Posts: 1,576 Location: Bergen, Norway
Tue 06 Feb, 2007 6:12 am
It is quite posible to divide the sword and
shield when using large shields, under a given set of cirumstances.
First of all, you need to provide a effective "passive defence" with your shield. In unarmoured combat this is hard to do with a shield that is smaller than 80-90 cm in height, as your opponent can drop under your shield .
Second, you need to make your opponent miss his intended target, which you most efficiently do by moving behind the shield, much as stephen describes, but with a more closed guard, and moving towards the opponent.
At the same time, strike at your opponent so that the path of your sword covers you. Typically a blow to the side of the head with the blade sloping downwards, or a thrust executed in the same fashion.
If you miss, simply move away.
With large shields, unlike bucklers or longswords, you can not hit the opponent from any position of the sword. There is a gap of time (or Tempo, as it seems the terminology goes) where one moves the sword to a position where one can efficiently attack.
However, smaller shield, like the
rotella does not have this advantage to the same degree; They are easier to fall under, and are thus more reliant on footwork and active defence.
Armoured fighters are also effectively imune to drawcuts, and thus can ignore this threat to a large degree; thus, as armour becomes more common, heaters shrink.