wistric, on January 27th, 2009 A year and a half ago I started a small project to send a once-a-week e-mail to the Kappellenberg fencing e-mail list with some musing apropos of melee and combat in general, to try to spark some of the philosophical discussion that a fighter practice is not necessarily conducive towards. The eventual goal would be to combine it all into a single document vaguely resembling a manual.
It lasted four e-mails, not necessarily on a weekly basis. This is the way of things.
But recent developments raised the specter of going all Web 2.0-y on the project, and who could resist?
If you’re reading this, please give feedback. “I agree” is fine. “I disagree” is better. “I disagree and this is why” is even better. And “I disagree and you’re a dumbass” is also acceptable (I’ve been a Free Scholar, I understand).
I’m aiming to update the WWW every Friday, with other updates throughout.
Suggestions for bloviation are, as always, welcome.
Letia, on January 22nd, 2012 Today Rory and I discussed Fabris’s Extended fourth guard and discovered that….
Fabris’s Extended Fourth Guard is like chicken soup with a side of cheese toast!
No really it is, and I don’t even eat chicken soup….
Fabris’s extended fourth guard is when you have the blade in fourth (suppinated/palm up grip), the arm fully extended, and the torso bent forward. This puts the knuckles and the strong edge of the blade on the inside. (Plate 14 for those following along at home)
Fabris states that “This guard’s greater strength is to the outside, from which line it cannot be attacked…”
But does this contradict the idea that the true edge of the blade is the strongest?
At first glance it actually seems that it may, however there are several elements that make up a strong guard. Consistently having the true edge toward your opponent is only one factor in a guard.
In some ways the true edge is like cheese, and a guard is like soup.
There are many soups that are enhanced by cheese, like broccoli cheese soups, but there are some soups for which cheese goes better as a side dish. That is where the chicken soup comes in. I am told chicken soup is made of all things delicious, although, it seems to lack cheese. In fact, if I insinuate that cheese should be added to chicken noodle soup it would be seen as highly disagreeable. It has all the ingredients it needs to be considered tasty and complete, but adding more tasty ingredients like cheese does not enhance the soup. A side of cheese toast, however, is a nice addition.
Similarly the extended fourth guard has all the ingredients to be a strong guard to the outside. The addition of the true edge to the outside is not necessary. Now if you add your tasty true edge to the inside, the inside line can be protected with more ease. “…to the inside, it is kept safe by the position of the hand with the knuckles pointing in that direction.” (The rest of Fabris’s earlier statement)
There are many forces that can be used to create strength and advantages in a guard: angle of blade, placement of forte, gravity. You don’t have to use them all in the same direction for it to be a strong guard. Some things are better as side dishes….like cheese toast.
wistric, on January 19th, 2012 While I am very fond of Wistric’s Rules of Melee, a second viewing of Zombieland reminded me of just how useful some of the rules are, both on the field and, as it turns out, for marshals. Also, some of them are not at all useful.
“Cardio” – Almost goes without saying, doesn’t it?
“Double tap” – aka “Kill ‘em till they’re dead” (It was “Ziploc bags” in a deleted scene, which can be ignored, except that when my gear got rained on I really wished it was in ziploc bags)
“Beware of bathrooms” – Er…
“Wear seatbelts” – Er…
“Cast iron skillet” – Er… Actually, having the right tool for the job is probably worth considering
“Travel light” – Lose some weight fatty
“Get a kickass partner” – Yeah
“Bounty paper towels” – Maybe for the marshal’s kit?
“Bowling Ball” – Probably not approved of by the marshallate
“Don’t be a hero.” – Yeah, that shit will get you killed
“Limber up” – Ho yeah
“Avoid strip clubs” – This is just good advice, weird shit happens there. Or, at least, take along somebody who’ll be a magnet for the freaks.
“When in doubt, know your way out” – Yeah, getting trapped against brush and trees sucks, don’t it?
“The buddy system” – Kind of like having a kickass partner, isn’t it?
“Check the back seat” – aka backfield
“Enjoy the little things” – Like the sound your opponent makes when, tensed up, they release their tension in a barely audible sigh upon realizing you’ve just killed them. It’s a lesser form of the death rattle. It’s what I live for
“Swiss army knife” – Most important part of my marshal’s kit
“Clean socks” – Eh…
“Hygiene” – A good principle in general
“Always have backup” – Again, kickass partner.
Now back to fencing…
Tassin, on January 15th, 2012 Fabris Practice
Concepts and things to practice:
- Lunging
- Moving
- Don’t fear the sword
- Angled attacks off line
- Passing attack, passing through the opponent
- Changing intent mid plan
- Cavazione with forward movement
- Identify openings
- Voids
- Lunging through the tip
- Working angles
- Forte going where the tip started
- “Lead with the forte”
Drills and what they work:
- Lunges
- Make pretty lunges
- Recovery
- Passing step
- Follow up
- *Bowling Ball Drill
- Faith in counter-guard/finding the blade
- Attacks in tempo
- Cavazione
- Add concepts as necessary
- Exploring Fabris’ Wounds
- Look at the wounds for further insight into the theory
- Gives knowledge of what to do in certain situations
- Call people on slop/bad form
- Slow fights, watching slow fights
- Angled attacks
- Foot work
- Passing through attack
- Changing intent at midplan
- Identify openings
- Create our own drill of 6 things
Practice plans
1/16/12-1/20/12
The focus of practice will be lunges and movement. In particular we will focus on making a nice Italian lunge from the Fabris guard. In addition, we will work on various aspects of footwork such as the passing step. The passing step is an important feature of Fabris but it works against our groups habitual way of attacking, the lunge or small advances with an extension.
After we have succeeded in making this footwork pretty we should continue to drill these concepts frequently on our own.
Other practices
All elements of the practice will be timed so as to best use our hour and a half.
Short footwork drills to ensure no bad habits are being picked up.
*Bowling ball drill, the details and complexity of the drill will increase week to week.
Fight for a set amount of time, try to utilize concepts from the bowling ball drill.
Briefly practice the Fabris wound worked the previous week. 5 passes each or until time is up.
Practice the weeks new Fabris wound.
Go through and practice (1 or 2 passes per wound) all or a select number of wounds from previous weeks.
Slow fighting with emphasis on certain goals or actions.
Fight for a set amount of time, try to utilize the concepts from the slowfighting.
*The Bowling Ball Drill
Retreating can be useful in a fight, but frequently it is better to attack or at least stand your ground if you are in a good counter guard. Since our group all have the habit of retreating as part of our defense we want a drill that will force us to defend with the sword. This drill has one fighter (A) attack the other fighter (B). Fighter B can do anything to defend themselves except retreat. What fighters A and B do may start as a simple attack and counter attack parry but will progress as knowledge increases.
wistric, on December 13th, 2011 About a year ago I asked a throwaway question in a discussion among the Atlantian Rapier Army’s eager beavers: Can you attack into tempo on the melee field? I admit, at the time, it was a lot of Wistric saying “Hey, look how insightful I can be!” (and, let’s face it, this blog is all about that, too, but I’m trying to change). The question, though, stuck with me. Now, of course, in any sort of one-on-one situation that evolves on the melee field you can attack into tempo, but if tempo, line, measure, and judgment are fundamental principles of all combat, not just one-on-one rapier, then they must have application on the melee field. But how?
How do we Define “Tempo”?
Well, if there’s a definition that works in Italian rapier, then it should pretty much work for melee, yes? The time between two moments of stillness, or two moments of action, should work. Or, at least as I conceptualize it, the duration of a continuous action or inaction. And there’s plenty of that on the melee field, so this should be doable.
If we’re talking about melee tempo as something distinct from the individual tempi of the combatants, we start to talk about the collective actions of units in maneuver.
And what about measure and line?
I’ll follow Giganti’s example for conceptualizing measure: Measure is where you can hit them. But it may deserve some tweaking for melee: Measure is where you can be placed in obedience.
Why does this change in definition matter? Well, there’s a distance where you might be individually out of measure, but where any maneuver on the part of your opponent has to be replied to in some fashion. Even though you can’t wound, you can affect behavior. Take the example of sliding left. Your opponent will slide right, because otherwise they expose their line. Of course, do it very far out and your opponent will slide right without danger, or just wheel slightly, or have enough time to pull a left-flank guard over to their right. But do it close enough and your opponent will have to slide right, creating a tempo during which you can successfully attack.
Line comes down to field position (slide left to access your opponent’s right flank, or divide and flank, that sort of thing), and changing your line of attack forces your opponent to maneuver in response which, when done at measure as with the example above, creates a tempo to attack.
Wistric, you talk pretty, but what are you actually saying?
So far I can imagine a handful of attacks into tempo on the melee field (in addition to the line-sliding example):
There are the tempi of enacting an order: From the start of the order to the end of the order, the end of the order to the start of the action, and the start of the action to the end of the action. All together they are actually a pretty sizable chunk of time when your opponents’ attention is not focused as much on you as it is on executing the maneuver. And, vulnerable to a stesso tempo counter, like, say, a charge.
Another moment of “inattentive action” that could be exploited is that tempo between coming to engagement and settling into guard. Again, an attack that launched at the moment of coming to engagement would have the same feeling on the receiving end as a lunge received during a change of line.
There is also a moment of stillness in many plans I’ve seen executed that can be exploited: When a plan is laid out as “We’re going to close distance with them, and on my order run right” there is the time between distance being reached and the order being given. Again, a counter-charge (or flank run, or whatever) launched while the opponent is prepping for that order, would be closely parallel to the abuse of tempo in personal combat.
How about a feint-cavazione? Say Wistric, with his pale-pale scarf flapping, runs up to reinforce a line on the left, making “oogity-boogity” sounds, just enough to draw the attention of the enemy line to him (on their right flank). And in that instant of inattentive inaction, the right flank of Wistric’s line attacks.
Nice Theory, Does it Work in Practice?
No fricking clue. I haven’t had these thoughts crystalized until just recently, and something about cold and dark means no melee practice. I’m waiting for the next time there’s a melee event where I can set up one group against another and take a counter-tempo strategy and see how it works:
“We have no plan except to engage with them, and the first one of them opens their mouth, charge”
or
“When their feet stop moving forward, run left”
or
“We’re going to slide right, briefly, and when they pick up their feet to move, we charge”
Train up a unit that, instantly and automatically, engages to disruption when an opponent starts a maneuver, and you could brutalize a good many fighters. Maybe. If you get to try it before me, let me know how it works.
wistric, on December 9th, 2011 Hey, look, actual almost content about melee. Okay, so it’s actually meta-content. There’s an idea I’ve been kicking around in my brain for a while which will get a more thoroughly written out post soon, but for the time being, I’m going to make a related thought kick around in your brain.
Using your favorite definition of a tempo (mine is “a tempo is the duration of an action or moment of inaction”), what are some tempi that you encounter on the melee field?
Tassin, on December 2nd, 2011 11/28/11
Neither Letia nor I had fought for a while so our warmups ran a bit longer than usual, until it started raining to be precise. At that point we went inside and began to look at Wounds 1 and 2 from Fabris’ first book. Each wound has a picture showing the end result and a description of the various ways that the two fencers could have ended in that situation.
The First Wound
This wound shows our fencer in fourth striking his opponent, who is holding his sword in third, with a firm footed attack (a lunge) in the chest. Fabris suggests two ways this could have happened.
The first, starting with both fencers in third on the inside. The opposing fencer feints inside, but instead of parrying the feint our fencer turns his hand into fourth and lunges, placing his forte on his opponents tip as he does so.
The second way involves both fighters being in third on the outside. The opposing fencer performs a cavazione, coming inside with the intention of obliging our fencer to parry. Instead of parrying our fencer once again turns his hand into fourth and lunges as his opponent perform his cavazione.
The Second Wound
The second wound shows our fencer in third striking his opponent, who is also in third, in the chest. Once again, Fabris gives two ways this wound might have occurred.
The first involves our fencer performing a feint inside, when the opponent goes to parry our fencer performs a cavazione to the outside as he lunges.
The second way involves our fencer finding his opponents blade. His opponent, needing to free his blade, performs a cavazione. As the opponent performs his cavazione our fencer lunges, striking before the opponents cavazione is complete.
The Take Away
1) A feint should start by finding the opponents blade and attacking as normal, if he moves to parry then cavazione and kill him. If you do not find his blade first you leave yourself open when you attempt your cavazione.
2) When striking with a lunge strike during an opponents action, for instance strike as he performs a cavazione or as he raises his foot to step. By doing this he will be unable to break measure. In addition, always maintain advantage of the blade while lunging.
11/30/11
Monday we talked about the first two wounds and the idea of striking while the opponent takes an action. While I understand the concept easily enough I currently lack the skill to do it. So after warmups and a brief review of the Wounds Letia devised a drill to help me train the necessary skill/timing/instinct/whatever.
The Drill
The student with a sword sets up in guard. The teacher, unarmed, stands at the edge of the students range. The teacher then takes a step, exaggerated if necessary, towards the student and then a step back out of range. Ideally the student should strike the teacher before their foot hits the ground, if this doesn’t happen then the teacher can tell the student at what point in their footwork they were struck.
Eventually the complexity of the drill can be increased by giving the teacher a weapon and having them perform different movements of either the sword, the foot, or both.
Thursday Night Fencing, or how Tassin learned that finding the blade is awesome
Lacking Wistric the universe decided that we needed a Provost at practice and so Percy showed up. All of my passes with Percy were done with single sword which for me meant using Fabris.
The first few passes went poorly for me, while I could defend myself I could not attack. Percy was able to push my sword all over the place. One of the things that Fabris teaches is not to allow your opponent to molest (I had thought this was just an odd translation, but it is a good description of what Percy was doing to my sword) your blade and to keep it free.
The next pass I made an effort to keep my blade free and after some maneuvering I not only kept my blade free but I found Percy’s in the process. What I saw was an opening that I could exploit and limited Percy to breaking measure if he wanted to defend himself. We fought again and I found his blade, and once again I saw that I could attack safely. We fought a bit more and I continued to find his blade until eventually he started to keep his blade where I could not easily find it. However, from those positions I was able to form a counterguard because of the limited ways he could attack.
Keeping my blade free helped me see what I was doing and what I needed to do to find my opponents blade. Frequently moving the blade made me use not just the third guard which is my natural inclination but also the first, second, and fourth guards, each of which has advantages when finding the opponents blade.
Dante and Wistric have told me the benefits of finding the blade, it figures prominently in Fabris. For whatever reason I have had difficulty seeing when I had found the blade before last night, without seeing that I had the blade I would not act on it. Last night I was able to find the blade and see that I had done it, the difference was stunning. It was like opportunities I hadn’t been able to make or exploit before were flashing neon lights saying “Here I am!”
wistric, on November 29th, 2011 Friday night, Tassin, Gawin, and I (but not Ruairc, boo Ruairc and holiday work schedules) piled in to Gawin’s little shoe box on wheels and headed up to Dante’s house, the two of them staying awake by talking alternately about League of Legends and Skyrim, which apparently are what people do if they can’t fight. I admit to being a one-button fu sort of player, but I’ll also admit to being a one-button fu sort of fencer. It’s probably telling that my favorite class on TFC was the heavy gunner.
Saturday morning we woke up, measured our manhood on the tracks of Mario Kart, and then headed off to Holiday Faire, which I’m told is a shopping event, but balls to that, there was fencing, and at least 50 people who needed face stabbings. As Sweetums pointed out, it was also my first tourney as a white scarf, no pressure or nothing. But I had to wait, because the first event was the…
Never Won a Tourney Tourney
These are an interesting exercise. Instead of the usual “novice tourney” these make sure that those who are no longer quite novices, but are not yet real threats, don’t have to spend every tourney getting stomped into the dirt by the luck of the list. Also, you get a wider range of experience, so fighters still get a challenge. As luck, or skill, would have it, though, the last two fighters were both novices. The winner was Somharlie out of Black Diamond, the runner-up was Tassin. When the grumpy oldsters were standing on the sideline at the start of it, I said “Tassin will be last 8, if he fights his normal fight rather than his Fabris”. But he pretty much stuck to his Fabris through the whole thing, so I guess that’s working or something, then.
Points-per-Wound Tourney
Dante, who is apparently immediately bored of any tournament format after fighting it once, threw another new one into the pot, based on something he read in one of those historical manuals with the naked men and the blood (they’re all sort of a period gay snuff film aren’t they). You may recall that previous Renaissance Snuff Film Tourney ideas included “One tempo to counter” and “If you hit the list fence you lose”, and were advocated by me, at length. So I had great faith in this one, also. The basics:
Fight is first to 3 points, counted blows, not acted out
The head and neck are worth three points. The torso, upper arms, and thighs are worth 1 point. The forearm and hand are worth 0 points. The shin and foot are worth 2 points. So, you could face-stab your opponent and be done. Or shiv them in the ribs three times. Or once in the foot and once in the stomach. Or some other combination. I think the original manual prioritized these as the most honorable, or most difficult, strikes to deliver. Anyway, the idea is “Hey, kill the guy, don’t just tickle his kidneys”.
Then, the winners fight the winners, the losers fight the losers, and you start getting stratification like a normal points tourney. It didn’t happen here, but I think it’d be interesting to see a further stratification based on “points earned”-“points lost” (so, if you go 3-1, your score is 2, your opponent’s is -2, then have the 2s fight, the -2s fight, the 3s fight, the 0s fight, etc, etc). Simona (Dante’s lady) said she’d MoL that.
So the strategy was pretty direct: Stab people in the face. A lot. Parting from my usual form of mixed case, I took sword and dagger so that, if measure shortened, I could deliver face stabbings and cuttings. It was mostly successful. I had a string of top end opponents, so my great dream of waltzing through face stabbing people from 10 feet away didn’t entirely happen, and Mr. Shiv got to do his job on more than one of them, but I did make it to the finals unbeaten, where I faced Aedan. I dropped a disengage to feint, he made a (for him) huge parry motion that froze me and him, we stared at each other for a moment, and then I backed out, because I was pretty sure that was the one chance I was going to get. We fought a bit longer, and I attacked, with my tip passing over his right shoulder. His tip landed on my face, and that was that.
There was a pretty clear divide on the field, though, between those who “got” the concept of the tourney and those who didn’t. Fighters throwing lots of body shots or closing measure to go for body shots were doomed. It rewarded those who controlled the fight and targeted the face when measure narrowed, which really should always be the case (though you could play a little looser with your low guard in this if it meant trading a foot or a body for a head shot).
And we have a baby Free Scholar
Aldemere (soon-to-be-Baron of Black Diamond, Marxbruder) played his prize on Saturday after the tourneys. The provosts lined up a bunch of proxies to make sure he got a good beating when they ran out of Free Scholars, and at the end the Marxbruders lined up in more or less Academie rank and attacked, one on the heels of the next, so that he had a series of one-on-one fights. I was the last fight, and he managed to turn his back to me, so I tapped him on the head. He spun, and we started fighting at narrow measure and closed range from there. It ended with me on top of him, and, er, sort of kind of almost breaking his ankle. Oops. Comments were made about him going for the Wistric path to a White Scarf. To my thinking, he’s been a Free Scholar for a while. Now he has the gold scarf so that everybody else will be properly warned.
Later I did pickups with Rachel of Black Diamond, Mattheu, and Somhairle. And, my fighting was fucking on! Having two months sitting on my ass apparently allowed my brain to fester on fencing theory so that my one-time shots and control of the line were better than they’ve ever been for me. Or maybe it’s the scarf. Either way, it probably won’t last. But, there may just be an indoor practice site for the winter, so I’ll have no excuse to not show up to Ymir ready to tear flesh from bones.
And other contests of mankind
Afterward, we went back to Dante’s house and had another game of Mario Kart that couldn’t be beat (or, could, really, as we proved, over and over). Then we went to BWW because a) beer b) buffalo wings and c) MMA. I’m told this thing is like HMA, but one letter different. I’ve never actually gotten in to watching it, because it lacks the level of female participation I prefer in my sweaty half-naked wrestling-based entertainment. But, I had beer, I had ribs, I had wings, and I had nowhere else to be, so we watched the Shogun vs. Henderson fight (and the up-card fights). And… well… it makes sense now. And, hey, there’s a BWW going in a half-mile from my house, so I could have beer, ribs, and wings to help it make sense again.
Tassin, on November 18th, 2011 Much like last week we fought warm up passes, fought some Fabris passes and then drilled.
The drills were very similar to last week although we experimented some. We found that the attack where you drop the tip worked well enough coming in at roughly the center of mass because voiding requires a fairly drastic step. This attack aimed at either the outside or the inside line can be voided with a smaller quicker step, meaning that it can be defended against without a parry.
We also discussed blade grasping some. While it doesn’t figure prominently in Fabris (Fabris says that blade grasping is an abysmal way to defend and that he doesn’t think it would be possible with a sharp sword) it is something that can occur during an SCA fight and our tactics need to account for it. Letia made the comment that we should treat it like fighting somebody with a very small cloak in their off hand. Fabris does briefly touch on how to defeat this sort of defense and it is something that we need to look at.
It seems like we have gotten to the point where we are fairly comfortable with the stance and guards. To avoid reinventing the wheel (which our current set of drills feels a bit like) we are going to start looking at the Wounds. For next time (after Thanksgiving) we should look at the first 3 Wounds and plan to drill them.
wistric, on November 14th, 2011 Saturday at Way Too Damn Early, Gawin, Tassin, Antonio III, and Jana piled into the War Wagon and drove three hours down to Sir Christian’s place for a couple reasons:
1) I wanted to fight somebody, a lot of somebodies, now that my foot seems to be functional.
2) Christian recently got his hands on a few sets of the David Rawlings nylon wasters.
In addition to the War Wagonload, Christian, Raphael, Vortigern, Indy, and Maximillian showed up, which meant a room full of ass-kicking was in store.
A quick note about Jana, though: Her first practice was on Thursday. There, she heard about this, and asked if she could go. That’s the sort of enthusiasm that makes my heart all warm and smokey-smelling. Her first time in mask was Saturday, as was her first fight (with, I think, Raph). Not a bad way to start.
But, really, this blog is about me (Tassin and Gawin can post their thoughts if they want).
The weapons:
Chris had single-hand and two-hand swords, and one basket-hilt broadsword. They don’t really vary much beyond that, except in the colors, which is one downside (I like to have a weapon appropriate to my body). Their weight and balance are pretty close to what I expect of a period sword, and they probably weighed about half what my meat cleaver of a bastardsword weighs. The blows they deliver are sharp, stinging blows, but don’t do a whole lot of damage. A somewhat chewed-up edge of a sword gave me a bit of a cut on an exposed inside elbow, which would have been prevented by long sleeves. As of Monday morning, both shoulders are a bit bruised and sore, mostly because I got nothing against Vortigern’s longsword game, and that man swings like he means to kill you.
But that’s really what’s great about these: You can swing, like the manuals show you, and you MIGHT cause a bruise without any armor. With the meat cleaver, I usually punch my fist out toward my target to deliver my weapon into their proximity, and then let the blade drop or turn my wrist to actually deliver my cut, so it never has more power than gravity or my wrist can give it. Any more than that, and it hurts like a mother. So my “Underarm” I.33 guard in actual combat was holding both hands fully extended, my sword hand under my buckler for protection, sword hanging low and to the left.
With the nylon swords a properly formed I.33 guard can and MUST be used to deliver a telling blow. Vortigern, Raph, and a few others and I all had sword and buckler fights and so much of the form suddenly made sense (though I couldn’t get Raph to throw an opening shot that I could properly fall under and deliver a nucken against. Vortigern, though, would. He just threw it better than I could counter).
Fighting two-hander against guys who knew what they were doing, with swords you could really use for it (not those stupid Alchem flyrods) illustrated just how little I had of it. I need to get back with Athos and really learn some Fiore, or start pounding the books on my own.
The downside: They don’t stand up to metal well, so you can only use them against other nylon blades, and bucklers without a metal edge (which sucked, because there was a tiny little buckler, and big round heavy shields, and nothing of the size I’m used to. I’m wondering if I can get some stretchy rubber tubing or a large-ish O-ring that I could fit around the edge of my metal buckler for fighting with the wasters). Also, many fighters were attempting a DiGrassi-esque sword-and-dagger fight (with Coldsteel hard rubber, REALLY hard rubber, daggers) but I didn’t see anything that impressed, mostly because they were a bit confused about the difference between DiGrassi and rapier. Next time I may pick up a dagger and give it a shot, though I’d rather see Roz rock her thing with it. Also, her with the basket-hilted broadsword and buckler doing the Silver thing would be cool to see.
The the other downside is the gear: Since no metal armor could really be worn, we were using hockey gloves and plastic elbow and knee pads. It’ll look like ass on the fencing field unless covered, or unless another option comes along. On the other hand, it could get the heavy fighters working in more realistic forms. I wonder if they’d make nylon sickles.
Is that enough of that? Okay, then.
My fighting:
At some point I said “Hey, I also like fighting with steel, we should do that, too!” so we did.
One of my first fights was with Sir Christian. We took guards, he said “Are we going to gunslinger this?” And kind of did for the first few passes. I have a bruise from where I beat him in tempo and he chose a double-out (which, if you’ve got nothing else, go for it). Then I switched up and went to a Giganti-style. With my 37 and his 35 (plus his four or five inches of height on me) it wasn’t ideal, but on the other hand it reminded me about measure and about closing his line (hey, he’s a lefty who refuses his sword, so he can ONLY attack from the outside! INSIGHT!) And I did pretty damn well against him. I’m pretty sure I went better than 50%.
I fought some other people, can’t remember who all out of the group there, but I do remember fighting Indy. He’s got height as well, and is quick and strong, with some really precise swordwork. On the other hand, I destroyed him with counter-tempo 80% of the time. Afterwards we talked about my use of tempo and invitations, and forming a counter guard to defeat my trap and force me to take a tempo instead of exploiting his. But he has surprised me with his improvement in the past year.
My fight against him? Fucking metal. Measure, tempo, line, I owned them all. The only shortcoming was that when Indy would drop for a toe shot I was not punking him in the head as much as I should have been, opting for a sweep 6 following with a low-line counter lunge and pursuit with passing steps until I could destroy him with brutality. Though, our last pass, I closed for that brutality and he simply stuck his right hand out and seized me by the throat, so we called that fight a tie.
Tassin, on November 9th, 2011 Warm ups consisted of me (Tassin) and Letia fighting a number of passes with sword and dagger in our normal SCA style of fighting. This continued until we were both warmed up.
Drills:
Today’s drills focused on finding the blade and attacking.
First drill, finding the blade:
Agente and patiente start out of measure.
The patiente takes a guard, in this case a typical SCA single sword guard.
The agente takes their choice of Fabris guard.
The agente finds the patiente’s blade and kills him.
Repeat until satisfied and then switch places.
This drill can be done with the patiente in any guard they chose. We chose a typical SCA guard today because it is common and according to Fabris should be easy to exploit. In the future the guard used in this drill should change.
Second drill, opponent in obedience:
Agente and patiente start out of measure.
The patiente takes a guard, in this case a typical SCA single sword guard.
The agente takes their choice of Fabris guard.
The agente finds the patiente’s blade and attacks.
The patiente parries the attack, putting him in obedience.
The agente performs an action to defeat the parry, continuing the attack to kill the patiente.
This drill can have many different outcomes we both performed a variety of attacks until we came to one that we felt should be repeated.
Letia as the agente:
Letia attacked my high line with a passing step requiring me to parry up.
When I made the parry she was able to drop her tip below my forte into my chest.
She can then continue her step past me.
Hangups: Fabris says that the process of finding the blade should start in the fourth part of the blade (the part closest to the tip). When this happened Letia was successful in her attacks. When she began in the second or third part of my blade she did not have the opportunity to drop her tip before it got caught on my guard.
Tassin as the agente:
I attacked on a low (waist/belly height) inside line with a passing step.
When Letia parried the attack I performed a cavazione and struck her in the body as I passed on the outside.
Hangups: Performing the cavazione before she started the parry didn’t work for obvious reasons. It was tempting to bring my hand onto her sword as I struck for extra protection, however, done properly my sword completely protected me and the hand movement slowed my attack.
In practicing attacks we used only passing steps. When using passing steps we found it was important to pass by the opponent instead of passing into them. The firm footed attack did not come up.
We then finished by fighting each other for the last 10 minutes or so in Fabris’ style with the sword alone.
Stuff to work on next time:
More varied attacks, including those that strike on the inside line.
Work against more varied guards since we don’t all fight the same.
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