Logan's Blog

Most of us should be familiar with blood of heroes by now as we have played it twice at practice. Just in case, here is a quick summary of the rules.

The game is played with two teams of five. The ball in this game is a simulated dog skull. Each team tries to place the dog skull on a stake defended by the opposing team on the opposite side of the field from the stake they are defending. Doing so scores one point. The game is played for three rounds of three minutes. If a team scores two points they win. If the time runs out during a round, that round is a draw.

Each player on the team has a role and a specified weapons set. The quick is armed with a dagger and is the only player allowed to move the dog skull. The slash is sword and dagger and is the main source of offense. The drive and back drive are sword and scabbard. And finally, the chain is sword and cloak and is defense. The chain is not allowed to cross the midfield line.

The game is played 180 degrees with death from behind. Running is not allowed, instead you must limit yourself to a fast walk. When a player is struck dead they drop to their knees for a five count, counting out loud. At five they stand up and announce loudly “Up”. They may not be hit, move, pick up the dog skull, or attack until then. A player may voluntarily go down to regenerate any injury. If a marshal sees that you are running, or not taking shots, or doing something else wrong they announce “Jugger Down” and you go down immediately without question, comment, or explanation, for a five count. Finally a player who is down may be “Pinned” by a member of the opposing team if that person places their sword on the chest of the player to be pinned, looks them in they eye and announces “You are pinned”. To maintain the pin the pinner must continue to make eye contact and periodically say “You are pinned”. Should the pinner look away or remove their sword the pin is broken and the one pinned may immediately stand up and announce “Up”.

Each round is started with the two quicks in the center of the field inside a circle. The slash is 15 ft behind the quick, and the drive and back drive are to either side of the slash. On go the two quicks duel it out in the circle. No one else is allowed to enter until the dog skull leaves the circle. It may be that one quick kicks it out, or slays the other, it does not matter. No one gets to go in until the skull leaves. You may, however, move about as soon as the round is started.

So, those are the rules. I think this game is great! It represents a great example of small unit tactics on an open field. The way this game is won is through loosely coupled teamwork. It is impossible for you and two buddies to form a line and fight because the game is so dynamic. In doing so you put three of your team of five in one place. Your opponents should just go around you. Furthermore only 3 players on  your team are even whole players because the chain can’t cross mid field, and the quick only has a dagger. This means that a pair is likely the largest group you can form without leaving an area exposed. Finally, the game is 180 dfb, and you never kill your opponents. Instead  you leave them behind to pop up in 5 seconds. That is as long as you have before they come around and dfb you, or surprise you from the side. This makes the game very tight, very fast, very dynamic, and very mean.

Pretty much all of the above things are things that Scola melee forces need to work on. In the past our melee tactics were very much equivalent to a fighter playing the rock. We never give ground, we are accurate to all get out, and if you come running strait at us you are going to die. Our existing tactics are even good on a flank, where we can only be bent from one direction. Our tight unit discipline makes exposing us on only one angle difficult because our partners always cover for us.  However, when exposed on a field that is to big and open we have found our rock tactics impractical. Once our fighters get surrounded, and isolated away from their pairs and trios they tend to get destroyed.

That is the beauty of blood of heroes. You are always mostly on your own. The largest number of buddies you are likely to have with you at any time is one. Usually that is the quick or chain with one other person. So, the way blood of heroes is played successfully is with rogue individualism and loosely coupled pairs. The circumstances of the game make it so that you must be comfortable on your own to be successful. A typical scenario is you hear your chain calling for help. You hustle back to help stop the opposing quick from scoring. You get killed. Your team moves the skull out of your zone and all the up team mates move out as well. Now you pop up. Only 30 seconds have gon by and your teams tactics have shifted twice. Further you are alone (since your team moved out) and  you need to be effective alone. You need to find where your opponents have stopped your quick, and come at them from the side or from behind to suddenly crush their defence and allow your quick the opening she needs to score.

I am not trying to say that it is all about going it alone either. The best tactic seems to be the loosely coupled pair. The two that work together, but don’t stand together. They draw out their opponents. They create temporary numerical advantages. They split and roll their opponents into unfavorable, confusing configurations. A good example might be that the quick and slash are moving up the field. They see the opposing chain and drive in between themselves and the goal. Rather than rush in the quick stops and allows the drive to come forward and challenge her. At this time she moves to the side to force the drive to turn with her, and the slash capitalizes on the turning drive and hits them. Now we have a temporary (less than 5 second) 2 on one situation against the lonely enemy chain.

I am still getting my head around this one. I need to play it more. But I am sure it will be good for us in improving our open field tactics. I think after we get comfortable playing blood of heroes we will be comfortable split up on the open field. It will make us better at stopping cascade failures as well. And also likely make us better at flanking and rolling lines.

Logan Out

When I say range, I mean the distance between you and your opponent. As every good Scola fighter knows there are four meaningful ranges. You are either out of range, in critical range, in lethal range, or finally as . Natalia likes to put it you are “in close and personal”. When you are out of range neither you nor your opponent can hit the other person without extensive footwork (read more than one advance, skipping, vaulting, leaping). At critical range you can reach out and touch your opponent with a long lounge. At lethal range you can touch your opponent with a simple extension. And finally, when you are at close range you and your opponent can slice and dice at will.

The range you are at has a huge impact on what is going on in your fighting. Normally, we like to fight at critical range. That way we are really fighting (not out of range) but we have a little bit of time to react when they attack. However, you can gain the advantage over your opponent by changing the range to suit your needs. Ideally you do this without your opponents knowledge. That way you can either be far away (not really engaged) and safe while they still think they can hit you with a lounge, or you can be in lethal range and just touch them with an extension. The tricky part is changing the range without them knowing. If you are fighting a charger, and want to be a little farther away to be safer, he is not going to be fooled by you retreating. He will just advance. Likewise if you want to sneak into lethal range for a lightning fast, where the hell did that come from, attack a simple advance will not work they will just back up.

A good way to mask the fact that you are changing the range is to circle while you do so. Now your opponent can’t identify a movement strait forward or backward. Rather he must deal with a spiral, which is much harder to read. Try to keep your range change subtle. Change it a little bit at a time. Your opponent will read large steps, so make the change small. Sometimes it will help to move your sword forward and backward while doing this as many fencers foolishly look at your sword as a point of reference. You need to just play with it to find out what works.

In contrast, we never want anyone to do this to us! You could wear yourself out thinking you are fighting at critical range when in fact you are to far away to lounge. Or you could get zapped. So, don’t be fooled. watch your opponents body. Gage the distance to them. Don’t be fooled by them extending the sword to make you feel like they are closer than they are.

Wow, been a long time since I updated this thing. Lets recap the last single session before XMas which was dealing with chargers via pivot.

Beating a charger via pivot actually falls into the larger category of skills, which is reading your opponent. It is important to try and read your opponent, what are their objectives, what are they going to do when I attack them, when will they attack me. In particular it is important to be able to distinguish between when they are attacking right now, and when they are in fact just feinting as a preparation for a real attack to come.

There are two good indicators that someone is attacking. In order to attack they must extend their sword. Also, given that you are maintaining the proper range and have not let them sneak up on you already (see later in this post), they will have to move their body towards you. Someone who has been classically trained will first extend the sword and second the body (a classic 1-2 lounge). However, you will see all variations on this. Some people will do both at the same time, other will lounge then extend, who knows. Assuming that they are going to attack in a classic lounge you can get the first indication of their attack by reading the shoulder. When they extend the sword their shoulder (on their sword arm) will rise up a bit. You can watch for this by placing the center of your gaze (which is like a good fencer unfocused and wide seeing) on their upper body and shoulder area. Then when their shoulder rises up you know that they are at least beginning to extend. Maybe at this point you wish to initiate a preemptive attack on their now extending hand. Maybe you want to prepare to parry.

The advantage of watching the shoulder is that it is the first possible tell that they are moving. However, the problem with the shoulder is that it only indicates an extension. The extension may be a feint, or other non threatening motion. This is why I prefer to watch the hips. When someone moves their body (like to lounge or slope step or advance) the first indication that they are doing so is in their hips. Depending on how squared up they are to you (with their hips facing you) their hips will either rotate, or move strait forward. It is impossible to lie with your hips (sexual innuendo aside). When the hips move forward, the rest of the person must do so also. So, assuming you are maintaining proper range, it will be impossible for your opponent to hit you without first moving forward either by advancing or lounging, or some combination there of.

The way this ties into chargers and pivots is that you can’t pivot against a uncommitted attack. Or rather, you can but it is a bad idea. If you pivot before your charger buddy is committed (read moving forward, rotating his hips), then he will be able to adjust his charge to track your pivot. He will then peg you right in the chest (yes! victory for brute strength!). Congratulations you are on your way to a big bruise, or worse. So, the solution is simple, don’t do that. Wait until you see their hips begin to move. Now that charger is committed to a strait line attack right through the space you are standing. PIVOT! Now you are not in that space. If you have time throw in a power eight parry on top of all that and you will be standing safely to the side as they blast through like a freight train. If you really have time, pivot, parry, and leave your sword pointed at them. You need to be careful while doing this however, because they could hurt them selfs by slamming into your point, which is now fixed in their path. So, be ready, keep your elbow bent, have a loose grip, be ready to drop the sword when the force gets to be to much. Not only does this work, but it looks super cool. Like a dexterous matador deftly evading and stabbing the poor brute strength bull.

This week we cut formal drills a bit short so we could work on circle of death. So, the topic we covered was “Standing there and not taking it like a bitch.” By which I mean blocking. We had two people face us at 45 degrees. They throw 5 shots at us each. We block them. The idea being to not only block them, but to try and bind them both together into one block by blocking one person into the other. So, if the person on our left attacks us, we parry 6 which sweeps through the path of the person on our right. Similarly, if the person on our right attacks we parry 4, blocking off the person on the left at the same time. If either of them goes low we parry 8, which is a big sweeping parry anyway.

This is very important for several reasons. One, it forces us to learn to block. Sometimes it seems easy to be a runner. To always retreat when attacked. The problem with this is that eventually someone will run us into a corner or a wall and then they will pound us. Also if we are to fight two on one we have to take the fight to them. Not only do we need to block them both out, but then kill one of them. This is almost impossible if all we do is give ground and run away.

This week the topic was simple, off-hands. I don’t have a lot to say in writing about this topic, so if you have any questions I guess you will just have to ask me. We covered dagger (or short scabbard), buckler, and long scabbard. This left cloak and case uncovered, but I don’t find them very useful anyway.

Practice holding your dagger away from your body. This gives two advantages. One, it provides a larger blocking “shadow”. Two, it gives more time to block. Since work is force over time, more time and the same force equates to more work done on your opponents blade. More work done means more deflection, thus a stronger block. The dagger can be used offensively as well. I recommend steering more to the thrust as the short dagger cuts are not well read. Also be careful with tripplet #2 blades, or other stiff dagger blades, as they tend to be very stiff. Take care not to damage your opponent.

Bucklers also should be held out away from your body for increased shadow. Practice punching at the incoming attack to knock it off line and open things up for a possible close. If you are not sure what to use in your off hand, take out a buckler and use it as passive defense.

Long scabbards don’t offer much protection for the hand. So, you will have to keep them moving to avoid loosing it. They are great for power parrying since they are both stiff and heavy. Try gripping it with about a third of its length below your hand.

For single fighting I will always choose a dagger over the other off hands. It offers lightning fast blocking and close range offensive capabilities. For melee, the buckler is more versatile, particularly the large war bucklers. Typically in melee the dagger is to short to get much done. Long scabbard is great against schlager because it offers such strong blocks. However the lack of hand protection, and its weight and relative slowness make it a distinct third in my book.

This week covered the advanced range drill, two shot combinations, and three shot combinations.

The advanced range drill begins (like the regular range drill) with you and your partner facing each other at critical range. At critical range two people of the same reach should be able to just lunge and hit one another. For those of you who are shorter you should practice your opponent’s critical range where they can just reach you (but make sure to close like a mongoose from there, don’t hang out there). In most cases this is the distance where the tips of your swords cross by an inch or so. Next, one of you takes the lead and begins moving forward and backward with advance and retreat. The person without the lead adjusts to maintain the critical range. So far, exactly like the regular range drill. Now, to make it advanced, hold your swords pointed to the side at your waist, wherever is comphy for you. This removes the sword as a distance cue and makes you judge distance by looking at your opponent (like you are supposed to any way). Periodically check the distance with the swords. To make it really advanced have the leader throw in other footwork like skips, circling, or sidestepping. In this case the person with the lead should work on their footwork of course, but in addition they should work on sneaking up on their partner, which is most easily done with an inward spiral. Of you can work on sneaking away from your partner with an outward spiral. The other person simply tries to maintain the range. Practice with both people leading, and with both hands.

Two shot combinations are the bread and butter of fencing. If I stand there and attack my opponent, with single attacks, without preparation, even the most new of newbs will block every one of them. There are actually many preparations (beats, Froissement, circling in, blade pushing, feints), however, today we focus on the feint. A two shot combination is one feint and one shot. The feint opens your opponent’s defense, preparing them for the second shot which hits. To practice this, begin by making a slow extension to your first, fake, target. When your partner blocks, disengage and lunge at your real target. Of course feints fall under the topic of lying, which I posted about earlier. In practice you will have to work at making your feint believable and credible. To make them believable, try changing the speed of the attack. Start slowly and then rapidly finish the extension. Or simply try extending at targets you can reach, like the hand. Also it helps to extend at basic zones that we practice in the parry drill. Finally to bring about credibility you will have to attack with a one shot once in a while just to keep your opponent on their toes. If all you do is two shots your opponent will start to ignore the first shot.

Finally, we covered three shot combinations. If two shots are the bread and butter, three shots are the gravy. Principally, I try to use two shots. Two shots are quicker, and work great for your average opponent. With three shots you run the risk of your opponent ignoring you and just hitting you in the face at your second feint. However, when fighting a skilled opponent, with tight defense, it is often necessary to move to a three shot combo. Sometimes, one feint is just not enough to break up their defense. When you try a three shot combination it helps to work backwards. Say you want to hit the front leg in eight. The logical place for their sword to be right before you do that is high in six, so eight will be your third shot, and six will be your second. Lets start with a shot to four then. So, our last shot is to eight, our second is to six, and our fist is to four. Great! By the time you throw two good feints at four and six, your opponent’s defense should be broken up leaving them helpless and waiting to get hit in the leg.

Things to think about:

• Proper range is very important. If your opponent sneaks up on you, and you don’t notice. You are hosed. They will hit you with an extension and you will think they have the speed of the gods. You won’t know what hit you. By controlling the range you control the most important aspect of the fight.
• You must learn to judge the range to your opponent accurately based on their body. Try looking at their center of mass, or across the shoulders. Do not attempt to judge the range by the sword! The sword lies in so many ways it is impossible to list them.
• An advanced fighter should work on anticipating where their opponent is going by watching for tells. Often times you will find that someone shifts their weight one way or the other before they advance or retreat. Once you see that you can cut them off at the pass, and get where they are going first, negating whatever advantage they were trying for.
• Feints are probably the best (and certainly the most used around here) form of preparation. You need to work on developing feints that are believable and credible.
• A common mistake is when trying to develop believable feints is to lunge on the feint, and then try and disengage to hit the real target. While a lunge is very believable it is a terrible thing to do on a feint. This will leave you closer to your opponent, and that much easier to hit when they don’t buy your feint. Further, it is difficult to disengage when you are so committed.
• Three shots are hard to think about at first. But they are well worth in when fighting an opponent who is willing to believe your feints and has good defense. You will find that against such an opponent two shots won’t be enough to open them up most of the time.
• Some opponents aren’t willing to believe feints until they are very credible. That is you may have to throw out many one shots before you try your slick two shot combination.
• Similarly, two shot combos build credibility for you to move to three shots. Wont they be surprised when after the third two shot combo that they bock, a third shot comes out of no where and hits them right when they were thinking about their counter attack.

This week we started by covering redouble (which I forgot to cover on advanced footwork day two weeks ago). A redouble is useful when we have lounged and came up short of our opponent who is still vulnerable. So, without recovering from our lunge we do a step across (bring our back foot forward to, or slightly past, our front foot), and the go strait into another lunge. If you still come up short, and your opponent still hasn’t closed that line, you can redouble ad nauseum. Arcadia comes to mind on this one. If you watch her she uses the redouble quite a bit.

Next we did a little bit of the strength training I promised. We did a lot of footwork with our arms extended. We did several lounges, which we held for 10 seconds or more. This is good stuff. I recommend doing this sort of drill at home with your sand scabbard.

Also we worked on performing footwork at combat speed. This is something that some of you are having a lot of trouble with. I think this is demonstrative of not knowing the footwork very well. It is no good to only be able to do everything slow. Slow is good for getting it right, and you should only do something (advance, lunge, pivot, whatever) as fast as you can do it correctly, however at some point you have to learn to pick up the pace a little bit. The best pivot in the world is no good if the charger hits you before you pivot. To remedy this WORK ON YOUR FOOTWORK AT HOME, in a normal, slow, muscle memory building way. Do hundreds and hundreds of lunges, advances, pivots, etc. As you feel more confident try to do them faster, but if you find you can’t do it fast and correct settle for correct.

So much for the line drills. The topic of seminar training this week was melee. We covered in conversation rules of engagement and death from behind (DFB). We typically play with one of two major sets of rules of engagement. The first set being 120 without DFB (120 no DFB). In this set we may engage our opponent anywhere in the front 120 degrees of their vision. If we are standing on the center of a clock facing 12, this means that our opponents may engage us of they are standing in front of us between 10 and 2.

The second major set of rules of engagement is 180 with DFB (180 DFB). In this set our opponents may engage us if they are standing “in front of us” between 3 and 9. Attacking our opponents from all the way at 180 (standing at 3 or 9), presents some difficulty. The sides of our body are not well protected naturally. To the side the headshot that normally just pushes our mask back turns into a sharp blow to the temple. The chest shot turns into floating ribs or kidneys. The leg turns into pushing their kneecap out of alignment from the side. Even an arm shot can go wrong when they suddenly lunge and we hit the chest (floating ribs, kidneys) by accident. So, I recommend not taking shots from 180. I have tried, and every time I tried it turned out bad. If you find yourself at 180 either move back into 120 and engage them from the front with the respect that they deserve, or move around to the back and do DFB.

This brings up the topic of how to do DFB correctly. Simply follow the following simple step-by-step instructions.

1. Point your sword tip at the sky. We do this because as we approach our opponent from the rear we don’t want them to suddenly back up and put their kidneys into our sword.

2. Note which hand our opponent is holding their sword in. This is typically the right hand, but not always. Approach on the off hand side (most often the left). We do this because it is farther away from their dangerous furniture should they spin around suddenly.

3. While still being cautious and keeping your offhand guard up, lower your sword (which to this point was pointed at the sky) over their shoulder so that a foot or so extends out into their vision.

4. Say clearly and distinctly “You are Dead From Behind”

There are as many wrong ways to do DFB as there are grains of sand on the beach. However a few worth mentioning are:

1. You may not stab your opponent in the back!

2. You may not perform more than one DFB at a time. If you have two swords for instance you can only use one. To freeken bad.

3. You may not fairy tap. That is you must perform DFB slowly. Each time taking at least as long as it takes to say clearly “You are Dead From Behind”

Actual drills that we practiced were centered on working as a team. The first is called marquee lights. Marquee lights focuses on the concept of interlocking zones of fire. That is that when you are standing on a melee line, your goal is not to stab the person in front of you, but rather the people standing next to that person. Our partners are similarly divided, which creates the interlocking zones of fire. To practice this we form two lines facing each other. The drill begins with one person extending to attack the person in front of them (like a bad non interlocking fighter). The person attacked parries. Then, the people to either side of the person attacked counter attack to the attackers arm. The drill continues with the next person in line next to the first attacker attacking the person in front of them. It is this rippling attack that gives this drill its name.

The second drill we did is a variation on marquee lights. It is trying to teach us to block for our partners. Personally I am terrible at this. However, it is a valid and necessary part of melee tactics. When I attack it leaves me vulnerable (see above drill). To counter this vulnerability my partners need to cover for me. This drill begins the same as the last with someone attacking the person in front of them. This time they need to expose themselves a little by lounging. Again the person attacked must parry (lest they be stabbed). The difference this time is that the defender’s partners attack at the body of our attacker. Oh no! Our attacker is doomed! He can’t block because he is attacking! He is lunging into a range where his opponents can reach him! But wait, his partners (the people standing next to the attacker) can save him by blocking for him. So they do. The drill continues with the next person in line attacking etc.

Things to think about:

• We need to work on our footwork at home. We can do this by performing many repetitions of the footwork slowly and correctly.
• Melee is complicated.
• When fighting a melee we want to focus our attacks on cross shots. That is not on the person directly in front of us. A cross shot is much more difficult to see than one coming strait at us.
• When our line is attacked it creates an opportunity for us to get a better (because it is less committed) counter attack on the attackers arm from the cross shot.
• We need to help protect our teammates. This is especially true when they are vulnerable because they are attacking, but it is really true all the time.
• When playing a scenario with DFB we need to watch out for people sneaking up on us. A commander should typically assign a rear guard to watch the rear while the rest fight the front.
• Attacking from the 180, although often legal, is dangerous and should be done very carefully if at all. This is because of the soft targets exposed on the sides of our bodies.
• Actually doing a DFB is also dangerous, both to us and our opponents, and should be done very carefully. Keep in mind that they may move around rapidly at any time. If our opponent is jumping around like a cat on crack we should just not do DFB as we would risk collision with them, which could result in all kids of badness.

This week was pretty basic. The topic of the day was, dramatic pause, Blocking! Ah blocking, nothing else keeps you in the fight like using your sword to move your opponent’s sword away from striking your body. Although there are other ways to avoid your opponent’s attack, (off hand, footwork, sci-powers) blocking remains an important aspect of any fight.

Topics covered include sticky blocks, elbow blocks, punch blocks, and rapid blocks against 2 opponents. The idea behind a sticky block is to hold your sword on your opponent’s and control where they go with your block. We practiced this by blocking an attack and taking a step forward while holding the block. Miraculously our opponent’s sword was wedged out of the way leaving the path forward safe. This is bead and butter for shorter fighters (Juliana pay attention!) but also good for the rest of us.

An elbow block is one of a group I like to call Oh Shit Blocks. It is not an ideal situation, however it will save you when you are in an oh shit moment. When you are out of position, in a lunge, with your sword out in an attack, and your opponent attacks you under your extended arm, is the best time for an elbow block. The idea is that by lunging you have negated your other options for blocking. You can’t parry because you are extended. You can’t move your feet because you just lunged. So settle for good enough and just bring your elbow, forearm, and or furniture down on your opponent’s sword and push it out of the way. I personally use this one all the time when my three shot combination doesn’t work out. My opponent cleverly negates my last attack and begins a counter attack. Having been fooled into thinking my shot was open I have committed to the line I am on. I am not able to parry or move off the line. My opponent has been clever enough to attack me in six so I can’t block with my off hand. The only option for staying alive is the elbow block.

Another Oh Shit Block that we covered was the punch block. These are ideal for when we are in a middle guard, and our opponent has attacked us around our waist line (right where we are holding our sword). The position of this attack makes it nearly impossible to parry normally. Often in this case I resort to a pivot, skip, retreat, or slope step (footwork). But, baring footwork, a punch block is all you can do. To perform a punch block simply strike at your opponents sword the last part of your forte. I like to hit it with the last couple of inches, and a bit of the bell. Also the pommel will work if you want. Just move your arm at the elbow downward and outward in a rapid beat like striking motion. After you have punched your opponent’s sword spring back online just like if you did a beat. Try to avoid dropping your weight or using the shoulder as this will slow your down and leave you unable to move. This takes some practice. Think about doing a snap punch with your furniture against your opponent’s sword.

Finally, we put people into the box. We had a line of two fencer approach together and fire out two shots each for a total of four shots which the person in the box had to block using only his/her sword. The person in the box is not allowed to back up, or parry with the off hand, just the sword. We did this at slow speed. Later after we cover off hand weapons we will try this again at higher speed and maybe with 3 people instead of two.

Last week we covered the most important topic in fencing… footwork. As Tristan is fond of saying “A fencer with average blade work and superior footwork will kick the c*@p out of a fencer with superior blade work and merely adequate footwork.”

We reviewed 3 different slope steps being used in place of the lunge, 2 different pivots (regular and step through), and the skip. We also used the slope step in a one step exercise with our partners. We learned the ever present counter cool move against the slope step, being the pivot. Finally we talked about schlager philosophy, which is chiefly centered on the fact that a schlager is awfully heavy so we have to treat it a little differently than an epee.

Things to think about:

• The schlager being heavy must act in a combination of shots, or a combination of shots and footwork to be successful. Simply throwing shot after shot will weary you out and won’t work on top of that.
• Lacking the blinding speed of the epee we may need to think about other ways to fool our opponent, eg slope step.
• We need to be stronger just to hold the stupid thing for 6 hours a day 3 days in a row at war. So we should start an exercise program which strengthens our forearm front and back, triceps, biceps, and possible other arm muscles. You can lift weights, do lots of drills with a heavy sword, or use a sand scabbard.
• The schlager will play differently than the epee. You will just have to go out and spar with it to get used to that.
• There are many different ways to build a schlager. You should experiment by borrowing other people’s equipment to find out what you like before you buy one yourself.
• You should really assemble your schlager in person at war for the best results. Schlager blades are highly variable and mail order is hit and miss at best.

Up next for this week, line drills featuring strength and endurance training. As usual bring your heavy schlager, long one if you have it, and be prepared to hold it out there for a long time. After that you will have to come and see.

I just read “The Liars’ Dance” in Crown’s book. Wow, that chapter struck me as so fundamentally true that I think I will base my next training period on it. I had to come in here and write about it to help myself internalize it.

Crown begins by reminding us that if when you attack, your opponent is “centered” (ready for the attack) you have no chance of hitting him. Therefore you must first uncenter him. The best way to do so is to lie to him, feint. Actually as I think about it now there are other ways to lie besides the feint. You could lead your opponent to believe that you are vulnerable with an invite, for now I am going to think about the feint.

It is not sufficient to lie. According to Crown you have to have two things in order to lie efectivly. You have to have “credibility and believability“. Credibility is the likelihood that your lie is in fact truth. As Crown correctly points out, someone who lies all the time will not be believed. In order to establish credibility it is necessary to tell the truth most of the time. This is where I am failing. I always feint for the first 1-2 attacks. My first attack is never meaningfully accept as a pick for an extended peripheral (primary hand or leg).

In retrospect I have faced opponents who at the time I perceived as unresponsive to my feints. I would attack them with a two or three shot combination and about shot two they gacked me in the face. In the past, I thought that they were just not interested in my attack. That they were so focused on their attack that they neglected to notice mine. In some cases that may have a glimmer of truth, however, I see now that the fact is they were not threatened by my attack. They did not believe my lie. They did not believe my lie because I lacked credibility. I had not first established the menace of my attack.

So, I learned to deal with that sort of opponent by letting them attack (playing the rock). That is what they wanted to do, so let them, then beat them on the counter attack (let them run screaming onto a line that I just closed because they didn’t bother to lie to me before they attacked). This tactic only works for so long. After you have done it for a couple of times your opponent begins to catch on (Hey every time I commit to my uberattack (TM) I get gacked in the face). This makes them more cautious, more random in what they might do, more dangerous. I was stuck with this sort of fighter. Now I see that I should try to establish credibility. This sort of opponent wants to believe that the uberattack is the way to win. So, I should feed them a couple of committed attacks. Let them think that I to believe in the uberattack, and then what have we here on the fourth attack Logan didn’t commit to the body but instead changed lines and delivered a perfect touch to the mask.

Also, I see that my fighting with other types of fencers has suffered because of my poor credibility. In general I need to work on delivering more committed single attacks to help establish the idea that you had better parry that first attack or it will certainly hit you!

The second part of the lie is believability. Believability is making your lie look as much like the truth as possible. In the case of a feint it is making your feint attack look so much like a real attack that your opponent parries. I understand this. I got over it a couple years ago. At the time I was in the habit of just sticking my sword out and moving it around expecting my opponent to believe I was attacking them. On some people that worked, however it was not enough. Many opponents saw that I was not threatening them, that my feint sometimes even didn’t point at their body, and that it did not move with intent. I was just sticking my arm out. I see a lot of scola fencers stuck in the same place. Since then I have learned to point my feints at threatening targets, to move the feint fast (giving the impression that I intend to continue on that line and that they must parry now or be to slow), to move the hips, shoulder, or feet (try making a small, 1 inch lunge) a bit or even to suggest a committed attack. I may come back to this later but for now I am going to say that my believability is much better than my credibility.

I think that believability has impact on my defense. I need to work on being more skeptical of other peoples attacks. I need to weight longer to defend. I need to force my opponent to make such a believable attack that in fact it becomes a real, committed attack. I will endeavor to not let people lie to me. To force them to tell the truth. To quote Crown directly by forcing my opponent to tell the truth I “become the locus of control of my opponent’s behavior”. That has a good ring to it.