“That distance from which you can hit him with a firm-footed attack [lunge]”
For the longest time I thought this was the only thing Giganti really had to say about measure. I reached this conclusion because in his chapter on Measure and Tempo, that was the only thing he said about measure. He devoted seventeen thousand words (approximately) to tempo, and just twelve to measure. I now think that difference is not because Giganti had nothing to say about measure, but because his strategic thinking is built around taking or forcing tempi from your opponent.
I would love to claim that I one day had a lightbulb moment and went back to my Giganti, studiously digging through it for the patterns of which actions occur at which measures. I totally didn’t. This is much more derived from discoveries made during practice, and a second-hand understanding of Fabris. Going back to Giganti, though, once I’d formed hypotheses based on these observations, I was able to find support.
Unlike Tempo, in Giganti’s system Measure doesn’t drive strategy, but it does dictate which actions are better once you have a tempo to exploit.
Distances in Giganti’s system
For Giganti’s purposes, you can be:
Way Outside Measure (my words, not his): Out here nobody can hit anybody, nobody can gain anybody’s blade. You’re not fighting. Either get closer or do something else. Hydrate?
Just Outside Measure: Here is where you gain your opponent’s blade. The fight starts here. This is where you gain control of tempo and place your opponent in obedience. This is also where you recover to after each attack.
At Measure: This is the distance at which you should attack. Giganti’s plays generally start by gaining the blade out of Measure, advancing to Measure, and lunging.
Inside Measure: This distance is reached after the lunge or pass controlling your opponent’s blade. Either the off-hand is on your opponent’s guard so he can’t get at you, or your own sword is still firmly protecting your line. Giganti’s a big believer in the double tap – Once you’re here and completely in control of your opponent’s sword, he suggests stabbing your opponent repeatedly, before recovering out of measure.
In each case, these are relative to your Measure (that discrete unit of distance which is the length of your lunging attack). Giganti doesn’t go into the specifics of how shorter fighters should conduct themselves in the fight, though gaining your opponent’s blade from out of Measure, at the earliest possible convenience, is a good way to stay safe even against taller opponents. Like Thibault and Agrippa, he starts with the assumption that everybody’s body is the same.
Measure and Lunges
One of Mediema’s complaints about Leoni’s translation of Giganti is that Leoni doesn’t address the off-line lunges Giganti seems to include. This is so, but I think they’re a bit more systematic than Mediema addresses in his interpretation. It gets difficult to tell – Giganti doesn’t actually say anything about lunging offline, but it’s clearly part of some of the actions in his plates. We could refer to foot placement on the grid in the plates, but the truth is the illustrations in the original Giganti were pretty faded after four hundred years and so some “enhancement” of the images is present in both Leoni and Mediema, which includes a certain degree of guesswork as to minutiae of the feet (also, from the enhancements made, it appears the bottoms of the plates were especially susceptible to disruption.
What I’ve found works:
When you gain the blade just out of measure and lunge (while your opponent takes an action, lunge or advance, that closes the distance between you), lunge away from their blade. At this measure, cavazione can be tight and quick, and moving your torso away builds a void into your action, forcing their cavazione to be larger and slower and therefore more easily countered.
At measure, lunge towards their blade. This drives their point further offline and keeps your body behind your sword for ready defense. Were you to lunge away from the find their point wouldn’t be as far offline, and their cavazione would find your body undefended.
Inside measure you’re not lunging, merely extending, so it can’t be offline, though you can move your torso and hips to still keep your body behind your sword.
Measure and Cavazioni
Measure also guides your counters to a cavazione:
Most of his plays begin with “find his sword out of measure”. If your opponent performs a cavazione out of measure, you just turn your hand to find his sword again (this is actually plate 5). A cavazione from out of measure is essentially just an attempt to find your blade. The hand turn counter-finds. So, too, would a shift of the torso (rotating and or bending) or a slight side step. Either way, as he’s lunging during his cavazione your counter-find will drive his point to your guard, and he will be within range of your own lunge.
At measure, when he performs a cavazione he will be close enough that, should you attempt to counter find, you will find he’s already across your blade with mechanical advantage. Instead, perform a counter-cavazione, yielding to his mechanical advantage and gaining it for yourself on the opposite side of his blade. Yields and voids are also good ideas here (and the “find/cavazione/void” is a favorite sequence for me).
Inside measure, timing is so tight that full cavazione aren’t really feasible as they require an even larger motion to get all the way around the blade. So if you are inside measure and your opponent performs a cavazione (or, say, a counter-cavazione to your own cavazione, see the previous paragraph), you won’t have time to move your sword much (and any large motion is likely to take it offline and past your opponent). A demi-cavazione will take it out of the find to bring it into a low-line target. A yield can change the angle of your attack just enough to get around their find and still land. In both these cases, since your blade can’t do too much moving, you must move your body to keep it protected by your guard, essentially a void. Dropping your body downward with the demi-cavazione lowers it below your opponent’s line of attack and keeps your forte, hand, and guard between their blade and you (practicing this action will result in getting stabbed in the face a lot. Enjoy.). Stepping and bending to the same side as the yield will void your body out of your opponent’s line of attack.
Taller Opponents and Those who Retreat
As mentioned, Giganti starts all actions with a find out of measure, then advances to measure. As we’ll discuss in the next part, though, that advance to measure is a tempo in which your opponent can attack you with a cavazione. To take that step safely, you must be ready for the cavazione your opponent’s cavazione, and prepared to turn your hand (as mentioned above) to counter-find their blade.
Here is the point where shorter fighters start to run into problems: At this point you’ve just advanced to the taller fighter’s Measure. If they’ve performed a cavazione (and are therefore lunging), they’ve moved themselves into your measure and are now available to strike. If, however they only performed a disengage, you still have to get to your Measure before you can strike them. This means at least one more advance, one more opportunity for them to attack you, while in their Measure. There’s this conflict, then: while Giganti does instruct “find and advance to measure”, it’s also against his overall tactical advice of “Don’t give your opponent an opportunity to attack you”. So what other options are available?
Having your opponent’s blade found and taking a series of advances in is not the safest action. Their hand is not in motion, so they can take an action to exploit your advance at any time. It’s better to wait until their hand is motion (e.g. wait for them to perform a cavazione) and is therefore committed to moving for you take your advance. Fabris talks about trading a tempo of the hand for a tempo of the foot, and this can get you to measure safely.
The next option is to perform a gathering step instead of a full advance to measure. This will keep your torso at the same distance while bringing you closer by a full foot’s length and a half. Again, this is better done during your opponent’s tempo of the hand, because their attention is less likely to be on your feet.
The third option is to lunge from just out of measure. This may seem counter-intuitive: Your lunge won’t land, why would you lunge? However, your lunge will drive their point to your guard and far offline, putting you well in control of their blade. At that point, a passing step will finish bringing your point to your opponent. Instead of advancing at measure, thereby giving your opponent opportunity to attack, you close that part of the distance which is not closed by your lunge only after the lunge, when you have full control of their blade.
At a little under 6 feet tall, I do not qualify as a short fencer. However, I use all of the above techniques in my fights, and probably use the last one the most when I deliver a full intent attack. This is because many fencers like to retreat. If I do not attack when they’re already moving forward with an advance or lunge, they will run away*. The passing step begins my pursuit and keeps me at or inside their Measure, with control of their blade.
Giganti’s application of Measure does turn out to be far more complex than just one sentence. And since he repeats it at the end of every play, I feel I must do so here: always recover out of measure, keeping your opponent’s sword covered.
*In period, running into the fence was considered a defeat, and therefore many of the masters don’t discuss continuing an attack against a fleeing opponent.
“That looks like a lot of fun, but I’m scared of getting hurt.”
I’d like to say that the above isn’t a direct quote, but it is. I give it without attribution because it is something I have heard over and over from, by my best recollection, over two dozen different people. These are only people within driving distance of me, and only people who know me well enough to be willing to share their concerns; I can only assume that the real number of people who are avoiding Cut and Thrust combat out of concern for their safety is far greater.
This is very unfortunate, because C&T is much, much more fun than regular heavy rapier and gives a reasonable increase to authenticity, even if we are still (necessarily!) saddled with All Wounds Are Equally Incapacitating. The addition of the cut immediately makes a lot of the sport mentality strategies obsolete. Someone who goes for toe shots, for example, will not do so more than once after realizing that their forearm is impossible to miss with a cut as a response. People who recklessly charge forward do so at the risk of a retreating cut disabling their leg and ending the fight. Tiny little ultra-light schlagers are much less useful for parries now, as mass matters when you must accomplish more than a mere deflection and redirection of a thrust.
In short, things start to look and feel much more like swordplay. We also have some significant diversity to the list of viable weapons once the cut is incorporated: the longsword, schiavona, katana, greatsword, sidesword, arming sword, and scimitar all become advantageous, to name a few. Several rapier styles that make more extensive use of cuts suddenly reveal their utility. C&T opens up a wide realm of possibility that can only enhance our game in the long run.
But, it’s not popular. It’s not popular because enough of its practitioners take it as an opportunity to play whack-a-mole with each other that observers walk away thinking that they’ll never bother with it. I can’t fault them for it; the only time in 14 years of SCA combat I have honestly felt a threat to my safety came during a C&T tournament at Pennsic when someone was swinging for the fences. I honestly had the thought that if he were to hit me I would probably have to end my vacation.
I’ve sparred with people who, nearly every time they landed a shot, it broke my skin and welted up. I’ve also been told that “if you wore more armor, [that kind of thing] wouldn’t happen.” No wonder the C&T program isn’t growing much, and that there are only a couple of tournaments a year for it, usually with only a handful of participants.
Reject this state of affairs. It can be done. My practice can have up to a full dozen people practicing C&T at any given moment, and while some of us do add extra armor to avoid stings, I have been using minimal armor since 2007 or so without anything more than an occasional sting once I decided to limit my opponents to people who recognize how rapier safety functions.
In rapier, which C&T falls under, the armor is largely not the primary means of protection. The mask is irrefutably important, as is the tip on the sword, but everything else is designed as protection against blade breaks, tip failures, and the possible crushing blow to a crushable bit. That said, the thing that keeps all of us safe is the care and consideration of our opponent.
Consider this hypothetical: a fencer goes to an event with the express intent of hitting someone so hard they require some kind of professional medical attention. Horrible to imagine, but how many events would it take for them to accomplish this goal? One? Two? I am fairly certain that I could send someone to the ER at every event I went to if I were so monstrously inclined.
The armor is not the only thing that keeps us safe, and the expectation is not that a person should wear more armor in heavy rapier; the expectation is that the required armor is adequate, and that it is the fault of the opponent or the situation if it is not. C&T does not get a pass merely because cuts are involved. Cuts should land with about as much force as do thrusts, and injurious cuts should be about as frequent as injurious thrusts. That is to say, they should be vanishingly rare and happen only under unusual circumstances… and if they happen more often than that, then there is a problem with the fighter delivering them. In fact, hard cuts should be less frequent and are almost exclusively the fault of the person throwing the cut.
Heavy, injurious hits are the result of the fighters’ bodies in motion, not the weapons themselves (any weapon we use *could* be controlled by someone physically able to control it; even a 6 pound two-handed sword *could* be controlled to hit gently by someone strong enough to do so, though such a person might be one in a million). With a thrust, the possibility of changes in distance is highly likely, as we can all attest, so sometimes both fencers move forward simultaneously and a genuine accidental collision takes place. With thrusts, sometimes everyone does everything right and the resulting hit is still brutal.
Cuts are different. With a cut, if the opponent moves forward, the resulting hit will be closer to the hilt and therefore weaker; in fact, this exact method is described in the cloak section of several Italian masters as a means to take the force away from a cut. Even if you were to do something foolish like intercept the point of percussion with your hand, the added force will still be substantially less than with a lunge because there is less mass behind the action. With cuts, the chief contributor to an excessive shot is the person throwing the cut doing so harder than they should.
You do not need more armor. They need to learn how to control a cut. The edge being a smaller surface area is a reason for extra caution in attacking, not a justification for failing to account for the difference. Done right, in accordance with the rules we agree to follow, C&T should be no more harmful than what we already enjoy dozens and dozens of days a year.
Cut and Thrust is tremendous fun. I love it, and I use minimum armor without fear of injury. I use weapons that protect my fingers, soft elbow pads, a good mask, and nothing more. I don’t get hurt because I don’t fight people who I don’t trust to face in minimums. If I feel like I need to armor up to fight you, then I’m not fighting you.
For some further reading on force and injuries: http://www.baronllwyd.org/Machine/RapierSpearInjuryBlurb.html
Having provided his list of the qualities of a good guard, Giganti then basically says to ignore that because good fighters don’t form guards, they form counter-guards.
A counter-guard at its most basic is a guard (still with most of the qualities of a good guard) which positions the sword and your body so that it prevents your opponent from attacking you in a single action. In general, this action by your opponent will be a cavazione, and he suggests that when they do this you can strike them, which is the first hint of his big plan:
Make your opponent move more than you have to move to kill them. When they move, kill them. Move fewer times than they do (preferably only once) and move less than do (preferably just a lunge).
The rest of his manual is the “how to” for this plan. And it starts with forming a counter-guard.
For Giganti, a counter-guard and gaining the blade are the same thing. You hold your weapons extended in front of you and you cross your sword above his “just about resting your blade over his, as if covering it.” The result is your blade pointing slightly off-line above his blade (if you’ve gained on the inside, you’ll be pointing outside his sword shoulder; if the outside, to the inside of his dagger shoulder). What this accomplishes, and what he doesn’t tell you, is first, if you’re both in terza, your true edge is now against your opponent’s false edge; second, you have formed the strong angle and if he extends towards you his foible will go to your forte (assuming you’ve got your sword extended and your body behind it); third, it gives you unimpeded access to his sword arm, torso, and head; fourth, if he wants to try to push your sword over to gain your blade he will be fighting gravity; fifth, if he tries to push your sword over to gain your blade he will bring your sword online with his face.
Giganti’s ideal counter-guard moves your opponent’s sword off-line, but this initially seems difficult if you’re not making direct contact with his blade. His solution is to move your body, so that a counter-guard to the inside brings the left shoulder back and the torso as profiled to your opponent as possible, and a counter-guard to the outside brings the left shoulder forward. Forming counter-guards, then, is not just a function of moving your sword but also of rotating your torso to move it out of the line of your opponent’s attack, and to align your arm and body behind your sword to buttress it against any direct pressure.
Counter-guards are always formed out of range. This is the first thing you do. You just don’t step into lunge range without having control of your opponent’s weapon. This means that the fight begins, and control of it is gained, out of range of your opponent.
When using a dagger, Giganti’s instruction to point it at your opponent’s shoulder suffices to include it in your counter guard. With your sword blade crossed above your opponent’s sword, your dagger and sword will now form a V (Fabris calls this “joining the weapons”), with no gap between them, so that any attack can be parried by one blade or the other with a single action of the wrist or elbow. The invitational dagger guards Giganti illustrates include this union of the weapons (except for the invitation to the center line, which requires a movement of sword or dagger to form the V).
Fighting in the Society follows a certain rhythm. This rhythm manifests itself most visibly at fighter practice. People will spend some time chattering on the sidelines & armouring up; then there is a time period of fighting, and then it seems that many of them will take a break at roughly the same time. This rhythm is partially determined by the current level of anaerobic capacity of the attendees at practice. It takes a certain amount of time to warm up & cool down, and recover yourself between exchanges. Improving your anaerobic system enables you to produce effort more quickly, recover more quickly, and resume effort more quickly. In other words, putting effort into training your anaerobic capacity means you warm up faster, you cool down more quickly, and you don’t have to rest as much between bouts. Thus, training your anaerobic capacity (along with aerobic capacity) can mean that you become more efficient at fighting. Becoming more efficient, generally means winning more – if all other things are equal.
This article will discuss ways to improve your anaerobic capacity. A previous article I authored discussed the development of explosive power. That article mentioned that it’s hard to work on developing explosive power without working on the development of your anaerobic cardiac conditioning. So as you are considering how to spend your training time, you can take solace in the fact that putting time into training your aerobic capacity will also train the amount of explosive power you can produce. Armored combatants will find this eminently desirable, but unarmored combatants must be careful to keep a lid on the amount of power that they hit their opponent with.
Developing anaerobic capacity is the latest weapon in the arsenal of knowledge in exercise science. And like any new, shiny, thing many fitness enthusiasts are quite enamored with these new discoveries. This is manifested at the slew of gyms that have sprung up across the country which have anaerobic capacity as their main focus. I’m talking primarily about Crossfit, but also the prevalence of such things as the Warrior Dash, Zombie run, and other types of anaerobic-focused types of exercise.
Training methodologies for anaerobic conditioning have a variety of names. HIIT (high intensity interval training), fartleks (no really), crossfit, tabatas, and hypoventilation training are all different labels with slightly different focii for achieving roughly the same thing. The good news is that you can train this capacity with measurable effects without a huge time commitment. The bad news is that since the majority of the population doesn’t train this physical capacity, in the beginning it is going to be pretty painful. However, the benefits of training anaerobic capacity are manifold. As mentioned above, not only will your body will become more efficient at attaining an elevated respiratory rate, and coming back down from it. Additionally, you will be less tired after these exertions. You won’t feel as run down after fighter practice or events, and you’ll be able to do more.
Some anaerobic training workouts are tremendously simple, and can be integrated into your daily practice with ease. For instance, fartleks are the easiest and most free-form. They were originally integrated with running; during your run, you pick a point in your run that’s further away than where you are now, and elevate your running pace to get there. Do that repeatedly. Intervals are a bit more structured; begin your workout, and specify time periods at which you work at a higher level. If you were going to do this during a fighter practice, you might pick a partner, and fight for 2 minutes. At the end of 2 minutes, transition immediately into a more active fight for 1 minute (perhaps see how many counted blows each of you can land in 1 minute), then rest for 2 minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat for 6 rounds.
If you are a member of a crossfit gym, please do be aware that many of those gyms have an admirable focus on both functional strength and anaerobic cardiac capacity, but may lack an emphasis on things like flexibility and aerobic capacity. When you become stabilized to their regimen (and it is a brutal one), seek out additional training in the things that crossfit lacks.
Tabatas and HIIT typically consist of separate workouts which, while not time consuming, are fairly monstrous. They place an emphasis on separate efforts which target anaerobic capacity. These workouts, if performed to capacity, can destroy you pretty well within 20 minutes. One of my favorites is what I call the Bulgarian Death March.
Obtain a willing partner, a grassy swath, two cones or markers, and a watch with a second hand. Place the cones approximately 10 meters apart. Partner 1 starts lying facedown on the ground at one marker. At the timer’s start, partner 1 jumps to their feet, sprints to the other marker, flings themselves facedown on the ground, jumps to their feet, and sprints back to the marker they started from, where they fling themselves once again on the ground. This action is repeated for 20 seconds, while partner 2 cheers them on. At the end of 20 seconds, roles are swapped and partner 2 performs the workout while partner 1 has a rest period. Repeat this again for a 30 second unit, then a 40 second unit, then down to 30 seconds, then 20 seconds to finish.
Make want die quick.
After a few weeks of doing this 2-3 times per week, add in a pushup at each marker. Beyond that, add in a 50 second unit in the middle (so the time intervals are 20, 30, 40, 50, 40, 30, 20). In the final evolution of this workout, the partner who is having a rest period is toted back & forth in a fireman’s carry by the active partner.
Aside from the Bulgarian Death March, a number of highly effective workouts can be sourced on YouTube.
If you devote time and effort into developing your anaerobic capacity, interesting things start to happen. One of those has to do with safety – a lot of fighters (armored and unarmored) get sloppy when they get tired. Depending on what discipline you’re fighting in, fighting is typically halted when sloppy starts to happen. However, time spent in developing your anaerobic capacity means that you are used to putting out focused effort when your capacity begins to wane. To put it plainly, you won’t get sloppy when you get tired. This is widely considered favorable in fighters. It can mean keeping your opponent safe from your own uncalibrated blows, and it can also mean victory because you can effectively block and return blows when your opponent begins to flag.
Being the imaginative sort that you are (you wouldn’t be in the Society if you were a person of little imagination), find creative ways to integrate the development of anaerobic capacity into your life. There almost isn’t a wrong way to do it. At the very, very least; if you take nothing else away from this article; restrict the amount of time you spend socializing on the sidelines at practice; you become good at what you practice – if you practice talking & resting, you’ll become good at those things. Even if you only stick to a structured rotation of effort such as; 2 minute low effort, 1 minute high effort, 2 minute rest, repeat – in any activity you do, you will see results. And those results can typically take the form of increased safety, increased victories, less time flapping your jaws at fighter practice and more time becoming the tip of the spear.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” – Mike Tyson
I came across this quote following a baronial fencing practice, and it seemed oddly fitting to one of my observations from our 2v1 practice that day. The 2v1 drill we were working was focused on training the two to defeat the one as fast as possible. Likewise, the one was trying to stay alive. We set a 15 second time limit and kept the field narrow and restricted to prevent a whole bunch of jogging around (We were within the goal box of a peewee soccer field) and if the one survived (or killed the other two), then they “won.” With the exception of Ruairc and myself, the rest of the fencers at the practice are relatively new, but have had some good melee practice. They have all been trained in 2v1 melee drills before, so this wasn’t anything new to them, it was just a little more difficult, due to the time limit. We rotated all of the fencers through all of the positions several times over the course of the afternoon, which gave me a good opportunity to watch their strategies. Ruairc seemed to be focused on what the two were doing, so I focused on the one.
My methods were simple. I was mostly watching to see what sorts of things Ruairc and I did compared with our scholars, and what struck me immediately was our reaction to lay-on. The one thing that all of our scholars had in common was that they all stood still or moved backwards at lay-on. In contrast, both Ruairc and I started moving forward immediately.
This brought to mind a phrase that is often thrown around during melee practices, but is often poorly defined or discussed; “Seize the initiative.” It also reminded me of a tendency I have noticed in tournament bouts. If you can get your opponent moving backwards at lay on, they often continue to do so until you stab them.
Interestingly, the instruction that Ruairc subsequently gave to the 2-man team was to advance more quickly, with a purpose, and it made it clear that what the two man team is doing is seizing the initiative, or perhaps more usefully, forcing the 1 into obedience. To help explain what I mean by this, consider a game of chess. At the beginning, there are a very large number of possible moves and outcomes.With each subsequent move, the number of possibilities is decreased until check-mate or a stale-mate is achieved (i.e. there are no more moves). Likewise, forcing your opponent into obedience reduces their options and forces them to respond according to a set of finite responses. If the two can force the one into obedience (which is easy to do since their numbers make them intimidating), then it will be easy for them to run them down and kill them.
In order to achieve victory, the one must instead be fearless and the first step towards victory is a step forward at lay-on. In other words, the one must force the two into obedience so that their responses are limited and predictable.
Giganti starts off with discussion of guards and counter-guards. At times I’ve tried to approach instruction on Giganti by starting first with the theory pieces (tempo, measure, line) because the reasoning behind Giganti’s instruction on guards is tied directly to his application of theory. However, this invariably ends up with the feeling of putting the cart before the horse – while “You stand this way because then you can attack with one tempo” requires an explanation and understanding of tempo, discussing measure and tempo without a clear understanding of what makes a good starting point from which to govern measure, and from which to take your tempo, results in more imperfect understanding of the theory. Giganti’s application of tempo is at the core of his system, so the least imperfect understanding that can be had is the best route. So, begin with an imperfect understanding of guards so as to better understand tempo later.
Unlike the other Italian Rapier masters, Giganti declines to prescribe any particular guards1 or hand positions (at least until much later on), instead saying “Every motion of the sword is a guard” and that knowing the best course of action from whatever position you are in (and whether it’s where you need to be or you need to change your position) is the important thing. Which it probably is.
At times he does instruct to do something “as seen in the illustrations”, but rarely says to stand exactly as illustrated. The exceptions to this rule regard very particular scenarios – invitations on various lines with sword and dagger, defending against cuts to the head, et al. – and not as part of the instructions on the basic elements of his theory.
He does identify the important traits of a good guard, however, and in so doing begins to define his system of combat:
- Stand solidly on your feet (Not bouncing on the toes, but instead with the feet firmly planted on the ground
- In a stance that can be extended with a step2
- With the sword held so you can parry and strike in a single action (off-line guards tend not to support this, encouraging keeping the sword on-line)
- With the body “well-placed and at the ready”
- With the sword pointed at his opening
- With the dagger pointed at his shoulder
I’ve usually translated that “with the body well-placed and at the ready” as relaxed and balanced (Giganti instructs to be in a position that can’t be easily unsettled). This also, given Giganti’s emphasis on attacking and defending in a single tempo, suggests having the weight primarily on the back foot (like a good Italian) so that the lunge will be clean and efficient with no wasted effort to shift weight off the front foot so that it can be moved forward. He repeats many of these instructions again in regards to Plate 20 (How to Use Single Sword against Sword and Dagger).
Later on, in his chapters on sword and dagger fighting, says again “There are as many possible guards as there are positions of the sword.” When setting out to instruct students on Giganti, I emphasize that trying to stand in a plate-exact way, without knowing why it works or how it’s best utilized, is not nearly as important as internalizing the traits of a good guard and developing the ability to test your position against those criteria.
1 Giganti prefaces the list of traits of a good guard with “as you will see in the illustrations…” While some have taken this as a prescription for the exclusive use of the guards which illustrate gaining the blade (in plates 2 and 3), the instruction does not seem nearly so specific, but instead a suggestion that looking at those plates, and others, will demonstrate instances of fighters standing solidly on their feet, with the body well-placed and at the ready.
2 Here the illustrations seem to be at odds with the instruction. The illustrated stance has the feet separated by two and a half foot-lengths. I, and all others I’ve instructed on this, have difficulty taking a step (“extending the stance”) from that long of a stance. It is possible that this is due to a lack of sufficient conditioning. Whatever the cause, I usually stand with my feet one and a half foot-lengths apart as it meets the conditions of the text, not the illustration.
Four years ago, I worked through Nicoletto Giganti’s Scola, overa Teatro (as translated by Tom Leoni) and documented it on what was then Wistric’s Weekly Warfare. In full disclosure, it was, I think, my third read through, but the most detailed and considered I’d been till that point. It took the format of quoting an important line from Giganti’s book, and providing my interpretation of it, usually speaking as though I had clue. Reading back through it, I didn’t (“I also sincerely believe that a fighter with single sword should be able to defeat any fighter of equal skill carrying sword and dagger.” This was a thing I said).
Now, with the benefit of four more years of experience and application, and teaching him to others, and access to his second book (including the just-concluded workthrough of it) and Aaron Mediema’s translation, it might be time to take a look back at Scola and discuss Giganti’s system, now with Bonus Content.
At the end of Giganti’s first book, he mentions that, God willing, he will one day produce a second book where he would explore more fully the use of the dagger, buckler, targa, rotella, and cloak. At the end of my first pass through his first book, I planned to make at least one post where I’d explore what that might look like, applying the lessons he’d already covered to the weapons he mentioned. I failed to follow through. Luckily for us all, he didn’t. However, in that second book he mentions two more books he will produce, God willing. Unless somebody stumbles across a manuscript that says “Libro Terza” sitting mis-labeled in some collection somewhere, though, it looks like those books won’t show up anywhere any time soon. What might they look like, though, if he had written them?
The first he describes is “A book dedicated to the dagger alone against a variety of weapons.” The second “a book… entirely with the left foot forward”.
The Dagger Alone Against a Variety of Weapons
Well, actually, there aren’t any he hasn’t covered. Remember that buckler, targa, and rotella are just like dagger, and he already covered sword and dagger. Cloak is mostly like dagger, and the way it’s not (the passive screening of the entire left side) doesn’t matter because your dagger won’t reach to their cloak anyway.
He’s already covered polearm, using the example of the short spear. The polearm is not all that different (in length or striking) from a longsword or from any other hafted weapon, and the same tactic of feigning weakness, falling back, offering an invitation, and parrying strongly when your opponent takes it, would work against these weapons, too. The two-handed weapons can’t be overpowered by just a dagger if they’re being held ready in guard, but they can during a blow (muscles already committed to the strike can’t resist the parry). The sword, though, can be pushed aside even when held in guard, which constitutes the decision point against all weapons: “Can I move it aside right now?” If yes, do, and kill them. If not, solicit an attack, and when you can move it aside, do, and kill them.
In fact, the only armament he didn’t already cover, by analogous weapons, is the unarmed man vs. the dagger. And missile weapons. But there’s not a lot to say about missile weapons and Thibault said it. The unarmed vs. dagger is fun, and his instruction would probably look similar to Marozzo’s or Fabris’s (though, simplified, because Giganti). Marozzo’s can be broken down to “Is your opponent attacking overhand or underhand? Is his right foot forward or left foot forward? Is your right foot forward or left foot forward?” It works out to eight combinations. Marozzo gets over 20 out of it. There might also be a decision point of whether or not they’re attacking strongly (and therefore you have their momentum to assist your throw), but that still would only make sixteen. Extrapolating from Marozzo’s pressa (what I remember of them – I should revisit those. NEXT PROJECT!), my guess at Giganti’s eight:
| Attack Over or Under |
Opponent’s Lead Foot |
Your Lead Foot |
Your response |
| Overhand |
Right |
Right |
Block upward with right hand, pass to his outside with your left foot (seizing wrist), place left hand on their face or throat, and throw them backward |
| Overhand |
Right |
Left |
Deflect to your left with left hand, pass in with right foot, seize throat with right hand, and throw to your right |
| Overhand |
Left |
Right |
Block upward with left hand, pass forward with left foot, seize throat with right, throw backward and to your left |
| Overhand |
Left |
Left |
Block upward with left hand, pass forward with right foot (behind their left on the inside), wrap arm around their waist and hip-toss them to your left |
| Underhand |
Right |
Right |
Block with left hand, pass left foot forward (outside and behind his right foot), grab throat with right hand, throw to your left |
| Underhand |
Right |
Left |
Block to the the left with left hand, pass right foot forward, seize throat with right, throw to the left |
| Underhand |
Left |
Right |
Block (or seize) with the right hand from the outside, pass left foot forward, seize throat with left hand, throw to left |
| Underhand |
Left |
Left |
Block with left to the left, pass right foot forward, seize throat with right hand, throw to left |
Put it in pedestrian Italian, add plates, and there’s his other book.
As for instruction in how the dagger-wielder can be certain to best the unarmed man (it does seem obvious that the guy with the knife shouldn’t need to be told what to do, but Giganti’s first book does assume both fighters know what they’re doing) I can’t begin to form a guess. Fiore’s the only master I’m aware of who covered that and I’m not familiar enough with his counters to the counters, and I didn’t stay with Aikido long enough, to make an educated guess as to what Giganti’s would look like, or even what his decision points would be.
With the Left Foot Forward
He doesn’t say “With the left hand”, just “With the left foot forward”, so I’m starting with the assumption that he’s not just talking about fencing left handed. To quote what Giganti says about the left foot forward:
“Anything you can achieve with your right foot forward, you can accomplish with your left foot forward, be it a lunge, pass, or cut. Furthermore the thrust is just as long, whether the right or left foot is forward on the lunge. Any differences depend on practice.”
My first inclination, based on long experience, is to call bullshit. All that he says is not in keeping with my experience, and the left foot forward seems to limit your actions to two-tempo grab-and-go’s and the passing lunges he spent two pages teaching against in this same book. However, since Giganti’s been pretty spot on up to now, over the course of two books and a couple hundred pages, he earns consideration of his premise.
He makes an obvious, and easily tested claim: The lunge covers the same distance, whether the right foot is forward or left. So I just picked up the yardstick/substitute sword I keep in my office for just such situations (they really do come up far more often than the average person might think), set up with my right foot forward, and lunged so that the stick just touched the wall. Then I marked my rear foot’s big toe on the ground. I set up with left foot forward, then, and my right foot’s toe on the mark (with about a 120 degree angle in my feet and hips), and lunged: extending the arm, rotating my body to bring my right shoulder forward, leaning in behind it, and lifting my left foot. And the yardstick touched the target. The son of a bitch was right. It takes more rotation of the upper body, which may make it slower, but not by much. In practice, and with perfection of both, the difference between the two might be as much as one or two inches of range and a quarter second of time.
Since Giganti doesn’t have prescribed guard positions, your guard only has to meet his criteria (remember those from the first book?). However, these criteria rule out almost all left foot forward fighting styles seen in the SCA, since they hold the sword withdrawn, relying on the off hand for defense, rather than where it can parry and strike in a single tempo. You still need to lead with your sword in order to be able to close lines. This requires rotation at the hips to bring the body more or less square, and keeping the sword extended. Counter-guards are formed just as readily (the blade rests above the opponent’s the same, either way) though it’s more difficult to get your body behind your sword, since you’re squared up and your sword cannot extend as far forward as it can right foot forward, so your opponent’s extension won’t necessarily go to your guard without additional action on your part. While closing the line to the outside is simple (and almost doesn’t apply – If your opponent engages your blade from the outside, his sword will already be offline if yours is online), closing the line to the inside requires extending the sword in quarta with more lateral movement to your left.
With dagger, his basic suite of invitation guards work the same, though the left shoulder is the more favorable target to provide for an invitation. The liberally-borrowed Fabris “wedge of doom” style guards (which echo Giganti’s example of a single-sword guard to the outside with the right foot forward) also work with either foot forward.
And, since your body doesn’t have to shift much, if at all, from the waist up to maintain a counter-guard, this means you can pass forward to form left- or right-foot forward guards, and lunge from whichever finds you at measure. However, as Master Ximon illustrated for me rather clearly, the greater extension of the hand in quarta for the inside line must be done before passing into the left-foot forward stance. Otherwise you deserve the stop thrust to the left shoulder that your opponent will give you.
So ends our discussion of Giganti’s colorfully named Second Book. There may be cause to revisit it sooner or later. Until then…
Giganti prefaces the dagger section by pointing out more men are killed with daggers than with swords. He then promises a third book on fighting with dagger alone against “a variety of weapons.” Maybe that one’s also in the Wallace collection.
His basic approach strongly echoes his rapier fighting: When they attack, push their dagger aside and stab them. Given the size of the dagger, he resorts to two tempi: one for the defense, by delivering a cut to their hand or blade, and one for the attack, thrusting to his face while your left hand maintains control of your opponent’s dagger hand. He describes three or four scenarios, all of which boil down to the same pattern. In contrast to Silver and others, who teach a more boxing-like approach dagger fighting, this still has the form of fencing, which makes it probably more acceptable on the SCA rapier field.
He also provides instruction for facing sword and dagger with dagger alone, and for dagger alone against spear: Feign weakness, retreating, drawing more vigorous attacks from your opponent, provide an opening on your right side, and when he goes for it, parry his weapon, pass to his outside (away from his dagger if he’s got sword and dagger), and stab him a lot. Or: Make a trap, spring a trap, close measure quickly, and make the murder happen. Giganti really only has one plan.
I’m curious as to why he bothers to instruct particularly on these two weapons forms. The translator and author don’t provide explanation, just note that this is not a scenario found elsewhere in the literature. My best guess is that, since these constitute the arms of a soldier, this is Giganti’s only real sop to battlefield-related fighting.
MONDAY
The warpoint plan was that rapier and heavy would fight the same scenarios (mostly) on the same day, which held promise of the back-to-back woods battles, one of the best endurance tests I’ve ever encountered. Monday was the day for field battles!
HEAVY FIELD BATTLE
The Queen’s Spears rallied up, 8-10 in number. Duke Vlad was tasked with handling the left flank guard and the Spears fell in with him. Atlantia would go forward and turn right, so the flank guard would form a skirmish line to cover the kingdom’s backside against inevitable counter-charges.
I took the Mean Stick (7.5’ laminated rattan) and trotted forward in formation. In the first go I found myself off Vlad’s right shoulder. There’s nothing like a tall knight to draw fire, so fighters repeatedly charged him, exposing their left sides to me and the Mean Stick. I scored the bulk of my kills just by chopping kidneys and heads as they ran past. I wasn’t completely successful at keeping Vlad alive, and he died eventually to a spear, I think. After a while the enemy had nothing left to throw at us so we advanced through them, turned left, and pushed their flank. Eventually I ate a spear myself, but Atlantia had torn such a brutally large hole in the enemy line that it collapsed and we took the first field battle.
The second battle I found myself on the opposite leg of a right angle from Sir Tash. He was, as Vlad had, receiving charges so I just laid into the flank of the charges and drained their force. I died a little while later, I think to a charge targeting my portion of the line.
By the third one I was starting to get gassed, but I do remember laying about myself with the Mean Stick to some effect.
The Mean Stick, it should be noted, tends to do all the work for you. There’s not a lot of give, and she’s got no small amount of mass out at the end. All you have to do is get it moving. But getting it moving can be exhausting, and by the fourth I wasn’t good for anything except standing there looking scary. The fifth I barely got to swing, since some twerp ran down our line smacking people in the face. Still… cardio.
RAPIER FIELD BATTLE
The effect of going from heavy armor, swinging the Mean Stick, to rapier armor, with the 45”, is what I imagine astronauts feel like when they get into orbit. You’re weightless, and all your energy returns in a rush. You go from thinking “I can’t move enough to undress myself” to “I CAN RUN FOREVER!”
Atlantia formed up on the right, then, at the two minute mark, was told they needed to go form up on the left. So we did. Turned out, we were going to be the anvil to the Mid’s hammer. Apparently, there was not confidence in all of our noble allies that we could do this.
We did.
Letia released me to “go run and be wild”, because she knows me and is my friend. I trotted out to the far left wing and stopped their flanking unit as Atlantia advanced to mid-field. Atlantia then set its line and hunkered down. After three or four minutes, I counted up their flanking unit (5 of them) and our flank guard (4 of us). I did this pointing my dagger. One of them cottoned on and said “We outnumber them, push!” And then a hold was called. In the hold, I looked to my right and saw that the hammer had taken three quarters of the field and was marching toward us slowly but steadily. All we had to do was keep them from getting a break through and evening things out. So the goal went from “Prevent stuff from happening” to “Make stuff happen” (in this case, destroy the enemy opposite). At “lay on” they gathered to push so I legged the guy with the big round shield in front of me, and landed a cross shot on the guy to his right. 4 on 4, with one of them legged. Then it was back to waiting, until a big wall of red tape rolled over the remnants of the blue army in front of us.
The second battle followed the same plan, but they pulled resources to stop the hammer, so Atlantia just kept going forward, squeezed our opposition into a pocket, then turned and ran the entire length of the field to take the rest of the blue tape’s back field.
The third battle we ran across the field. I was facing a bit of a gap. Down the line, some Atlantians got into the back field, and I saw a pair of fighters (turns out one of them was Duke “Are You With Me Atlantia?” Konrad) turn to go jump them. So I went through the gap, neck-shotting the guy to my right, but missed the parry on the guy to my left and ate a shot to the face. Oh well. We still won, though this was the closest run of them. At one point things were pretty dead even, but there was a baronial unit of Scholars that mopped up our end of the line, crunched an OGRe or two, and then hit the rest of the blue tape in the flank. Not bad work.
In camp afterward, a Mid Realmer said “Atlantia’s performance was really uncharacteristic.” I asked him what he meant. He said “You guys are usually the run-and-gun crowd, and you seem to be proud of it, but you held the line really well.”
If it needs clearing up: Atlantia most absolutely and definitely is the run-and-gun crowd. We train mobility and we train impact. And we absolutely take pride in this, because rapier is light cav, not heavy infantry. It’s what makes us decisive. If you don’t think rapier’s about running, you’re wrong. That said, when you take an army which likes to run, which fights on its feet, which thinks fast, and which maintains unit cohesion across a hundred yards of field at a dead sprint, and you make it stand still, you haven’t weakened it. You’ve freed up more of its mental powers for figuring out how it’s going to slaughter whatever comes its way.
TUESDAY
Tuesday was supposed to be the woods battles, back to back. Sadly, because of rain, the ambulances could not get into the woods. So the planned-for-Thursday heavy bridge and rapier broken field battles were moved to Tuesday, and then the rapier broken field battles were rained out (with an assist from the East Kingdom dragging ass to get started, and Aethelmarc having court scheduled right on the heels of the rapier battle).
HEAVY BRIDGE BATTLES
There were five battles over five bridges. 15 minutes, no rez. Atlantia was on the far left, which was blocked from archery or siege, so we could stand with our thumbs up our butts for long periods of time unassailed until we got a chance to get into the fray.
In the first one, Atlantia pretty much went forward at a mosey and received a whooping. As is our way, the whoopers had to work for it and send in most of their reinforcements against us, but, still, whooping. Our noble allies were only able to hold two out of five bridges.
So the second one they decided to have a forlorn hope of shieldmen supported by top-end spears (lots of white belts). Unfortunately, the forlorn hope was not substantial enough, and the top-end spears ended up resisting shield charges until we could get shit sorted out. I think it was in this one where, once I got up to the line, I had a spearman on my right who was against the edge of the bridge (and therefore safe on half his front). So I started blocking, and waiting for him to throw, and waiting, and waiting. He never did, no matter how much blocking I did. Then, when I was dealing with an attack from my other side, he over-extended a lunge, ate a spear, and by the time I turned back to check on him the enemy spear was headed for my neck. I was happy, or at least consoled, to see our spearman switch to sword and shield thereafter. And, yes, a spear is just a long rapier. This sort of thing should not happen in rapier either.
The third run our forlorn hope was beefed up, and Alric dragged me up to the “top-end spear” rank with him. Despite my protestations that I in no way meet that definition, he said “I need somebody who can keep me safe”. So we did that, me blocking, him killing (we were on the far left, so he had the same half-safe front as the guy in the previous fight). We chewed up the enemy for a while, then fell back, caught our breath, and went back in to do some more work. The enemy spears attrited hard, so Atlantia launched a column charge, which put the enemy back pressed against itself so it couldn’t move. I put my spear horizontal, charged, and pushed a couple/few off the bridge, then realized we were at the end of the bridge in a killing cup and tried to bail, but took a shot to the helmet.
Run four went about the same as three. It may have been in this one that I was on the far right, received a three man column charge, and simply angled my spear so that they ran off the bridge to my right (one threw a shot well after he’d stepped off the bridge and hit me, but fuck that noise).
They all tend to blur together, and I can’t really remember how the fifth went (probably quickly for me, because I’m assuming I had no strength left in my arms after an hour of fighting). My general impression is that, even with spear, I ended up with more kills by throwing people off the bridge than by actually stabbing them. But I did finally reach that point (I noticed it on the heavy field battle, too) where the melee around me started to make sense. In previous years it’s just been wild, unintelligible chaos.
And then they cancelled our rapier battle, and we would only get to have two rapier battles the entire war. That was some BS.
WEDNESDAY
I marshalled the 5-man, being tuckered out and needing a day off. It was small (only 16 teams) due to the weather I think, but there was actually good weather the entire tourney.
THURSDAY
The woods were still in bad shape, so they decided the heavy and the rapier fighters would fight the broken field scenario on Thursday.
HEAVY RUINS BATTLE
The heavy field was laid out with a series of ruins that I really didn’t pay much attention to. Scattered through these were six banners. placed in pairs across the field, one half of each pair closer to each rez line, the idea being that each side could secure three easily, and push to steal one of the other side’s three.
Atlantia was given the right hand pair of banners, and the Queen’s Spears were placed out on the right wing of Atlantia to skirmish and protect the flanks of the main battle in what was more or less an open field. Some hay bales made locally interesting obstacles, but didn’t overall dictate the flow of combat in the area. There were also some Ansteorran and Trimarian spearmen and a unit of Midrealm shields. Against that were all the Tuchux. The day promised to be interesting.
What occurred was a series of Tuchux pushes and charges that drove the skirmishers back, sometimes to the rez line, but never sufficiently penetrated to affect Atlantia’s back field and, once the charges were depleted, rezzing spearmen would push the Tuchux back to or beyond mid-field then stabilize and attrit for a while until the next Tuchux push.
Things started off pretty clean, but there were some ‘chux who clearly had higher calibration standards. One guy had a ‘grotesque’ face plate whose eye holes I used for point control drills, only to hear “side” in response every time. He later was clobbered by somebody else and lay on the ground for a minute until he was able to walk back to his rez line. I can’t help but think these things are related.
Which brings me to the ‘chux reputation. One of the Meridian fighters who was fighting alongside us told me they were clean. They weren’t. They earned their rep. A ‘chux cracked my rib, with a spear, hitting me in the back, through my pickle barrel armor. No ‘chux took positive pressure spear thrusts to the face, but one bitched that my up-calibration spear to his face was too hard. Another one shrugged whatever I threw at him, then whiffed on me and asked “Did you feel that?” ‘Chux used the “3 points of contact doesn’t mean you’re dead, but you should probably take it as a kill” convention among the SCA to their advantage, knocking our fighters down rather than going for a kill. However, they did not adhere to that convention themselves. In that article going around on Facebook they claim to be really proud of their armor, but there were guys wearing a black t-shirt and black sweatpants pulled over hockey armor, not a stitch of leather or metal except the helm. They raise calibration when convenient, expect touch-kill when it serves their purpose, abuse others’ honor to their advantage, and exploit armor loopholes. Sounds familiar.
At one point, I’ll admit, I was frustrated by this bullshit. I devised, and announced, a plan to get “as close to marshal’s court as I can with a Tuchux”. Shortly thereafter, a ‘chux indulged. We received a charge, he took a number of blows, and I drove him to the ground with my spear shaft. We stepped back to let the dead out, and he popped back up and rejoined his line, saying he didn’t get hit (and, remember, no 3-point convention for them). And he immediately charged us again. I again put my spear across his shield to stand him up, let a few blows land on him, and then pushed him backward. Since ‘chux like those trashcan lids so much, my spear slid up and, by the time we hit the ground, my spear was against his throat (or gorget, if he bothered with it, not sure). I asked if he was going to call any of that good. He started bashing my helm with his basket hilt in response. The local fighters broke it up and sent him to rez, I trotted back to rez, too (I may have needed to calm down a bit).
I didn’t need him that time (I was totally legal), but other times (like, the time I put a ‘chux over a stack of hay bales when he charged me), I had a guardian marshal standing right behind me, always appearing whenever I was concerned I might have transgressed a rule. “M’lord marshal, was that okay?” “Yep.” Same thing happened with the ‘chux who bitched about my face thrust. “Looked clean to me.” I should write that dude a thank you note, and hire him to follow me around the battle.
Towards the end of the fight, everybody was worn out and calmed down a bit, and it all got better again. Atlantia did its job, but the rest of the line was not as steady and we did not win.
RAPIER BROKEN FIELD BATTLE
You may have noticed a pattern among the heavy battles: Defeat, but by a narrow margin. Luckily, rapier did not suffer this problem.
The rapier broken field was laid out in three sectors: far left was the open field, with a flag in it. Center was a broken field (hay bales that mostly served as tripping hazards), with a flag. And a 20X20 (maybe 30X30?) hay bale “house” on the right with a flag in it. Beyond the house was a narrow open area to provide access to the house (it was originally supposed to be wider, but they decided to run the siege battle at the same time as the rapier battle, FFS).
Atlantia was tasked with the open field sector. We formed up on the left and I again drifted out to the far left flank. And against was arrayed… nothing. The East left a hundred foot gap between its right flank and the edge of the battlefield, essentially ceding everything to the left of the banner in the open field. And as Atlantia charged, nothing came out to meet us. We had reached their rez line and turned right before I came into contact with the enemy. Atlantia basically formed an L shape with the angle at, or just past, the banner. I noticed a couple goobs who were dying were trying to rez in our back field, so I drifted back, stabbed them, let them rez, come back out, stabbed them again, and offered that “We could keep doing this all day, if they wanted”. Unfortunately we couldn’t, because Caitilin decided she didn’t want Atlantia running all the way across the field to rez, and called us back (I think we could have done it. Remember, we like to run, though that may or may not be a good thing).
Somewhere in there I noticed the new tip on my blade was at a bad angle so I went back to rez, removed the tape, found out it had a little split on the side, and re-taped. By the time I got finished with that, Atlantia was in a stable (and basically unmovable, like, for the rest of the 90 minutes) line in front of our banner. The center banner was the enemy’s, though, so I headed that way to help out, we pushed, and got the banner. I think I died this time, and when I came back from rez we still had the left two banners (with, I noticed, a strong Atlantian contingent holding the center banner, meaning, yeah, half the field was Atlantia’s). I joined up with Connor and another guy to go work on softening the defenses on the last banner, the one in the house, or tower, or whatever it was.
So let’s talk about this tower. Like I said, it was maybe 20 by 20, with two entrances. There were a good 40 people inside, which meant double and triple deep killing cups defending those two entrances. In addition to that, the No Man’s land between the two lines was centered on those entrances, meaning any attack was charging not so much into a killing cup, as a killing ladle. The side facing the other banners was bad, but apparently the opposite side was even worse due to the dense packing due to the narrowness of the access path. There were a lot of blind shots, hard shots, uncontrolled charges, and people getting pushed over hay bales. There were 5 medical holds, most of them from around the house. I don’t think I’ve seen that many medical holds on the rapier field in all ten years of Pennsics (missed 2) that I’ve been to, combined. The field layout was poorly designed.
Connor and I nibbled at the entrance to the doorway, weakened it a bit, I died, and when I came back our side had taken the house, and held it for most of the rest of the battle.
started drifting, looking for holes that needed plugging, or weak spots in the enemy line that could be exploited. There were times even where I came back from rez and had nowhere that needed me, so I just hung out in the back field until something looked interesting or Caitilin ordered me somewhere.
Remember the thing about the Tuchux cracking my rib? And the 90 minute heavy battle? That was all an hour before the rapier battle. Not only was I exhausted, I was in pretty constant pain. Moving hurt. So I didn’t. At least, no more than absolutely necessary. Every action had to kill, which meant a lot of one-shots. Somebody actually complimented my fighting because of it. Which leads to my best advice from the day: Break a rib, you’ll fight better.
FRIDAY
I got my brakes fixed so I could drive home the next day, missing the heavy fort battle, but I didn’t really feel a desire to go into a meat grinder like that.
Despite losing the war (by, rumor has it, the amount of points that Rapier would have won if we’d had a third battle) it was a pretty good one. I mean, I wasn’t the one who broke an ankle or got concussed in the Stupid House. It probably sucked for those people. But I got to fight as much as I wanted to, and the Monday after found myself extremely grumpy and twitchy, missing war more than I ever had previously.
How was your war?