Wednesday Practice

Today, I worked short-blade Destreza almost exclusively. It was glorious. I think I need to try a heavier pommel for my standard blade when doing Destreza, because of how the movement from a 45º atajo to a 90º atajo works. Basically - the movement hinges around a point too far forward on my standard blade to actually and effectively prevent a disengage. More importantly, my moulinet needs to rotate around that same point, which makes it too slow and hard to control for in-fighting. And lastly, the tip-heaviness of my sword means that in order to perform a slicing cut, I need to do it very far out - at about thrust range for my 37" sword, and at about a 45º shoulder-angle from my opponent.

All of these factors are nice when I'm fighting Italian - the tip-heaviness makes my disengages quicker and the far-forward cut-point means I can transition to a cut if I miss my thrust. But for Destreza, all of these things are not super useful. I might be able to get the blade opposition to work if I leaned far forward, Fabris-style, but I am unsure. On the plus side, I better understand how to perform good cuts now.

But yeah. Lots of talking, lots of slow work, lots of single-versus-case. Fun times.

Practice Yesterday!

Practice yesterday was very good. I realized that I make lots of noises when fencing. Lots of them. I am unsure if I should care about this.

*****

First up, I fought a fighter who used a crinkle-buckler. I didn't realize it, but I apparently was catching her sword with my dagger more. This is interesting, because it means I was using my dagger in the way I've been drilling the New Spanishish Thing at home. She caught me quite a bit with thrusts timed and placed in such a way that I couldn't really have defended against them on-reaction with my dagger, so I just ended up batting at them ineffectually after they landed. I kept getting placed in a dead zone where I couldn't really use my sword, especially given her Sun Chips™ buckler. I also tried and failed multiple times to blow through her buckler with my sword.

I think that the correct approach to take in the future would be to do a better job faking out the buckler and perhaps taking more leg shots with an offline step. This particular fight continues to be frustrating in educational ways.

An interesting note - usually at the distance where I would be able to use my dagger to attack, I am too close to use my sword to defend. That is to say, my sword is stuck on the ground or my opponent. This, I think, explains some of my difficulty against buckler fighters. I need to work on my ability to restrict their sword hand, while keeping my dagger hand at liberty.

*****

Then, I fought our guest from the Midrealm. It was sad because I could tell that there were many things that he wanted to do, which he just couldn't because he was using my 44.5" sword instead of his 42" sword. He maintained a straight-armed low guard pretty consistently, which allowed him to perform very effective straight-in shots and interesting blade rotation in response to having his blade taken. In the end, I was pleased to note that the things I have worked on for usage against people with a low guard tended to work very well.

After-the-fact, he noted that I vastly preferred single snap-exchanges to prolonged exchanges, which might leave me open to being set up. This is accurate - after all, if I can get in a situation that I have solved and then run my "I win" macro, why wouldn't I? But if my opponent is familiar with that particular macro, it's possible that they would be able to set up conditions that look like the appropriate conditions for me to win, but are not.

As well, I am unsure how to solo-drill prolonged exchanges at home. Visualization? No idea.

*****

I then fought Rowan and it was recorded. We recorded the first many passes. Weirdly, I felt like I ramped way up in terms of trying hard to fight skillfully when videotape became involved. I didn't even realize that my regular game wasn't as intense as I could do. Across our fights, I found that some of my "older" techniques were actually way better against her than my "newer" and "better" techniques. It's very possible that Easterners have adjusted to the principles I use in the way I used to fight, so Rowan, who came from out-of-kingdom, hasn't had to deal with that yet.

Also I made a bunch of weird noises, and I rotate my front foot a lot. (That positioning at 0:20? Ugh.) I know why I do it - it's preparation for movement to the left or the right, in order to gain more lateral stability. But it looks super awkward, and probably is not good for my bad ankle.

I really like how crisp and deliberate my blade movements look in that video, though.

*****

I also fought against another fighter. We did a bunch of single rapier. I tried some of my new stuff, but when using my New Spanishish Thing the fight sort of became "disengage around until either she takes my blade solidly, or I can connect my blade to her with a straight arm". It was somewhere between hard and impossible to get her to take her tip out of my presence to the left or the right, as outlined by the Diestros. In retrospect, I think that I could have had more success with this principle if I had taken her blade with the top of mine more often, and then performed spiraling opposition through. I was using my 45" blade though, and the length difference was enough that I never felt secure in my opposition.

Maybe pulling my hand back and/or down, to put my strong on her weak, before starting my spiral? Who knows.

*****

On the way home, I had a lot of good talking about fighting with our Midrealm guest. Apparently gunslinging is going somewhat out of vogue in the Mid, which is nice.

I ended up talking a lot about fighting, and not fighting quite as much as I could have. There are a number of techniques that I would like to think about more, including:

• Dagger-first sweep-up into arbitrary sword-thrust from a more Ansteorran stance.
• Move forward and left with my sword hilt as a fake, and then move my body and sword-plus-hilt right, in order to act as a tempo-trap to get a case fighter's right-hand thrust to miss, while parrying their left-hand thrust.
• My old shallow tourney game (nail/rising nail/yield/thrust in prima), with a particular focus on where Nail is appropriate versus Rising Nail.
• Giganti's stomp to force an action with a demi-lunge, then lunge to completion based on my opponent's response.
• New Spanishish Thing, with a focus on forcing my opponent into opposition.
• I'm coming to think more and more that there's very infrequently a reason to bend one's elbow during a fight.
• I still haven't actually fought at a practice with my 37" sword very much, despite drilling with it at home almost exclusively.

All in all, a joyous fencing practice. I wasn't thinking too hard about refining my game - I was thinking much more about new things, and about just getting out there and fighting my fight.

Practice Report

Standard disclaimer: This stuff is experimental. I will likely say things which sound right, but are not, because I'm trying to figure out how to make them work and why they do or do not work.

Trying to understand and implement New Spanishish Thing continues to vex me.

I had some dumbbells set up such that I could perform opposition on them. It worked great! I was able to slide down the blade to perform versions of the various Spanish generals on my practice dummy. It taught me a lot about how blades interact. However, when I got to practice, the thing didn't work super well.

I'm reaching directly toward my opponent's hilt with my hilt, using a straight arm. Then, reaching toward the part of their sword that is as far away from their quillons as my tip is. So, if I'm using a 37" sword, I'm reaching 37" down their blade. With a 45" sword, I'm reaching toward a point past their tip.

After that, I'm just moving forward and, when I reach the medio of proporcion (the point at which, at full extension, their tip would be just past my quillons), then I am performing an action. These actions which I am making up terms just now for are:

1. Scoop their sword over their body as per previous work with New Spanishish Thing
1. "attack by engagement"
2. Slide up the line inside of their sword relative to their shoulder and detach to stab, defending with the middle of my blade
1. "attack by detachment"
3. Slide up the line their sword could occupy, placing my blade to block as many of their possible lines in and then detaching to cut their arm and/or body, when my hilt gets near theirs.
1. "attack by barring"
4. Push their sword off the center and stab them, as per actual real Destreza.
1. "attack by crossing"

1 and 2 should work if their arm is not pointing toward your leading shoulder but their sword is, 2 and 3 should work if both their arm and their sword are not pointing toward your shoulder, and 1 and 4 are kind of the same thing and thus should work if their arm is pointing toward your shoulder. There's some squishy room, and which you should do depends on body positioning, but that is the gist of what I was trying yesterday.

Performing all of these actions should happen as I enter the medio. The positioning I have specified means that my opponent is limited to going to one side or trying to extend their arm and push through their blade. After that, all of their actions will be in the time of the body and the foot, which should be slow enough that I can react to them given that I know what to anticipate.

I had a hard time getting appropriate angulation. The last iteration of New Spanishish thing worked super well, but

• I was working it from way out of measure, which allowed me to choose a way weaker part of their blade to act on.
• The "wrapping" motion I did allowed me to grab blades that were farther off-line than what I'm trying right now.
• The "wrapping" motion also meant that my opponent frequently didn't expect the push, which allowed me to act without direct opposition for a tempo.

I think that for action 1, I need to integrate a wrap as I enter the medio.

My angulation was wrong, too. Frequently my opponent would either change blade position after entering measure, or wouldn't allow me to extract myself to the measure needed to calculate the blade position I wanted. As such, I wasn't strong as I needed to be. It's also possible that active pushes against my sword would mean that I need a yet stronger position, in order to do the thing appropriately.

Perhaps I should just go with the Romagnan 45º or 30º angle for taking an atajo, for performing these actions. A 45º atajo would ensure that my opponent could not gain strength on my sword by bending their wrist, and pointing my arm straight at their hilt means I almost always have the inside line. This gets complex when my opponent's sword is way offline, but complexity can be worked out later.

I should do some math to see if my intuition about pointing at the 37" mark with a 37" sword is completely off-base or not. Like, actual modern geometry to see how that ends up working out. I can already tell that if I get in that position against someone in an Italian stance, that sort of leaves me open to a straight-in thrust. But again, I shouldn't be allowing them in their thrust range without acting on their sword.

I did like how the new positioning meant that I could go anywhere with my sword, and wasn't limited to the four directions I was working on previously. 

Lastly, it really felt like this was all more effective with my 37" sword than with my 45" sword. I'm not sure if it's just because I've been drilling more at home with my 37", or if it's actually just a better set of principles with a shorter sword. Maybe I need to begin the actions as I enter my opponent's medio? Or whoever's medio is farthest away? Ugh. Viedma says I should act at my medio, but the Spanish also favor shorter swords, so his book might be more suited to the fighter with the shorter sword.

*****

I've also been working on the principle that the thing in my left hand should defend against the thing in my opponent's right hand. I'm not sure how good an idea that is in practice against people fighting sword and dagger. Against case fighters who I don't outrange, I think it's a good idea, and perhaps the only effective idea. The entire point of New Spanishish Thing is to figure out a more universal set of principles so that I can apply them to (for example) case fighters. Against case, I can't do my textbook "apply two items to one item in order to win" actions. So I need different and better ones.

*****

I fought my standard game a little bit? It worked decently. I actually felt better in my Giganti stance than I did in my Fabris-60-knockoff stance, which is unusual because I was fighting against a very blade-forward stance and usually I consider Fabris-knockoff to rock-paper-scissors against blade-forward stances pretty hard. It makes sense though, because my Giganti-esque stance was able to take advantage of the New Spanishish Things I have been studying.

I also think that I have discovered that my yield-under disengage is actually not good unless my opponent is very far off-line. This makes sense - it's basically a giarata, and that's when a giarata is used in Giganti. But it's disappointing, since that means I need to find better things to do when I am blocked out on the outside line, but not super hard. Maybe just reverting to my old false-edge-beat-through would be a good idea.

*****

That was a practice. As a summary:

• Keep trying this variation of New Spanishish Thing, but think through the problem of angle of atajo.
• Keep working the problem of dagger-versus-sword. Maybe read Viedma more?
• Do the good things in My Stances. I'm getting lazy and letting things slip.

That's all for now.

Quick Notes on Daggers

Common wisdom holds that historical dagger blades were perhaps 8 to 12 inches in length. This is not the only historical length. Viedma has the following to say about daggers (page 53r):

The dagger has to be long, at least half a vara, which is of notable advantage. The posture has to be over the arm, close to the chest, in a form that the sword doesn’t lose its straightness, nor the body its profile.

Earlier in the book, he also mentions (page 23v):

The body has to remain in profile, brought close to the master’s sword, in such conformity, that although he may have a dagger of three quarters in the left hand, he doesn’t reach to wound.

This leaves off the units, but it seems a reasonable assumption to me that the units would be the same in both instances.

One vara is about equivalent to 33 inches. Math says that this means that Viedma suggests a dagger of at least ~16.5 inches, and isn't surprised by the idea of a dagger of ~24.5 inches.

(EDIT FROM FUTURE-LUPOLD: In-period, the vara was different in different places until a declaration by King Felipe II in 1512 - well before Viedma's text was written. It's still possible, however, that Viedma was referring to a different measurement of vara. The smallest measurement of a vara that I can find is the vara of Teruel, which is 0.768 meters, and the largest measurement I can find is 0.912 meters. This means that the minimum range for a dagger would be from ~15 inches to ~22.5 inches, and the maximum range for a dagger would be from ~18 inches to ~27 inches.)

Viedma doesn't specify that this should be the length of the blade, rather than the overall weapon, but given that we have several historical examples of length being specified from the cross of the quillons in the Spanish tradition, it seems reasonable.

What of the shape of the dagger? We have historical examples of Spanish main gauches, of the correct length. However, if we look at Viedma's rather sparse art, we see the following in his section on fighting with a dagger against a sword, on page 58r:

If we are to believe this image, a Spanish dagger ought to basically look like a smaller sword, with quillons, a knucklebow, and a ricasso. This is different from the main gauche shown earlier, and indeed it seems as though Viedma advises that one use a dagger in about the same way as one uses a sword. In terms of modelling this, I could see a smallsword hilt working well for this purpose.

I am unsure if it is intentional, but the dagger shown in the art also has no distal taper, as opposed to the sword which has some degree of it. This would change the properties of the dagger and allow for more blade presence. Similarly, the sword is drawn with relatively little distal taper, which is an interesting thing to note.

*****

Other notes include the fact that Viedma implicitly mentions tempo on page 53r (emphasis mine):

It doesn’t have to serve more than at its time and blow, placed on the chest; only for some particular blows will it have to be placed at the part that the adversary’s sword has to leave, so that the blow is so brief that it almost can’t be known by the opponent, as our authors say.

This is an interesting note, given my semi-heretical definition of tempo as "the amount of time in which you can move before your opponent can react".

I really need to give this book a more thorough reading, now that I have some slight degree of understanding of Destreza. I've read the first half relatively thoroughly, but only performed a relatively detailed skim of the second half.

*****

After-the-fact edit: It's worth noting that Viedma's treatise is from 1639, which makes it somewhat post-SCA-period. However, it's only about 10 years more post-period than Pappenheimer hilts, which are ubiquitous.

Lochleven Practice

This past Sunday was Lochleven practice, which was fun. We did a bunch of melee, and I brought longsword to most of it. I also wore lacrosse gloves after my hand got smacked for a fourth time, and that might be a good thing to do in melee in general.

*****

In our line-rolling drill, I learned that I need to get in people's personal space after I stab them more often. This would allow for faster rolls. The issue there is that by the time I need to make the choice to move on, I don't necessarily know if my opponent is taking the shot yet. And indeed, I don't know if I've hit yet, since I need to be stepping in as I finish throwing my shot. So, the answer there is probably to learn to better distinguish thrusts which are going to land before I throw them.

Alternately, I can ignore that, and just understand that my slower, less-efficient line-rolling has the advantage that I confirm that my opponent is taking the shot before I move on. In theory, the line should be able to "ripple" when it starts to roll, and if I take too long then the next person in line can pick up the roll.

I shall state once again - I'm not *that* good at melee. I'm good at measure, and I'm good at using that to create opportunities to turn melee into fencing, rather than melee. When it works, I can sometimes do excellent things. When it doesn't, I am sad.

To be better at melee, I need to learn to use my long blades for in-fighting. Maybe I should work on that next practice.

*****

Longsword was great. My work with Left Plow guard in rapier crossed over decently well. My go-to shot ended up being a preparation in Left Plow on the outside line, baiting an outside-line ward and leading to a disengage under their sword and then harpoon to the stomach. That shot was great because I could throw the start of it relatively quickly, then gently poke in at my opponent's belly when I got to the point where they couldn't stop it even if they tried.

*****

I tried fighting with the New Spanish Opposition Thing using and against case. I couldn't get it to work against a very active case game, in which my opponent's arms never stopped moving. I think that the combination of him being very far off-line with him moving around a lot meant that I couldn't do what I wanted. In retrospect, perhaps I should have just tried to pry him open - that is to say, place my blade in a position that blocks off his straight line, and widens as I get closer until I can throw a shot.

This might be the general solution for someone with a very active blade. If their blade is active, they will put it in bad places, and my job is to not allow them to return to good places.

*****

In closing, there is one thing I would like to see. So, there are a number of melee strategy classes I have taken. And then there are melee tactics classes. I would like to see a class on personal melee techniques that people use, since I have no idea what people other than me do.

This would be things like "rush in and bar blades outwards" and things like that. The appropriate way and situations to perform actions in. Because while it is possible to default to fencing techniques, I think it's not the optimal solution.

Previous Entry Postmortem

This post isn't really written for other people. It's written for myself. If you gain something out of it, great! If not, oh well. Assuming this doesn't all collapse under the weight of trying to fence well, I'll probably write a part two for the previous entry and correct the incorrect parts of it. Part two would probably be about "barriers" and second-intention actions.

So, I tried a new thing yesterday! It was pretty great. Problems with it include:

• It is vulnerable to a disengage above, below, or around.
• Maybe the correct way to do the thing is to carry their sword past the center lines, and then form a barrier with my sword?
• So, as an example, perform Action 1, then place my hand in a firm diagonal, my hand in Rada's position 6, my blade in Rada's position 4.
• Stepping through helps, but when my opponent is moving that is hard. 
• People were not generally willing to let me get into the range that would allow me to single-tempo thrust in.
• Maybe advance defensively and wait for them to screw up?
• Maybe chain appropriate actions together, forming the aforementioned barrier in between?
• Maybe perform the one action, then learn common second actions to perform afterwards?
• For example, after action 4 on a left-handed person, disengage from high to low and thrust to the flank, either warding with dagger or returning the sword to a defensive posture quickly thereafter?
• Actions 3 and 6 were almost impossible to perform on Italians because I could not get my tip under their hilt.
• This meant that in hilt-low-tip-high positions, I was forced to use actions 4 and 5.
• However, the Step 2 positioning for Actions 3 and 6, and 3 in particular, was relatively easy to turn into Step 4 or an exaggerated Action 1, completely skipping performing Step 3 in the Process.
• So maybe if I can get my sword "behind" theirs, I can rotate through into the final position of the Action numbered plus two or minus two, depending on whether the action is even or odd.
• Odd actions minus two into taking the blade, plus two into attacking by detachment.
• Even actions plus two into taking the blade, minus two into attacking by detachment.
• I'm not 100% sure about staying fingernails-in the entire time. Action 4 felt much more solid when I switched to fingernails-up. I need to try Actions 5, 3, and 6 in various hand-positions more, to see what feels most solid.

Really awesome things with it include:

• These actions seem to not suck defensively, as long as I exaggerate them a bit and move my hilt over as part of Step 4.
• As an example, when performing Action 2, drop my hilt into Rada Position 7 and put my tip in Rada Position 9, to cover the blade better after transitioning them through.
• That's not quite right, but it's close enough for me to remember what I'm talking about.
• This is similar to the above thing about forming a "barrier".
• I was performing the Actions with my dagger by the end, and it worked decently well. It was essentially an Italian invitation, when I did that. My opponent would disengage, but my dagger is quick enough that I could catch them. I was ending in those defensive positions specified above.
• It was actually very similar to how I used my dagger in my sword-refused stance.
• Actions 5 and 8 are hard with a dagger, just because hands don't bend like that. Work on hand positioning.
• The Actions can be performed at any angle, but it's good to have the results of an Action pre-processed. 
• So, you can rotate the cross from the previous post at any angle, and it is still a valid set of actions. The results will just need to be re-processed.
• Eventually I should probably gain an intuitive understanding of this, so I can just act without thinking about the exact angle.
• Or should I? Because having pre-drilled moves is a good thing.
• This is the first time that I've actually felt like returning to the right angle in the center is an advantage. Especially against opponents who play blade opposition, it felt like returning my sword to the right angle helped me to avoid getting effectively opposed, and helped me to be able to perform the Actions as small movements.
• My Action needs to be much, much tighter in Step 2 if I'm starting at the center, rather than if I'm waiting in Step 2. This is if I want the Action to be a single-tempo action, which I always always always do.
• The first step against Italians seemed to almost always be Action 2 or 4, depending on where their tip was. Action 5 would happen rarely, if they drifted off-line as an invitation or attempted to gain opposition on the outside line.
• Against a lefty, the Actions were still 2 and 4, but he kept his blade far to my right, interestingly enough.
• I think the game here is to take actions to bring them closer and closer to the center, until I can take them out of the center under my control.
• Unless they just give me the positioning to take them out of the center under my control. In which case it would be rude not to.
• Elbow-bent positions are bad for me, because they can just launch the blade up a difficult-to-predict line.
• And unless they refuse their blade in a position that allows me to carry them to a location where they cannot hit me. That's also nice.
• I think that with thinking about positioning, I can get to the point where I can successfully perform the Actions and not get stabbed most of the time, so I can start working on taking advantage of the positioning I gain from the Actions.

Side-note - I tend to think about new things in terms of three "percentages" - how often I can perform them without dying, how often I can perform them and gain better positioning, and how often I can perform them and stab the other guy straight out.

Previously, my strategy has been to look for actions in which the first number is as low as possible, while the last number is as high as possible. I'm unsure how much I should value that second number, but that's apparently what I'll need to work on for this. That is also why I have been working with a shorter sword some - it means I can't optimize for that last number, and I am forced to learn how to take advantage of actions which have a high percentage on that second number.

But really, "success rate" in my book is that first number. If I can do a thing and not die, that's great! I can try something again.

So, that was a practice. Yaaay!

A New and Experimental Way to Understand Opposition

Today, we have a thinky post. I was inspired to write this post after some fights over the weekend, in which find-gain-attack wasn't working against me. I was able to counter-gain and attack my opponent due to my shoulders being higher, and I wanted to explore why this is the case.

*****

After-the-fact edit: I've already thought of some problems with this, but I'm going to wait for a while to update this post.

*****

What is Opposition? Well, it's the mechanism by which we interpose our sword in order to limit our opponent's options in order to not be hit.

This is usually performed by pushing our opponent's blade aside, and then extending our arm to place our blade literally on top of our opponent's blade. However, if your shoulders are lower than your opponent's shoulders, this becomes difficult. This is due to the following principle:

Ignore the fact that these spheres get terrible  past the part where they overlap.

I don't own a compass. The spheres should be centered on the fighters' shoulders.

I know they're circles. Imagine them as spheres because that's what they are in real life.

If your opponent's shoulders are higher than yours, then you are giving up range at full extension by attempting to put your blade on top of theirs. As well, consider the following:

In this position, the higher opponent can gain stronger opposition by moving forward. The lower opponent, however, can only gain opposition by raising their hand.

If the higher opponent wants to stab the lower one, all they need to do is move forward and stab at the lower one's face, pushing their sword aside by the weak.

If the lower wants to stab the higher, then they can't just push through. Pushing forward moves a weak part of their blade to a strong part of their opponent's blade. The only single-tempo action they have is a disengage and thrust to the belly. They can pull their hand back to gain better opposition, but that adds a tempo to their action.

Let's look at the first picture again.

If opposition is the way we stab our opponent without being hit, it makes sense that we would want to put our opponent's sword in a place that means we can hit them without them hitting us. If we look at the spheres depicted in this picture, we can see that the lower person can hit farther on a low line, and the higher person can hit farther on a high line.

So, it makes sense that if we are higher than our opponent, we want to bring their sword up, and push through their sword on a high line.

If we are lower than our opponent, we want to bring their sword down, and push through their sword on a low line.

*****

Shoulder positioning matters. If someone's shoulders are higher, then that means that the Duello-style find-gain-attack Just Works. You can remain more on-line than your lower opponent, since coming on-line to strike at your chest or face is automatically a disadvantage to them in terms of opposition, as illustrated above. I have had problems working on Duello-style find-gain-attack bladework because of this very set of principles.

I think this means that the lower opponent should favor Transports, in an Italian context. You sweep their sword down and are in position to stab them in the gut, as illustrated above. This doesn't mean a lower opponent can't find-gain-attack. This is manifestly false. It just requires the lower opponent to carry their opponent more off-line before attacking.

Note that I'm saying "higher" and "lower". This is because you can raise or lower your shoulders in subtle ways over the course of a bout. The two people in the first picture should be about the same height, if they were standing up straight. The one on the left just has a far, far wider stance.

*****

This is all well and good, but it's not enough. It's a set of squishy, imprecise if-then-else statements. This is terrible. Swordsmanship should be universal! If there's this idea of "carrying up" and "carrying down", how do we do it?

Fortunately, we have the Spanish. The Spanish have their own set of sweeps and carries, which I have worked with for some time. However, I could never get the thrust after the atajo to work quite right. The brewing of some half-remembered ideas about "straightening the arm" and "spiraling the blade in" eventually led to some exciting geometry.

*****

This is intended ot be a drawing of someone pointing at you in a destreza stance.

The thing that looks like an apple is a sword.

Foreshortening is hard. Drawing is hard.

If you imagine an opponent standing head-on, facing you, the farthest they can reach is the line extending from their shoulder to your shoulder. If they are head-on to you, this is close to a point. If their arm is fully extended, then you can imagine them divided into quarters. Their shoulder lies at the center. The lower-right quadrant contains their belly, while the upper-right quadrant contains their head.

I'm going to show you a symbol now. It won't make sense until I explain it. That's okay though.

Each line represents part of a blade transition that can be done. So, there are two in the upper-right quadrant. One is represented by first going up, and then going right. The next is represented by going right, and then going up. At the end of each of these, we cut through our opponent's blade and push them to one of the adjacent quadrants.

So, the first one I mentioned moves your blade up, then right, then pushes your opponent's sword down into the bottom-right quadrant.

The second one goes right, then up, then pushes your opponent's sword from the upper-right quadrant into the upper-left quadrant.

Each of these movements is begun with the tip. There are four steps in each. I assume that you are in an arm-extended late-period Destreza stance, although I will later show that this is not necessary. The steps are:

1. Move your tip outwards along the central cross.
1. In the first example, this means to move it up.
2. You are only moving at the wrist here.
2. Move your tip outwards along the end of the cross. At the same time, move your hilt to the position that your tip used to occupy.
1. In the first example, this means to move your tip right and your hilt up.
2. The tip movement is again accomplished with your wrist. The hilt movement is accomplished with your shoulder. Or elbow, if you really want?
3. Move your sword in a direction opposite the two directions you have moved. Straighten your arm fully at this step, such that your sword points out along the dot in that quadrant of the cross.
1. This is the step at which you first make blade contact. According to the first example, you should be pushing your opponent's sword downwards.
2. You will be adjusting slightly right and down with your shoulder. Your wrist will be straightening back out, which will carry your tip leftwards somewhat.
3. I'm not sure if you should be straightening your wrist completely - I think it might be just a pivot opposite to the second direction. This is to make your sword "flat" relative to the direction your hand is moving, to make it harder for your opponent to use your momentum to slide from your strong to your weak.
4. Keep pushing your opponent's sword opposite the first movement you made, carrying your and their sword into the appropriate quadrant.
1. This means that you have pushed them downwards, in the first example.
2. The downward push is accomplished with your shoulder at this point. You probably shouldn't need to bend at the elbow or wrist at this point? But maybe you will. Who knows.

This is the shape of the first action:

Here is an excruciatingly thorough and somewhat exaggerated illustration of the action, from the side and the top:

The side view of the third step has a weird sword because I was unsure 

if it should be parallel to the ground, or straight in line with my arm. This is one of those things I will

attempt to work on tonight.

Step 4 Top View also has an art error. The arm should be *more* toward the center than Step 3 Top View, rather than less.

There is a diagonal aspect to the last action, but it's primarily downwards. This diagonal aspect is omitted in the below listing of the actions.

The tl;dr of this is that you move your sword around your opponent's sword and then cut through their sword in the direction opposite of where they currently are.

Real talk: In practice, the first and second actions can be combined, or even used as a stance to rest in. The third and fourth actions are basically the same action, except that you want to have your arm straight near the beginning of your movement.

The eight actions and their result in a righty-versus-righty fight are:

1. Up, right, down. Probably stabs the gut.
2. Right, up, left. Probably misses over their right shoulder.
3. Right, down, left. Probably misses under their right arm.
4. Down, right, up. Probably stabs the face.
5. Down, left, up. Probably misses above and outside of their right arm.
6. Left, down, right. Probably stabs their right flank or belly.
7. Left, up, right. Probably stabs their face. Maybe their right cheek?
8. Up, left, down. Probably misses, sort of looped over their right arm.

In general, you want to use the action corresponding to the location of their blade. If their blade is super-low and only a little to your right, you probably want to use Action 4 - down, right, up.

If the correct action isn't clear, you can make it more clear by walking left or right, or dropping your shoulders to reposition the relative location of the cross on their shoulder.

If your opponent has their arm and blade very far off-line, this will not help you too much? You can approach and then counter-thrust if they thrust as you enter measure, or you can do something different to bar them and keep them off-line, then thrust as you get close.

If your opponent has more reach then you, then you will have to push them farther off-line to succeed, so they can't yield around your opposition and stab you.

If your opponent's shoulders are higher than yours, you should favor the actions which involve downward movements. Similarly, if your opponent stands lower, you should favor actions which involve upward movements.

My intuition says that after you initiate the movement, you should step in the opposite direction you would expect to, in order to get past their hilt more easily. So for Action 1, you would circle left until you complete Step 2, at which point you would take one step to the right in order to finish the action.

I have also been less than transparent with you about the definition of "in a quadrant". "In a quadrant" just means that the part of your opponent's blade that you expect to touch in Step 3 of your action is in that quadrant. Their full sword could span up to three quadrants, but only the location of the part you plan to touch matters. This gets complex if your opponent is not in a late-period Spanish stance, but you should be able to hide behind your hilt such that their riposte is a duo-tempi action, regardless of where you push them or how they started.

*****

Let's break this down even more.

Fencing is a game of reactions. You want to get your opponent into a position in which you can stab them before they react. Since steps 3 and 4 can (and, in execution, should) be done as a single-tempo action, that means that our Win Position is after completing step 3. So, if you can get your hand angled right with respect to your opponent's blade, you can take a single step and blast them in the face or gut.

As a note, this is the idea of tempo as according to the Italian. If I remember my research from a few years ago correctly, the Spanish tended to prefer to think of time as more fluid, and not divisible into discrete moments. I disagree with the Spanish in this regard. I have apparently never written a blog post about this, and I should fix this posthaste.

*****

Most Italian stances are "pre-loaded" in a position in your lower-left, upper-left, or lower-right, depending on which Italian master we are talking about. So, the appropriate single-tempo responses would be pre-loaded Actions 6, 7, and 4, correspondingly. Approach as though you have already completed Step 2, and then stab them in the gut, face, or face.

*****

As a note, Spanish masters tend to deeply dislike "violent" or upwards movement. This means that Actions 4 and 5 are probably a no-go according to them. I plan to use them, however, and see how it goes. Maybe I will come to agree, maybe not.

Happy fencing!