K&Q Post-Action Report

Starting With the Happy Things

So there was an event, and a bunch of people I like got recognized for stuff! The most awesome scroll was handed out! My fencing unit got recognized too! I need to start wearing a sword hanger to events, because our unit has been explicitly granted the right to wear weapons before the king and queen for this reign, so I want to flaunt the hell out of that.

The site was gorgeous, and despite high tensions and suchlike, people seemed to be in good spirits


Now, About the Fencing

The finals of King's and Queen's rapier championships contained the guy we sort of expected to win and one of the guys from my pool, who is also my don.

The semi-finals contained one of the other guys from my pool and the guy who I beat a year ago to become Carolingian champion.

Saying it like that, I shouldn't be unhappy with how I did even though I didn't advance out of my pool. But I really, really wanted to progress out of my pool this year. As such, I'm going to be frustrated for a while in my own personal little blog here, where very few people will see it.

When I was knocked out of my pool, I was so, so frustrated. I managed not to say anything too rash, aside from brushing a few people off with a terse "I'm going for a walk". I sat on a bench for a good few minutes and thought about life for a while. Eventually I returned and got some food and water, at the continued prodding of one kind person.

This is the second year running that the finals had one guy from my pool, and the semi-finals had the other guy. At this point I am just going to emotionally prepare myself for having the single hardest pool every single year, because according to tournament performance in the Sweet Sixteen, that is what I have had the last two years.

Additionally, the people I lost to in my pool are people who I would have particular strategies against, who I did okay against in the pickups I got it, and who those strategies uniformly did not work against when I got to the tournament. I think that warming up against people who are not my usual warm-ups was a bad plan. From here on out, I will only warm up against handsome boys.


My Losses

My first loss was to a tall guy who used a crinkle-buckler. I got half of a pick-up against him before the tournament started. I attempted to leg him in our pass, and that didn't work. Eventually he pressed hard and got through my defenses somehow? I usually can remember these things, but not this time. I remember most of our pass, and I think I presented good defense and offense. I think that next time, I need to go deeper for the leg against him, perhaps with a rightwards diagonal step of some kind.

My second loss was to my don, who uses longsword. I attempted a couple of my standard ridiculously long lunges based on distance against him, and they didn't work. Eventually I took his hand, but with his right hand he was able to sort of circle his sword around my parry and lay his tip on my chest. Next time, I should attempt a passing step if I think halfway through that my lunge that it will provide me adequate defense.

My third loss was to a tall guy who I fought extensive pickups against, in which I did pretty well. In the pickups he brought dagger. In the tournament he brought buckler. I attempted a few tactics, and saw him learning what I was doing and short-circuiting his responses as time went on. Eventually he landed a cut on my neck that I had attempted to pull onto my arm before he had a chance to cut. We went back and forth about it for a little while, and I was about to cede it to him when the king walked by saying that, "he totally had it." I probably should have ceded it earlier, which I will try to remember to do next time.

In the future, I either need to commit deeper earlier, or I need to take advantage of his anticipated responses. I am somewhat loathe to do these things, because it is hard to do either of those things in a safe way. More importantly though, I need to investigate the utility of learning people's responses in the middle of a match. It does leave the danger that I might allow myself to be trained into a dumb response. But it is a thing to think about. Maybe. Maybe not.


Notes and Other Things

In terms of specific techniques. I need to think through the following tactic more thoroughly:

• Perform a disengage from the inside line to the outside line, ending in an exaggerated quarta.
• If your opponent responds by taking your blade to the outside, take a forward passing step and place your dagger in the Parrying Area. Re-disengage under their hilt and stab them in the gut.
• If your opponent does not respond, uncoil your arm directly horizontally to deliver a cutting thrust through the Sad Zone of their sword. Proceed to take a diagonal leftwards passing step, making sure to put your dagger into the correct place to cover any counter-offense.

It works great against so many people. But against people with middle-weighted swords, it might be possible for them to rotate their sword too fast for my dagger to present a real obstacle to them. I need to think harder about how back-weighted, middle-weighted, and front-weighted swords handle differently, and how this changes the possible tactics against them.

All in all it was a good-but-stressful event. Life will go on. I really really wanted to be a kingdom champion, but the two people who got it this year were super deserving of it, and I am legitimately happy for them.

Why Do You Fight?

On the eve of K&Q, it seems like a good idea to remind myself why I fence.

I fence because fencing is a puzzle.

I fight specific people so that I can present problems and solutions, and either I can be proven wrong by my death, or right by my living. Additionally, I prove my opponent wrong by stabbing them or I prove them right by being unable to.

I fight in tournaments because I can guarantee that in a tournament, my opponent will be doing their best to prove my principles wrong. I will be doing the same for them. In practice we try things and do research to try to mine for new principles. In a tournament, we are presenting our very best theories and principles and butting them against each other. Am I right, or is my opponent? Only time will tell.

Tomorrow, I will get yet another chance to learn the clearest lessons possible. There is value even in losing. There is value especially in losing, because losses provide an opportunity to improve and refine myself.

As Jon Radburn once told me - "It isn't about winning. It's about fighting well."

Pre-King's and Queen's Championship Feels

I completely failed at "taking it easy" yesterday. My ankle is super messed up this morning, but from past experience it will be okay tomorrow. Ah well. Post-K&Q Podiatrist Appointment will totally be a thing, because my general internal medicine doctor is useless for my ankle and has encouraged me to "just wait and see if it gets better" for more than a year at this point.

I'm pretty anxious about King's and Queen's Rapier Champions tomorrow. My fencing has been pretty on-point, but I still feel like there are things I need to work on before my game will be "good enough". I've always felt that since starting fencing though, so I guess that's not a bad sign.

It's scary coming into this event. I don't have a particular "thing" that I plan to use and overuse. Sure, I've got my old-style Outside Line Tricks, and my new-style Sword Magic, and I've got my distance/measure/posting tricks. But I don't really feel as though any particular one of them is going to carry me through the tournament. I don't have A Plan, because people have adjusted to all of the individual games that I play to the point that I can't win with them alone.

It's really scary coming into this event. The lead-up to this event has been super intense. This is the first K&Q that a lot of my semi-contemporaries plan to go for it for real. Along with so many skilled OGRs and MoDs going for it. I'm actually more stressed about this than I was about Champs last year or the year before.

The one thing I need to remember is to have resolve. All the skill in the world doesn't matter if I don't have the emotional fortitude to make correct choices in the tournament. I need to remember to do the things I need to do in order to make all of the noise and static at the back of my head go quiet.

Practice Report

Practice last night was good. I had a couple more realizations about New Sword Magic. I've finished writing two blog posts on the subject, except that I need to create photos and animations to describe the concepts involved.

I fought pickups against several people. The purpose of my pickups was to see how this different way of thinking about opposition is applicable. A note: I use the term "Sad Zone" in this post. This is the ideal place to push against someone's sword for opposition. I will not go into how I determine the location of the Sad Zone here.

As a note, I was literally bouncing this practice, that's how happy and excited I was for the pickups portion. As the tournament happened, I slipped into tournament headspace. That was good! It means I am able to switch between headspaces as needed.

My first set of pickups was against a buckler fighter. I ended up getting touched when he was able to isolate my sword and grab on to its location with his sword and/or buckler. I ended up touching him with a cutting thrust over his arm, directly through the Sad Zone of his sword. Additionally, I was able to perform several single-tempo passing-step dagger-pushes into the Sad Zone of his sword, when I moved my sword to the far outside line. I wasn't able to capitalize on it like I thought I should have been. Perhaps I should have gone for arm cuts or leg thrusts during the tempi in which I completely owned his sword.

My next set was against the Doctor. He was not feeling super well, and even so I think that the fights went more than 50% in his favor. He uses two long swords, and using my knowledge of principles in New Sword Magic, I was able to determine that the Sad Zone of his swords was much farther back than I had previously expected. As such, I was able to perform many cuts and pushes which actually gained good opposition against his swords. I feel like there is quite a bit of room for me to improve my execution of the principles of New Sword Magic, so that's pretty exciting to me.

After that, I fought another buckler fighter. She used her buckler more offensively and kept her sword much lower. I had trouble applying my principles of opposition to her, because she kept doing all these really good things that I didn't expect. Eventually I settled on a tactic of getting into Fabris Plate 60 stance and letting my dagger drift around defensively, while alternating high/low and high/high fakes. I could probably have done that same thing I mention above for the other buckler fighter, to her. Oh well, live and learn.

My last set of fights was against someone fighting with a dagger and a shorter sword. She was fighting primarily in a Fabris stance that I do not think is Good and True. I have seen this stance several times, and I have never liked it. Her stance exposed the Sad Zone of her sword, and as such I was able to push through that area using Compound Thrusts. That is to say, a particular type of line-change, combined with a particular type of cutting thrust. 

There was also a tournament! I fought in it and won it.

Several people did good things. I got booped in the nose because I did not close the line far enough, which is apparently a danger when performing a cutting thrust from the inside line using New Sword Magic. I need to work really hard on it before K&Q Rapier, in order to not shoot myself in the foot with New Sword Magic by doing something like that.

The other pass I lost was one in which I had cane, and he had buckler. There was a bunch of messiness, and I got legged. Then there was more messiness, and we both thought that we might have hit with thrusts, so we re-fought from the point at which I was legged. Eventually he took the pass and I don't even remember how. I think it was a thrust from his left side, using his right hand? Not sure.

But yeah. It was a good practice. I learned a lot.

Rose Tournament, and a preview of New Blade Magic

Rose Tournament went well. My team won, which is nice. Everybody in my team had more wins than losses, which is also nice.

I was sort of work-hung-over, so my attitude toward my fighting during the tournament wasn't that great. I had a lot of good fights, and so many courteous people. Such courtesy. So fighting. Wow.

My first loss was either my first or second fight in the tournament. I fought a guy who I had seen around, but never fought before. As such, I made the terrible error of assuming that he would not be a skilled fighter. I posted my sword, assuming I'd just be able to ace him quickly. That was not the case. He did the correct thing, gaining my sword deeply. I grabbed some pickups with him later, and he's really good. Victory wasn't a sure thing for me against him, but I certainly handed the win to him on a silver platter.

My second loss was to a guy who I have fought and won against in tournaments before. He's quite good. There was an iffy maybe-push-cut and around the same time, I had a draw cut. I suggested we re-fight it, because he seemed confident that he had the cut and I was pretty confident that I had locked his sword pretty far outside of my head. It was also clearly evident that he did not at all feel my false-edge draw-cut.

We re-fought, and he caught me square in the gorget with a cross-shot over his right arm, after I had taken his blade and I was preparing to stab him. It was fine, it was good, and I'm not 100% sure what I could have done differently. I need to figure out if New Blade Magic has any relevance to cross-shots with case swords. It might be able to teach me a better way to take case swords so that the cross-shot isn't open, so that would be cool.

Aside from that it was a pretty good day. I got pickups with the first guy I lost to, and those were good. New Blade Magic seems to have clicked to the point that I can do neat things. This is good, because I spent the first half of the tournament wrestling with New Blade Magic, instead of being able to just call upon the reactions which I know work. A blog post is brewing, but it's going to take some time to fully explain it. I will probably try to explain it to people at practice, just to see if it makes any sense outside of my brain.

As a preview, New Blade Magic provides:

• An explanation of how and where people can disengage from.
• A way to determine the exact correct area to push on your opponent's sword, and why that is the case.
• A digression on what "back-weighted" actually means in the context of a sword, and what that gains you relative to "front-weighted" swords.

Have a good day everyone!

New Geometry on the Inside Line

The new geometry described in the previous entry, worked pretty well.

Stance Description

The stance ended up as a very profiled stance. The hilt went slightly to the left of my body, and the forte crossed over the rest of my body, frequently ending up with my tip pointing quite a bit off-line. This was because I needed to use my forte to defend myself against their debole, and the way most people fight on the inside line involves putting your sword very far over theirs on the inside line.

My hand ended up naturally rising when entering this guard, but I think that's because I was profiling my body. I could not find a comfortable place for my dagger, so it ended up drifting to various places. My hand ended up changing between being in seconda and in terza, which is about as expected.

None of the single-tempo actions I expected to work were the ones which ended up working. I had expected to be able to get a single-tempo on-line thrust to work well. This almost never worked, because my opponents never felt comfortable having me on their inside line. Usually this resulted in my opponent pushing me even deeper toward the inside line.

Successful Actions

The most successful actions ended up being two-tempo actions. One example was a two-tempo false-edge push upwards into a single-tempo thrust, from my sword being in seconda-terza below theirs. This ended up being a relatively safe action because of how this stance covers itself, and because of how far offline my opponent's blade had to go in order to push me offline. Also, the fact that my tip tended to be lower than my opponent's tip, despite my hilt being above their hilt. A less steep angle seems to be a thing with this stance.

Another successful action ended up being a straight-in thrust, leading to a passing step with a dagger-cover, void, and yield around. I would try to thrust straight-in, which forced my opponent to parry hard to the inside. This meant I knew where my opponent's sword would be, so I could take a passing step, covering with my dagger. If my opponent parried particularly high, then the dagger was not necessary, the body void being sufficient to protect me.

The last successful action was a response to my opponent pushing hard inside and downwards, with their tip lower than their hilt. It was a simple disengage to the left around their hilt. This is extremely fast, because the action initiates in the direction of my true edge. It ends up touching in my opponent's flank, past that beautiful and hard-to-parry part of the crook of the arm.

Less Successful Actions

When my opponent didn't give me blade engagement, I felt like I could not do very much. In theory I should have been able to strike in the tempo of their disengage, but in practice my sword ran into their dagger most of the time when this happened.

Additionally, if this stance really is what Giganti wanted, it should have been easy to strike through a disengage-thrust. This was decidedly not the case. I would usually catch the parry, but then my tip would go wide. I think that is a problem of execution on my part though, not a problem with the geometry itself. I shall need to think on this.

Going Forward

For the future, I need to work on my single-intent actions from this new inside guard. My intuition says that as my two-tempo actions improve, this will open up options for single-tempo actions. The two-tempo actions listed above all take advantage of my opponent's guard being very "big" - as in, "oh, you're on the inside line, I am going to very firmly cover your blade". I think that if I fight someone using a "smaller" guard, I will have more success with single-tempo actions.

Additionally, it's interesting to note how many of my go-to actions on the outside line are two-tempo. The most successful ones are still the single-tempo actions, but the two-tempo actions are very necessary to make opportunities for the single-tempo actions.

This stance is still not ready for tournament primetime, but it's well on its way to being useful.

Heretical Thoughts About Giganti

I have something to confess - I have been having heretical thoughts about the text of Giganti, as translated by Tom Leoni. The following is the result of a couple of hours of research. I could be wrong, and if you have evidence that I am wrong, please show it to me and I would be happy to edit this entry. I do not want to mislead others.

Additionally, if the geometry and techniques resulting from this end up being ineffective, I will edit this entry to reflect such, so that others do not begin down an ineffective path.

First, links to the two plates I will be talking about:

http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/xb-7532-1s/max/00009.jpg

http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/xb-7532-1s/max/00010.jpg

Why Should I Even Care?

One thing which has always bothered me about Leoni's Giganti is how Leoni specifies that in the inside guard, your tip should be pointing toward your opponent's right shoulder. There are several reasons that this just does not feel like it works. 

First off, it is impossible for you and your opponent to both be in this position. Sure, if you can force your opponent out of that position and take it for yourself, it's nice. But unless you are in an unsafe and impractical position which exposes both of you, then it is impossible for both you and your opponent to be on the inside line.

Second, the thrust is an unsafe action from the inside line. Giganti is concerned with safety above all things. He repeatedly chastises people who fight in a way that would cause what he calls a "double-hit". However, if you take your opponent's sword and then thrust from Leoni's Giganti guard, you create a line for your opponent to thrust at you. If your opponent is an inexperienced fencer, he might do exactly that. Or if he has a dagger that he intends to parry with, or any number of other, unpredictable factors.

Note that it is possible to perform a safe thrust from Leoni's Giganti guard, by pushing your hand toward your opponent's blade and then directing your sword to them. However it is slower, and from experience it ends up feeling more like a tempo-and-a-half action, rather than a single-tempo action.

Additionally, I have been recently thinking about alternate ways to adopt an inside guard. This does give me an agenda in this - I am working from necessity and looking to historical precedent for guidance. I will not go into my entire argument for this, but I feel it is good way to do things, due to the ambiguity of historical sources in many places.

What Does the Text Specify About the Plates?

Due to the above reasons, I decided to take a closer look at the actual text and words of the translation. In the actual text of Leoni's translation of Giganti's words on guards, it isn't specified which guard is inside and which one is outside. Is this actually true in the historical source?

http://mac9.ucc.nau.edu/manuscripts/giganti.pdf
(Look at page 11, GUARDIE OVERO POSTURE)

Survey says nope, as far as I can tell. This makes sense, because Leoni's translations are beautiful, generally carrying the intent of the words faithfully. In the translation by Leoni, the order is not specified. It is true that the inside guard is mentioned first in the text, but that doesn't necessarily mean that figure 2 is the inside guard, and figure 3 is the outside guard.

How Does the Text Specify You Should Place Your Blade?

Since there was no direct reference to an image which I could find, I decided to dive into an attempted translation of the text. My Italian is nonexistent, but with the help of multiple dictionaries, I was able to figure out that the reference text I was using didn't explicitly rule out the idea that by saying that you should place your sword "over" theirs, it could mean that you should put it "between" you and their sword.

It's a bit of a stretch, but stay with me.

What Do the Images Themselves State?

For these images, the text specifies that one is on the inside line, and the other is on the outside line. Given that the earlier PDF I linked doesn't have very good images, we turn to a later translation of this book:

http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/xb-7532-1s/start.htm?image=00009

And the high-resolution images for these plates:

http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/xb-7532-1s/max/00009.jpg

(indicated by Leoni as the fencer to the left taking the blade on the inside)

http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/xb-7532-1s/max/00010.jpg

(indicated by Leoni as the fencer to the left taking the blade on the outside)

It is worth noting at this point that these are not the only reproductions and material that I looked at. These are just the highest-quality, and none of the other material contradicted this material. Indeed, in the versions of the plates used in Leoni's book, Figure 3 looks like they are on the inside, as I argue below.

I looked desperately at many different reproductions of these plates. In particular, I looked for indications of which sword was closer to us at the cross. This is the easiest piece to see aside from hand position, and even this is infuriatingly difficult to decode. Giganti does not help us, expecting us to figure out which fencer is in a better position by ourselves.

Figure 2, even in this higher-quality version, is infuriating. It is hard to tell which blade is closer to the viewer at the cross. It might be the fencer on the left? Additionally, the shading seems to indicate that the fencer on the left has his hand tilted to his left, with respect to his arm. If the image is to be believed, we can see the start of his fingers, which would not be possible were he in quarta or between terza and quarta. This means he is between seconda or terza. As for the fencer on the right, there is nothing noteworthy about his stance.

This seems to indicate that these fencers are on the inside line, and that the fencer on the left is pressing on his opponent's sword with his false edge. This seems less than ideal for the fencer on the left, even though his sword is closer to being pointed at the other guy's face.

Figure 3, at this higher quality, becomes far clearer. The fencer on the left's sword is clearly closer to us at the cross. This means that the fencers are on the inside line. The fencer on the left is once again in seconda. It seems pretty clear that this is on the inside line. As well, the fencer on the right has his sword pointed more toward the fencer on the left's face. Lastly, from the quillon positioning of the fencer on the right, it seems like his tip is pointed more toward his opponent's left shoulder.

If both of these are on the inside, then Giganti has explicitly lied in his manual. I would prefer to imagine that Giganti is not lying, so I imagine that the one which looks more like the outside line is Figure 2, since the single line of the fencer on the right's sword drawn over the fencer on the left's sword makes it look as though the fencer on the right's sword might be closer to the viewer after all. This results in something interesting.

Context

Giganti cares very much about the idea of counter-guards. He mentions them in this section of the book, and in an earlier section states that "guards" aren't the appropriate thing to create, but that you should always work to create a counter-guard instead of a guard. If we take this into account (and ignore the fact that the models change between plates), and we assume that Figure 2 depicts the outside line, we get the following sequence:

In Figure 2, the fencer on the right (Dexter) assumes a completely generic guard in terza. The fencer on the left (Sinestro), being a knowledgeable and savvy fencer, assumes a counter-guard on the outside. Note that his tip is pointing at his opponent's head more than the reverse. This fact is hard to see at first, but because Dexter is taller than Sinestro, it is true.

In this plate, we should model ourselves after Sinestro.

In Figure 3, Dexter sees Sinestro's counter-guard. Dexter, also being a savvy fencer, adopts a counter-guard on the inside line. Presumably there was a disengage somewhere in here. Note that Sinestro has not changed his guard in any major fashion. Dexter now firmly points toward his opponent's head, and, assuming that Dexter's wrist is bent and pointing his tip at Sinestro's left shoulder, this forms a ramp which would push Sinestro's tip off-line if Sinestro tries to thrust directly in. We can tell from Dexter's body posture that he expects to be on the inside line, whereas Sinestro still expects to be on the outside line.

In this plate, we should model ourselves after Dexter.

Further Context

One last interesting note - the postures specified by me here, in which the inside guard points over your opponent's left shoulder and the outside guard points over your opponent's right shoulder, force your opponent to make the largest disengage possible if they want to disengage.

I have also gone through several plates separately and this alternate inside-line posture seems to make quite a bit of sense. 

It seems safer against double-kills, which is a deep concern of Giganti's. It also seems generally easier to execute the actions specified by Giganti in this guard. And lastly, it allows for a neutral position between two fencers in an inside guard, so that they can wrestle over the center line and force each other to disengage. As well, my intuition tells me that Giganti fought with far heavier swords than later period masters. This position would allow you to pivot around your blade's center of balance, which would allow for much more agile movements than otherwise.

Closing Remarks

Obviously, this means nothing without testing. I have done separate geometry about this alternate guard, and will be bringing this new paradigm to practice on Thursday. There, it will face a number of opponents. I will need to bring it multiple practices in order to confirm or deny its efficacy. After all, this is why we imitate the period masters - they are theoretically the most effective fencers of a bygone age.

I hope this has been educational, or at least entertaining, to all who read this.


All references for this entry with the exception of Tom Leoni's excellent book were found on the Wiktenauer page on Nicoletto Giganti's book, Scola, overo teatro.

Tom Leoni's excellent book is a fantastic resource which I still suggest you get. It is available at this link.