[Christian Henry Tobler]

I’ll keep this one short and sweet…



New Release: In the Service of Mars

Having braved the slings and arrows of unforeseen printing delays and misadventures, I am to say that In the Service of Mars: Proceedings from the Western Martial Arts Workshop, Vol. I is sitting in the warehouse and ready for immediate order!

For over two and a half millennia the martial arts of Europe served the hoplite, gladiator, legionnaire, knight, duelist, boxer and wrestler on the battlefield, in the duel, as street defense and in the ring. Interest in these traditions has brought together a unique combination of fighters and scholars in the quest to resurrect and preserve this proud heritage of the “Arts of Mars.”

In the Service of Mars, Vol. I, is both a compilation of some of the most popular and detailed lectures and class notes from the Western Martial Arts Workshop’s first decade, and a record of the growth in depth and breadth of the WMA community over the same time. But it is not only a “best-of” anthology; most of the inclusions here are substantially different from the form in which they first appeared in the WMAW event guides. The contributions in this book have been substantially revised, expanded, and photo-illustrated, coming as close to recreating an actual class in the subject as the written word can ever replicate a physical discipline.

From armoured axe combat to the elegant and swift rapier; the wrestling of Germany to the swordplay of the Scots Highlander, In the Service of Mars contains something new for every student of the Western martial arts, providing hours of training, food for thought, and a chronicle of the community’s growth over the last decade.

2011 is off to a fast start, and watch this space next month for two new releases, and two more on the horizon! Which releases? Well, you’ll have to wait and see….

Best wishes and good reading!

[Jean Thibodeau]

Tempting, very tempting. Lets see how many days it takes before I buy it. Well, maybe mid February so that it hits my creditcard for the next billing period.

[Christian Henry Tobler]

...and there's also the messer fighting downloadable video too, Jean.

Not that I'd want to tempt you or anything.

Thanks, btw, as always for your patronage and enthusiasm!

Yours,

Christian

[Jean Thibodeau]

Oh, well couldn't wait so I ordered the book a few minutes ago ( 10:00 p.m. my time ).

[Scott Hrouda]

[Mark T]

[Greg Mele]

Jean is hard at work making sure that he keeps all of us in the mercantile end of things fed!

Jean, I knew you wouldn't resist...and your order has already packed and may be on its way to the post office as I type. I'll be interested in your feedback - this is a larger and somewhat different book for us.

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Aron M.]

Received my book Monday, and then was sacked by a winter storm allowing me two “snow days” off of work to get some good reading in. Summed up – Love it!
As other obligations will not allow me to attend a WMAW event, this was my first exposure to the material taught there (other than second hand accounts). All of the articles are very well written and contain hordes of wonderful information. As a student of the German side of things and primarily of the 14th/15th centuries, many of the articles were not directly related to my studies (rapier, single-stick, broadsword, etc.), however the concepts presented were completely in tune with any area of WMA you may be in pursuit of. I especially enjoyed Tom Leoni’s article on the duel, as it breathed new life into my understandings of the Art of Blossfechten. The articles on later period sword styles presented such clear concepts that I had to rethink some of my own ideas of items such as Zufechten and Vorschlag.
Thank you to all of the contributors and to Greg for putting this together.
A highly recommended read!

[Greg Mele]

Thanks for the kind words, Aron; I'm really glad you liked the book.

My goal was to have each volume have a bit for everyone, so that any one volume shows the breadth of Western martial arts. On the one hand, if you're all German longsword, or all Italian rapier, all the time, this makes it less immediately applicable, but my hope was that students would have the response you mention: by stepping outside what they know best they would get some new insights into their own art.

[Jean Thibodeau]

Just received my copy and I'm very impressed by the quality and variety of the topics covered like the poleaxe and period wrestling to just mention a couple of the topics covered.

Overall it seem very well written and presented but I can't say that it's an easy read in the sense that just a quick skimming of the material is enough to get everything out of it or absorb the information without putting in some work: But this is a good thing because as reference articles in a wide variety of periods and fencing techniques one shouldn't expect to become an expert after a lazy and quick read.

What one can get with a quick initial read are general principles that repeat as unavoidable themes with any martial arts system and what all the systems have in common and can teach us.

One thing I think is that the more one already knows about Medieval and Renaissance martial arts already the more this book will be valuable and frankly I'm not even close to being qualified to " critique " the content but I do think I know enough to recognize high quality material when I read it.

I also gave only skimmed here and there and I really have to sit down and do an initial complete read of all the articles and then go back to them and really concentrate to start getting the most out of them.

For anyone actually practicing any of the specific arts like the Ott's Ringen article by Jessica Finley the text and pics do become very valuable instructional material: For example I took a 6 week class on Fiore dagger and wrestling that turned into " private " training sessions because I ended up being the only person taking the class ( Not good and part of the reason my group disbanded i.e. recruiting new students unfortunately was unsuccessful ). For me in the short term this was good because I ended up having one on one time with a very talented instructor. ( Private instruction. )


Anyway, digression aside, this means that the Ringen article and pics are very much easier for me to understand as I have muscle memory of very similar techniques so that I can get a great deal more out of the article than if I didn't have any real training in something similar. ( Not that 6 weeks makes one an expert but it's much better than just a day's seminar + 4 years of longsword also helps a bit. )

So, for other articles one can say the same that those who have had some sword training the concepts will be easier to assimilate than for a complete novice: But one can say the same of all the various instructional books out there that one can get out of them as much as one is ready to put in as effort and that the learning curve can be steep at first but gets easier once basis concepts have been learned.

In conclusion: Very high quality material and I highly recommend buying this book.

[Emil Andersson]

This book is definately going on my list of items to purchase. It looks like a great resource, especially for a budding enthusiast like myself. I'm looking forward to reading it once I've put aside enough to place an order.