Practices Continue to be Good

Tonight, I fought a bunch. Instead of a play-by-play, I thought I would concentrate on how I'm trying to develop my game.

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My game for the last while has been concentrated on cutting through my opponent's opposition. Swords in collision are an edge case that I have studied pretty thoroughly. However, in order to gain the sort of cutting thrust I want, I have to throw that cut from my wrist, from a position in which my opponent has somewhat-strong opposition. That is a useful tool, but every new tool I add to my tool-set increases the effectiveness of every other tool.

I have watched through the Academie Duello series on opposition. In this video series, Devon Boorman talks about how to perform opposition correctly. And the videos I've watched thus far are So Good.

Today, I was working to try to fight even more safely than usual. I was trying to perform opposition from the elbow, not the wrist. The problem I ran into is that whenever I applied strong opposition, my opponents would disengage. Or they would put their tip far enough below my sword that I couldn't effectively oppose. Or other things like that, which neutralize Good and Proper fencing. As such, it was possible for me to defend myself in that way, but not for me to actually stab my opponent with my current knowledge.

In order to stab my opponents, I had to revert to my tactics from about a year ago, even before the cutting-opposition that I have been using recently. This meant that I did a lot of tiny twitchy mind-games type feints. It's the sort of thing that relies on my opponent reacting to me, which some people don't do until I present an actual threat. I could probably integrate cutting opposition into the new tactics, but I'm going to need to fight a more "pure" Duello-esque fight for a while so that I can learn how to blend things in without losing the essence of these new techniques.

One thing I noticed is that this type of fighting is far, far less tiring on my wrist. This means that I was able to pull off better twitch-angle-shots when I had to. Unfortunately, this form of opposition is one that the longer-time fencers in practice seemed to be very familiar with. As such, I ended up just sort of flailing when my first or second intention didn't work, and things did not go well for me.

Really, what I need to do is binge on Academie Duello videos. I'm sure that the Duello.tv website covers what to do in their fight when someone disengages and suchlike. I could guess, but I don't want to make assumptions based on the period manuals I have read. I also need to think harder about what to do when someone has a buckler, because frikkin' bucklers. Maybe I need to actually poke their buckler to get them to think, and then proceed accordingly? It's a start.

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I also played around with my longsword. I stitched together a leather wrapper for the handle, and it feels so good in my hands now. There is now an integral shim to improve blade stability, and it actually stayed in place when I took the sword apart. It is so easy for me to swing it around and do horrible, terrible things with it. I don't like the color of the leather of the handle in contrast with the metal of the sword, but that thing is intended to be an atrocity which will do horrible things on the melee field at Pennsic. As such, it shouldn't be pretty. Part of me wants to put a nice splatter of red on the handle, to properly express the horrible things that this longsword is capable of.

As a minor bonus, the integral shim means I can actually fully take apart the longsword and get my extra-heavy blade for drilling back on my standard hilt. Yay!

I want to make a new longsword handle for a second, shorter longsword. This is to see if I can replicate my success with this longsword's handle. I have probably spent upwards of 20 hours on research and work to make this handle, and I would like to see if I can do it faster this time. I started from basically no knowledge or skills, which is why it took so long. This new handle will be rounded and about 10", so it can be used with almost any blade and still be within SCA rules. I will see if I actually prefer the rectangular handle, or if my love of the rectangular handle I made is just some complex form of Stockholm syndrome.

Maybe I should leather-wrap a rapier handle I own which is too thin for my hands to use comfortably. That would be a good trial for leather-wrapping a cylinder.

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In order to keep myself accountable, I have the following action items:

• Before next practice, I want to:
• Watch through at least another series of Academie Duello videos.
• This can just be in the background while doing another thing, like sewing or some kind of leatherworking or something.
• I have a sheath to finish for Carolingia - perhaps that?
• At home, drill more. I've been slacking lately, because work-stress.
• Drilling is a good thing to do.
• It improves my ability to stab a person.
• It is vaguely aerobic.
• Next practice, I want to:
• Fight a buckler-user if possible, because bucklers are A Problem For Me. Poke the buckler and see how they react.
• In the future, attempt to generalize reactions to poking buckler. Do all buckler users react the same way?
• Try using my rotella. Do I react the same way when someone pokes my rotella?
• Continue working on direct opposition in the method outlined by Academie Duello.
• Don't try integrating cutting-through opposition yet.
• Try not to use too many feints yet.
• Probably this will be more detailed when I walk into Thursday practice, because of the above directive regarding watching more videos.

Until next time - have fun fencing!

Violence Practices

Sunday and Monday's practices were good. This post is mostly spitballing random thoughts, because I've got no overarching sword-theory that I'm working on right now.

Sunday I ended up authorizing in long s-word. It is pretty great, and it's especially a fun form to periodically bring into melee. Speaking of melee, there was melee on Sunday! Yaaaaay.

We ended up doing a bunch of line drills, primarily. Line drills are hard to do, but we need to do them to get better at the melees. The particular focus of this one was in rolling lines. There were two lines, and one person to the side. People were expected to fight some, and then eventually the person to the side would choose a line and start rolling it. Before the side-person starts moving, all hits are called out but not taken. Afterwards, shots are called normally.

I liked the drill because the incentives were very similar to normal melee line incentives. Eventually I started fighting more conservatively, because I realized that if someone has their tip close to me when the line starts rolling, I will die. I started hanging back in my guard and waiting to either catch the roll or assist the roll, which is pretty much how zippered lines normally go in melee. We weren't practicing the creation of internal flanks, but that wasn't the point of the drill.

I feel like I did pretty well both at rolling lines and at stopping the roll when it began. It was pointed out that my chosen stance was kind of gaming things by accident, so maybe next time I start farther back or in a less offensive stance.

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Near the end of practice, I had a realization about the way I throw thrusts. In general when I'm fighting for keeps, I set myself with my hand forward and my blade to the far outside line. If my opponent commits to taking my blade, I perform a hilt-first disengage and stab them in the gut. If my opponent stays in guard, I try to do a thrust with false-edge leading. This is much more effective because of the particular way I hold my sword. This thrust should cut through the weak of my opponent's sword, thereby foiling any counterattack and their parry at the same time.

I have previously had trouble with people who hold their sword particularly far out. I have since realized that I can actually angle the cut so that my tip creates a curve, instead of a line. Instead of going from the outside line through my opponent's sword to stab them, I can cut a different path with my sword. This path goes from the outside line, to my blade being almost vertical, on to thrusting into my opponent's body.

This preserves the defensive and offensive properties, but lets me apply opposition at a much more advantageous spot. It's pretty cool, and I still need to explore all of the possibilities therein. I have managed to surprise more than one person with it at this point, though when doing this I need to be prepared to move forward more than I normally would with a false-edge-opposition-cutting-thrust. This is because this new method takes a bit longer, and also weirdly it can be initiated from farther away. This is because the normal counter for false-edge-opposition-cutting-thrust is having one's arm extended very far, such that pushing through the weak of the blade would put my sword to the other side of my opponent's body, but not in a place I can thrust.

Maybe I should add a passing step or something. Also, my hilt sort of goes in front of my eyes and it's hard for me to eyeball if I have touched my opponent yet. Maybe I need to drill responding to the tactile sensation of thrusts?

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Monday practice was kind of full of derp. It was probably useful in some holistic way, but there were just so many moments of weird things. I spent most of the practice working the new cutting thrust described above, or fighting single, or fighting shorter-than-usual sword.

I started drilling with a dude, but bailed on the drill when I realized that we were drilling things that I deeply and explicitly don't want to do in my particular game. Namely, I don't want first-intention dagger defenses to be a thing for me, with a few exceptions. Defense always starts with the sword in some way. Either the sword parries, or it beats, or it serves to zone-block and limit my opponent's options. I am very aware of how easy it can be to trick someone's dagger into doing the wrong things, and my game is very sword-primary.

My lack of ability to care about drills if they are neither historical nor My Thing leaves me somewhat hesitant about the non-historical classes of KWAR next week, but I'm sure it will be fun regardless.

The other violence was pretty good, I guess? I fought most of the people I have been learning a lot from fighting recently. There were many derp moments, regardless.

I think that the number of pre-loaded intentions in my violence macro needs to depend very heavily on the weight, agility, and tip-heaviness of the weapon of my opponent.

I also pulled of some pretty sweet Spanish-ish stuff. I need to remember to ask experienced diestros about the situation I keep getting into, where I hilt-parry my opponent and lever them around from the inside line to the extremely low outside line with my bottom quillon. It usually turns out somewhere between okay and good for me, but something feels weird about doing it in a Spanish game.

I have continued to try to pull off my reverse-giarata against both right and left-handed opponents. That entire sub-game seems more effective against left-handed opponents, but it's okay against right-handed opponents. It usually doesn't get me dead, but I'm not sure how to make it land on my opponent. I think people tend to see a situation that they are not used to, then they prepare to back off. Or they don't commit their thrusts hard enough. Perhaps developing my false-edge cutting thrust from the inside line with the wrist angled would make my life better. Perhaps I should try that with a giarata-step, or a rightwards-diagonal lunge? Who knows.

I need to explicitly work on fighting opponents who have more reach than me. That means using a 37-inch sword and fighting someone with a 45-inch or 42-inch sword.

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In conclusion, I've got nothing.

Sliding Steps and the Nine Hand and Blade Positions

So I was sick yesterday, which meant I couldn't go to practice. It was terribly sad. As such, I wish to organize some thoughts for next practice. These are several concepts I have come to understand from Sebastien Romagnan's Destreza text. I probably don't understand them as well as I could, but learning is the process of refining understanding. An important step in refinement, for me, is writing things down. As such, I have written them here.

As well, some of these concepts seem like they would be interesting and useful to people.

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Destreza has a particular type of sliding step. The front foot takes a step forwards similar to a lunge. The back foot comes up to meet it, and then the back foot goes back out. The two feet meeting allows one to gain a couple more inches of reach, without over-extending and falling forwards. The back foot does not touch the ground, but instead continues elsewhere. As well, the instant of feet meeting allows you to decide whether your back foot continues into a passing step or returns out of measure.

The red circle is you, the black circles are where your feet go.

This is in the order specified by the green numbers.

The slide really does create additional reach. It's pretty sweet. I want to start integrating it into my standard Italian-ish game. For some time I actually did by accident, because I was preparing a second lunge in order to catch people who reacted by moving backwards quickly. I am unsure why I stopped - perhaps because passing steps took the theoretical place that preparing a redouble took? Either way, it's time to introduce this into my game.

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Secondly, I think I have come to understand better the idea of Spanish-style bladework. As described by Romagnan (whose book I suggest you acquire if you find these concepts interesting), there are a set of nine positions and a set of three distances-from-the-center. They end up forming three cylinders  (or cones, depending on how you think of it) - a two-foot-diameter one, a four-foot-diameter one, and a six-foot-diameter one. I don't personally believe that the number of feet is exact here. It seems like it would suffice it to say that there is the small, medium, and large cylinder/cone/pyramid/whatever shape you want to call it.

Your hand can be in any of these positions, and the tip of your sword can be in any of these positions. This image is to be imagined as looking at your opponent. The 1 position is to be imagined as as having your arm extended straight at them, with no bend in your elbow and your sword pointing outwards. The 2 position is your tip or hand being level with or in line with their head.

Wheeeeee swords.

If nothing else, this is a useful framework for defining blade positions. It lets you understand where you are in relation to your opponent's weapon - an understanding sorely lacking in the traditional Italian one-two-three-four shorthand we generally use. Additionally, the position of your top quillon is defined in the same way.

As an example, Capoferro's guard in third places your hand at 6, your tip at either 1 or 2, and your top quillon at 2. Probably in the 4-foot cylinder/circle/pyramid.

Giganti's bastard guard for the outside line in terza-quarta places your hand at either 5 or 6, and your tip at 9. Also your top quillon in 9.

It would be a super-interesting exercise to annotate an Italian manual with this notation.

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This becomes weird when there is a significant height difference. As I understand things, this is what a side-view of two people of radically different height doing late-period Destreza would look like.

That short figure's leg-to-torso ratio is way different from what I intended there.

I could also be completely wrong about this.

Note that the cylinders are tilted, such that each fighter's 1 line (not drawn - it goes along their arms) is pointing at the other's shoulder. This is all well and good when it's another Diestro that you're fighting. But extending your arm like that just gives your opponent your tip, especially if you have a long sword. Even if you attempt an atajo. This is something I have experienced in drilling at home.

Several throwaway mentions of lowering your arm occur in various texts. For example, if I remember correctly, Thibault advises that you lower your arm if you are fighting in constricted circumstances, such as in a tunnel or some such. So I wonder if it would be useful to consider the 1-line to connect your respective elbows, rather than your shoulders. This would mean we could do things in two ways. We can either tilt down from our shoulders or we can lower our elbow to the same level as our opponent's elbow.

An example of lowering from the shoulder, to create a line between elbows.

I totally forgot to label the 2 and 6 lines.

Also I drew the Italian's sword.

Note that the cylinders are angled downwards from the Diestro, and the Italian's hand is on the inner 6 line.

...the Diestro's hand is supposed to be on the 1 line, not the inner 6 line.

An example of lowering from the elbow.

I drew the Italian's sword. It seems much less complex than the above.

Note that the cylinders are straight and parallel to the ground, here.

Perhaps neither of these is correct, but I have had trouble making the Destreza things work on Italians in the past, so I am interested to try these things. It is fully possible that the answer exists in Romagnan's book and I missed it. Or even that it is in another book that I have read fully or partially, and I just missed it. Or perhaps it's one of those ill-explored territories in fencing.

This doesn't at all take into account the fact that the ideal Atajo is accomplished with a 60º/120º angle between the blades.

This is a very abstract image of an arm, a hand, and a sword from each person.

The person on the right is taking the sword of the person on the left in an atajo.

But yeah. It's hard to take your opponent's sword in an atajo if they are already at an angle like Italian guards tend to be.

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So, in summation, there are a few things that I want to try on Thursday at practice.

• Sliding steps to gain extra range and to be able to move more freely.
• Different guards against Italians, to understand how Destreza concepts can be used in an Italian fight.
• Trying to understand Destreza concepts better in general.

Yay violence! I hope that this entry was educational, or at least interesting. This post does not cover nearly all of the things in Sebastien Romagnan's book. It only covers the things I am finding most interesting at this current moment in time. Have good fencing, everybody~~~!

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. :(

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.