Over the years I've played around with edged weapons, and had a small amount of actual Japanese sword training, but now I'd like to get a bit more serious in handling Bastard, Long, hand-and-a-half, and Two-handed swords the proper way. I know Patrick K. will be a great help, but being the anal person that I am, I would like to get some ideas from you guys on books/cds that show and describe the different forms and methods of swordplay in the real world (or the world as each writer saw it, HAH!). My thanks in advance.

Greg

I won't type out a list, just come over and look at the library. :D

I'm sure others will have some good advice.

I strongly suggest the library as well! I know I've got more than a few books that I suggest for learning the sword:

http://www.myArmoury.com/books/list.php?mode=user&u=126

Relatively few historical manuals have been commerically published. ARMA is the best source I know of for both the published and unpublished material. There's a great collection of it available free-of-charge on this page:

http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm

Depends on what you are looking for. There is an Italian longsword tradition, and a German longsword tradition. The original manuals are the basis of modern interpretation, but the original texts were not meant for beginners, and are not written in a modern format. I know of two books written for the modern beginner, Guy Windsor's The Swordsman's Companion (in the Italian tradition) and Christian Tobler's Fighting with the German Longsword. Either would be a good place to start.

The most recent and best researched stuff is all available from Chivalry Bookshelf. This includes Guy Windsor's Swordsman's Companion for Italian longsword, Christian Tobler's Fighting with the German Longsword, for (obviously) German longsword and the Ochs DVD, also on German longsword. Pretty much everything else is dated, some material very badly dated.

Looking at the original treatises is also very useful if you're that way inclined. The best collection of them is at AEMMA.

Cheers
Stephen

You could also wait for Stephen's forthcoming Silver book or Paul Wagner's English longsword book. I know I am. :)

Thanks for the replies! I see there are several resources for everything from the raw beginner to the seasoned practitioner, and I'm looking forward to delving into them all. I'm sure PK will be happy to beat me senseless trying to work out some of these moves, LOL. Great bunch of folks here, glad to have found you all.

As the Ochs DVD is mentioned, I might add another DVD about the German tradition, produced by Agilitas TV here in Germany. If you don't mind that it's spoken in German, the video is excellent and instructive. The two instructors are from Ochs (hm - maybe it is the Ochs-DVD mentioned earlier :idea: ).

Click on www.agilitas.tv and look for "Langes Schwert Teil 1 nach Johannes Liechtenauer".
It's a useful support for your exercise with the longsword.

Yup, that Ochs DVD has " Agilitas.Tv " written at the top of the DVD box: So it seems to be the English dubbed version of the original version.

And Aaron, run don't walk to buy this one: With your experience I think you will get a lot out of it, at least for me I may be at the bottom of the learning curve but with this DVD I am getting a lot more out of the books, you can only get so much from sequential pictures in a book if you have never seen the actual movements in action. Now I can read the text, look at the pictures and start forming a mental image of all the in between motion between pictures A to D. :D

If it wasn't already obvious I highly recommend this DVD. :lol:

Really big and heavy ones! Not only do you get a good workout with them but you can use them for weapons when needed ;) (yes, I am being a smartass).

I would agree with everyone else and refer you to the Chivalry Bookshelf for the most up-to-date offerings of quality books on Western Martial Arts.