The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

“Since when did you remember how to fence?” I shrugged. I don’t usually go seventy-five percent against Wistric—even the slow, schlubby teacher-Wistric who shows up at Thursday practices. But in my last dozen or so passes everything was clicking. I wasn’t getting intimidated, my actions were small and subtle, and I was wasn’t falling into […]

First, thank you all for chiming in on the question. To repeat some things I’ve probably said: The front 180 tends to be arbitrary and ill-defined.  Shoulders move, heads move.  You can usually figure out a “frontness” of an opponent, but that 180 is really hard to define. Recently, while mulling this at work, I […]

In melee there’s this rule: Fighters may strike any opponent with any legal blow if they are within the 180 degree arc ofthe opponent’s front. A fighter who approaches an opponent from behind shall not deliver ablow until he is within that frontal arc. How do you teach that to new fighters?  Does your  kingdom […]

So much of our melee training is based around what the unit does, how it moves, what commands cause the unit to do what.  At most, the individual’s training comes to, essentially, how to be a good little cog: “When the line runs right, be right on the ass of the guy in front of […]

Folks who attended Holiday Faire were treated to Dante’s “All Fun and Games [Until Someone Loses an Eye]” tourney, wherein fighters fought in eight iterative bearpits, with head-shots being the only way to definitively eliminate a competitor from the pool. The champs of each pit squared off at the end in a single-elim tournament. The […]

And of course we should start by pointing out it’d be the 5th Peerage.  Or 12th, depending on how you look at it.   Anyway, the rapier/C&T peerage committee was announced and is starting up.  I have many, many thoughts on this, but figured I’d see what everybody else thought, first.  So what, if anything, […]

I’ve come to the conclusion that in my single-sword fights I get by mostly on parries and footwork for defense.  This is actually sub-optimal, since it usually means I take two tempi, and at the very least lacks a certain amount of grace and “prettiness”.  Thinking this way, I decided want to make more use […]

While you’re waiting for new posts here (*ahem*HawkeLetiaRuaircTassinGawin*ahem*), some other fencing-related blogs that are worth a read:     Grauenwolf’s blog, a study of lots of HMA masters Science of Defence, an intermittent blog from one of the founders of the Scatha Combat Guild Chivalric Fighting Arts Association, an HMA blog by Sean Hayes, Gregory […]

I’ve been thinking of late how authorizations REALLY don’t need to take thirty minutes (except in a few select instances, more on those later).  In fact, I think you can get it to six questions and maybe five passes. The Questions The first and foremost question is Have you read and do you understand the […]