opponents to be in. There is no need to be exhaustive. Feel free to imagine some specific fencer as a "default" and proceed from there. If you are not able to visualize your opponent spatially, ask to take a photo of them in guard and use it for this exercise.

If you chose "attacker", then you should consider how you are going to use the attack from 1b to strike your imaginary opponent's openings.

If your imaginary opponent doesn't have an opening which can be reached by that attack, consider how to convince them to open up that spot in particular. This will be the second action of your style. There is a set of questions to help think this through, after this.

If your opponent does have an opening there, consider what the most "obvious" thing for them to do to defend against your attack is. Generally, this is the thing which involves the least movement of the body and blade possible. Consider the following questions from the perspective of where they are when they have defended against your attack.

i. Do they have other openings? If so, are they open enough that you could strike them from your default stance or abort your attack into an attack to that location? Might as well add that in as an attack.
ii. If no clear other openings, is there a place you can push an attack through their sword to maybe hit them? In this case, it is most important to be defended against their sword and disorder them. If you do it enough times, they will need to adapt their guard, and you can return to the first technique.
iii. If no clear openings and their weapon is not available to attack through, are there harassing threats you can make, such as trying for hand or wrist shots?
iv. In a worst-case scenario, look at the next part and crib something from the Approaching Defenders.

Ideally, after those questions, you will have a Second Technique. We'll get back to you, Approaching Attacker!

b. Defender

If you chose "defender", your task is a bit different from the attackers. Your "First Technique" is probably the thing that will happen if your opponent just stands still forever - you bind their blade, or beat it, or go for a disarm, or something like that. Something which gains you space and time, rather than the immediate gratification of stabbing a motherfucker. Regardless - it is usually a proactive action toward their blade. If it is not, then I have failed in my assessment and you should go to the "receiving defender" section immediately.

A receiving defender controls the timing of the bout by the implicit threat they present when approaching. This forces your opponent to do something, anything. Very frequently, this will be an attack.

Get out that photo of yourself. Look at it. Consider where is "open" on you. Is your blade low enough that someone could strike above it to your chest? Is your blade far to one side or the other, making a location for attacking obvious? Keep in mind that there are relatively few "bad" guards. Something that looks like an opening is merely an invitation. It tends to close off other locations, and encourage your opponent to strike at particular openings. This gives you knowledge.

Once you have figured out your most obvious opening, you need to figure out something you can do to defend it. This is generally a large and sword-primary defensive maneuver, like a big ol' windshield-wiper parry or something. It should defend a lot of space and have a large margin of error. You should be able to do it as a reaction without any thought, so it needs to be simple. This is your Second Technique.

After that, go back to looking at that photo. Where is the second most obvious place for an opponent to attack - one which wouldn't be covered by the Second Technique. If you don't see one, move on. If you do, figure out another big ol' obvious parry which feels nice to do, which will cover that opening. That is your Third Technique.

Generally, from that type of big ol' parry or big ol' sword-gain, an attack is difficult. The attack after a big defensive maneuver is improv as much as anything else. Consider what your most obvious attack from the big defensive thing is, and get good at it. Consult the Receiving Defender section for more info.

B. Receiving

As a note - one problem with our game is that in order to win, you have to stab your opponent. This means that in some circumstances, you will need to approach rather than receive. This is especially true when your opponent out-ranges you. It sucks, but it is life.

a. Attacker

As a receiving attacker, your job is generally to convince your opponent to make some kind of a mistake. This is generally done by manipulating time and distance. Moving backwards slowly to make your opponent's attack just a split second slower, or other mean tricks.

Consider what your First Technique is responding to. Is it an attack to your left shoulder? To your belly? to your face? Regardless of what it is, you should look at that photo of yourself in guard. Make sure that the attack you are responding to with the First Technique looks enticing. Stand in front of a mirror, adjusting your guard in small ways to make it look more or less open. The more something is open, the more someone will assume it is bait.

A good complimentary technique for this is a response to something that isn't an attack. The idea here is to increase the amount of cognitive pressure on your opponent, to give them less brain-space to realize that your obvious opening is a trap. Thus, they attack into it, and you can use your First Technique.

Generally, an opponent approaching you goes something like this:

i. They walk up to measure.
ii. They get in guard.
iii. They approach a bit.
iv. They find your blade, increasing their safety a little.
v. They gain your blade in preparation to throw an attack.
vi. They attack.

Between each of those steps is a moment where your opponent's brain is switching gears from one thing to another. And in the moment of your opponent's brain switching gears, they are paying less attention to what you are doing. There are studies to quantify this, but we're just going to leave it at that for the moment.

Choose two of those moments. Make a study of what it looks like when people are finishing up each step in that process. Try to find the rhythm of those actions. Attacking during these moments is all about speed, so try to work on making your attack as fast and efficient as possible, while blocking the most obvious responses. That is your Second Technique.

A good candidate for a Third Technique is to throw an attack from when you are doing these things. So for exmple, you walk into measure and immediately throw an attack without getting into guard.

b. Defender

Receiving Defender - the thing I'm worst at. Also, I'm running out of attention span to write this, so this is gonna be quick.

In general, the receiving defender wants to have the best possible defense. I would say that invitations aren't necessarily in-genre for this style, but two-tempo parry-riposte actions are. The problem with two-tempo parry-riposte actions is that generally, your opponent has an idea of how they are going to exit if their attack fails. Fortunately, most opponents don't think much beyond that.

Look at the photo of your guard. Imagine your opponent attacking, and then you performing the parry which is your First Action. From there, imagine the fastest, most obvious, most direct attack. Then, imagine what your opponent can do about that attack. Consider what you can do to counter this.

In general, an opponent will retreat or otherwise desperately try to parry after their attack fails. You will need to run them down. You will need to practice the timing of people's desperate parries, and ways to get around them or through them. It is a hard time, being a Receiving Defender.

You will also need to integrate one or two more parries into your game, because it is unlikely that a single parry will be enough. Do the same exercise of running through a layer or two of chess-game of what your opponent can do. When doing this, try to keep broad strokes - if you can, try to make sure your actions work against a wide variety of parries and counter-attacks.

In-fighting is a strange and mysterious thing, but it can be useful here. As can dagger-thrusts.

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"SKIP ALL THIS BULLSHIT"

So, you have constructed the skeleton of a style. Yay! What do you do with it?

Bring it to practice and make a specific intentional effort, every practice, to use it against at least a few people. Note down how you get stabbed. Fencing has a lot of variance to it, so it takes a lot of examples of a thing to get good data.

Keep in mind - this is a good situation for the use of plus-minus-plus. Because with too many areas for improvement, it is easy to forget about one thing before it is dealt with.

After practice, think about one of the ways you got stabbed multiple times. Or try to think about situations that maybe look like you could have taken advantage of something. Try to figure out which of the following categories it fits in:

1. I can make a small adjustment to my guard or how I perform a technique, and I will be able to stab/not get stabbed.
2. I can make an adjustment, but that adjustment will open a hole in my technique that can be exploited.
3. My style is completely unprepared to deal with this.

If something falls in 1, that's great. You can make that adjustment.

If something falls in category 2, it is likely that you will need to add a technique. Stealing something from the four sections above might be useful. Especially from the sections that do not match your style.

If something falls in category 3, adding a technique might help. However, it is possible that you have run into a central problem in fencing, and you will need to make larger changes beyond the scope of this article. Running into this sort of problem is usually what causes me to read historical masters or try to make up a new style or any one of a thousand questionably-useful things.

One key thing - each practice, only make at most one adjustment to the style you are working on. Again - fencing is a high-variance sport, so you need a lot of data of a narrow set of things in order to draw good conclusions. For examples, I believe that the posts tagged "Focused Work" are where I wrote about that on this blog.

Ideally, try to keep the number of techniques in the style as low as possible. Studies show that when someone is trying to react to a larger set of cues, their reaction time slows down. As well, that point I keep harping on about fencing being a high-variance sport. Doing 100 techniques a single time each gives very little data except "it is possible for this to work". Doing 3 techniques 30 times gives a reasonable distribution of what is or is not working.

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It is important to note as well - you don't need to stick rigidly to the techniques. There will always be improvisation after the initial clash of blades. But understanding the first things you do extremely well allows for a better understanding of what comes later, and allows for better improvisation.

GOOD LUCK.

If you want an example of a constructed style, I can provide a link to one. But I'm not gonna do that right now, because I want to go for a run.

Smash Bros, rather than Fencing, and Hard Reads

 It has been a long time since I made a blog post! Let's make one today.

Since the pandemic started, I have been doing basically zero fencing. A little bit of stray fencing work here and there, but no consistent practice and nothing really useful for improving my fencing. But what I have been doing is playing Smash Bros Ultimate.

Smash Bros is a series of fighting games unlike any other. It is highly air-focused and mobile, and has mechanisms in place to put penalties on too much defense and too much offense both. There are a ridiculous number of characters. I play one named Ridley.

Ridley is a giant space-demon-bird. He is a large character, but not heavy - in real terms, that means it's easy to hit them with attacks and relatively easy to kill them at low health. He is a little bit slow, but he has a decent amount of range on his abilities. He is a high-risk-high-reward character.

The reason I say all of this is to talk about a thing called a "hard read".

A hard read is when you do something based on what you think your opponent is going to do, but hasn't done yet. This comes up in fighting games a lot. Characters in fighting games move much faster than people do in real life, and in fighting games people usually have many fewer choices of action at any given time, versus in real life.

Playing Ridley requires a lot of hard reads, but he has the tools to restrict most characters' choice-space in order to let them make those guesses. As well, played correctly you can minimize the cost of failed reads in order to open up your opponent to different guessing games.

Hard reads exist in fencing, too. The place I would say the concept exists most is in Destreza-esque fighting.

When fencing Destreza, one spends a lot of time with their arm fully-extended. This is good, in that it allows you to gain better opposition and have a strong defensive posture. But it makes life more difficult for attacking. Most attacks from a Destreza-esque posture require an opponent to be at a very specific distance - doubly so in a non-C&T SCA context.

This is because we have fewer joints to un-bend for the action of making an attack. When extending into an attack, we need to make sure that it is going to contact in the "line" of the assault. For a thrust, this is forward along the direction of the blade. For a cut, this depends on the particular sword. Regardless, the elbow and shoulder, working together, can radically reposition the attack at any point.

For Destreza, this is not as much the case. For a thrust in LVD, an opponent stepping slightly in one direction or another can completely mess up an attack. Where an Italian might be able to launch an attack that could hit at anywhere along a few feet of length, a Diestro has maybe a foot of length which can really strike at most, if not even more like a point.

This means that a Diestro has to predict exactly where their opponent will be. This is difficult, since in SCA rapier we generally aren't allowed to physically interpose objects to restrict our opponent's movement. So, we need to guess.

In order to not just lose all the time, this means we need to minimize the cost of a failed guess - that is to say, our defense must be impeccable. In general, when planning an assault in Destreza, I try to make sure that my opponent won't be able to attack me when I attack, regardless of if they are moving backwards or forwards. The right-angle position and extended arm help with this, because they cover so very much space, but they are not perfect by any means.

Bored of writing now, time to be done.

One Fact of Tall Versus Short

As a long-time tall fencer, tall-ologist and tall-ographer, I have opinions on the tall-versus-short fight. We recently, at my practice, ran an exercise to demonstrate the differences in mechanics between being tall and being short. This inspired me to write down some thoughts I have had for a while.

Behold this beautiful drawing I have made.

Here we have Doroga, with his arm in a sling, versus Remy, with abs and a swole arm.

I have drawn many lines on this drawing. The rough sketch is of two fencers, a tall fencer and a short fencer. The teal line connects their shoulders - it is the line around which all blade engagement is centered. We’ll get back to that line in a bit.

The pair of red lines are the lines on which Remy could attack at full extension and hit a vital area. Any farther outwards and he will not hit Doroga in a vital area.

The pair of orange lines are the same for Doroga.

The orange and red arcs between their respective lines are an arc showing the relative distance gained or lost by raising the blade from the shoulder, with arm and blade fully-extended. The arcs assume that Remy and Doroga have the same arm-plus-blade length, which will be important later.

The dark blue line is the shortest line for Doroga to hit Remy. Similarly, the light blue line is the shortest line for Remy to hit Doroga.

If one is approaching, it is important to cover those lines first, because those will be the lines that your opponent will plan to attack first from out of measure. Anything deeper requires more time, and thus will give you more time to plan a defense.

As such, it is important to cover those lines first. One way to do this is to attack through the line, in such a way that at the point of contact with your opponent’s body, your blade will still be crossing the line of shortest ingress.

The rest of this post assumes that you accept that the above is true. Or at least, true enough.

For Doroga, this means attacking at just about any target below the teal line. For Remy, this means attacking at just about any target above the teal line.

This presents several difficulties for Remy. Doroga has a lot less head than he has body. This is simple human anatomy - the area above the shoulder is smaller than the area below the shoulder.

Doroga is fortunately attacking Remy’s body. This means he has much more valid target area to hit than Remy does, both in terms of width and length. He can afford to be sloppier.

This partly explains a trend that I have seen. People who practice Destreza and other styles which involve standing straight are usually taller humans. Given that most “true” attacks in Destreza involve pushing through your opponent’s sword to attack their body, it makes sense that taller people would have more success with the style, given the above.

I have also noticed that, with some exceptions, most people who practice the Fabris’s fencing style are shorter humans. Given that the Fabris stance leans forward, refusing the lower body, this makes sense.

Perfect Practice and Fencing

This post is a comment I made in response to a question someone had on Facebook about "perfect practice" and how to get feedback about if an action is correct. This was my comment, after thinking about it for a day or so.

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tl;dr: I engage in minimax, and constantly work to improve the accuracy of my model of positions and of possible moves. "Correctness" of a drilled action can only be defined in those terms. "Perfect practice" is the improvement of one's theory and execution of that theory.

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I'm vaguely sorry about this, but I wrote a bit of a novel.

Most of my work in rapier has gone into my ability to classify positions, my opponent's possible options from a given position, and the optimal move for a given position. This lets me figure out if a position is good or bad, aside from the Boolean of "they hit me", "I hit them", or neither.

There are an infinite number of positions that two fencers can be in, with respect to each other, in rapier. Many of the differences between them don't matter. So what I try to do is find the boundary conditions among the set of positions which actually matter.

In terms of fighting - this gets boiled down to half-conscious rules and mnemonics. "If their sword is near the center-line, their tip's position means more than if it's way off-line", that sort of thing.

So, I have developed that list of positions. It is imperfect, which is fine. From that list, I develop the list of actions that a fencer can take, and the list of positions that it can result in, with special focus on positions that I recognize as leading to their victory. And my victory, too, but theirs is more important.

Once I have the list of positions and possible moves, I can observe and decide what the correct action is in a given situation. This context defines whether an action is "right" or "wrong". This is why, when drilling at home, I generally visualize an opponent with a sword, because their position dictates whether my move was "correct".

Every time I lose, it's because I misjudged what position my opponent was in, or misjudged the valid moves from that position. Or I physically failed to do the right thing, which also fits in the category of "misjudged the valid moves" because if I can't get my body to do a thing, it's not a valid move.

This is why my concept of "a tempo" being the minimum amount of time it takes for someone to perceive their opponent and begin to execute a response is so important. Without it, the game can't be formalized in this fashion.

In fencing, as with any real-time game, we are acting with outdated information. We act, and we act, but the fact that the brain takes about 120ms to intake information and another 80ms to output a response to our limbs means that we are always acting with information that is at least a little outdated.

But this allows us to formally isolate moves into atomic units. That allows us to separate out positions. From there, we are able to anticipate our opponent's possible movements from a given position, based on their possible moves.

Keep in mind that our information about what we are doing is always a little more up-to-date than our information about what our opponent is doing. We know our current position, but we only know our opponent's previous position because we haven't perceived their current position yet.

This is further complicated, because even the brain isn't one unit - frequently my body will do correct things without "me" telling it to, and I'll have to suss out whether what I did in a situation was correct or not. And if it wasn't, I have to suss out why I did it, in order to figure out how to communicate to my hind-brain that a different action is better.

I could go even deeper, but I'll spare everyone the essay.

This whole structure is what allows me to dictate if a move was "right" or "wrong". If I don't understand everything here and have full positioning context, then "right" or "wrong" is meaningless. Sure, there are some things that are universally good or bad - rolling one's ankle is just a bad way to take a step. But beyond very a very simple set of things, we need all of this to determine if a movement was "correct".

...I think I should probably copy/paste this into my blog as a post.

Seven Layers of Tactical Decision-Making

Pennsic was good, but I don't want to talk about that.

I went to practice yesterday, and it was frustrating. I couldn't figure out why things weren't working right, until I was leaving practice talking to Rowan, and I realized that I had completely forgotten to implement a coherent strategy all practice. Like, at all.

Some background - in the way I think of fencing, there are several levels to the game. They are interconnected, and the boundaries between them can be fuzzy sometimes, but they go something like this, from bottom to top:

• A physical movement.
• This is something like "extend your arm" or "step left while turning your shoulder behind you", or even could be "perform a lunge" or "execute a giarata". At this level of consideration, your concern should be primarily internal. Are you doing the thing correctly? Could you do it more efficiently? Is it happening in the way you envisioned it?
• This is where most solo-drills live.
• A technique.
• This is the point at which we consider that we have an opponent. A technique is different from a movement in that the way you perform it changes based on the positioning of yourself and your opponent. Here, we're not considering edge-cases or weirdness. We're considering performing the technique, and it going correctly.
• This is where most pair-drills aspire to be.
• A specific implementation of a technique. (I will call this an operation, henceforth)
• This is where messy stuff comes in. There are idealized versions of techniques, but there are a lot of squishy places where the technique "goes wrong", or your opponent does something unexpected. This can be anything from "oh shit, my opponent disengaged at the exact same time I did my thing" to "my opponent isn't letting me get them firmly within the bounds of the technique, so I need to figure out how to modify or adapt the technique to make it work given what they are letting me have".
• This is what we consider when our opponent is staying too far away, or not giving you as strong opposition as you want, or they are pushing on your sword way harder than you expect them to. Doing this part well in a bout tests the boundaries of your knowledge of techniques. Will this work here, or will it fail here?
• This is where I personally get stuck on period manuals. "Oh, but what if they have a weapon that's longer or shorter? How does that change things? What if they do this obscure thing? And that other one?" It's somewhat exhausting, really, and I really wish more period masters covered possible variations more thoroughly.
• This is also covered in pair-drilling, but it's hard to actually get people to focus on it when they're concerned with "doing the drill right". Frequently people think that the problem is with them, rather than trying to vivisect the technique to figure out what makes it tick.
• This is closer to what I consider an "exercise" rather than a "drill".
• The possible results of an operation. I guess you could call this "an exchange"?
• This is where one considers the places your opponent could be after you do your technique. "After you do your technique" is a vast over-simplification, though. Humans have a constant loop of perception and action going in their heads. As well, different types of perception happen faster than other types - you can react to a sound faster than to a sight, and faster still to a touch. This is neurochemical truth, and unavoidable.
• Back to the point here - there is a small gap between what you perceive and the actual state of the world. There is another small gap between the decision to perform an action, and your muscles implementing that action. This layer of the tactical process is all about considering what you can perceive during your operation, and what that could mean in tactical terms.
• I call the aggregate time of those two gaps "a tempo". Many people disagree with me, including period masters. I call it such because it is the smallest amount of time that you can be sure that your opponent will not react to your action. They might predict what you are going to do, and they might even predict when you're going to do it, but they won't REACT to the action because it is physically impossible.
• An example is in order here. I am so, so sorry.
• If you are attempting to find your opponent's blade by making contact with it on the high inside line and your blade doesn't touch it when you expect it to, what could they be doing?
• They could have yielded around, moving their hilt away from the line but keeping their tip on-line.
• They could have performed a disengage or a disengage-attack.
• They could be performing a half-disengage or low-line attack.
• Or, they could have pulled their blade back entirely, either by pulling far backwards or by performing a moulinet.
• (Or they could perform some bastard combination of the above.)
• The job we have here is to figure out, given the small amount of information we have (DID NOT FEEL SWORDS TOUCH) what we should do in order to infallibly not get stabbed. The swords-not-touching is the very first information we receive that Something Is Not Going According To Our Initial Operation. In some cases, the correct thing to do might be to wait until we see what they are doing with our eyes, instead of acting prematurely.
• I'm disregarding the idea that someone might disengage earlier because I'm currently assuming that we're acting
• In this particular case, I feel relatively comfortable (with my tip-heavy blade) doing a mid-blade rotation from my wrist to place my tip low and my hilt to the left, creating a descending cut. That rotation lets me avoid acting directly counter to the original gaining motion, which would be slow. That descending cut will catch everything except for the fourth option there, and the fourth option will take enough time to complete that I can perceive that it is happening soon enough to counter it.
• This leads to the next blossoming perception loop, in which we perceive if our opponent has been caught by our cut. And, if not, why not and what can we do about it?
• This is where tactics get interesting. As you can see from the above example, the tree of possibilities blossoms too quickly to map out exhaustively. Especially for beginners, this is where having a coherent style Matters A Lot. Most period masters are relatively congruent and cover most situations pretty fully. Even if they don't cover a specific situation, there's probably something in their manual that is relevant and can be adapted to fill the gaps. They usually aren't exhaustive in enumerating possible results, however.
• Thibault's manual covers this really, really well. In excruciating detail, really, which is why it's So Damn Long. He's one of few period masters who does this, as far as I know. Fabris does a bit as well, but not nearly as exhaustively. Meyer, Capoferro, and other period masters sort of cover this, but not at the level of exhaustiveness that would be useful.
• Drills tend not to be designed cover this. The Capoferro Hierarchy Drill covers this somewhat, which is why it is such a good drill.
• This is the first layer that you can lie at. When a more experienced fencer does a half-lunge at a range that they can't stab a newer fencer at, they're lying here. They are telling the newer fencer that they will get stabbed, and the newer fencer, hapless as they are, believes it and jumps, giving the more experienced fencer the opportunity to stab them.
• Perception of these lies is what I believe to be the hallmark of a no-longer-beginner fencer. A lack of reaction to these lies is essential to fencing correctly, and is one of the most pernicious mistakes that even skilled fencers make. This isn't to say you shouldn't move at all - something that is a lie can also be a way to reposition for a different technique. And that can lead into jockeying for position. However, a twitch "HEY I'M THROWING A LUNGE" from out of measure is different, and responding to that is evidence of a deficiency in someone's fencing.
• I tend to call things that cover this "exercises" rather than drills. I think this is what most people use slow-fencing for. I tend to want to do them at-speed, because it's easy to accidentally react faster than possible when you're operating at 1/4 speed. Though, a case could be made for slow-fencing in that if your opponent predicts what you're doing and when you will do it, they could move that fast.
• A set of tactics, or the techniques you plan to engage in and the operations they can flow into.
• This is what I view as the highest useful level - a game-plan of what can be done. A good game-plan assumes that your opponent will do the thing that is the worst-for-you possible smart move that is based on them reacting to you or you reacting to them. Here, we are not yet thinking about predicting our opponent's action.
• This is what I forgot to have in mind yesterday.
• A basic Italian set of tactics would be something like this:
• Get in a backwards-leaning guard just out of both you and your opponent's lunge measure.
• If they manage to step forward and lunge or pass at this stage, execute a single-tempo or duo-tempi parry/riposte.
• Take a small step forward with your front foot and find their sword to the inside or outside, whichever occupies more space
• If they disengage, find their blade to the other side. Your hilt should be low enough that they can't strike to your body under your sword.
• Complete the small step with your back foot, leaning forward and progressing your find to a gain.
• If they disengage here, you can probably just lunge and stab them.
• Lunge and stab them through the eye.
• If they do an oh-shit emergency parry at this stage, they probably have to come off-line enough that their sword isn't a threat any more. Execute a tiny disengage around their hilt and stab them in the chest.
• That set of tactics is very basic, and doesn't address everything! It says nothing about if your opponent uses their off-hand or an off-hand implement, nor does it say things about if your opponent does weird things to gain your blade from below. It's a basic framework, and as time passes more things get hung from it. Maybe it has a deep strategic deficit which means the person using it will always lose if someone does a very particular sequence of actions. Who knows! Diagnosing these problems and searching through them is what I fucking live for, in this sport.
• Being a cold and ruthless killer means living at level and trying not to go to a higher level of tactics. This is the level at which things work well and consistently. Above here, we get to strange games of anticipation and then knowing your opponent. If you allow yourself to get sucked into those, it allows you to be lied to. If your opponent can firmly convince you that something is going to happen, then they do something else, then you will lose to them. It's a game of "who can lie better", and I think it's best not to play because there will always be a better liar.
• This is a very Spanish sentiment. The Spanish abhor lies and feints. I happen to agree with them philosophically, though I don't necessarily agree with their system.
• On the other side of things, Giganti and Capoferro wax rhapsodic about how the pinnacle of fencing is deceit. Many people agree with them, and do quite well with it. I will not say they're wrong, but it feels like a shallow end to the game. I'd rather work on perfecting my strategy, since that is universal.
• Fabris is the only person who really covers this in any depth, as far as I know. This is essentially all of what Fabris's Book Two is. He lists six game-plans with single rapier, and then four game-plans with sword and dagger. He then flow-charts out what you should do based on your opponent's reactions. I wish he had explicitly stated where these tactics don't work, and when to abandon them for other things. He says it in the positive sense, but I wish he said it in the negative sense more often. I understand that hubris is period, but still. 
•  Tactical Deceit
• This is the level at which you create and break expectations in people. It's very useful, and relies on finding quick rock-paper-scissors exchanges. Generally, this is implemented on the offense - I execute attack A, letting you execute defense A. Then I do it again. The third time I start off looking like I'm doing attack A, but then switch to attack B, which defeats defense A.
• Some basic patterns here include:
• A-A-B
• A-B-D
• In general, "do one thing until you don't do it"
• In general, "do a progression then skip a step in that progression"
• This can be done defensively, I guess? But it's much weirder, and relies on your opponent being more on-the-ball and taking your bait. This is something that Maija Soderholm talks about in her book, "The Liar, the Cheat, and the Thief", but I have not worked with that book enough to comment on whether the thing she speaks of is different from what I try to do.
• The way I try to do this is the German way - making the final technique a "masterstroke" that counterattacks the "expected" technique, but also defends against all other direct, single-tempo attacks. It's not the easiest to set up, but it allows us to implement this level while still staying true to the principles of the previous level. Even doing that though, this level should still be subsidiary to Tactics.
• You work on this by fighting a bunch of pickups, over and over again, forever. Soderholm's book has many drills to work on it, but I have not even attempted these drills.
• Personal Knowledge
• This is the level of "Oh, Remy is really good at in-fighting, so I should do this particular thing." Or "Lupold likes to snipe, so it'd be good if I bum-rush him." It's all about knowing who you are fighting.
• This is a level I do not like to rely on. It relies on using what you know of people to stab them. However, they might know that you know these things, so they might be expecting you to do a thing. But if you know that they know that you know, then you can do a different thing. But if they know that you know thaewnlkweanglakewnflkseanf newlafEWANFIAWNFLAENDFLKFNADFKLNFKLANDSF
• As stated, I don't like it because it can spiral infinitely. Now, if you can execute tactically sound operations which don't leave openings and Just Happen to strike at places you know your opponent is weak, you can do that. In fact, I encourage it. It should be subsidiary to Tactics, however.
• This all boils down to understanding what parts of The Game Of Fencing you understand better than your opponent. If you know this ahead of time, it might give you an edge. Might. In reality, I think it's best to just fight your fight and diagnose things from the flow of the fight, rather than from outside knowledge.
• Of course, if you are attempting to create winning Pennsic Champions pairings, this skill is super important. This skill is what lets you look at a fight and figure out who is more or less likely to win.
• Personal knowledge of yourself is important, though - it's good to know what parts of the game of fencing you are more or less strong at. In a tournament, it lets you attempt to lead bouts away from those areas. For example, if I'm not strong at in-fighting, I can stay at a distance. In training, it lets you decide what to beat your head against until you understand it better. This means improving every level below this one in that area of the game.
• In training, if you rely on this too much, then you and your opponent might, over the years, descend into a shallow sub-game of the overall game of fencing, in which you both attempt to hammer at a particular part of the game of fencing. This is why R&D is important - R&D is what happens when you try to break out of your known "best" fight and branch out, to try to find other techniques that are effective or useful in your overall game.

 So, that's the full breakdown of "What is Tactics", from my perspective. Hopefully it's useful to someone other than me. Hell, hopefully breaking it down like this is useful to me. The short version of the list is:

• Movements are smaller than,
• Techniques are smaller than,
• Operations are smaller than,
• Exchanges are smaller than,
• Tactics, which should be your focus above all,
• But if you can use Deceit you might as well,
• And if you can use Personal Knowledge then why not.

 I feel like I could do better. Like, making that into a poem? Seems like effort.

Bored of writing now, so I'm done.

Teaching a Class!

I'm teaching a class at EK 50 Year, about how swords work in terms of rigid systems!

It takes stuff from a few papers and adapts them to a slightly more utilitarian perspective, rather than the most-expressive-in-least-space form that the papers outline. It is available here:

CLICK ON THIS LINK CLICK ON IT.

Six Elements Theory

Practice Monday night kinda sucked.

tl;dr: I work through a theory of fencing in this post. If you want to, you can skip to the end and just skip back if something doesn't make sense. I don't mind!

I was trying to work on my recent "6 elements of attack" theory. Essentially, I argue that there are 6 types of attack, and to be defended you must defend against all six of them. Each one has a corresponding way-to-defend, and so an ideal defense includes all six elements of defense. And an ideal attack contains as many of the six elements as possible, to try to take advantage of any flaw in defense.

This post, I want to work on building up this idea which has been in the back of my head. This involves going through all possibilities related to it and branching out ideas,  until we have covered everything necessary for it to be useful.

Those elements of attack are:

• Technique: Attack to absence. In general, the Italians call this a "disengage". Super obvious. When your wrist moves your tip in a circle in front of you, dipping past your opponent's tip or pommel. I call this "attack to absence", since it's literally moving your sword to the place that their sword isn't and attacking.
• Technique: Yielding around. That thing where someone pushes their hilt "outwards", perpendicular to the line between two fencers, while moving their tip "inwards" toward that line.
• Technique: Pulling out. This is when someone's sword moves in a way that moves the tip away from your shoulder, meaning that their tip can get around your sword. If their sword is below your shoulder, this can mean a move straight down. The key here is that the attacker's tip (or pommel in really really really weird circumstances) is the one that makes way for the defender's sword, whereas in Attack to absence, the attacker's tip stays forward, but the blade makes its way around the opponent's tip or hilt. This also means that some things which would normally be called a "disengage" would be considered to be this technique, too.
• Technique: Opposition. This is when someone uses a stronger part of their blade to push through a weaker part of your blade.
• Technique: Attack to slowness. This is when someone attacks right next to your hilt, meaning you can't parry them with your blade. This is mentioned in several manuals, but Fabris is notable for how he talks about doing it.
• Technique: Feinting. This is a weird meta-technique. This is when you half-attempt one of the above techniques in order to attempt to "draw out" a response which leaves an opening. Usually this is done by Italians using disengaging, since the Italian counter to a disengage leaves you open to a second disengage. Note that a feint can be intended to create a small advantage, and further feints can be designed to create slightly larger advantages until you are stabbed, which is why you need to react to a feint. Just, you need to react smaller, as we will cover later.

And the elements of defense:

• Technique: Attack to absence.
• Countered by: Cutting to the reverse. Italians do this by default when changing lines, since their hand stays largely in the same place, but their blade moves. In general, you want to cut in a way that gets as close to perpendicular to their blade when your blades impact. This can be weird sometimes.
• Technique: Yielding around.
• Countered by: Pulling your hand away from the center line or back. This is what happens when an Italian executes a "transport". It also happens in Thibault a few times. This can be done by moving your hand backwards and maintaining your blade's angulation, or it can be executed by moving your tip backwards by moving your wrist. The former is probably better.
• Technique: Pulling out.
• Countered by: Following their blade. This means you need to extend your tip farther, or move forward, or lean, or something to prevent them from getting "out".
• Technique: Opposition.
• Countered by: Coming off-line with contact. If you let your tip come off-line, you can refuse them contact with weaker parts of your blade, or at least force them to come off-line as well if they wish to try pushing through your blade. This happens a lot in various dialects of LVD.
• Technique: Attack to slowness.
•  Countered by: Voiding / Pushing. This is changing the relationship between your sword and your body, usually by pushing your sword in one direction while moving your body in another. You can also do just one or the other of those - a sideways void while not moving your sword counts as this, so long as your sword or hilt is between you and their blade. Fabris does this a lot, too, but more on this later.
• Technique: Feinting.
• Countered by: Keeping your previous line closed. This means that if someone is in a position and they move to disengage, your action needs to defend against both the line that you previously had closed, as well as the line they seem to be attacking on now. It amounts to knowing exactly what you are defending against, and how they can take advantage of your openings. Honestly, it boils down to good technique.

In theory, those should be the basic elements of fencing. Unfortunately, time is a thing too, and frequently we can't perceive what our opponent is doing until they are finished doing it. So we need to figure out how to perceive these six techniques as early as we can.

• Technique: Attack to absence.
• Defensive cue: Sudden lack of blade contact. Their blade is completely and very suddenly gone!
• Countered by: Cutting to the reverse.
• Technique: Yielding around.
• Defensive cue: Change in direction of blade pressure. This signifies that they are no longer trying to push through your blade, and now want to get around it and let your blade fall toward their hilt.
• Countered by: Pulling your hand away from the center line or back.
• Technique: Pulling out.
• Defensive cue: Avoiding blade contact. It's hard to pull out or away when blade contact has been established, so the best way to pull out is to avoid it in the first place. This can be accomplished by maintaining distance, using a refused stance, or moving their blade parallel to yours.
• Countered by: Following their blade.
• Technique: Opposition.
• Defensive cue: Movement toward your blade. This is what allows them to push through. This can be accomplished by snaking around behind your sword, too, which is an altogether more effective way of moving toward your tip.
• Countered by: Coming off-line with contact.
• Technique: Attack to slowness.
• Defensive cue: Coming on-line with your hilt. There is no reason they would do so otherwise, since coming on-line with your hilt leaves them terribly open to counter-attacks.
•  Countered by: Voiding / Pushing.
• Technique: Feinting.
• Defensive cue: Attack that could not succeed / is too far away. If your opponent couldn't actually strike you if they followed through on their newly-attempted attack, it has to be a feint. Anything else is committed enough that it can be countered. In general, this is dictated by distance. Note that you still need to act on a feint, since a feint can be used to cover for a movement toward a better position, but the action you need to take is different.
• Countered by: Keeping your previous line closed.

But even beyond this, we need to be able to confirm to ourselves that our defense succeeded, even as we prepare our next defense and consider executing our next attack.  Fortunately for us, none of these defensive techniques is mutually exclusive with any others. As well, most of these are touch-based cues, which are processed faster than visual information.

• Technique: Attack to absence.
• Defensive cue: Sudden lack of blade contact.
• Countered by: Cutting to the reverse.
• Success cue: Hard, sudden rotation-ceasing blade contact. A disengage is a quick movement, involving moving your tip as fast as it can move. This will result is a sharp, clanging impact that will reduce the amount that your sword is rotating.
• Technique: Yielding around.
• Defensive cue: Change in direction of blade pressure.
• Countered by: Pulling your hand away from the center line or back.
• Success cue: Smooth, sliding blade contact. The yield doesn't have a huge amount of force to it in general, and hopes to make its way using reach rather than strength. So a yield, when blocked, presents nice, smooth contact.
• Technique: Pulling out.
• Defensive cue: Avoiding blade contact.
• Countered by: Following their blade.
• Success cue: Continued pressing contact. When pulling out, they are presenting you with their weak. You will be able to feel your weak pressing against their weak.
• Technique: Opposition.
• Defensive cue: Movement toward your blade.
• Countered by: Coming off-line with contact.
• Success cue: Sudden reduction or stasis in pressure. Either they will match your force by winding behind your sword, or they will not get there in time and the possible pressure they can exert will diminish as you move your stronger part of your blade closer to their weaker part.
• Technique: Attack to slowness.
• Defensive cue: Coming on-line with your hilt.
•  Countered by: Voiding / Pushing.
• Success cue: Thudding impact. This impact will not result in your blade rotating, really, since most of their force will be focused forward toward your hilt and body.
• Technique: Feinting.
• Defensive cue: Attack that could not succeed / is too far away.
• Countered by: Keeping your previous line closed.
• Success cue: Smaller versions of other defensive success cues. Less pressure, that sort of thing.

Of course, attacking is necessary to win a bout. So we need to figure out the minimum cue to understand if we have succeeded or failed at our attack, as well, so we can proceed to our next attack or defense as necessary. Similarly, these should ideally have touch-based cues for success or failure, so we can act with as much speed as possible.

• Technique: Attack to absence.
• Defensive cue: Sudden lack of blade contact.
• Countered by: Cutting to the reverse.
• Success cue: Hard, sudden rotation-ceasing blade contact.
• Attacking failure cue: Arrested movement. So if your disengage stops before you would have stopped it yourself, your attack to absence has failed.
• Technique: Yielding around.
• Defensive cue: Change in direction of blade pressure.
• Countered by: Pulling your hand away from the center line or back.
• Success cue: Smooth, sliding blade contact.
• Attacking failure cue: "Pulling" movement. Basically, if your tip doesn't feel like it's quite going in as far as you need for it to, your yielding attack has likely failed.
• Technique: Pulling out.
• Defensive cue: Avoiding blade contact.
• Countered by: Following their blade.
• Success cue: Continued pressing contact.
• Attacking failure cue: Continued pushing against your blade. This means that you haven't actually succeeded at pulling out, since they are still in contact with your blade.
• Technique: Opposition.
• Defensive cue: Movement toward your blade.
• Countered by: Coming off-line with contact.
• Success cue: Sudden reduction or stasis in pressure.
• Attacking failure cue: Sliding toward their hilt. If they have adjusted their blade to overcome your attack by opposition, that means they are in a position that forces your sword to either give up its strength, or slide toward the strong part of their blade.  
• Technique: Attack to slowness.
• Defensive cue: Coming on-line with your hilt.
•  Countered by: Voiding / Pushing.
• Success cue: Thudding impact.
• Attacking failure cue: Blade movement off-line. This is similar to the failure cue for Pulling out, but where you're probably moving backwards for Pulling out, in this case you are moving forwards. They are essentially acting as a bullfighter and allowing your forward momentum to carry you past them.
• Technique: Feinting.
• Defensive cue: Attack that could not succeed / is too far away.
• Countered by: Keeping your previous line closed.
• Success cue: Smaller versions of other defensive success cues.
• Attacking failure cue: Small response. The point of a feint is to draw an exaggerated response so that you can execute a counter to their defensive technique. If they don't respond, or they respond in a very small way, then your feint has probably failed. 

Beyond even this, we need to know how to counter our opponent's defenses. While a perfectly-executed defense might not be easy to take advantage of, all defenses create openings. And for each defense, there is a particular way to best use those openings.

• Technique: Attack to absence.
• Defensive cue: Sudden lack of blade contact.
• Countered by: Cutting to the reverse.
• Success cue: Hard, sudden rotation-ceasing blade contact.
• Counter-counter: An even smaller Attack to absence. The way absence works is by trying to rotate around the physical limits of their weapon. If they have rotated their weapon to defend against your attack to absence, that means there's likely an opening on the other side of their weapon now. Unfortunately, the defensive action is smaller than the offensive action here, so there's no guarantee this will work. This is where mid-blade disengages tend to come into play, for the offense.
• Attacking failure cue: Arrested movement.
• Technique: Yielding around.
• Defensive cue: Change in direction of blade pressure.
• Countered by: Pulling your hand away from the center line or back.
• Success cue: Smooth, sliding blade contact.
• Counter-counter: Opposition / Winding. If you have executed the Yield around, then you have gotten your sword "behind" theirs. This means it is will be hard for them move the strong of their blade in the way of the weak of yours. This is similar to the German concept of "winding", in that you wrap your blade around their blade to make it impossible for them to gain back opposition.
• Attacking failure cue: "Pulling" movement.
• Technique: Pulling out.
• Defensive cue: Avoiding blade contact.
• Countered by: Following their blade.
• Success cue: Continued pressing contact.
• Counter-counter: Attack to slowness. By virtue of your opponent extending their blade, they are presenting you with their hilt. This means it is very easy to attack toward their hilt in response, especially if they are not in a position that allows for a good void. 
• Attacking failure cue: Continued pushing against your blade.
• Technique: Opposition.
• Defensive cue: Movement toward your blade.
• Countered by: Coming off-line with contact.
• Success cue: Sudden reduction or stasis in pressure.
• Counter-counter: Yielding around / Winding. These counter each other in an exciting way. As stated above, the combination of Yielding around and Opposition leads to a concept the Germans call "winding". It is likely that you and your opponent will get into a stalemate here, in which you need to abandon your plan and do something else. 
• Attacking failure cue: Sliding toward their hilt.
• Technique: Attack to slowness.
• Defensive cue: Coming on-line with your hilt.
•  Countered by: Voiding / Pushing.
• Success cue: Thudding impact.
• Counter-counter: Pulling out, depending on distance. Attacks to slowness imply more forward movement than a lot of other actions here. If you are still far enough out, though, you can Pull out. The sideways movement of Voiding / Pushing from your opponent makes this easier. As you get closer, Pulling out becomes less of an option. In this case, the changing relationship between blade and body becomes harder to take advantage of, and you must use a different technique. Of course, a moulinet, which can arguably be either Pulling out or an Attack to absence depending on execution, remains possible.
• Attacking failure cue: Blade movement off-line.
• Technique: Feinting.
• Defensive cue: Attack that could not succeed / is too far away.
• Countered by: Keeping your previous line closed.
• Success cue: Smaller versions of other defensive success cues.
• Counter-counter: Redoubling. So, executing the same attack, but bigger. If your opponent doesn't move at all, then you are likely to catch them off-guard. If they move a bit, but not too much, they can still defend themselves.
• Attacking failure cue: Small response.

So as you can see, this leads to sequences. Attack to absence forms its own little loop. Opposition and Yielding around form a loop called Winding. Pulling out and Attack to slowness have a bit of a looping quality, but eventually lead something else due to the nature of distance. Feinting has its own loop with true attacks, due to the nature of attacks, but that is weird and not the kind of loop we're looking for here.

There's also a relationship between Attacks to absence and Feinting, since the size of your Attack to absence will decrease over time. As the size of these Attacks decreases, the size of what qualifies as a Feint decreases as well. So while a tiny twitch might not be useful at the start of a fight as a feint, after three disengages it might be useful as one.

We can also look at the defensive and offensive actions and guards that make those actions easier. For the defense, this allows us to change and fortify our stance based on what we think our opponents will do. For the offense, that allows us to choose our attack based on what our opponent's stance is.

• Technique: Attack to absence.
• Offensive guard: Angled guards. The idea is that if your guard is angled such that your sword can cross with your opponent's sword, you can use your wrist to move your blade above or below your opponent's guard.
• Defensive cue: Sudden lack of blade contact.
• Countered by: Cutting to the reverse.
• Defensive guard: Counter-angled guards. A similar thing. If you have no crossing with your opponent's guard, it's hard to cut into the reverse of their disengage motion. The important part here is that you know what direction they can move their sword, and how to execute a counter-movement.
• Success cue: Hard, sudden rotation-ceasing blade contact.
• Counter-counter: Attack to absence.
• Attacking failure cue: Arrested movement.
• Technique: Yielding around.
• Offensive guard: Arm or body pulled back. This means you have distance to extend your arm and bend at your wrist, to suddenly gain distance and angle around your opponent's blade.
• Defensive cue: Change in direction of blade pressure.
• Countered by: Pulling your hand away from the center line or back.
• Defensive guard: Blade away from the diameter. This means that your blade or tip is already away from the diameter line between your shoulder and your opponent's shoulder.
• Success cue: Smooth, sliding blade contact.
• Counter-counter: Opposition / Winding.
• Attacking failure cue: "Pulling" movement.
• Technique: Pulling out.
• Offensive guard: Arm has room to pull sword back. This means you can pull your sword away from their shoulder, even if it's not straight backwards. Reserving some space to move forward as well is useful in order to make it harder decide what your end target is.
• Defensive cue: Avoiding blade contact.
• Countered by: Following their blade.
• Defensive guard: Arm and sword extended. If they can't get out, then they can't pull out.
• Success cue: Continued pressing contact.
• Counter-counter: Attack to slowness.
• Attacking failure cue: Continued pushing against your blade.
• Technique: Opposition.
• Offensive guard: Blade "over the opponent's blade". This means that your blade is angled in a way that makes it take longer to regain opposition, and the process of regaining opposition might just put you back on-line.
• Defensive cue: Movement toward your blade.
• Countered by: Coming off-line with contact.
• Defensive guard: Mid-blade at or near the edge of profile. This means that if they try to strike through your mid-blade or the weak of your blade, they will miss you. The idea is to force your opponent to place their weak on your strong if they want to attack you.
• Success cue: Sudden reduction or stasis in pressure.
• Counter-counter: Yielding around / Winding.
• Attacking failure cue: Sliding toward their hilt.
• Technique: Attack to slowness.
• Offensive guard: Attacker's hilt in-line with defender's hilt. This means that you can push your hilt in toward the defender's's hilt, and the line through their hilt will connect with their body.
• Defensive cue: Coming on-line with your hilt.
•  Countered by: Voiding / Pushing.
• Defensive guard: Hilt near or past the edge of the profile, arm extended. This would allow you to have less distance to move your body or your sword to push their sword past your profile. The extension of your arm means that your profile is effectively smaller. Having your hilt near the edge of your profile means that there's really only one direction that they can strike toward your body, near your hilt.
• Success cue: Thudding impact.
• Counter-counter: Pulling out.
• Attacking failure cue: Blade movement off-line.
• Technique: Feinting.
• Offensive guard: A compromise among several. Feinting works by overwhelming your opponent with options. Don't do any particular guard which would let them know what you will do.
• Defensive cue: Attack that could not succeed / is too far away.
• Countered by: Keeping your previous line closed.
• Defensive guard: Counter-guard. Make sure to be in a guard that can defend against all options that they have.
• Success cue: Smaller versions of other defensive success cues.
• Counter-counter: Redoubling.
• Attacking failure cue: Small response. 

Beyond this, there are things which we can call "master-strokes", in the German tradition. The Germans tend to believe that the person attacking has the advantage. In order to win from the defense, you need to perform an attack that also defends you, which is difficult to do. The Italians would call this a single-tempo parry-riposte, in some circumstances. You do need to do a tiny bit of prediction, to know what your opponent will do. Master-strokes are good to execute if your opponent over-commits to a technique.

• Technique: Attack to absence.
• Offensive guard: Angled guards
• Defensive cue: Sudden lack of blade contact.
• Countered by: Cutting to the reverse.
• Defensive guard: Counter-angled guards.
• Success cue: Hard, sudden rotation-ceasing blade contact.
• Counter-counter: Attack to absence.
• Example master stroke: Single-tempo parry/riposte. This is a largely Capoferro thing. The idea is that you extend and counter-rotate into their disengage, attacking to their body. Thibault also has a similar concept. This can be difficult to do if the attacker's blade is very low. This is a special case of Attack to slowness.
• Attacking failure cue: Arrested movement.
• Technique: Yielding around.
• Offensive guard: Arm or body pulled back.
• Defensive cue: Change in direction of blade pressure.
• Countered by: Pulling your hand away from the center line or back.
• Defensive guard: Blade away from the diameter
• Success cue: Smooth, sliding blade contact.
• Counter-counter: Opposition / Winding.
• Example master stroke: Leaning thrust with shoulder away from the diameter and elbow bent. Here, you lean forward while pulling your arm to the side so that your weapon moves forward, while your hilt and blade create space. Your face will likely be closer to their body than your hilt. This is a special case of Opposition.
• Attacking failure cue: "Pulling" movement.
• Technique: Pulling out.
• Offensive guard: Arm has room to pull sword back.
• Defensive cue: Avoiding blade contact.
• Countered by: Following their blade.
• Defensive guard: Arm and sword extended.
• Success cue: Continued pressing contact.
• Counter-counter: Attack to slowness.
• Example master stroke: Circling thrust. This is essentially pushing their blade in a circle, while presenting your tip to their body as a threat. They may pull back far enough that you can't continue to do that, in which case you should probably cut them or stab them or some such when they are so far back that they can't attack. This is a special case of Cutting to the reverse.
• Attacking failure cue: Continued pushing against your blade.
• Technique: Opposition.
• Offensive guard: Blade "over the opponent's blade".
• Defensive cue: Movement toward your blade.
• Countered by: Coming off-line with contact.
• Defensive guard: Mid-blade at or near the edge of profile.
• Success cue: Sudden reduction or stasis in pressure.
• Counter-counter: Yielding around / Winding.
• Example master stroke: Jam your hilt into their mid-blade and attack. Essentially, you want to short-circuit the opposition game by putting your hilt onto their mid-blade. This lets you win opposition handily and frequently cut to them. This is a special case of Opposition.
• Attacking failure cue: Sliding toward their hilt.
• Technique: Attack to slowness.
• Offensive guard: Attacker's hilt in-line with defender's hilt.
• Defensive cue: Coming on-line with your hilt.
•  Countered by: Voiding / Pushing.
• Defensive guard: Hilt near or past the edge of the profile, arm extended.
• Success cue: Thudding impact.
• Counter-counter: Pulling out.
• Example master stroke: Thread through their blade. In this case, you thrust in the direction of their blade redirecting your tip toward their body at the last moment. Your hilt will likely follow a curved path through space, since you are pushing their blade with your hilt and quillons. This is a special case of Opposition.
• Attacking failure cue: Blade movement off-line.
• Technique: Feinting.
• Offensive guard: A compromise among several.
• Defensive cue: Attack that could not succeed / is too far away.
• Countered by: Keeping your previous line closed.
• Defensive guard: Counter-guard.
• Success cue: Smaller versions of other defensive success cues.
• Counter-counter: Redoubling.
• Example master stroke: Just attack. If a feint isn't sincere, you can simply attack them and be fine. If you can't tell whether or not it's sincere, you can't take that gamble.
• Attacking failure cue: Small response. 

In reality, the master-strokes listed here aren't a full list. There are many other ways to attack and defend at the same time. While I think that the earlier parts of this post are very good, the deeper into the rabbit-hole we get, the farther from certainty we go. As well, I have an obvious bias toward using Opposition to attack people. I can imagine many different master-strokes that involve many different types of attack. So let's leave things at the previous bullet-point list, shall we?

THE END OF THIS POST

This is our end result, with the example master-strokes removed.

• Technique: Attack to absence, aka Disengage
• Offensive guard: Angled guards
• Defensive cue: Sudden lack of blade contact.
• Countered by: Cutting to the reverse.
• Defensive guard: Counter-angled guards.
• Success cue: Hard, sudden rotation-ceasing blade contact.
• Counter-counter: Attack to absence.
• Attacking failure cue: Arrested movement.
• Technique: Yielding around.
• Offensive guard: Arm or body pulled back.
• Defensive cue: Change in direction of blade pressure.
• Countered by: Pulling your hand away from the center line or back.
• Defensive guard: Blade away from the diameter
• Success cue: Smooth, sliding blade contact.
• Counter-counter: Opposition / Winding.
• Attacking failure cue: "Pulling" movement.
• Technique: Pulling out.
• Offensive guard: Arm has room to pull sword back.
• Defensive cue: Avoiding blade contact.
• Countered by: Following their blade.
• Defensive guard: Arm and sword extended.
• Success cue: Continued pressing contact.
• Counter-counter: Attack to slowness.
• Attacking failure cue: Continued pushing against your blade.
• Technique: Opposition.
• Offensive guard: Blade "over the opponent's blade".
• Defensive cue: Movement toward your blade.
• Countered by: Coming off-line with contact.
• Defensive guard: Mid-blade at or near the edge of profile.
• Success cue: Sudden reduction or stasis in pressure.
• Counter-counter: Yielding around / Winding.
• Attacking failure cue: Sliding toward their hilt.
• Technique: Attack to slowness.
• Offensive guard: Attacker's hilt in-line with defender's hilt.
• Defensive cue: Coming on-line with your hilt.
•  Countered by: Voiding / Pushing.
• Defensive guard: Hilt near or past the edge of the profile, arm extended.
• Success cue: Thudding impact.
• Counter-counter: Pulling out.
• Attacking failure cue: Blade movement off-line.
• Technique: Feinting.
• Offensive guard: A compromise among several.
• Defensive cue: Attack that could not succeed / is too far away.
• Countered by: Keeping your previous line closed.
• Defensive guard: Counter-guard.
• Success cue: Smaller versions of other defensive success cues.
• Counter-counter: Redoubling.
• Attacking failure cue: Small response.

And this should be a full system list of what makes a valid fencing strategy. This isn't a "how to fence" - it's more of a blueprint for constructing valid strategies, and seeing where a particular system might fall down.

Next post, I plan to do a take-down of a few systems and show how they can be modeled in this system.


Edit: Oh shoot, I forgot to include "conditions that will make this technique work without question". Oh well.

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.

*****

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.

*****

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.

*****

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.

*****

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?

*****

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.