Practice Report and Digression on Freeplay

First practice using my case blade as my primary one. It could have gone worse. I still mourn the loss of my blade. It had always been wobbly, so I am not surprised that it broke. I purchased the sword that became my case weapon specifically so that if my sword broke at an event, I could just switch over and continue. Even so, it doesn't feel quite right. I think that the greater stiffness and weight will eventually be better, but right now I'm having some trouble pulling off weirdness that I could with my old blade. Also it's half an inch shorter, which means that a decent amount of the time I either miss, or I take a passing step and overshoot.

I did hit people too hard some, which I feel super bad about. :(

*****

I talked a bunch at the start of practice, eventually leading into some drilling and some freeplay. I had a hard time getting Destreza concepts to work for me, and ended up falling back on a lot of Destreza-inspired-but-not-in-canon hilt parries. I need to work on the second-intention attacks, since I had worked on first-intention attacks primarily and my opponent was presenting strong opposition even when I was able to successfully apply an atajo to his sword. By the end, my opponent was doing Destreza, and I was doing Destreza-ish.

It was so obvious that he knows how to do this better than I do, lol.

As an aside, this is why I tend to want to do free play more than drilling. Free play gives me data about what I need to work on in drilling at home. I worked super hard on those atajos and first-intention attacks, but if my opponent performs a counter to those attacks then working further on first-intention attacks is not useful. I tend to think of things in a rock-paper-scissors context.

1. I learn how to throw rock. Yay rock! 
1. No idea how to throw paper or scissors, though I know vaguely that they exist.
2. My opponent knows how to throw paper. I lose.
3. In response, I learn how to throw scissors.
4. My opponent knows how to throw rock. I still lose.
5. In response, I learn to throw paper. Maybe I win now?
1. It is at this point that we are actually fencing. Before that, I was just losing.

In this context, my weakly-applied first-intention atajos are rock. His stronger, firmer first-intention atajos were paper. I am imagining that second-intention attacks will end up being scissors. The metaphor breaks down at this point, because the relationship among these attacks and counters is more complex than this. Regardless, my outlook on learning how to actually do Destreza in fights is optimistic, with my new textbook.

Just to be super clear - I am not at all saying that people who primarily drill are wrong. It's just not how I learn for myself. Different learning styles are totally a thing, and I am very much an active learner. I learn best when doing the thing, whether successfully or unsuccessfully.

*****

I then drilled some more with a newer dude in our practice. Things went okay - I walked in thinking I had a plan for what to do, but everything I was planning fell out of my head. We ended up doing some free-fighting, me using my short blade. It went okay. I was sort of doing my "throw out a bunch of attacks and parries and see what sticks" strategy. Then I threw a bunch of words at him about concepts that exist and how to do a very tight disengage. I am pretty sure that I didn't express myself effectively, but life will go on regardless. Next practice I need to write down what we are going to work on ahead of time.

*****

I then fought some against other people in our practice. I'm pretty sure that they were both trying new things. I was working on my Outside Line All Day Every Day style. It felt right. The new blade means that my first-intention thrusts need to have a little bit more cut to them than they used to, in order to move my opponent's blade out of the way. The yield around is a bit more awkward to do now - I can't rely on a flick of my wrist to get my blade to flex such that my tip goes around their hilt. Even so, I was able to get those two things to work. It made me happy.

I'm learning the value of not pulling my hand back after thrusting. If I leave my tip out there, I might get a kill if my opponent expects me to pull back. Additionally, it forces them to take that extra tempo to clear my blade. It's a way to keep them honest if I don't have a clear second thrust to attempt. It's a dumb long-blade trick, but so many things I do are dumb long-blade tricks.

Lastly, I think my lunge has gotten longer? Because my at-home practice area feels smaller now. That means either my lunge has gotten longer or the practice area has shrunk. While the second is possible, I think it's significantly less likely.

Practice Report and Intentional Rambling

Monday practice was good. I feel like I blinked or something, and literally every single person has improved relative to my skill level. Every single person, without exception. I haven't been drilling at home, so I guess I'd better start that back up so that I don't fall behind. However, in order to be motivated to drill at home, I need to have a Thing to be working on. Some bit of theory or something. So today, I plan to ramble until I figure out some things to specifically work on.

I started off practice with my short sword. That sword is super light in the blade, despite being kind of heavy in the hilt. I was attempting to play my basic Capoferro game. It worked okay, but not great. I kept needing to revert to my largely speed-and-trickiness game. In theory, throwing thrusts in third toward the arm should be safe, which was my primary go-to action. It was not safe - in particular, there was a type of hilt-high disengage which dropped the tip toward my gut which forced me to back off every single time.

I eventually moved to fighting with my long and super-tip-heavy sword. It went pretty well - I like the fact that my opponent has to commit super hard to push it offline, even with rigid parry devices. My game with it tends to involve just sort of dangling it out there and disengaging until I can take a long step or two. I am tempted to take a hacksaw to my spare Darkwood Pappenheimer hilt in order to remove the plates and reduce the weight, so I can have a real ricasso and reduce the danger of getting thwacked in the finger. This is instead of using my dagger hilt for that particular blade setup.

*****

We eventually fought the tournament. I was trying pretty hard, but wasn't correctly in tournament headspace. Usually when I fight in a tournament I have a "game" that I play with people. In particular, the "game" usually has the following aspects. I have also included an example of each of these aspects.

• Uncommon situation
• Keep my blade on the far outside line no matter what
• Opponent has a relatively obvious response
• They strongly take my blade to the outside and thrust
• Strong counter to that response which is hard to counter
• Yielding disengage with hilt used for defense
• Knowledge of other responses, and counters that at least won't get you killed
• Opponent maintains distance
• Edge forwards slowly as possible
• Opponent weakly takes my blade to the outside
• Countered by pushing through and thrusting with opposition with a diagonal passing step
• Opponent takes my blade to the inside
• Maintain distance, counter-disengage

Shallow games are useful because it's easy to retrieve your go-to responses quickly, and you are far less likely to get caught with your brain-gears turning. There is an aggregate paper which contains information on various topics which affect reaction time, such as the number of options you need to choose among. The more things you have available as choices, the slower you will react. As such, a shallow game will let you react more quickly than you would otherwise.

I think that if your objective is to win tournaments, creating a somewhat shallow game like this is an effective tactic. You will only lose if someone else plays a game that happens to have a hard counter to your actions, or if your opponent has knowledge of these obscure portions of the game. Unfortunately, people gain this knowledge bit by bit as they fight you, if they are fighting mindfully. As such, it is necessary to mine for new secret knowledge, and to be able to plumb the depths of your secret knowledge quickly when your first-line techniques fail.

I think that writing up several prospective shallow games like that would be an interesting exercise. The shallow version of Capoferro which I wrote would be a good example of such a writeup.

*****

As I said above, this practice was fun. It felt aimless though, which means that it wasn't really satisfying in that way that practices are frequently satisfying. I think I need to start dividing my practice time up ahead of time, so that I don't end up just messing around all practice. Something like the following:

• 30 minutes: Practice a secondary style.
• This should probably be first because warming up is important.
• Case, bargain-basement Capoferro, ridiculously tip-heavy sword.
• My interpretation of Fabris 60, Dagger-forward stance.
• If I am trying to decide between two tournament-styles, might practice one here.
• If I need to do R&D, do it here.
• 30 minutes: Practice my current tournament style.
• Far outside line is currently my best.
• Compound thrusts are a close second.
• 30 minutes: Teaching/drilling with anyone willing to listen to me talk at length.
• 15 minutes: Socializing, drinking water, changing, etc.
• 15 minutes: Pick a fight with one or more people to work on some specific particular things.
• "Oh hey, you are doing something interesting I don't understand. Let's violence at each other."

This might get mixed together. I might switch among these while fighting someone. But keeping things divided in this way might be good for me to retain focus. Because focus is hard, and it is easy to just mess around with a wide variety of things during practice.

Next practice I intend to work on:

• Shallow version of Capoferro, with long and short weapons.
• "I <3 the Outside Line" style, with particular focus on situations which kill the disengage.

YAY PRACTICE.

Practices Report

So I didn't really do a Monday practice report? Ah well.

Monday was pretty good. I entered the tournament late and fought longsword, a form that naturally works well with how I fight. I also got utterly and ruthlessly curb-stomped by Anastasia in pickups both Monday and today, but that's how things go.

I didn't really enter the practice intending to do anything except for have fun. I did. Yay!

*****

Today I entered practice intending specifically to fight a couple of specific forms. I wanted to focus on a very pared-down interpretation of Giganti, Capoferro, and Fabris. As well, I had three swords I used - the first is "The Standard", a 45" front-weighted hilt-heavy sword. The second was "The Heavy", 45" front-weighted tip-heavy sword which actually used a dagger guard rather than a standard rapier guard. The third was "The Original", a 37" hilt-heavy slightly front-weighted sword which is overall very light.

The three pared-down flowcharts were as follows:

• Giganti
• Attempt to assume his bastard guards.
• Draw my opponent offline by adopting strongly outside or inside guards.
• Single-tempo disengage-thrust
• Compound thrust
• I performed the disengage by moving and rotating my hand, and then performed the thrust by flicking in with my wrist.
• Hand starts farther back, then extends.
• Tighter grip on the sword than Capoferro.
• Use actions depicted by plates on reaction if they seem applicable.
• Capoferro
• Loose grip, with the cross resting on the pad of the index finger and the pommel resting on the bottom of the wrist. This is taken from plate 4, in which he describes his guard in third.
• Only thrust in the ways outlined in the chapter titled "Explanation of some Practical Fencing Terms" paragraph 17 - "The Thrust"
• imbrocatta
• Thrust in first targeting the line between your opponent's left shoulder and knee
• Outside line mostly?
• stocatta
• Thrust in third toward your opponent's right shoulder
• Both inside and outside line?
• punta riversa
• Thrust in fourth toward "the outside of their right shoulder"
• ????
• Didn't really use this one
• Primarily counter-punch in the way outlined in the above chapter, paragraph 15, "Strikes"
• Falso Manco
• False-edge cut to your right as a parry with your weak, then extend into an appropriate thrust as described above.
• Mostly performed by clenching the hand and rotating the wrist slightly.
• Falso Dritto
• Didn't actually parry with this.
• Instead, rotate to fourth and extend, parrying with the strong of my sword. Then hit with a thrust in fourth???
• Hand starts more extended, then when disengaging moves back, as per (can't find the reference. Maybe I imagined this?)
• Fabris
• More extended guards
• Fabris plate 60???
• Mostly trying to steal from Donovan's blog
• Wait for opponent to try to take my sword near the tip, then disengage by moving my hand, and then thrust by moving my wrist.

I'm beginning to study Capoferro, so obviously that flowchart is more detailed. And again, this is drawing almost completely from that one particular chapter, because I find it useful to focus on particular parts of a text to try to discern what it means.

*****

I want to preface this next section by saying that I walked in expecting The Heavy to work for Giganti and Fabris, and The Standard to work for Capoferro. Because I have particular heresies that I have come to believe, and they are

For Giganti, I liked using The Heavy quite a bit. I wasn't able to get my opposition to click well enough tonight using any of the others. This is probably because I was focusing on the new and shiny configuration of things, but regardless, it was much much easier to gain opposition with it. Giganti worked pretty well with any configuration, though. Or at least, Giganti prevented me from dying, which is almost like working.

For Capoferro, I liked The Original most when counterpunching, and The Standard most when being more offensive. The imbrocatta is even better as a starting action than I thought it would be, especially when aimed correctly. As well, with The Original, I was able to respond so very, very quickly to attacks. I want to pay attention to how length of blade effects things when I eventually go through the Capoferro plates, but I feel like it mostly changed how I wanted to fence, not my overall mechanics.

For my knockoff Fabris, I liked The Standard the best. Extending your blade way out there can allow people to do horrible things to your sword. With The Standard, I could get out of the way, dance, and taunt in-measure much more easily. With The Heavy, when I got past their guard, I was totally in and wasn't going to be dislodged before landing my thrust. It was a much more subtle game, but I felt like when my opponent knew where to oppose my blade with The Heavy, it was harder to perform effective actions than with The Standard. I forgot to try this one with The Original. Oh well.

I guess I was wrong about that one. Educational!

Perhaps if I knew more of How To Fabris, I would have been more effective. As it stands, trying to Fabris with The Heavy was a far more subtle game, but not one that plays to my strengths. Very educational though. I will do this thing more often, because I feel like I have learned from it.

Lastly, there is one particular last-ditch maneuver I have become accustomed to. When my sword is pushed far to my right, either up or down, I tend to flip my sword back in a circle over my head and step back with my right foot, ending in position for a thrust in first from very high. With The Heavy, the mechanics were different enough that this movement just turned into a cut toward my opponent's head. That would be great if we were doing Cut and Thrust, but I had to stop myself from completing that motion twice. My lizard-brain really wanted to get in position for that thrust in first both of those times, but it was not happening.

*****

Presently, I remain in an experimentation phase. Perhaps I will add a shallow version of Meyer's rapier to my repertoire, since The Heavy resembles a Meyer style rapier more than anything else. I have learned that tip-heavy blades do help for straight-on opposition, but as far as I can tell they don't improve things for motions such as Destreza-style enveloping thrusts, as described by Puck on his blog. (Line in Cross, etc) I will continue using The Heavy, and perhaps I will gain more insight. It will be fun times regardless.

Melee Practice

Yesterday we had a melee practice. I also had a flash of insight right before sleeping that I can't remember for the life of me, so maybe I can recall it if I just start typing.

It was good times. I reassembled the longsword, and one of our local OGRs kindly provided a suggestion for a better shim. It's not easily-removable which makes me sad, but I don't really use that blade for anything other than the longsword very often anyway. I also added a leather washer next to the pommel, which makes it fit much more snugly and solidly.

My warm-ups were an illustration of why I would want to use the longsword for cut and thrust. I ended up in a hanging parry pretty often, which in non-C&T play doesn't give me many options. In C&T, however, I would totally be able to go from that position to a squinting cut while remaining defended.

Melee happened too! First, we did some fox and hounds. It was a great warmup for more complex melee, and super fun to try going back and forth between my standard case of rapiers and longsword. I think I did better with longsword, honestly.

I spent the rest of the practice thinking about where it is appropriate to use different types of implements, given that we played several 4-on-4 and line drill games.

• Longsword feels like it would be so good in a very static line situation, like a capture the flag sort of thing. If I can maintain range, it is so good. I can also frequently catch people who are moving backwards because having five feet of sword plus my standard lunge is so long.
• Sword and dagger is something I need to try more in melee. It would be nice to be able to commit to taking one person out in fox and hound drills. Dagger would allow me to commit deep to taking out one person and not care if I get too close, where case wants to maintain range, which is bad for me if I want to kill someone in a 1v2 situation. Getting close to one person and essentially using their body to foul the other person's attacks seems fun.
• Case of 45" swords is pretty much made for zippering, skirmishing, and striking from the side. One sword gets committed to fouling their blade, then the other one stabs. It's great, and it is a strong tool for forcing individual people to retreat.
• Buckler / Rotella is something that I need to try more in melee. It seems like it would allow for safer presses. I don't like pressing unless I can snipe from range, so it might be good to work on that. Like, maybe I push my opponent's weaponry to the other side of my buckler with my sword, then advance and stab?

I had trouble with the fast-paced line drill we were working on. Usually in line situations, I use distance to defend myself and try to draw the person across from me forward, in order to create internal flanks. I couldn't do that in the drill we did, partly because people were pushing very hard and not behaving tentatively, and partly because the people across from me had super-solid defense.

I was also asked about how to fight people with case. My answer is, and remains, that you should try to get both of their swords on one side of your body and then move in. In theory you can also push both of their swords outwards, but that is hard to make work.

At dinner afterwards, people talked about a bunch of things. Of particular note was a conversation in which we talked about what direction we parry things when trying to zipper lines.

• I parry forward, attempting to push my opponents' blades across their bodies. This unfortunately creates opportunities for them to parry, which skilled people can use to prolong their life.
• I also push swords sideways, which makes life easier for stabbing people, but also forces me to put myself in some danger from the opposite side that I'm pushing.
• As well, this and parrying forward both put people's blades in the way of the direction I'm going. This means I either have to step daintily over their blades, or I have to wait for them to finish moving.
• Many times, I've stabbed someone in a line who take a long time to leave and also leaves their sword sort of in my way, which ruins the momentum of my zipper.
• One fencer at dinner parries downwards, which makes it hard to maneuver through your opponents' tips.
• One other very successful melee fencer parries upwards. This puts blades above you, and it makes sense to me that this is a more "sustainable" parry, since it doesn't put blades in your own way.

So, I need to practice throwing shots between prima and seconda more in melees, to see if I can get free parries out of it. This will require me to duck down a bit and try to catch swords upwards, but I believe it might be a more effective way to do things than my current strategy of pushing forwards and sideways with case in melee.

Practice Repoooooort

Practice was a good thing yesterday. I was tired because I didn't sleep very much that day. Not solely because I was out late on Wednesday, but because I had woken up early to work on things for work. I had the most stressful work-day that I had had for quite some time, to the point that I was having some breathing and heart-rate issues before on the way to practice.

Practice itself was fine. I started off by doing some random desreza things. We sort of ended up doing the back-and-forth chess exercise organically, which was cool. I find that the most successful actions I perform involve catching and pushing with my quillons and hilt. If I can get my hilt on someone's blade and make sure that their hilt isn't on my blade for a moment, I can frequently capitalize on that because defending against it requires my opponent to pull their blade offline.

I ended up fencing a bunch of people. I did some single rapier, in which I got stabbed in the right lower ribs several times. I did a bunch of short rapier and stick, in which I remembered why I like that combination of implements so much. I did a bunch of case, in which I proved that I have no idea how to use a short weapon against someone using a pair of 45-inch swords if they're fencing in the way I tend to fence. I need to ask Sorcha how that works, and maybe fight her with case a bunch.

I ended up doing some fencing with afterblows. That was fine. Neither of us really had afterblows trained as a reflex in this context, so it didn't really change things. Very good fights all the same, despite the fact that I didn't really learn anything in particular from them. Very interesting to see additional Fabris guards in use.

I need to go back to actively thinking about how I lose bouts, in my ideal 45-inch sword and dagger setup. In the past, I have had the following flowchart for improvement:

1. Fight a bunch.
2. Find a particular way in which I am losing consistently.
1. "I'm getting stabbed in my ribs"
3. Figure out why I'm losing in that particular way consistently.
1. "I'm committing to weird angle shots when I don't have substantially more range on my opponent."
4. Figure out a way to fix that.
1. "I'm going to try only striking through my opponent's blade with opposition."
5. If the change to my fight makes me die less, try keeping it around
6. Regardless of whether or not I keep the change, return to the top of this flowchart.

Obviously this flowchart only works for finding local maxima and minima. I'm not going to go from fencing Italian to fencing Spanish with this flowchart. But large changes to my game come from thinking really hard about big concepts, rather than thinking small and optimizing like this.

I worked on footwork some. That was nice. I am a firm believer in the principle that the hips lead and the feet go where they dictate. But my footwork was terrible-but-effective for a long time.

Lastly, I did some more destreza-ish stuff. My fighting was destreza-ish, his was more true to actual destreza form. I spent those fights feeling out what did and didn't work in terms of many things. I need to work on the four thrusting actions as per Puck. I also want to try doing Destreza with a more tip-heavy blade. This means either using my 42-inch noodle or my 45-inch stick of rebar. Possibly I would like to try doing destreza with a more minimal hilt, in order to make my blade more tip-heavy and my handle more back-weighted. I might try putting my dagger hilt on one of those blades and fencing with it.

Actually-lastly, practice really tired me out. Like, all of my muscles felt like lead before dinner, and there was a part of practice where I just sat down and panted for a while. This morning, I feel fine except that the point of my shoulder is super sore. That's probably because I was improperly loading the weight of my sword on my arm, for destreza things. Oh well.

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."