Last Sunday kicked off with our first Fechtschule. Overall it was a resounding success with well over a dozen different weapon styles used including great swords, halberds, staves, one- and two-handed axes, and sabres. It seems that the only option not used was the longsword, as everyone was far too interested in using something they don’t normally spar with.
Awarding points to the judges worked well. It really encouraged people to actively participate between matches.
We are looking at toning down the severe penalties for rule violations. While violations such as thrusting and hand strikes did occur, they were never intentional. So generally speaking, the fencers just agreed to negate the point and continue.
On that topic, many of the rules have ambiguities such as “Does an arm hit count higher than a head hit if the arm is raised at the time?”. We’re going to leave those in place for the time being, as it’s better for the fencers to work out the issue among themselves than result to rule lawyering. Though over time we may build of a body of rulings and lock these down.
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On Wednesday the scholars started looking at Meyer’s deceptions for the sidesword.
Meanwhile the novices were working with the cuts for Meyer. This is a hard chapter with a lot of complicated techniques thrown in right away, but everyone did well.
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Thursday night saw a return of the Paurenfeyndt staff program. We started by reviewing the plays we did before the shutdown. This was a full 8 plays accounting for half the text.
Next we saw on new play that uses the half-staff, which is where you place both hands near the center of the weapon.
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And this brings us back around to Sunday with our normal program.
For L’Ange rapier we worked on parries and disengages. Next week we’ll continue along that line with more disengages and maybe some feints.
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For today’s longsword session we covered Chapter 11, Zornhut (Wrath Guard) devices 1 thru 3.
The focus for device 1 is controlling the opponent by putting pressure on their arms and blade. This is called the slice in Meyer. It’s not so much a play as a game where every time the opponent tries to escape you reestablish control.
Device 2 introduce ls striking with the flats. You’ll see that again in this section.
Device 3 is more about range control and working with momentum.
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And the last class of the day is sword and buckler, where we started our investigation into the second assault. This differs from the previous assault in two key ways.
First, it has leaps. Both forward and backwards.
Secondly, it’s not linear. You work your way around the opponent to attack from their flank.