Mind Games

The easiest way to talk about mind games is to compare them to chess. You have a set of pieces that are in place that have particular rules for how they can move. You can’t move all of them at the same time and executing an efficient strategy is about being able to set up your moves. That means being able to know in advance what you’re trying to accomplish. As you go about setting up your offense you also have to read your opponent and figure out what moves they are trying to set up. You have to respond defensively to their actions but you have to do so also without giving up on your offense. If all you do is play defense and you’re a turn behind your opponent they will eventually win simply because they are forcing you to react to them. Eventually they can control how you move by setting up credible threats. Once they’ve done this it is only a matter of time until you lose because they are able to complete their setup and checkmate the king.

Checkmate

Fighting, when taken to a high level has almost all of the same components. The “pieces” that you have to work with are your body, your limbs and your gear. There are rules that apply to your limbs that limit how far they can reach and at what angle they can swing that are built in by your physiology. How much air you have (how long you can fight), how fast you can move and your height are all set variables that you are unlikely to be able to change once a fight starts. Your weapons also have certain limitations about what they can and can’t do based on things like whether or not you can stab with them, how heavy they are and how much reach they grant you. More reach (usually) means a heavier weapon, and therefore a slower swing and return. Less reach means a faster strike but forces you to have to close before you can use it. A shorter reach also means that you can effectively fight much closer together then if you have a weapon with a lot of reach. This basic dynamic is most of what learning to fight reds effectively is about.

When you set up to fight someone you need to be able to know where all of your pieces are so that you can be realistic about what you can and can’t do effectively in the fight. You also need to be able to observe your opponent so that you can observe all of their pieces to know what they can and can’t do in the fight. After that it unravels in much the same way that chess does. You each move your body around, repositioning a weapon to more clearly prefer some shots over others, and watching them change their guard in order to adapt to the possible shots that you can take. As you do this you respond to their weapons as they position for swings. Periodically someone will swing and depending on how well a person has played chess beforehand, they’ll either swing at an opening or swing into a block. But chess doesn’t stop there. The thing that makes chess interesting is being able to think several moves ahead of your opponent. If I throw a shot at you as a florentine fighter that goes directly into a block of yours, much of the time that’s deliberate. In some cases I’m trying to tell you that you should swing at the arm I just exposed because I’m trying to get your arm out from behind your shield. In other cases I’m throwing a shot or a feint I want you to block with your shield because if you do so it creates an opening for me elsewhere.

Grandmaster

Being a good chess player (which is what I will no refer to when talking about outwitting your opponent) is always a good skill to have developed as a foam sword fighter regardless of what weapon set you’re using. But when it comes to florentine it is CRUCIAL. You absolutely cannot fight florentine without being able to bypass your opponents guard and you can’t bypass their guard if they remain in a perfect static defense a set distance away from you. You need to be able to out-footwork them to get close enough to wrap around a board or close with a red. You need to be able to outwit their sword arm so you don’t get killed by it, and you need to take aggressive offensive actions without them killing you. All non sword and board or florentine fighters have reach on their opponent which gives them a degree of safety that’s not afforded to those two classes of fighters. Sure, if a polearm isn’t careful they’ll get rushed, but one swing is very rarely going to result in them dying before that swing even finishes. A S&B fighter can also throw swings with their weapon while behind their shield, which means that they can throw swings that don’t immediately leave any openings, though in much the same way as a red fighter you can still punish them for getting out of place. A florentine fighter as absolutely NOTHING that stops someone from killing them every time they swing. Not dying is the result of your active effort to make sure that when someone throws a shot for either the arm you just threw with, or for the side of your body that you were guarding, you have to be ready to block. If you aren’t ready to block, you either die or become half dead. If you are ready to block, but guess the wrong quadrant of your body then you also die. If you guessed correctly for left vs right side, but didn’t correctly guess if the incoming shot was a shoulder pick instead of a hip wrap, you die. In short if you the person responding to the other fighters aggression, chances are good, you will be the dead one.

There's no Kill Like Overkill

What having 2 weapons does for you is it makes it much easier to make sure that you AREN’T the one who is forced to respond to your opponent, but are instead are the one setting the tempo. If you can throw the first shot, and keep throwing shots in order to make them continue to respond to your aggression, they will eventually make a mistake that you can exploit. If you’re fighting a sword and board fighter and they swing at you and miss you can often get their arm for it. If they got for a stab and miss then you are often able to guide their weapon past you, opening them up for a shoulder pick. The trick then is about being aggressive and oppressive in your application of force without also becoming reckless. This the difference between a noob just swinging wildly and a florentine fighter who engages with purpose. You should not expect every swing you throw to hit, but you should know why you threw that shot and expect to get something from it. That something doesn’t have to be a limb or a kill. That something can be the subtle manipulation of your opponent by convincing them to move a certain way which sets you up for the next shot, or that can just be a bit of information if you’ve thrown a shot safely and want to see how they react to that particular bit of aggression. Every person you fight will fight in subtly different ways, the trick is figuring out how to beat them at chess before they figure out how to beat you at chess. This is the main reason why older fighters are still so frighteningly effective. They aren’t faster than the average person on the field nor are they inherently better. Their main advantage is that because they’ve been playing chess for so many years, they are REALLY really good at it. This means that as soon as their opponent throws the first shot they instantly know where to swing in response. It means that they also rarely misread their opponent and get caught out.  As a now not-new fighter, let me also add this.  There is no hubris quite like assuming that you've hit someone, or assuming that they are dead.  Always, ALWAYS, keep swinging until you are absolutely certain that they are deceased, or until you hear them call dead.  There's nothing quite like turning your back on what you had assumed is a corpse only to then be killed by them.

Think About It

So. For the rest of your read of this blog's entries on florentine fighting think about chess. Think about swinging deliberately, about how to hit them with them hitting you, about what you have to do to bypass any particular individual’s gear. If you’re having a tough time with a fighter right now, picture them in your head. Learn how they move. Figure out all their chess pieces and think through how you would beat them. What openings to they leave in their guard? When they swing, do they overextend themselves or do they tend to go for short safe chops? If they go for shots that extend their arms past their garb, go for their arms. If they tend to go for short, safe chops, get up in their face and be the one going for wrap shots. If you are shorter than your opponent, check to see if you can get shots in around their hips or waist, especially the ass wrap. If you are much taller than your opponent look for shoulder shots and high wrap shots. Figure out how that person kills you, think about what it would take for the shots they throw not to hit you. Figure out what shots you throw on them right now that aren’t working think about what openings they have and what shots you’d need to know in order to be able to get to those openings.

Think. Florentine is not swinging mindlessly, it’s swinging deliberately, and until you get that part right no trick I can teach you will help.