Quick Practice Post!

Practice was good. A couple of bullet-points:

• I finally am starting to feel like a mid-range short-blade-fighter.
• Giaratas are hard. See the below picture and text for details.
• I'm getting better at changing from "I'm practicing!" into "I'm trying hard to win!" at will.
• I need to use my short sword to push into their sword more, when I am doing opposition. Many people are stronger than me, so I need to compensate with better technique.

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Below is described my Problems with Giaratas.

My art continues to be fantastic.

This is a top-view again. 

Of both Weak Under Strong into a thrust,

and of a giarata.

The issue here is the angle of the shoulder, when entering into the thrust at the top of the Spanish Circle, or after performing the void from a giarata. I need that particular body-angle, but in order to land my tip at that body angle I need to bend my shoulder in a way that I'm not sure it actually bends. I'll try working flexibility for a while, but I might need to consider other options.

Italians and Daggers, Spanish and Body Angle

One peculiarity of the Spanish is that they tend to not use daggers. The Spanish masters mention them, and mention how to use them in passing, but in general they state that the single sword can defeat all combined arms. Why is this? Why do the Italians hold onto usage of the dagger so tightly, whereas the Spanish could take it or leave it? The Spanish use body angle and positioning to do the same thing that the Italians use daggers to do.

Such an artist. This depicts a top-view of fencers.

The point of using a dagger is to block your opponent's angle of attack. You want to force them to disengage around your dagger, which adds to the time it takes them to touch you. This, ideally, gives you time to perform actions like attacking.

This means that a dagger is useless unless you spread it outwards, pushing their blade outside of your body and maintain it there. You gain no utility if you just keep the dagger in front of you. Similarly, if you spread your dagger outwards before you are close enough, you just create an open line for your opponent to stab. So, to prevent stabbings, you need to get past your opponent's tip and then create an angle between your dagger and your body, which prevents their tip from reaching you.

(For the following, I am adopting the convention of arbitrarily using male pronouns for the fighter farther upwards, and female pronouns for the fighter farther downwards.)

For an example of this, see the "YES, GOOD" set of fighters. The person with the dagger cannot be stabbed without a disengage, unless her opponent either moves forward and creates an even larger angle with his sword. This can be countered by the dagger-holding fighter pulling her hand back.

I believe that a similar degree of defense can be accomplished simply from body angle. I have two assumptions to which you must ascribe here, to agree with me:

1. A proper chopping cut requires at least a quarter-turn of the blade, whether of the wrist, the elbow, or the shoulder.
2. A proper draw cut is slow, because it requires you to place the blade, then push or pull it while applying pressure. If you don't place and then pull or push, the blade will bounce ineffectually.
3. The thrust is the ideal attack, faster than either cut unless your sword is far off-line.

So, without further ado...

The person on the bottom was drawn without arms to accentuate the point about body angle.

As we can see, the distance matters. If you are past their tip, then you can prevent them from touching you based solely on body angle. This is something that the Italians do as well - a giarata is an attack which twists your body into a position which can't be easily attacked, while countering with your own thrust.

But yes - here, you're creating an angle that can't be dealt with by rotating your own body. In "NO, BAD", she has rotated wrongly and will be stabbed. In "YES, GOOD", she has rotated correctly and will not be stabbed.

So, now that I've given a hasty set of examples that body angle can defend in a way similar to how a dagger defends, let's look at how this applies to the Spanish.

Pronoun-wise, he has the sword, she's stepping around.

This circle is based on the arm and sword of the fencer with the sword. As you can see, the positions shown for the diestro without the sword follow the same angulation shown in the above "YES, GOOD" set of fighters.

Note that here, the fighter without a sword is assumed to start opposite the fighter with the sword.

(As an aside - the diestro realistically would not maintain the same direction all the way around the circle. When she steps from the top position to the upper-left position, she would step and put the left side of her body forward, allowing her to grab her opponent's hilt or blade and perform a Movement of Conclusion.)

Being more specific - a diestro steps around the circle, keeping the front half of her body closer to the line of her opponent's sword than the back half of her body. This means that her opponent must correct their direction first, then thrust. This effect is exacerbated when the diestro has a shorter sword than her opponent - the circle is tighter, and by the time she has crossed one or two steps around the circle, she is past her opponent's tip.

My phone makes interesting choices about which direction to orient images.

The above image shows the arc of "past the tip" for a long, medium, and short sword. As you can see, the diestro is past the tip after two steps. If her opponent were to step forward at the same time, the arc would move and she would be past the tip after one step with a long weapon.

This is the same movement as the Italian giarata, except that the Spanish fencer gets there faster due to her upright posture, rather than the Italian who has to push his leg around behind him, depending on how squarely his body is situated.

The diestro's movement around the circle accomplishes the goal of being safe from thrusts using body angulation alone, without adding anything else, even an off-hand.

(As an aside, I plan to attempt to use this along with explicit taking-of-the-blade to work on my game of fighting against case fighters with single rapier and rapier-and-dagger.)

So, as we've seen above, Italians create safety with their daggers by widening the angle between the tip of their opponent's sword and their body. This relies on positioning - trying to make a wide angle between their tip and your body doesn't matter if you aren't past their tip yet. This is similar to how when a diestro steps around the circle, her body angle creates safety from thrusts after she crosses a certain line. The front half of her body acts as a parrying device, refusing to allow her opponent's tip to touch the rest of her body. In this way, body angulation allows the Spaniard to obtain the same effect as using two implements, where the Italian would prefer to use a dagger. This means that body angulation can be effectively used to act as an additional implement.

(As another aside - I think that Fabris's forward body posture can act on the same principle, and I am eager to try it more after having written this post.)

Stabbings

Not a whole lot to talk about.

New Destreza continues to be good and feel Correct. My gameplan currently is to switch among the four Generals until either:

• My opponent anticipates what I'm going to do and I can capitalize on them being out of position.
• My opponent doesn't react in time to what I am doing, and I can capitalize on them being out of position.

Using a shorter sword means I use the four about equivalently often. Using a longer sword means that I use Weak Over Strong and Weak Under Strong far, far more often.

I think that if I blend a certain amount of Italian-esque body mechanics, I'll be able to use Line in Cross and Narrowing more often. The issue is that, at the point where I could actually gain opposition on my opponent's blade, I am close enough that I only need about one and a half steps to touch them. So, if instead of attempting to do Spanish footwork with my longer sword, I do Italian lunges, it blends better. I still want to be moving diagonally away from their sword if I am using Weak Under Strong or Weak Over Strong, and I still want to be moving through their sword if I'm doing Line in Cross or Narrowing, but one lunge rather than two steps.

One thing I've been having trouble with is people who keep their sword low-ish and point from one side of my body to the other. This makes it so I can't accurately identify which direction to go at any given time, which makes me sad. I think this means I need to make more effective usage of Narrowing, though it might mean that I need to learn how to use the Low General and the High General.

In any case, I've been able to successfully create a mapping between my Italian maneuvers and my Spanish maneuvers, which has allowed me to improve my Italian fencing and more accurately predict what will work, and understand why it will work.

Lunchtime Blogging!

Finally, finally my Destreza feels pretty good.

As per previous post, I've been stepping away from their sword while using Weak Under Strong, and stepping toward their sword while using Line in Cross. It works well, but it seems like certain positions put me into stalemate.

If, for example, my opponent keeps their hand low in an Italian and mostly pointing their sword towards me and disengages readily, this can prevent both Line in Cross and Weak Under. As long as I don't deviate from those stances though, it means my opponent can't really hit me either. It's a stalemate, which relies on one or the other of us to mess up or to decide to stop fighting.

Thinking about the philosophical basis of Destreza, it makes sense that Viedma would make special note to teach us a pair of techniques that can defend us all the time, and not necessarily hit our opponent. Ideally, after a while, we will decide that duels are absurd and then leave without anyone being killed.

However, there are another pair of techniques - Weak Over Strong and Narrowing. I believe that if I used these judiciously, I could create more opportunities to go for the kill.

I suppose we will learn more about this tonight.

Apparently All I Think Is Destreza These Days

Despite having made many draft posts, I haven't actually posted in a bit. Let's remedy that.

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So there was a tournament. It is largely not relevant, except for the first bout. In the first bout, I fought as true a Destreza as I could against Doroga. It was fun, but I left the bout frustrated. I did everything I could according to how the masters would have wanted, and I fought a very faithful-to-Destreza game. I still lost though, which made me a bit sad. After all - I am not one of those truly-period fencers. I care about the utility of fencing techniques more than I care about accuracy-to-period. My accuracy comes from the belief that surely, they were doing something right, back in the day.

So, this led me to re-read Viedma.

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Reading through Viedma went much, much faster this time. Apparently all of the time I have put into Destreza has finally paid off. I paid the most attention to the techniques section, because that's where the True Art is to be found.

This quicker reading has allowed me to pay more attention to what isn't being said, rather than solely what is being said. As such, I have made the following tentative realizations:

• Viedma explicitly states that Line in Cross should only be done when pushing outwards on (towards) your opponent's blade. So, when their blade is to your blade's right if you are stepping right, and when their blade is to your blade's left if you are performing the general atajo on the left.
• It is not explicitly mentioned, but Viedma shows examples of Weak Under Strong when stepping away from their blade. So, these two facts mean:
• Use Line in Cross and Narrowing when moving toward your opponent's blade.
• Use Weak Under String and Weak Over Strong when moving away from their blade.
• There are several sequences of attack that seem to be somewhat general. They are:
• Movement of Conclusion - grab quillon, cut to face.
• Movement of Conclusion - push blade down, stab.
• Disengage above their quillons to a thrust to the face.
• If they try to catch with their hilt, perform a vertical cut to the head
• If they parry that, disengage to a thrust to the chest.
• Line in Cross doesn't necessarily involve setting your sword at an obtuse angle with your wrist. So that extended-straight Line in Cross might be correct. 

Those bits should solve some of the problems I've been having recently. With K&Q coming up, I need to decide if I am going to be bringing my Destreza game, or if I'm going to be bringing my standard rapier game. A hard choice.

Destreza Thoughts

Given that my previous destreza attempt failed, I have put in some serious thought about why and how it went wrong. I have come up with the following issues.

• The strong atajos I was performing, while seemingly nice, allow for my opponent to push in toward my weak and gain strength, requiring me to respond by parrying.
• My attacks all were based on the position of their tip, which meant that they could position their wrist in a bent fashion and convince me to attack in ways that are easy to parry
• My attacks were easy to parry because they all involved an active push and then a movement that was not necessarily in a place that was hard to parry.

Upon some degree of meditation, I came across the following ideas.

• If I keep my blade in or near contact with their blade with my arm straight, it suddenly requires a larger, remissive movement for my opponent to increase their strength on my blade, which creates tempo for me to act.
• The center of the opponent's blade is the point which is most likely to need to move toward me in a predictable fashion for my opponent to stab me in the fastest possible way, as per my post on Triangular Thrusts.
• In order to stab my opponent, I either need to push through a weak part of their blade, OR I need to move away from their blade in a way that they can't sweep my blade with strength.
• This latter point means that, ideally, you will move at least perpendicularly away from their blade, to make putting the strong of their blade on your blade as difficult as possible.
• The circle didn't feel quite right - it felt too large. The standard circle is centered about on the center of the opponent's blade, which is what we're trying to defend ourselves from anyway.

So, this results in a few different strategic choices.

To take a brief interlude - my standard way of doing things is to try to implement what the period masters specify. If that doesn't work properly, I try to figure out what works. After that, I try to work backwards and see if what I do can be justified by the original text, even if it's a stretch.

So, with that in mind.

The previous insights have led to me to the following:

• Keep my arm outstretched and point it at the center of their blade. My intention is to match the center of my blade to the center of their blade.
• MAINTAIN THE RIGHT-ANGLE-ISH POSITION
• If my opponent attempts to perform a thrust with a disengage, bend my wrist just enough to catch their blade with my quillons.
• If I am not in a position to attack, perform a disengage from my shoulder to switch from one side of their blade to the other, always ending at the center of their blade.
• Step in a circle with the center of the mutated circle on the center of their blade, and the circumference on their sword-arm's shoulder.
• There are three types of attacks:
• Thrust, where I can simply step forward with opposition and stab them.
• This requires an obvious line through to their body.
• Push through, where I take a circling step which opens up a line connecting my sword through their weak and into their body. This thrust is performed by sliding the center of my blade along theirs toward their tip, while stepping in to stab them.
• This requires a place where one can step and get "around" to a position where this sort of push through is available.
• Detachment, where I detach my sword from theirs in a perpendicular line, while stepping away from their blade. Ideally this is done by moving my blade in a line perpendicular to the line which is their sword. Immediately twitch my hilt back to cover the center of their blade, after touching them, to defend myself.
• This is possible when very far "around" their blade.
• Face completely sideways. Don't point your front foot at your opponent. That restricts your movement.

The simplification of the circle is a beautiful thing. It means I have to perform half as many mental calculations. Instead of trying to figure out where to defend and also how to step, both the defense and the stepping use the same circle.

There are some possible permutations and complications. For example, when my opponent has two weapons or uses their off-hand, I might need to cut around their hand. 

The key here is to maintain blocking off the center of their blade from thrusting directly in, which also seems like it should be true for performing other cuts.

As well, when another person adopts this position, it becomes a good idea to start going for thrusts by detachment at their hand and arm. Lastly, I'm not sure how to deal with a German-style Day Guard, where the sword is above the shoulder and the mutated circle is thus small enough to be non-existent.

So, I'll try all of this next practice I am at. We'll see how it goes.

AFTER-THE-FACT EDIT, SAME DAY: Maybe if I'm trying to hand-snipe, I should act on a circle centered on their hands, and switch to the one centered on the center of their sword if I have to make any blade contact? Or maybe hand-snipes are just a shot thrown from the sword-centered-circle, to which we immediately return? Maybe Weak Over and Weak Under are just the same thing as Line in Cross and Narrowing, but the former have a circle centered on the hand, while the latter have a circle centered on the center of the sword? TOO MANY QUESTIONS.

DOUBLE-PLUS AFTER-THE-FACT-SAME-DAY EDIT: There is one more type of attack.

• Disengage through, where we go directly from the middle of your opponent's blade, disengage around their hilt, and then stab them. This one is performed when their sword is far enough off-line that your sword and their sword are at a 90º angle, while being on the same horizontal plane. This ignores the perpendicular departure of Detachment, because there is literally no other way to attack, and they are far enough off-line at this point that you don't really need to worry about them getting their strong on your weak.

OK, I think I'm done now.

Notes from Practices

There were a couple of practices. I write down what happened in them here, so I will remember them better in the future.

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First, I spent time using my old style, described here. It was interesting. As expected, it worked better against people who had not spent time fighting me when I started using that style in the first place. This makes sense - if someone has never had to deal with that extremely specialized game, then they won't necessarily know the specific techniques and principles necessary to counter it.

This makes me wonder if my modern fencing game (vaguely outlined here, though I've never gone through a full description, looks like) is just the latest in a series of finding new things which work against the current meta-game. If so, it means I would need to synthesize my old style and my new style, and figure out more specifically when to use one or the other. Perhaps I should just tack my old style on as what I do in my blade-forward stance. It does, however, show promise in positions that, in theory, I would use my dagger-forward stance against. So that might be a thing.

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After the dismal failure of my simplified bargain-basement destreza at Pennsic, I started thinking about what I could do differently. One primary issue I ran into was that people would instantly respond to large Line in Cross and Narrowing atajos. As such, I wasn't able to attack effectively from them. And sadly, my bargain-basement destreza doesn't take into account the idea that you might push through their sword.

Additionally, the mutating circle seemed like it kind-of worked out. It always felt like I was spending too much time calculating where the circle was in relation to their sword, given that halfway through Pennsic I realized that it would need to resize based on how close to the right-angle position their sword was. This, combined with the fact that in my old fencing style I pay attention to the division of weak and strong in people's swords, led to a minor breakthrough.

The thing I have been trying recently is to center the circle on the middle of their blade. This means that as they lower or raise their blade, the circle gets smaller or larger. Additionally, instead of using Line in Cross or Narrowing as initial positions, I have been using Weak Over Strong and Weak Under Strong as positions. Only instead of trying to keep my tip hovering near their guard, I have just been trying to maintain the middle of my sword against the middle of their sword. This allows me to more effectively control the position of the weak of their sword.

So again - everything I do happens to and centered around the middle of their sword. This is not necessarily the exact middle - this is the division between the "weak" and the "middle" of their blade, as I have described in previous posts that I do not care to hunt for. This just happens to be in the center of many blades, given that many blades have more weak than strong. But that conversation is not super-relevant here.

This new operation of weak-under and weak-over as being things I do to the center of their blade has allowed me to control their sword much more thoroughly. If someone attempts to attack, I twitch my hilt up or down to Narrowing or Line in Cross, and then proceed accordingly. If they don't, then I proceed to attack either by moving my sword toward a weaker part of their sword while I thrust, or by detaching my sword from theirs while I step away from their sword. It is fun times.

tl;dr: I've started using both the point of blade-contact and the center of the circle as the middle of their blade. This has resulted in good things.

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That's all I've got for now. Ciao.