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 counter-guard best formed?
What advice does he give for fighting unskilled/bestial/SCA fencers?
What advice does he give for advancing?
What advice does he give for retreating?
When are two tempi advisable?
What are his rules for defense against cuts?
What is his preferred defensive action?
What is his recommended counter to blade graspers?
What is his recommended technique for using the offhand?
What’s the difference, if any, between a counter-guard and finding the sword?
What are the elements of finding the sword, and which does he consider more important?
What are the steps involved in finding and lunging?
What are some techniques and tactics suggested or implied in chapter 4? Chapter 5? Chapter 6? Chapter 8? Chapter 9?
What actions that are worth drilling are suggested or implied in chapter 4? Chapter 5? Chapter 6? Chapter 8? Chapter 9?
What tactics does he prefer at misura larga? At misura stretta?
What’s a tempo? What are the necessary qualities of it?
What does he place as a condition for attacking at larga? What’s the alternative?
What’s a cavazione di tempo? A contracavazione? A ricavazione? Half-cavazione? Committing of the sword?
What motion does a cavazione follow? What motion does yours follow?
Why would your opponent be unable to parry a proper cavazione di tempo?
What governs the use of the half-cav?
Why is the hand inherently inaccurate?
What are the advantages, disadvantages, and uses of left-foot forward guards? Why?
What is his ideal recovery from a lunge?
How does he say to finish a lunge if it brings you close to your opponent?
What does he mean by run the length of your opponent’s blade?
What are the advantages of passing all the way to your opponent’s body?
What would call for the sword to be directed straight towards the enemy? To be just out of line?
What does he advise tall, short, strong, or weak fighters to do?
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 I wasn’t sure what the quality would be. Maybe when it gets warmer.
I fought Brendan deHay (who’s commented here before) and his lady, Raven. Also met Sir Morgan (who I recognized from Gulf Wars, but didn’t realize was a MoB, which led to a “How is the knight teaching the new person fencing?”), but he’s injured himself so he wasn’t fencing.
Raven and Brendan are both fun fights. She’s newer to the art, I think, but is admirably aggressive. He’s been around apparently since the SCA was “The Society for Creative Contemporaneity”, and a former Atlantian, and gives a good energetic fight. Brendan, if you’re reading this, how long would you say you and she have been in it? Also, since you read this, how would you describe South Downs’s approach to melee?
Despite planning to claim a certain flabbiness after the holiday binge eating, and the 5 degree temp outside, I still felt like I was moving pretty well, and the time off has let my right shoulder heal up a bit more. Still need to do the strengthening exercises more regularly than I currently am (which is “When I remember”).
Also, I need to remember to not brain dump Giganti whenever I meet new people. Well, maybe.
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.
I realize that a lot of the intro stuff is old hat, but please reread
it with an eye to culling out anything from your prior knowledge that
isn’t present in that material.
The two plates offer one guard for single sword, and one for sword and
dagger. I consider anything that you can execute from either of these
guards to be fair game for the purposes of this experiment as long as
the initial moment of stillness is one of those two positions. I chose
ones that are versatile enough to cover the inside and outside lines,
as well as use the lunge, the pass, and the girata.
As you fence, be sure to stay in one of those two guards. During the
course of your bouts, please pay attention to how you react to your
opponents (other people will need to be your test subjects, though the
Giganti adherents can do that job as well if need be) and consider if
those reactions are in keeping with the theory, or in violation. The
goal should be to whittle down to being 100% in keeping with the
theory, and applying it however is useful from either guard at a given
moment. It that happens to mean a passing step, sword beat, and a
dagger in the groin right then, go for it.
I will need each of you to do some form of moderate journaling in the
form of “X is the ideal. I did X-N. I can make the value of N smaller
by…” This can be broad, specific, or some mixture of the two. I’d like
to get biweekly reports, though these don’t need to be terribly
elaborate.
Reports, thoughts, and progress will appear here as they occur.
For the last several months, Ruairc and myself have been meeting on Tuesday evenings to work through a series of fencing drills that focus on the basics of Italian fencing. We’ve made quite a bit of progress as a result, and our Tuesday evening drilling time has helped us both with figuring out how to teach our newer fencers. I figured I should share these drills before Dante started calling this blog the yearly warfare (as he has already started calling it quarterly).
The primary focus of these drills is to work on the basic actions of Italian fencing. The concepts are shared by Giganti, Capo Ferro, Fabris, and seemingly Agrippa (though I haven’t finished reading through that one yet). They build as a progression through the first 9 plates of Giganti. The use of Giganti here is primarily due to his organizational scheme.
Plate 1: Lunge
Plates 2 & 3: Gaining the Blade
Plates 4 & 5: Attacking in tempo, cavazione
Plates 6 & 7: contracavazione
Plates 8 & 9: Feints
The first few drills should be fairly simple for fencers with a bit of experience in the Italian system, however they are essential starting points for newcomers.
Drill 1: Fencers stand at measure. Agente gains the blade of Patiente. When this can be done cleanly, Agente gains the blade and then lunges, striking Patiente.
Key lesson: If you gain your opponent’s blade and they don’t do anything, stab them
Drill 2: Fencers stand 1 step out of measure, agente gains the blade of patiente and performs an advance into measure. Patiente performs a cavazione in the same tempo and attacks with a lunge
Drill 3: Fencers start 1 step out of measure, agente gains the blade of patiente and performs an advance into measure. Patiente performs a cavazione and attacks with a lunge in the tempo of the advance. Agente turns his blade aside by turning his hand to re-gain the blade and attacks in a second tempo (parry-riposte)
Drill 4: Fencers start 1 step out of measure, agente gains the blade of patiente and performs an advance into measure. Patiente performs a cavazione and attacks with a lunge in the tempo of the advance. Agente performs a contracavazione, regains the blade in the tempo of the cavazione, and strikes Patiente in the tempo of his lunge.
These 4 drills should make it obvious that it is a bad idea for Patiente to lunge immediately following the cavazione. Good thing that Capo Ferro at least things that he should instead feint by cavazione instead.
Drill 5: Fencers start 1 step out of measure. Agente gains the blade of patiente and performs an advance into measure. patiente performs a feint by cavazione (that is, he performs a cavazione while feinting a thrust rather than performing a lunge). Agente responds to the feint using a parry while Patiente performs another cavazione (in the other direction) and strikes Agente with a thrust.
Drill 6: Fencers start 1 step out of measure. Agente gains the blade of patiente and performs an advance into measure. Patiente performs a feint by cavazione in the tempo of the advance. Agente responds to the feint using a contra-cavazione. Patiente performs another cavazione and strikes Agente with a thrust.
I could describe further variations on drills 4, 5, and 6, but Guy Windsor seems to have put out a new video. I found this two weeks ago and it provides a good description of several variations of this play and the appropriate responses here: Rapier Hierarchy of Defense
Now, for some drills that work feints:
Drill 7: Fencers start at measure. Agente gains Patiente’s blade and pushes a feint (thrusts towards patiente using only arm and upper body, not feet) towards patiente. Patiente moves to parry this thrust and agente performs a cavazione and strikes Patiente on a different line.
Drill 8: Fencers start at measure. Agente gains Patiente’s blade and pushes a feint towards patiente. Patiente chooses whether to respond. If Patiente does nothing, Agente should continue the feint and strike Patiente. If Patiente parries, agente should perform a cavazione and strike patiente on a different line.
Working through these drills should take a few months, so don’t rush it. The first two are fairly simple and can be worked through rather quickly, but most fencers need to work drill 3 pretty extensively before moving on from there.
Last Weekend, our very own Aedh Ua Ruairc hosted us at Serf’s Uprising. As the name implies, the day was filled with melee fighting that pitted rebellious serfs against their rightful noble lords. There was more than enough schtick to go around, and Wistric was the RMiC. At the beginning of the day, teams were formed with Her Excellency Adriana’s guards forming one team (Adriana, Talorgen, Filipo, Tassin, Girard) while the serfs formed the other (Adelric, Drogo, Stephen, Melchior, Dave, Ermagard, Andris, and myself). This gave the serfs a slight numerical advantage of 7 vs 5 (Drogo had to bow out, Dave joined us afterwards), but gave Her Excellency the greater share of the melee skill/experience.
Fighting started with a grand melee or something, but I was busy doing an authorization and didn’t get to play. I joined the serfs after the authorization in time for the first scenario that I’ve described here.
Scenario #1: Steal the Bacon Sidearms:
The first scenario was a fairly straightforward steal the bacon type game. The serfs’ offhand weapons were placed inside a “ruined building.” The baronial guard was fully armed. At lay on, both groups attempted to get the weapons back to their resurrection point. The peasant plan was simply to run forward and grab weapons as quickly as possible. At lay on, I ran forward and realized that the rez points weren’t terribly even, when the entire other team had reached the middle before we’d even gotten close. I ran past the building to intercept Her Excellency on her trip back to rez with a bunch of weapons, but didn’t make it in time. Ultimately I ended up dying and the serfs got none of their weapons. While returning to the serf rez point from the other side of the field, I realized that the Serf rez point was about twice the distance from the middle as the baronial rez point was.
Scenario #2: Steal the tax receipts:
The second scenario was roughly the same as the first. The idea was to capture the tax records (covered phone books) and tear them in half. The tax records were labelled alphabetically, so that if the peasants destroyed book “A” for instance, everybody whose name began with an “A” would be allowed to recover their sidearm. Wistric moved the serf rez point a little closer (now the baronial team only started 10 feet closer rather than about 25). The plan for the serfs was mostly the same. We designated Steve as the tear-er (and made various puns about him being a terror) and lined up to start. I grabbed Melchior and instructed him to follow me rather than keep pace with the rest of our team. At lay on, Melchior and I ran forward and actually managed to reach the middle first. I grabbed the book that included the “G”s first and then fought off several of her Excellency’s guard while my team collected the rest of the books. Tactically speaking, I think that the baronial guard made a mistake during this melee as they seemed to be fighting individually, which allowed the numerically superior team to engage them in a series of 2 and 3 vs. 1 fights. The serfs ended up capturing all but 3 of the tax records, but unfortunately pretty much everybody on the team’s name would have been listed in those books, so only Melchior and myself got our daggers back.
Scenario 3: Counted Rez in the ruins
For the third scenario, we continued to fight in the ruins. This time the victory condition was to have the least number of resurrections. To that end, I instructed my team to stick together, avoid fighting in the buildings (they were death traps disguised as useful cover, really), and use caution. I took to the left flank. Throughout the battle, Tassin ended up lining up against me alone. I managed to kill him twice and run the baronial line. There was also a point where I managed to push Tassin out wide and have Melchior slip between him and his line to go kill some people. Unfortunately I didn’t clarify that Melchior needed to run the line rather than go for DFBs, so he only got one or two kills. At the end, the score was pretty close (17 to 16), but the Serfs lost. Throughout the battle, my team wasn’t doing a very good job at staying out of the buildings and they tended to die to the man rather than fall back and wait for slain fencers to return from Rez, so they died a lot. However, I think that this battle shouldn’t have been as close as it was mainly because the baronial team could have neutralized me fairly easily by pairing up another fighter with Tassin and then aggressively pushing against the less experienced fencers that made up the rest of my team.
Scenario 4: Woods Assault
The fourth scenario was the first non-rez battle that I fought in. We moved to the woods where there was a path that led from the field to a “fort” that Wistric had constructed from bed sheets and ropes. The objective was simple; for every serf that made it to the “fort” in the woods, we’d get a sidearm back. The Serf strategy was to stick together and push down the path in good order. I placed Dave and Melchior on our right flank and put myself on our left. As we advanced into the woods, we found the baronial guard had spread itself out and was attempting to pinch our flanks together. I managed to pick off Her Excellency who had lined up against me on her team’s right flank and then I ran the line, killing Girard, Tal, and Tassin. Filipo fell back, but was mobbed by the Serf team and died shortly afterwards. We had taken only 2 losses, and so we got 5 sidearms back which meant that we were fully equipped.
Scenario 5: Siege #1
With the woods assault successful, the Serfs raised their banner in the fortress and prepared to hold it against the baronial guard who were laying siege to rescue their baroness (who started the scenario as the serfs’ prisoner). There was a main front door that was open in the fort and a back door that could only be opened from the inside. The baronial guard was given 3 resurrections while the defenders had none. Tassin organized his team in several attempts to break our killing cup, but they were largely unsuccessful until Adriana managed to wrest a blade free from Steve after he died and DFBed the defenders.
Scenario 6: Siege #2
The serfs and baronial guard switched places and ran scenario 5 over again (This time without the hostage). The serfs were only given 2 resurrections, however. Rather than use the classic method of storming the killing cup, I instead had the serfs remain outside of the door and formed them up into a wedge using the one shield we had to provide cover from the left side of the door. I had another serf focus on sweeping blades down on the right side of the door and we took our time to snipe the defenders, slowly whittling them down until they were all dead. We took minimal casualties. Tactically, I thought this ended up working out better considering the level of melee experience of the serf army as well as the fact that its members didn’t fight together regularly. Storming a killing cup takes quite a bit of organization and requires either people who fight together regularly or requires a standard form of training that would allow disparate groups to carry it out together. The serfs didn’t really have any of those features.
Scenario 7: The fellowship has broken
Drunk with their nascient power, the peasants had their own revolt, with myself, Melchior, and Andris forming our own team of 3. This left serf team 1 which was led by Adelric and had 4 fighters, serf team 2 led by me with 3 fencers, and the baronesses’ team which still had 5 fencers. The next scenario was a game of capture the flag. The flag was placed in the doorway of the fort and each team was given their own rez point forming roughly an equilateral triangle around the fort. This scenario was mainly a fight between the peasants, while the baronial guard served mainly as a distraction. The peasant teams scored 1 point for each flag capture and lost 1 point each time their leader died. The baronial guard spent most of the time defending the flag. Adelric’s team focused pretty heavily on capturing the flag, while I had my team hang back. The point system meant that it was not really worth it for me to die in order to capture the flag or even for me to die by letting Melchior and Andris run off to capture the flag, so I mostly kept them close. We made attempts on the flag each time it was reset, but we mainly focused on killing Adelric as many times as possible. I ended up dying 4 times, while we captured the flag twice, which gave us a score of -2. Adelric’s team ended up capturing the flag 3 or 4 times, but he died a lot, which left their team with a score of -23. I used this scenario to demonstrate to my two teammates the importance of rule 4 (Remember the objective). It was interesting to me that leader kills and flag captures were worth the same amount of points. This made it optimal to just hunt down the other peasant leader rather than focus on the flags or even the baronial guard team. The scenario might have been more interesting (or at least tricked teams into placing a false level of importance on the flag) had the flag been worth several points. I was a bit confused about whether the baronial guard could also win this scenario, so I had my team push for the flags in order to catch up with their positive score (since they couldn’t lose points), but apparently they couldn’t win, so this was a mistake on my part and probably cost me one of my deaths.
Scenario 8: Back to the ruins
We left the woods after scenario 7 and went back to the ruins following a short break where Wistric talked about being RMiC to the MiTs. We several of our fighters to court preparation, and so we ran a few final melees in the ruins. Because Adelric and Steve dropped out, Filipo was shifted to serf team 1 as their new leader. The first melee we ran was a counted rez melee. This time, only the team with the fewest resurrections got to keep their sidearms (as weapons and equipment fatigue in war). It was a 3 v 3 v 2 melee, with Tassin and Girard remaining for the baronial guard. This melee continued to demonstrate that the ruins were a death trap. We ended up killing Filipo’s team a bit and Tassin and Girard each got killed once, as did Melchior and Andris on my team. Actually, Melchior wasn’t so much killed as he lost his hand and then forgot about the victory condition and went to rez. Unfortunately there was a counting mishap due to Filipo’s team rezzing off of my team’s rez (which confused the marshal who was doing the counting), so rather than a tie at 2 deaths, we were counted as having 6. For the next melee, only Tassin and Girard got to keep their off-hand weapons.
Scenario 9: The final battle
The last melee was essentially a 3v3v2 fight in the ruins. If the baronial guard won, then the baronage won the day, if the peasants won, well they needed to pick a new leader, so the peasants could go to last man standing if they so chose. I started the melee by bribing my teammates with fig pies to choose me as their leader and we started the battle by teaming up with Filipo’s team to get Tassin and Girard. The two of them decided to hole up in a building (remember how I said they were death traps) and ended up dying spectacularly. That is, they were fighting back-to-back to defend the two doorways into a small building when Girard stepped back, passing in front of Tassin, and was DFBed by the person who was fighting Tassin at the time. Filipo died in the process of killing Girard and Tassin, leaving his peasants leaderless. I offered to incorporate them into the leadership of my new state (and also offered them fig pies), but they refused and we slaughtered them like the peasant scum that they were.
Unfortunately, my “coronation” as the peasant leader didn’t go so well and I was DFBed by Odo du Villain’s rake at the last moment.
After that, there were a few pick-up melees. I had a debrief-style conversation with Andris, Melchior, and Dave about the melees and when I asked them what they learned today, they said “Remember the Objective,” so hopefully that lesson sticks. Remember, if Wistric’s the RMiC, there’s always a trick.
As far as general thoughts, it seemed to me that the teams/scenarios ended up a bit heavily stacked towards the baronial guard, which made many of the scenarios less fun, as there didn’t really seem to be a chance of victory. As I mentioned before, the serfs had a slight numerical advantage, but the skill difference seemed to make up for that difference and then some. The serfs tended to win the non-rez battles where their numbers mattered, but lost most of the non-rez battles, as speed, coordination, and cooperation were more important in those.
An interesting note is that on the serf team, the leaders (Adelric, Filipo, and myself) were the only people with AoA’s. I thought this was a humerous statement about the 3 estate system of medieval feudalism.
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 I talk about the things that actually stand out to me, it comes out as a bitch fest because only the negatives are anomalous. But other people did cool shit, so let’s talk about that. First, though, the general layout of the day:
Ben was RMiC. We started with woods battles, but not in the usual woods, which meant actual novelty. I think he pretty much used the woods I did when I was RMiC, so someone was paying attention back then. Two flags, hard to see from each other, which made backfield C&C important. There was a “chaos” team that was alternately trying to be balancing and disruptive.
That was followed by the last rounds of the Rising Star tourney and the champs fights.
We then had three field battles to finish the day.
The highlight of the day for me was in the first of those field battles. Letia, Jaume, and I were on the right flank, along with three guys from Stierbach who’ve been auth’d about a year, across from most of the heavy hitters on the enemy team. “We’re going to run over there and kill them all,” I said. The Stierbs seemed doubtful as to the likelihood of success of that plan, but I pointed out that there was nobody else who was going to do it, so at “Lay on” we ran over and put the enemy flank guard back on the edge of the field. I was falling back engaged with Dom and Alessandro, lost my right arm to Dom taking him out, then turned to fend off Alessandro. As I did I saw that one of the Stiers, realizing he had a four-on-two, turned, saw the enemy line unprotected, and ran all the way back across the field to DFB enemies. We didn’t win, but it wasn’t for lack of those Stiers outperforming expectations.
One of the greatest tools at our disposal when we are learning to fence is our brains and nervous systems. It may surprise you to learn that up until a certain point, the majority of gains when learning new physical skills are neurological in nature, and are not due to increased muscle strength. The reason for this lies in how our brains and muscles communicate and how we put new movements together. As a general rule, our bodies become good at doing things that they do regularly. With repeated usage, muscles become stronger and likewise, with repeated usage, our nervous system creates new connections, yielding faster, more specialized circuits. In order to explain this more fully and demonstrate how this relates to learning to fence, I must first explain how our brain and muscles are structured and how that relates to carrying out movements. My goal for this post is to describe how our brains cause our muscles to move and how we learn new movements in order to inform the way that we train.
The Anatomy and Physiology of motion:
While we often think of muscles (e.g. biceps, triceps) as singular entities, they are in fact made up of several bundles of muscle fibers. Each of these fibers is an individual muscle cell and within each of these cells are structures called sarcomeres that allow the cell to contract. Our brains tell our muscles to contract via motor nerves. Importantly, these nerves form connections with small groups or even individual muscle fibers, allowing fine-tuned control over which muscle fibers are contracting at any given time. For the first few weeks of any new strength training regime, it is these connections that are changing, NOT the muscle fibers. Increased strength in the first few weeks occurs because the brain becomes better at activating a greater number of muscle fibers at the same time. This is also why over-training is a significant risk in the first few weeks of any exercise plan, as overtaxing the muscle early can inhibit the creation of new nerve connections.
On their own, muscles aren’t very interesting, so let’s turn our attention to the brain. As I just noted, our brains connect to our muscles through nerves that independently control very small groups of muscle fibers. The primary motor cortex of our brain serves as the output of our brain and is spatially organized into a rough map of our bodies. This region is controlled by several other brain regions including the prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum, and the basal ganglia (which we’ll talk about in part II).
What happens when we perform a motion for the first time?
In order to carry out any given motion, our brains must coordinate not just the activity of several muscle groups, but it must do this by coordinating a whole bunch of separately connected muscle fibers. As you can imagine this is a pretty complicated task, as the brain must activate the right muscle fibers in the right amounts at the right time in order to succeed. When we perform an action for the first time, our brains have to figure out in a relatively short period of time. This is similar to on the fly graphical rendering by computers. This processing is largely carried out by portions of our prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that is largely involved in thinking, planning, personality, and consciousness, which should probably tell you that it requires active, conscious thought in order to perform.
Do we have to do this every time we move?
Fortunately, no, our brains have a way of shortcutting this processing for actions that we perform on a regular basis. With repetition, our brains store the needed pattern of muscle fiber activations that are associated with a particular motion. This process is often called “muscle memory,” but it actually involves our brains, specifically our cerebellum. Along with storing the pattern of activations needed to carry out a movement, our brains also make the pattern more efficient. To continue our computer graphics analogy, the brain stores pre-rendered graphics information for actions that it carries out regularly. To put it another way, our brains store “movies” of actions it performs regularly. When it needs to perform those actions, it simply calls up the right video presses play. Now, these actions can be of wildly varying complexity. The “templates” for very simple actions (like extending your arm) can be combined in new ways to create more complex actions (like extend your arm while turning your hand into quarta) and likewise, those actions can become even more complex (like extend your hand in quarta and lunge). Importantly, carrying out these actions will seem to be far more automatic, making them occur faster, more efficiently, and cleaner.
So, how can this inform our fencing training?
In essence, it tells us to drill, tells us how to drill, and tells us what to drill.
The key takeaway from this should be that our initial goal in training is to make our actions automatic. Doing this requires us to drill, as turning new movements into automatic movements requires repetition so that our brains learn the right sequence of muscle fibers to activate. Furthermore, because this training is based on activating the right muscle fibers in the right way, it is far more important to perform the action correctly than it is to perform the action quickly. New fencers often get tricked into thinking that fencing is about speed and strength and that they simply aren’t strong or fast enough yet. This is especially true of the SCA where we transition new fencers to sparring very quickly (here’s a sword, pointy end goes in other guy, go have fun) rather than building up a body of skills before allowing sparring (as other martial arts do). In order to combat this, drills should be carried out regularly, slowly, with proper form, and preferably supervised. New fencers simply won’t be able to tell when they’re drilling an action incorrectly, and incorrect drilling is probably worse than not drilling at all. Because it bears repeating, in my experience, the biggest pitfall here is speed. New fencers feel like they need to be figuring out how to do things (like lunging) faster rather than focusing on making it automatic first and then building speed. To help you understand what I mean by this, tonight, brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand (the one that you don’t usually brush with). Then, try doing it fast. If performing a horribly uncoordinated stabbing motion towards your throat at speed doesn’t seem like fun, imagine how that works for trying to learn fencing. The relative awkwardness of brushing your teeth (something you do all the time (I hope)) with your other hand (something you might not have ever done before) is the difference between a well-practiced, automatic motion, and an unpracticed one that requires conscious, on the fly control. The first is the feeling you want to build with your drills.
As far as what to drill, our understanding of how our brain learns to carry out new movements tells us that we should initially practice basic actions and then build complexity. In fencing, we often consider our basic footwork (advance, lunge, pass forward, pass back, lunge) to be the basic actions, but it is worth considering other actions as well. Lately I’ve been including the action of assuming guard to be an additional piece of basic footwork. I’ve also had success with some drills and exercises that work on training parts of those basic actions (leaning over a leg, hip bends, arm extensions). Working in the other direction, we build complexity by combining our basic actions into pairs first and then even more complex combinations later.
As this is getting a bit long, I will discuss how these actions become behaviors (that is, how we recognize a situation and select the appropriate action to perform) in the next segment.
A few months ago I ruminated on the fact that we have no ready analogue in melee for the nice, neat set of principles native to singles fighting, and that this made the didactic process a bit challenging (or nonexistent, depending …). My previous post on 2v1’s represents the first significant breakthrough I’ve had in deconstructing How Melee Works, and inertia has led to further examination. I’m excited.
What’s So Great About 2v1’s Anyway?
Trying to build up a new understanding of melee has required a reanalysis of some things we often take for granted. A lot of this will seem obvious, but that’s probably the best place to start.
In a singles fight, we can use our understanding of line, tempo, and measure to know when we’re safe and when we can strike. In a 2v1, the 1 has a much harder time of it. He has two lines to close and consider, two measures to react to, and two tempo “tracks” to watch.
The Fourth Principle
It might be called attention, or awareness. It’s a melee analog to the principle of judgement – how many details we can recognize and correctly interpret. It’s mostly about tracking the number and position of enemies (and their weapons) and objectives. Many fencers, especially beginners, will fixate on a single opponent. Some are capable of attending to two or three enemies at a fairly low resolution, picking up and parallel-processing the more obvious details. Rarely are we better. Humans suck at multitasking.
This is really why 2v1’s suck for the 1.
After all, from a pure three-principles perspective, a 2v1 is not that bad; the rules of fencing hold. Both of your enemies must have an open line, be able to take a tempo, and be within measure to strike you. To safely attack Opponent B, you just have to momentarily foil one of those elements for Opponent A (i.e. make the fight a split-second 1v1). SOP is to make A irrelevant via movement and measure, but there are other options available. In theory, it shouldn’t be that hard.
But practice is where the fourth principle comes in. Two opponents have their entire attention focused upon one, able to interpret all the subtleties of the fight to the best of their ability; meanwhile, the one is stuck with reducing these details to a manageable level, dealing in simplified forms just to be able to cognitively process it all, and therefore is much more likely to make mistakes.
But fortunately, awareness can also work for the 1 – because the 2 are also subject to awareness. They have to keep an eye on each other, interpret each others’ movements, and react accordingly to keep themselves safe – i.e. they have to maintain formation and protect each other. If the 1 has better awareness than the 2, he will be better able to manipulate and maneuver his opponents, and eventually, exploit an opening. Shut down opponent A, safely attack B.
Like all principles, our sense of awareness can be developed; maybe we should put more focus on that.
Elaboration
Of course, awareness/attention is bigger than that. Once we start looking at a full melee, rather than a microcosmic 2v1, this fourth principle truly comes into its own. Much of what we talk about – commands, field vision, remembering the objective, etc – is directly related to maximizing and using fighters’ attention and awareness most efficiently.
At any rate, an enemy who is not aware and attentive to us is not a threat, any more than an opponent who is out of measure; or whose line is closed; or who is busy taking a tempo doing anything other than attacking us. He becomes a threat when he is aware of us and turns his attention to us – whether or not we’re aware of him.
If we’re attentive to an opponent, and he is not aware of us, he should be dead pretty quickly – because he won’t know to stay out of measure, close the line, or use tempo to keep himself alive.
Just as we can use line to gain a tempo, or use measure to open up a line, we can use attention/awareness to gain another advantage. Because attention is a limited resource, if we can take up some of our opponent’s – get him focused on us – he’ll be less able to process other details of the fight around him. This is obvious in 2v1’s, where A’s attack might draw too many cognitive resources from the 1, and his parry-counter opens up a line and a tempo for B to strike. In melee, we have the famous tactic of occupying the Provost so the Scholar can run around and DFB him.
The Three Fights
So what does all this mean for our pedagogy? We can boil everything down based on attention and awareness.
At any point, a fencer can be in one of three fights, based on how many people are threatening him:
First, he can be completely unthreatened. Call it 0v1. Other enemies may be aware of him, but they do not have the quatrafecta of measure, line, tempo, and attention necessary to strike.
Second, he can be threatened by one other fighter. This is 1v1 and works pretty similarly to singles fighting, with the caveat of maintaining situational awareness.
Finally, he can be threatened by multiple enemies. This is 2v1. (Yeah, it could also be 3v1, or 4v1, or 5v1 … but you fight them all the same way, so they all go into the same category.)
These are where we begin. During a fight, you will always be in one of these situations. (For the newbie, we can pare down highfalutin concepts of Italian Principles + Attention to “is he in range and are his swords pointed at you?”)
What do you do?
It’s All About Rule 4
Depends on the objective, of course.
0v1 is the most desirable state; because we are unthreatened, we can focus our attention freely.
If we do not threaten anyone else, this is the time to think “what are my objectives?” Look around the field. Evaluate weak points. Is there a clear path to any flag? Will there be one soon? How can I make one happen? Are there some juicy, juicy flanks open? Any opportunities to create favorable 2v1 situations? Any budding unfavorable 2v1 situations to stymie? What about terrain?
If we are in measure of an opponent or opponents, the moment in which they do not threaten us is the time to strike. Ideally we attack the unaware (DFB being the best form of this), but we can still attack and force our opponents to take tempi to parry, retreat to expose their line, etc.
(This is why I am able to lunge in a line fight without getting killed, which seemed to impress Celric at Assessment; if no other enemies threaten me, even for a moment, I can attack safely. )
Of course, we can do things other than strike. We can grab the flag from the ground; we can blow past our opponent into their backfield and create a ruckus; we can even take a moment to turn our attention elsewhere and glance around the battlefield to make sure we aren’t being flanked.
1v1 is the next-most desirable state to be in. Make it 0v1 if you can.
Usually, this means “close the line and kill the bastard.” But here we run into occupying our opponents’ attention and whether or not this will help us secure the objective. If I, the newly-scarfed Scholar, can keep Dominyk busy for 10 seconds, just staying alive and maybe retreating away from the flags, I’m keeping his attention fixated on me. Because his attention is nowhere else, he can’t threaten anyone else. Of course, Dom would be well advised to make it a 0v1 by killing me, or simply disengaging from the fight.
2v1 is the worst state to be in. Work to make it 1v1.
Or “don’t be outnumbered.” Most people know this instinctually, but again, it’s worth spelling out for the newbie. If you’re threatened by multiple people (perhaps because your line is collapsing) you might be better off falling back to join the incoming rezzers. You’re definitely not going to gain much by a panicked lunge. Again, being in a 2v1 can be good, if you can occupy the enemy’s attention for a while; but rare is the Scholar who can do that for long.
What About Line Fighting?
Here’s the real point I’ve been working towards: line fighting is the most complex situation a fighter can be in. Attention is dispersed among several allies and enemies; there are a half-dozen tempo tracks to watch, and near twice as many lines, and measure is difficult to control, so you can’t use it to protect yourself. All players are in constant 2v1. It’s pretty difficult.
Yes, principles still apply. The rules still work. And we can make up simplified forms like “don’t lunge” to bring the messy chaotic swirl into something the average Scholar can process. But I’m left wondering why the hell we drop newbies into a line, as if that’s the most basic and easiest place to start. It’s not! It’s exactly the opposite!
Perhaps we do it not because it’s easiest for them, but because it’s easiest for us. A line has to be dealt with. It draws focus. It occupies the attention of our foes. It’s easy to teach and command. And then the better fighters can run around making trouble while our opponents are preoccupied by the line of Scholars.
In a way, this isn’t all selfish. We presume that newbies can’t survive on their own, or get kills, or even make good decisions independently, so we put them where they’ll do the most good – taking attention, because they can’t take much else.
But I am curious to see what would happen if I took a passel of new Scholars to a melee and, instead of teaching Line Fighting Basics, taught them How To Be Skirmishers – remember the objective, stay spread out, go for enemy lines from oblique angles, retreat when outnumbered, and defend as long as possible against higher Scarves.