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.

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.

*****

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.

*****

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.

A Semi-Universal Swords Theory

Hello, friends!

This theory was developed over the years based on when attacks did and didn't work, with my longer sword. I stepped away from working on it for a while, because I didn't see its potential as a universal method for executing swords. Previously, I had only understood it in terms of its applications for attacking. As I've worked with shorter swords and in different styles, I've started to see how it applies to defense as well.

So, let's get started.

*****

First - a convention. If two fencers are described, they will be Alexandra and Zachary. Alexandra will be on the right and doing the "correct" thing, if there is a correct and incorrect thing. Zachary will be on the left and doing the "incorrect" thing. Alexandra uses feminine pronouns, whereas Zachary uses masculine pronouns. Unless mentioned otherwise, they are both right-handed.

(I choose these names because Thibault uses these same conventions, except that women are under-represented in a fencing context, so Alexander is now Alexandra.)

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SWORD ANATOMY

There are three parts of a sword that matter, for our purposes. I will call them key points of the blade.

1. There is the hilt and quillons or hilt-point.
2. There is the point in the middle of the blade, or mid-point.
3. There is the point on the blade about six inches from the tip, or tip-point.

(I will be happy to describe how I chose these later. Stay with me now.)

Beyond that, we can ignore the rest of the blade for the time being. Our aim here is to reduce sword interactions to a simplicity that allows them to be considered in-combat.

The contact of two swords can be described by where on each sword they either touching or near.

(The meaning of "near" is left deliberately squishy. If you need a number, it's something like within six inches. Close enough to a part of their sword, usually their hilt, that they can't easily place the middle of their sword on your sword without a large arm movement.)

So, if Alexandra parries Zachary's thrust with the middle of her sword, you might say that her mid-point is touching Zachary's tip-point. Or, for shorter terminology, her 2 touches Zachary's 3.

Similarly, if she places her tip on Zachary's hilt, we would say her tip-point is touching Zachary's hilt-point.

If, as Thibault advises, she places her sword under Zachary's, we could say that her tip-point is near Zachary's hilt-point. In the particular case described by Thibault, where he wants your sword to be parallel to their sword, this would also mean that her mid-point is near his mid-point, and her hilt-point is near his tip-point.

This isn't necessarily the case - Alexandra's tip-point could be near his hilt-point without her mid-point or hilt-point being anywhere near his sword. We could define this exhaustively every time, but in general we won't because that wastes a lot of time and honestly, it usually is only important where one or two parts of their sword are.

In general, only one part of your sword can be touching one part of theirs. It's true that we can do silly things like lock their sword in place between our quillon and blade, but that usually limits our movement too much to be useful and should be avoided.

(Beyond this, the side of the blade that you are on or they are on is important, but not being covered in-depth right now. I'm hoping it will be obvious when we get there, but I leave this here for future-me to reference. In general, "side" is dictated by the direction, clockwise or counter-clockwise, that your opponent would have to disengage in order to get around your sword and stab you in the shortest and easiest path.)

(Beyond even this is "inside of presence" and "outside of presence", which is dictated by the line drawn from one of the three points on your opponent's sword to an arbitrary point on your body, and whether that line is intersected by your sword. So if your sword isn't in the way, that part of their weapon is "inside of your presence". Otherwise, that part of their weapon is "outside of your presence".)

***

We only want to consider three points on the sword because humans have a limited reaction time, determined by the number of options available to them. Most Spanish systems have at least eight divisions of the blade. If we want to exhaustively enumerate the ways blades can interact, that means we need to multiply our blade's divisions by their blade's divisions, resulting in 64 different relationships. This is before mentioning distance, timing, off-hand usage, or anything else.

In order to be able to react, we need to simplify things. Three times three is nine, which is a reasonable number of things for someone to keep in mind in a fight.

*****

ANATOMY OF AN ATTACK, Part 1

Our sport begins with attacking. We win by stabbing our opponent, and we prevent them from winning by defending ourselves from attacks. The basic attack is a simple thrust, in which we extend our arm toward our opponent and hope to hit them.

***

ANATOMY OF A DEFENSE, Part 1

The basic defense is a parry. Intuitively, this is easy to grasp - we push their sword such that their blade will pass by us. Generally this is done to one side or the other. Simple, right?

***

ANATOMY OF AN ATTACK, Part 2

Attacks, however, are harder to stop than that. Our opponents can confound our defenses in several ways.

1. They can slow their attack or pull out or move through, allowing our parry to sail uselessly by, and stab us when our sword has gotten out of the way.
2. They can take advantage of the fact that the sword is a line connected to our hand, disengaging below our sword, getting to the other side of our weapon in that way.
3. They can travel with our parry, pushing their hand out and rotating around the middle of their blade such that their tip can point at our body again, while their blade yields around our defenses.
4. They can use their sword as a lever, placing a part of their blade closer to their hilt on a part of our blade farther from our hilt, allowing them to exert more force and push through our parry using opposition.
5. They can attack to our hilt's slowness, taking advantage of the fact that the hand is slower than the wrist and thus batting an attack out of the way with your hilt or the strong of your blade will likely not complete before they stab you.
6. They can use a combination of any of these methods.

In general yielding around is only applicable at middle range or closer.

***

TERMINOLOGY

profile - This is the shape of your body, with respect to their weapon. "Out of our profile" means that they can't attack us without their sword beating against our sword.

control - This is a weird one. It's generally used in terms of two points; "my tip point controls your hilt point". It means that, if you draw a line from their point to the edge of your profile, that particular one of your points is somewhere in the middle of that line. This means that part of your sword presents an obstacle to your opponent's sword becoming "in your profile".

***

ANATOMY OF A DEFENSE, Part 2

That sucks to have to deal with! But it's not impossible. At a base, we want their blade to be out of our presence or too far away. In addition...

1. To counter pulling out, we follow their sword with ours, making sure to maintain contact.
2. To counter disengages, we move counter to the clock-direction they are moving their sword.
3. To counter yielding around, we either move our body forward or pull our sword back to force their defense wider.
4. To counter opposition, we gain stronger opposition and rotate ourselves until our opponent over-commits away from our body, at which point we leave the bind.
5. To counter attacks to slowness, we push with our hilt or void with our body, or use a faster part of our blade to defend.

***

ANATOMY OF AN ATTACK, Part 3

Most people gain the ability to deal with the above techniques relatively quickly. It's not easy, but people usually gain an intuitive sense of what does and what does not work.

At this point, things get more interesting. When people see others defend, they realize that defenses can leave openings. So they start launching false, feint attacks, to take advantage of the openings that their opponents leave.

***

ANATOMY OF A DEFENSE, Part 3

At this point, the fencer realizes that committing to defenses too much results in holes and flaws in their guard. As well, there are ways to make the various types of attack take longer or be more predictable, allowing more time to execute defenses.

1. Pulling out requires pulling back from your blade.
2. Disengaging requires moving around your blade.
3. Yielding around requires you not having contact with their mid-point or their tip-point.
4. Opposition requires their hilt-point or mid-point to touch your mid-point or tip-point.
5. Attacks to slowness require their tip-point to be near-but-not-touching your hilt-point.

These act as tells. Further, we can look at the actions that will lead to these requirements being fulfilled.

1. If they don't have contact with your blade, they can more easily disengage or yield.
2. If you have opposition on their blade, they can more easily yield around.
3. If your blade is across your body, they can more easily attack with opposition.
4. If their hilt-point is blocked from being in-presence by your hilt-point, they can likely attack to slowness.

So we want to stop them from getting into these positions where they can do these things.

1. To deal with pulling out, we need to make sure we always control their blade deeply enough that we have time to react if they try to pull away. This place is the tip-point or deeper.
2. To deal with disengaging, we need to make sure that, in order to disengage, their tip has to move a very long distance, to allow us time to react appropriately. This means we need to either have contact with their blade, or our mid-point has to control one of the points of their blade.
3. To deal with yielding around, we need to make sure that we control either a point far enough toward their hilt that their yield can't hinge appropriately, like the mid-point, or a point close enough to the tip that they can't come on-line, like the tip-point.
4. To deal with opposition, we need contact with their blade so we can react in time, or we need our hilt-point to control their mid-point.
5. To deal with attacks to slowness, our hilt-point needs to control their tip point or their hilt point, but not both, unless we also control their hilt point. This last scenario would allow us to void if they try to take advantage of slowness of our hilt.

All of these only matter when we get close enough that our opponent can, with a small lunge, strike us.

This is all doable and doesn't conflict with itself. In general, it means that we want contact with their blade, and we want to have one of the points of our blade intersecting the line connecting one of the points of their blade to us.

In practice, this means that as long as one of the key points is touching one of the key points of their blade, we're safe enough.

***

ANATOMY OF ATTACK, Part 4

At this point, the game becomes making your opponent fail. We do this with compound attacks and feints. The easiest way to do this is to feint to one side of your opponent's blade, then disengage and attack using one or more of the above principles, to one of the key points of their sword.

***

ANATOMY OF DEFENSE, Part 4

At this point, the game becomes not allowing them to do this. Their attacks create weaknesses in their form, depending on what way they attack. These weaknesses can be taken advantage of in the following ways.

1. Pulling out gives you free reign to approach.
2. Disengaging allows you to choose where on their blade the re-engage happens.
3. Yielding around allows you to win opposition and approach.
4. Opposition means that they need to approach or they will lose.
5. Attacks to slowness can be either voided or cleared with a wide sweep of your sword, allowing you to win opposition.

Beyond this, it's your game to win.

*****

A brief interlude.

Practice Report, and Thibault-esque Position/Find/Gain/Attack

Fencing was good. I'm attempting to budget better, so I didn't grab any of the pre-fencing snacks that I normally would. This resulted in me having less energy during practice than I normally would. This is expected, and I'm trying to lose weight anyway, so it is fine. It does mean I am likely to derive less per-practice improvement, but again, I will survive it.

I did mostly Thibault things this practice. I spent time trying to do the Thibault-esque position/find/gain/attack to people, and it was interesting. I learned a number of things, which can be summed up into a single-ish point that I will mention later in this post.

LATER IS NOW.

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So, from working Thibault these few years, I've come to understand that his basic flow of action is very similar to the Italian flow of action. The Italian flow of action, as I understand it, goes something like this.

1. Position
1. This means to get in whatever guard or counter-guard your particular master specifies.
2. Find the blade
1. This means a small gain of their blade, to make it harder for them to hit you at very large range. "To make it harder" is somewhat ambiguous and squishy. Hard to define.
3. Gain the blade
1. This means to create a larger angle with your sword while moving forward a bit, to make it even harder for them to hit you. This is because you are likely progressing into or close to the range in which they can hit you with a leaning thrust, rather than a lunging or passing thrust. This is faster, so you need to make their attack take even longer.
4. Attack
1. This is mostly self-explanatory, but it's hard to say exactly what ways one can attack with assured safety from all positions. Usually this is, in Spanish terms, an attack by detachment.

In Thibault, the flowchart is similar. I have filled in many details using experience, which I give to you now. I use Italian terms when applicable, since "defensive actions at first instance" is very unwieldy. I realize I should be using different words here, but please bear with me because I view these as being very similar to the Italian things.

1. Step to the edge of measure
1. This has a very specific flow, described very early in the book. Swing your blade left and low as you step forward with your right foot, swing it right and usually low while stepping with the left foot, and then step with the right foot, ending in the intended position.
2. This step wouldn't exist, except that a number of plays later in the book involve altering the way that we do this, especially the blade positioning when stepping with the left foot.
2. Position
1. This is more explicit than the Italian way of things. Thibault specifies a number of counter-guards based on the position of your opponent's sword. The idea is to get to a place where you can step into the next bit.
2. Generally, this is where you get to a position where your blade is parallel to their blade and below it.
3. Find the blade
1. Thibault's plates imply that you want to get to a place in which you will be defended from a direct thrust by your quillons. Specifically by your quillons. Your blade can be used to position their blade to reduce the area they can strike, but the direct attack should be defended against using your quillons.
2. In general, you want to try to position your quillons as close to perpendicular to the line drawn by their blade from their hilt to infinity as possible.
3. Your blade should limit where they can go. Your quillons should defend against their direct attacks.
4. Gain the blade
1. Here, we need to transition to using our blade to defend ourselves. We want to transition from quillons-perpendicular-to-their-blade to blade-perpendicular-to-their-blade. This is because we're entering a closer measure, which requires wider defense.
2. This is usually done because an opponent either starts in a guard that doesn't allow one to find the blade, or they transition to such.
5. Attack
1. In general, we need to be able to place their blade in a position that allows us to attack them with our blade, quillons, or off-hand in a perpendicular position to defend us against their counter-attack, or their blade in a position that doesn't allow them to counter-attack.

That is the basics. However, to do well and to win, you need to know how to cut corners and when one can transition early, or entirely ignore steps.

Thibault's first play in his book shows only positioning, finding the blade, and attacking, because that's all that is needed against a passive opponent in the Destreza right-angle stance. Positioning is barely touched on because you adopt the "default" position which is described in detail previously. Stepping into measure isn't mentioned at all for the same reason. Gaining the blade simply doesn't happen because it isn't necessary.

In searching for these places I can skip steps, I've started classifying Italians based roughly on how angled-up their blade is.

• If my opponent is almost parallel to the ground with their blade, with their arm mostly extended, I can probably do all of the steps here defined, though a little bit less of Finding than with a Diestro in the Right Angle posture.
• If my opponent is less parallel with the ground, perhaps between 25º and 55º from the ground and with a correspondingly lowered arm and hand, Finding becomes irrelevant. By the time I get into the range in which I can Find the blade, I am within their lunge range. I should skip finding, and go directly from Positioning into Gaining.
• If my opponent is even less parallel to the ground than that, I honestly am not sure what to do. Maybe I need to just skip directly from Positioning into attacking? This is how I lose repeatedly to Zohane.

 Two particular plays seem relevant. These are adapted to a standard Italian or Spanish grip, rather than Thibault's grip.

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Against one of the first type of Italians, I Find their blade from the inside line. My sword is in a hybrid terza-quarta such that my blade is above theirs, but my quillon still blocks the direct line of ingress. I feel a disengage and immediately lunge, bringing  my sword into a low quarta, such that my quillons block the most direct path of their sword, and the strong of my blade blocks the less direct path. This allows me to stab them, countering their disengage. I have thus skipped the "Gain" step and move directly into "Attack".

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Against the second type of Italian, I position myself such that my blade is parallel to theirs, sloped downwards toward the ground. If they are attempting to gain the inside line, I'm somewhere between terza and quarta. If they are attempting to gain the outside line, I'm somewhere between quarta and what would be called "quinta" by logical and rotational progression. In the German tradition, it would be the hand position of Left Ochs.

Regardless, my quillons are perpendicular to the line of their blade, and I am just barely hidden from some of the direct thrusts they could perform. While stepping forward, I flip my blade around theirs, such that my false edge cuts into the false edge of their blade, leading with my sword's tip and immediately transitioning to a position where my blade is perpendicular to their blade. Here, I have transitioned directly from "Position" into "Gain".

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ADDITIONAL EDITED-IN-AFTERWARDS PLAY

When someone has significantly more reach than their opponent, they can frequently ignore the "positioning" step, and go from a relaxed lack-of-a-guard into an immediate attack.

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All that said, I think the next evolution of my fencing is to look actively for places and times that allow me to skip or combine steps. As a minor aside, I believe that this sort of "combining steps" is what the Germans mean by their definition of the "master stroke", which combines offense and defense.

I would be interested to talk to people about places where they find that they are able to combine steps in similar ways.

The Capoferro Hierarchy seems like a similar thing, depending on distance and timing. I feel like there's a lot of stuff in there that could be mined for more information. As an example - if you and your opponent are at a somewhat long range and your opponent executes a very committed cavazione, it isn't super possible for them to abort to a duo-tempi parry-riposte, which is the traditional counter-counter. But if they are a bit less committed, they can execute the duo-tempi parry-riposte. It would be an interesting study to find where the borders of each counter and each counter-counter exist, to see when they are viable or not viable.

Anyhow. That's the end of this post. Your homework is to tell me about things you do in your fencing to "skip a step". Tell me the thing!

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.