Rory put forth the observation that the HEMA community is much troubled by what the “best” tournament format is, and long debate between entrenched positions as to what’s wrong with every current format (see: Sayre’s Law). It starts with the assumption that there is an optimal format, or at least a universally least-bad format. That […]
Author Archive
Tournament Structure/Rulesets Conducive to HMA Study 6 comments
Second Giganti I: Defense against cuts to the Head 4 comments
Through his first four plates (and a fifth plate embedded later on, in the section on passing steps), Giganti lays out his method for defending against cuts to your head or upper body with the sword or sword and dagger. In the first book his responses were either to lunge in the tempo of their […]
Missives from the South: Birthday fighting 2 comments
Sunday I went to the regional fighter practice here in South Downs. About eight fencers turned out and I got passes in with most. Despite it being my birthday, and having planned to fight N+1 (where N is the number of your years on this planet, in my case 33) passes with everybody, I […]
Second Giganti: Introduction and Preface 1 comment
Three years after working through Tom Leoni’s Venetian Rapier, his translation of Nicoletto Giganti’s first book, Piermarco Terminiello and Joshua Pendragon (really, people are still named Pendragon, isn’t that awesome?) have discovered, translated, and published The ‘Lost’ Second Book of Nicoletto Giganti (1608). Their introductions are fascinating, and an excellent testimony to the fact that […]
Question for the Audience: Tells 5 comments
I was thinking about the Most Dangerous Swordsman I’ve known (though, this was when I was a foil fencer at the club in Orlando, so it’s been a while), who was this late-60-something guy shaped like a beachball. In no way, by physical judgment, could he have been thought of as dangerous. I was […]
Minimalist Italian Rapier Experiment – Study Questions Leave a comment
For those of you playing along at home, below are the questions developed while doing the reading. Some of them have simple answers found in one sentence, some have answers spread across many chapters. Why does he divide the sword into four parts? What are the traits of a counter-guard? At what measure is a […]
Missives from the South 5 comments
Made it out to practice, finally, last night. I have not fought since December 19th, and frequent readers of the Warfare may know that I get twitchy after one week without stabbing people. There’s a practice up in Athens that I’d been meaning to go to, on Mondays, but it’s an hour long drive and […]
Minimalist Italian Experiment – intro 7 comments
Dante’s devised this scheme to re-focus the local Italianate fencers on the fundamentals of theory and form instead of plate replication. The textbook for the experiment would be Leoni’s Fabris, which we all have access to. The available guards were limited to extended quarta for single sword, and a withdrawn terza for dagger. Reading: Chapter […]
War of the Wings 2013 14 comments
I’m realizing a hurdle to writing up these post-mortis is the high standards to which I hold myself. At WoW I DFB’d commanders, ran lines, and held off five fighters at a time, but so what? I’m a white scarf, that’s my job (this is why white scarves don’t tend to get shark’s teeth). If […]
Other People’s Stuff: Body mechanics in the knee and foot Leave a comment
Encased in Steel has an excellent post on bad foot position in guard and how to really fix it.