Hi Dustin,

For my part, I certainly took no offense from any part of your post(s).

The discussion is a helpful one.

Yours,

Christian

it is my experience that all the defensive actions from the manuals work best as offensive actions in free play.
If you see your opponents sword in a certain position, you know that by moving foward, you will trigger a strike of a certain type, which you can then preempt, for instance by exectuing a grapple, cover or bind.

When it comes to rules, I agree with Michael that less is often more.

We opperate with two distinct rule sets; the reenactment group combat system, which is for all practical purposes a sport system, and the Huskarl rules, which are made for simulating a realistic figth.

The huskarl approach spesifically states that the bout is a cooperative effort between the fighterts to do a good fight. The whole body is a target, excluding the side of the head or face if using a helmet instead of a fencing mask. A fighter is expected to tell his opponent to disregard unintentional or inneficial hits, and indirect or half blocked hits do not count.
By sharing the responsibility for good hits, you can have high speed, relatively light contact fights that maintain a good level of realsim.

It is however vital to always be aware of the weaknesses of your rules system or the customary way of fighting within your group or comunity. If posible, try other rule systems that fill in the gaps, and try to build a broad comprehension of how things work.

Hello Everyone:

I am surprised by the number of responses - even from my "Hero" Mr. Tobler. I have a habit of submitting something humerous to a conversation to attenuate the seriousness. So please bear with me for a moment because I am guilty of doing what I discussed in my first posting for this topic.

I have a 10 year old nephew. This last Christmas I got him two Nerf swords. Wow! I was instantly a god! I think he needs the Nerf battle axe too. One moment during Christmas vacation, I was going to be the cool uncle and play swords with him. I thought I'd share some of the moves I've seen on youtube to further the god-like image he has of me.

Well ... before I could say anything he starts wacking me, I start laughing, and I found myself just trying to parry his strikes while up against a wall!. So much for fancy fechtbuch moves! I'm sure Liechetenauer, Ringeck, and Talhoffer were rolling in their graves!

I just had to share that. I think I managed to grab his arm and eventually had him being spun around on my shoulders ... and he was still wacking me with that Nerf sword! Man ... those things are tough! :-)

Hi all

Great thread - very much enjoying the discussion.

Quote:

Dustin R said I disagree (as some have said previously) that wrestling at the sword only occurs when your opponent rushes you. Closing to wrestle is cited as a valid offensive technique. For example, here is a passage from Ringeck (translation by Keith Farrell, from the wiktenauer) :

Indeed sir and Fiore has similar moves from close binds. Even from middle binds there are sword plays where the sword is taken. Still, we have found that mostly the grapple occurs because we bind (even middle/long) and someone isn't sure what to do next and pushes through an attack that isn't really on. But they feel they have to do something. As a result, the rushing person tends to end up in trouble. You can indeed set up a grapple, but that takes patience.

We found far too many 'mutuals' were occurring in tournaments and freeplay and are now looking at doing something different. Both start with 5 lives and each clean score removes one. A mutual removes one from both - its is therefore possible for both fighters to 'lose'.

I agree this can be gamed - any set of rules can.

It does tend to promote an approach which is about controlling the fight and only attacking when you cannot be counter-struck. As I noted previously - we are drilling this a LOT. When it works, it really works and you are pretty much unhittable in the 1 - 2 seconds we allow for reply hits.

I felt the comment about doing the basics excellently was spot on - the master systems we are studying have some set and standard wards and moves for a reason - they work.

cheers

mike

From what few period accounts I've seen, double hits happened often. Double kills were rare. Train hard, hit hard, your cut will kill, his may not.

Hi Dustin,

Quote:

When you rush in towards another, release your sword with the left hand and hold it with the right. And go with the pommel outside and over his right arm, and thus twitch it downwards. And grip his right elbow with your left hand and spring with the left foot in front of his right foot, and pull him over the foot out to your right side

The text says that you've run into him. The previous techniques all say that 'one has run into another', or 'when he rushes you'. It either doesn't declare who the initiator is or says the opponent is in most cases.

This is from the Durchlaufen part of Ringeck; I quoted from the equivalent passages in von Danzig. And please note that I didn't say that you never initiate a grapple - it's just the less common case.

Cheers,

Christian

Hi folks

I think Jean and Dustin both make a good points, it's not one or the other its both/all of the above

I'm more familiar (read 'know a tiny bit') about Fiore rather than the German system and the treatise talks about the various animals. Lion for courage, Elephant for balance, Lynx for prudence and Tiger for speed and strength. The treatise talk about the balance between these attributes.

Too much tiger leads to the 'rushing in', not enough elephant leads to you being thrown or otherwise off-balanced when you do. Too little lynx leads to picking the wrong moment to do this.

I personally love the close plays and will take every opportunity to close, because I have so much more experience at grappling/unarmed. This is itself a weakness and one I am trying to remedy by not doing this.

Nevertheless, what my instructor is drilling into me is the best fight is the one where I am unscathed and my opponent is scathed (to butcher the language a shade).

Still working on that. :)

regards

mike

I actually find sparring not very interesting in general, because it is often done in a manner close to sport fencing, with hits adequated to points (one way or another).

What I would like to see is tournaments encouraging skill, not hits... In the last Dijon HEMAG there was this idea during the rapier tournament (but probably not developed enough yet) that each fighter would announce a style/master he would try to adhere to and showcase (i.e. Meyer's rapier, Gérard Thibaut's rapier, etc.) and the judges then awarded a special, separate prize (independant of the prize for the actual winner of the tournament based on the usual "points") to the fighter they thought had best shown the style he had announced. This I think is a very good idea and tournaments should go towards emphasizing that, not points.

Another possibility in the same spirit would be to secretly announce a "technical dare" to a judge before a fight, i.e. I will try to get to grappling with him, I will try a disarm, I will try this or that technique etc. Then, you could win the fight with standard hits, but would be awarded a bonus to your total points (or something like that) if you meet your dare.

This would actually encourage fancy moves and give more meaning to sparring (note : I have never participed in sparring but as a spectator, apart from a few really good moves, I find it most of the time boring and not very fruitful).

I agree with Simon that it would be much more productive to concentrate on using technique rather than winning.

Winning might be great for a competition ( sport ) but bouting to test one's ability to use a technique is much more interesting.

As an example my instructor used to have us pick from a hat a technique, and approach or specific core principle before a bout and use it no matter what and the goal was to see if we could make it work and not care too much about winning or losing.

For example one could be assigned to use a specific master stroke or concentrate on controlling measure/timing before all else in the specific bout or : Will only defend ", " Will attack first ", " Will close to wrestling " ..... etc .

My instructor always reminded us that we where bouting firstly to learn and only very lastly to win.

For a real fight in period " winning " is everything but only thinking about winning in every training bout may lead to " cheap " gaming wins but very little in acquired skills.