Momentum / Flow

Advanced techniques!  I've already written a bunch on the basics but I rarely touch on any of the harder stuff since I'm not sure it will translate well into text.  But here goes.  For the purposes of all examples assume it's a right handed sword and board fighter against another right handed sword and board fighter.  Adapt the rest as you see fit.

Setup

This may get a bit arcane, so I'll start by trying to layout some terms.  The first one is potential energy.  "Potential energy" is what you have when you have a flexed joint.  The more flexed it is the more force/speed/energy you can release in a direction when you unflex that joint.  I think if you talk to weight lifters they'll tell you that, that release of energy is "exploding".  So, allow me to define that as a thing to.  "Exploding", for the purposes of this bit of writing, is when you release your built up energy in any particular direction.  "Momentum" I'll define as the energy/speed/force that contained in your weapon and your arm when you swing.  Right then. Onward.

Tap / Commit

There's basically two kinds of shots you can throw.  You can throw a shot that doesn't have the intention of connecting, or you can throw a shot you do expect to connect.  A shot that you don't expect to connect needs to be very fast, and use almost none of your potential energy because you need to conserve that energy for a shot that you do want to have connect.  An example of this kind of shot is tapping the top of a person's shield.  Most of the time this shot won't connect, but it's also usually pretty low risk; it requires a straight throw so the distance the shot travels is minimal, and because it goes in a straight line the return to guard is also very fast.  An example of a kind of shot that's supposed to connect is a wrap shot.  There's a great deal of risk in this throw because if it doesn't connect it will take significantly longer for you to return to guard.  However, the shot has a high chance of success if thrown correctly because it can arc around a person's guard.

When you throw a shot that's not supposed to connect I'll call that a "tap swing" or "tap shot" because of the properties mentioned above.  When you throw a deep shots that's supposed to connect I'll call that a "commit swing" or a "commit shot".  Part of the reason why tap swings are successful is that after they connect with the target area that they're aimed for they regain their momentum as they bounce off the target area with near the same amount of force that they came in with.  In other words if you throw a shot and it hits something it comes back to you.  When you throw a commit shot it's usually at the extent of your range and with the extent of your energy, those swings tend to simply stop moving after they've connected, requiring you to pull the shot back to guard on your own.  Or in other words commit shots don't come back to you.

Tick Tock

One of the starting advanced shots that you can learn I've referred to as the "tick tock".  You throw a tap swing on the outside of your opponents shield to cause them to move to protect their back and then you immediately flip your wrist, redirecting the momentum from the bounce back and re-accelerate the shot into a commit swing against the inside of your opponents shield.  A tick tock is a pretty easy swing to throw once you get the hang of it.  The majority of learning it is simply knowing how to conserve the momentum from the first swing so that the second shot is as fast as the first one.  Once you've mastered that bit then you have to learn how to accelerate the second shot is faster then the first one.  Generally speaking this is largely a matter of using your wrist and waist to give it more momentum.

While in this example the tick tock is a straight side to side shot you can use the same motion to also throw low to high or vice versa.  For instance instead of starting on shield side you could start with your opponents leg and then try to snipe high for their arm or shoulder.  You can also do the same thing low to high by using that same technique of a tap and then a commit swing by aiming first leg and then throwing a wrap shot over the same side shoulder.  By using your body to move as you swing you'll generate more momentum for your shot, making it explode faster and getting it to a deeper angle then you would without the additional potential energy provided by your body movement.

Don't stop the beat

The thing that most people lose is that you don't have to necessarily commit to a one two punch the way that you would with a tick tock.  You can indefinitely throw the initial tap shot and simply transition it's energy from one target location to another.  As long as you hit something other then an offensive parry (in which they direct your weapon for you) you'll continue to renew the momentum in your weapon with every swing.  If you continue to add your own momentum in each swing by accelerating the weapon with your body or your wrist the swings will go faster and faster until either it connects or until you throw a commit shot at which point you'll have to bring your weapon back to guard before you can begin throwing again.  By leveraging that particular bit of knowledge I've learned to throw swings with one hand very fast, and with two hands can throw a perpetually increasing number of shots.

It's important to note that even though you can use this technique to throw shots very fast you'll also leave the hand that's swinging vulnerable to counter strikes while you're doing so.  As a result you need to make sure that the shots that you throw are either very safe, or threaten a part of your opponent so that they have to block rather then strike.  A safe shot is something like a blow to the top of the shield and a threatening swing is a throw to the outside of their shield aimed at their back.  If you simply throw wildly, while leaving yourself exposed, first you'll lose the arm and then they'll kill you.

Not just your hands

This technique works fine with just your hands but if you first build momentum and then transfer it over to the rest of your body you can make the rest of your body move faster too.  Especially when using red weapons the amount of kick back you get after you connect a solid swing often has enough momentum to move your entire body.  If you can learn to utilize this extra energy to move and not just to throw swings it will mean that footstep for footstep you will move faster then your opponent.  Learning to harness that extra energy to continuously be moving allows you to enter what we generally call a "flow" state.  This particular fighting style is almost without form as you don't have any real kind of static defense the way you would if you weren't in constant motion.  It's not to say that you don't put up a guard, it's just that it shifts and moves the same that you do.

As an added bonus, if you hit flow state whenever you go to engage someone you'll already have momentum that you can add to your swings, so they'll seem faster and be flung deeper then normal.  Your ability to dodge is also heightened as your body moves farther away whenever it dodges.

It's not infinite

While you can build momentum with each strike and body movement there's only so much your body can house at any one moment in time.  Too much momentum in any given direction and you'll simply lose balance and fall over.  Physics, being what they are, dictate that if you can't use or redirect the energy you get on the kickback from impact it will simply reflect back the way it was going to in the first place.  For instance, if you go crashing into a shield and you don't immediately spin off of it the only direction for you to go is back the way you came (assuming they didn't move).  If you slam into a shield and aren't prepared to get thrown back then you fall down at which point a person hacks at your legs while you're stunned.  But, if you're ready to get knocked back you can simply pull your heels up off the ground and keep your feet set.  This will cause you to glide along the ground until the momentum that was imparted to you by that shield runs out.  I particular love that technique because a person who resorts to aggressing with their shield by slamming it into you tends to leave their side vulnerable to attack, allowing you to get a quick kill so long as you can avoid being trampled.

The point being every technique has it's downsides.  If you aren't careful as you build momentum the downside is that it will cause you to lose balance.  Losing balance in turn will mean you're easy to knock around, predict, or hit because your guard will get out of place.

"Rift"

This is a post about lore.  It won't make you a better fighter.  This is the story of how I got my name and how the lore around it developed.  Also something of a shorter version of my own journey... in case anyone was curious about that process.

Before there was anything, I was 14.

Rift, as a name, before it was anything else, was the idea of a fullness from emptiness that got encapsulated in a poem I wrote back when I was something like 14.  I am not finding and linking that thing because a 14 year old's poetry is terrible :-P.  The gist of it was that I guess by then I'd figured out I was odd.  Between being ADHD, dyslexic and perhaps mildly autistic I'd never really fit in.  The idea of that poem was back when was embracing that the idea that only by accepting myself as a break in what was normal would I truly be complete, and that trying to pretend that I was the same as everyone else would be like drowning, like dying slowly.  ...I wasn't a happy 14 year old.

I started fighting when I was 17, fall of 2003 in the realm of Chamonix at Grinnell College in Iowa.  Though I've said it before, I'll mention it again.  Back then I was terrible.  It took me on the order of months to reach the point where when the battle started I actually moved or responded instead of just freezing and standing there while I got hit.  The first weapons I ever picked up were "aho" and "baka" two huge blue swords which had at one point been reds, but had been broken so often that there wasn't much left of them now.  While it was murderous on my wrists having the ability to batter other people's weapons aside was good when, even trying to get myself to swing, was a mental effort.

Back in Chamonix

As I started to develop as a fighter I started to be an "all in" kind of fighter - a brawler if you've read rock, paper, scissors.  At first I started to just look for backs because I wasn't able to match up to other fighters on the field, but as time went on I started to be able to beat people 1 on 1.  I still found joy in finding a gap and backing a bunch of folks though.  When it came time to choose a name I choose "Rift".  For a year no one really used that name because apparently it didn't suit me much.  I was still a silly kid who was more "Eric" then I was "Rift".

A year later and we got a new group of freshman to join us.  To them I became Rift.  That was also the start of the original blades.  A group of fighters who met on Wednesday nights to practice and learn new things.  For the first time I had to start to think about how I fought, reverse engineering what I knew so I could help the new fighters pick things up.  All around me there had been good teachers if you wanted to fight red, or arch, or fight sword and board.  But there was no one to teach florentine, so I decided I would be that guy.  Some version of that first set of things I taught to the freshman back then have stayed with me and become part of the "boot camp" I now put people through.  10 years later, much of what I had to say then is still good advice, though, since then I've learned more and added to what I started teaching.

About 3 years into fighting I think I probably hit the peak of my speed to the point where I could match shots with Peter the Quick.  Although, looking back on it, I wonder if it wasn't just my noob foo that caught him unaware.  On that field day ages ago I came to the realization that speed wasn't enough.  Sure, I landed shots on people before they could counter strike, but there shots came in a second later and at least on that day, most of my opponents were armored while I was not.  So I'd take arm or torso armor and then die.  I realized then that I'd either have to develop the skill to be able to not get hit, or I'd have to armor up so that when blows were traded I'd be on the winning side of the engagement.  Of course, the latter option would only work person to person once my armor was broken I'd be on the losing side of the engagement again.  So, it was time to start over and start learning some technique, rather then just flailing wildly at great speeds.  But, by that time, with my (foot) speed at the highest it's ever been people knew better then to let me get around the sides.  Now that name "Rift" meant something.  I'd become the hole in the lines, something to be wary of.

For "CHAM-...Anduril"

Clearing college I didn't fight much for the first year or so, until I landed down in Anduril after my own series of mis-adventures that mostly involved bad decisions around women... which remains an ongoing theme.  It was there that the name Rift really became a thing and took root.  I simply started by introducing myself with that name and it stuck.  There was a day where Brian walked up to talk to me while I was on the field and called out "Eric".  The person literally standing next to me replied to him "There's no one here by that name".  Apparently the name "Rift" was the dominant one people knew me by then.

Having to do something of a restart after not fighting for a while I had to re-learn the things I'd once known, but without the athleticism I had in college from being able to eat, sleep and fight to my hearts content my body wasn't in the same shape.  I still threw down a murderous volley of blows that sounded something like a machine gun when I started to go off and my foot speed was fast, but now at 24 with a job that started with me getting up at 5:45am, my stamina wasn't what it used to be.  So I started to learn technique, properly.  Rather then just reverse engineer what I knew back when I started the blades I started to really think about all the body mechanics involved in how I moved.  I started interacting with more fighters who had historical knowledge of a set of body mechanics like Tulga who had a system for how he fought with a board.  As I matched wits with him and other fighters like him I started to develop my own system in an attempt to counter specific fighting styles that I encountered.

Another year passed.  I knocked the rust off I straightened out my own ego, I got my life more together.  In the next few years the realm of Anduril / Sword at UCI had taken off.  My presence in that space and my efforts to push myself to be a competitive fighter had changed the face of the small campus club to the point where many of the original members weren't there anymore.  In spite of this myself, Ana and Cheeseheart spent our time visiting any new realm that started up, showing them belegarth and did what we could to help them get off the ground.  We visited Andor much more frequently and had a good relationship with them.  Some realms got off the ground and stayed that way like Desert Winds, others failed to last long, like several attempts at a "Northern Anduril".  Eventually though the region had plenty of fighters to the point where even Battle for the Ring had taken off, after 2 years of being on campus.

All the things

For my part, traveling everywhere, fighting bel, ampt, dag and even a few LARP systems, all while striving to improve my own skills had really shaped me into a good fighter.  Dag was good practice at getting around enormous shields and learning to dodge stabs.  Amptgaard taught me speed in a way that no other system did and opened my mind up to new shot angles.  While many of the shots you can throw in ampt don't have the torque to work in bel, many of the shots can still be executed if you throw them right.  The LARP systems taught me about pin point accuracy because any deflection in those systems is sufficient, and you aren't allowed to get within two feet of your opponent.  Additionally, their hit thresholds are much lower so I had to lose some of my speed in order to actually play.  Bel was still my main grind so it let me practice what I learned in all the other systems to see what would work in my own.

As new people joined who only fought dag or bel some of the shots that I had learned to throw or had adapted from ampt confused the new fighters.  At first I tried to explain what I knew in order to pass it along to people, but after I was ridiculed for doing so I decided it was easier just to explain it off as "magic".  As those years went by I also started participating in camping events in a way I hadn't when I was back in college.  I wound up taking a bunch of technology with me to campouts despite the way it might ruin someone's medieval experience, when they complained it was 'sorcery'.  Eventually, taking a queue from one of Anastasia's kits I named myself a mage.  At this point "Rift" started to be more then a name, it started to take on the aspect of a character.

"Magic"

As the joke about all my skills being "magic" became more prevalent ("How did you dodge that?!" "Magic ;)") a second identity developed.  The joke instead became that I was a time mage.  By altering the flow of time I could escape lethal swings, or appear behind someone by way of explaining the impossible.  Back when my swings sounded like a machine gun going off the other joke was that my ability to swing and block at the speed that I did was the result of a phantom third limb that gave me those extra actions but only appeared when I started swinging.  (The simply truth of the matter was I had short weapons that I could move fast, and excellent body mechanics to avoid having to move much).

More time passed.  I developed my own seal as the set of weapons and armor I had increased from 2 blue swords, to 4 blue swords, to 4 blues a shield, a red, some armor, etc.  My full inventory is now; 4 blue bats, a flail, and a red blocking stick, a red bat, a glaive, a set of torso armor and two shoulder pauldrons and my shield.  My seal is made of 3 parts.  A predator's teeth similar to what you'd see on a wolf, an eye, and inside of it a fire.  The symbol was meant to reflect my fighting style.  Animal instinct and a burning ferocity guided by insight.  After all, anyone can pick up two swords and flail, but to really be any good at florentine you have to kill your enemy AND not be killed.  In some versions of the symbol there was also a vortex to remind me of the first meaning of that name.  I also hoped that having a set of different colors in a pattern that were moving I might throw off my opponents.

By now my name was well known, as was Anduril's.  There was a surreal moment in time where, after being basically mistreated by Chaos Wars a few years in a row, the event did a 180.  Instead of us being nobody we were now somebodys.  I can still remember that moment when Cedric, leader of the Empire (a group of units that were banded together, including Elite Blood Falcons [EBF]) stopped me while I was walking onto the field to let me know I could use his pavilion and that he had a beer for me if I wanted it.  Also during that year I knew I had made it as a fighter when, during a unit battle, and representing the blades alone three fighters from EBF broke off to kill me and Elwrath, one of my old idols and then field commander, told them not engage me because I would kill them.  ...and much to my own surprise I did.  After baiting out the first shieldsman and killing him for free I managed to then close on the spearman and remaining shieldsman and pick up both kills for an arm.

The world was a beautiful place and things were going well.

"Broken"

Good things only last so long though.  While things had gone well for me in the fighting world that had not gone as well for me in real life, and I was starting to stress out about work/money and just generally staying alive.  Partway through a new job that was already looking like it wasn't going to end while I broke my leg and ankle.  For the next 4 months I couldn't stand, let alone fight, or participate much in the unit that I'd created which had reached it's peak height of just over 20 people.  I tried to offload (forcibly) responsible for running the unit to anyone who I thought might be able to do so.  In the end no one really wanted to be responsible for running a unit that wasn't their own.  As my own influence began to wane more internal conflict began to crop up, eventually tearing the blades apart as people with different visions for the unit competed over it's future.  Eventually, I got on my own feet again, but I wasn't the fighter I was before I broke myself.

Now 28, still with a job (though a better one) and without any other real form of exercise then fighting I had to once again bring myself back up.  Without being able to stand the musculature in my legs had degraded and in my right leg there was now a bunch of scar tissue I would have to work through before I could get that back.  After 4 months of not throwing a single swing and using my arms primarily for crutches the musculature for certain swings, like wrap shots, had also degraded to the point where shots that I had taken for granted as being easy because I would throw them repeatedly, several times a weak, had become sloppy, inaccurate and slow.  My honor tanked, as all the reflexes I had developed for taking shots had been out of use and discarded.  Many of my blocks also disappeared seemingly overnight and tangential skills like field awareness, or even tracking shots which hadn't been used simply ceased to exist.

Returning from being on the bench injured seemed to be the last blow the blades as a unit could take with them already struggling.  A year later it collapsed completely, in part because of internal conflicts and in part because of my own frustration and unwillingness to commit more energy to it.

Recovery / Then came the Void

I am nothing, if not persistent however, and in time most of those skills came back.  I pushed my legs as far as they would go, eventually working out the scar tissue that had developed.  I started practicing swings that had long gone unused with the help of some of the people I'd trained in my time around Orange County (thanks JK!).  Eventually I was mostly re-assembled in part thanks to my own drive to recover and in part due to the charity of the fighting world around me that had grown attached to having me around (because who doesn't enjoy watching a man in a wheelchair joust).

After some more disasters with a particular woman even the gear I had was reset, with my weapons bag disappearing, taking all my stuff with it.  Now, without a unit to put time, energy or money into I had time to actually develop my own kit, after YEARS of getting shit for not being all about garb.  The first thing that got built was the now infamous "acid trip" garb (made by Nicole).  My own response to garb-nazi-ism that in additional to being comfortable to wear I knew would annoy anyone who cared too much about garb.

This is where the idea of the void really came into it's own as it's own piece of lore.  The crazy garb that I wore somehow passed at most events until it was part of my identity to the point where someone a person recently identified me as "hey, were you that guy wearing the blue"?  The weapons I carry used to be crafted by my own hand and given names as though they were ceremonial objects.  Now older and with more money but less time I started to commission pretty much anything I needed built.

My garb became normal fabric that had been twisted by the void, a consequence of traveling through time and space.  My weapons, which had previously been ceremonially objects were now simply pieces of void, all mostly identical and with a unique property that let them pass through solid objects (also known as half wraps and footwork).  The joke became that when I broke a bat it was discarded back into the void, until a new one fell back out so that I could continue fighting.

Full Circle

At 30 I've now come full circle.  I used to be a joke because I was awful.  I didn't have a place where I fit and I wasn't sure what to do with myself.  Now I joke about my skills because otherwise I fear that my own ability would go to my head and corrupt me with overwhelming ego.  I never want to forget where I started from, so I can maintain my own humility.  Now having spent the last decade teaching new fighters, helping realms get off the ground and helping pick up slack at events (though never officially volunteering), it's not so much that I have a place or a home for myself, I'm simply welcome everywhere instead.  It's been quite the journey so far and I'm glad it's not over yet.

TheyCallMeRift

Time mage and denizen of the the void.  Known for fighting with two weapons that seem to pass through material objects like shields or other swords, striking into the soft tissue of his opponents.  The blows rain down at supernatural speeds, perhaps from using magic to accelerate his own body.  Seemingly always in reach yet never quite there, strikes seem to unnervingly pass right through where he ought to be, probably the result of short distance teleportation.  Sometimes he'll appear behind an enemy line with little to no warning, choosing to instead to teleport a greater distance.  He wears strangely colored garb that while perhaps once a normal piece of cloth has now been mangled by his travels through the void.  He is most to be feared when his hair blazes unnatural colors as this is a sign that he has free access to the mana he needs to cast his spells.  Strike when the color has burned out and he's at his weakest.  Recently he's taken to making and distributing potions which are just as deadly as he is so treat them with the greatest care when ingesting, or find yourself, like the juggernaut laid out for the evening over a hay bale.  

Updates Friday / Happy Thanksgiving

I have a few things to write, but was otherwise distracted by thanksgiving today.  I'll post updates tomorrow.  In the meantime, happy thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates the holiday.

The forward pommel

When I fight with a red sword or other equivalent weapon I fight with the pommel forward.  Wherever I go, I see everyone else fighting with their pommel back and their blade forward.  For the life of me, I just don't understand why that is.  It may be that there's a good explanation I simply haven't heard in the years I've been fighting but so far it seems like that's just how everyone learned to do it.  So allow me to explain what I think is wrong with that.

All melee weapons are an extension of basic body mechanics

The reason why fighting skills transfer from one skill set to the next is because even though the objectives of what each hand attempts to accomplish (IE, blocking only, striking only, doing both) you still have a limited set of body mechanics.  Regardless of the weapon set you pick up, your arms still work the same way.  Regardless of the gear that you're carrying your feet will still move the same way.  It's up to the individual to make adjustments to their form to bring out the best that the gear that they're using has to offer.  If you've got a giant board to hide behind, it probably makes more sense to take a defensive stance unless your plan is to run headfirst into a line while getting beat to death (clearly that was sarcasm, in spite of the fact that I see it all the time).

The red "florentine" stance

For me, as primarily a florentine fighter, red fighting, at least when it's with a red sword or equivalent rather then a glaive, is very much an extension of how I fight with two sticks.  My dominant (right) hand is back and my other hand is forward.  My right foot matches my right hand and my left foot matches my left hand.  This positioning means that both sides of my body are in sync from the top of my shoulders all the way down to my toes.  My right hand is primarily responsible for throwing swings while my left hand is primarily responsible for making sure that nothing gets close to my torso.  (It's important to note that this is a DEFAULT stance, not a set in stone thing to do, as stance changes with the ebb and flow of battle).  For a red weapon this means my top hand is my right hand and my bottom hand is my left hand.  This means that I'm primarily using the weapons hilt to block, keeping the blocking surface as far away from my torso as possible, while keeping the blade back and ready to strike.

The "come at me bro" stance

For whatever reason the thing that I see most people favor is almost the polar opposite of this.  While the top hand is still often the person's dominant hand the blade is extended to the maximum distance it can reach, and the pommel is either at a person's hip or right above their hip.  Typically when people explain this stance to me and why they chose to fight that way it boils down to a few things.  The most common reason I hear is that a person who fights this way was simply taught that this was how you fight with a red.  They haven't really taken the time to consider their design decisions, they are simply doing something they once saw some other person do.  Generally speaking, if you're just copying another person it's likely you're doing it wrong.  What works for someone else may or may not work for you, but without consciously choosing their form and knowing how it works it's likely that you're missing something.  Assuming you've got everything from their form right it may not be the best stance for you given how your body is built.

Another thing that I've heard is that it makes the stab easier.  While it may be true that you can throw a stab easier when it's pointed right at the other person's chest, it's also true that 1) it makes many other shots much more difficult to throw and 2) while it's possible that your shot is easier to throw it's also much easier for your opponent to block because it's much more obvious.  You're basically in a stance that asks your enemy to impale themselves FOR you.  At best that's lazy.  A good fighter is rarely going to run directly into that stab, even if you add a bit extra by lunging at them.

The last excuse I've heard is that it's more comfortable for a person to be set up that way because it feels like a better defense.  This is only partially true.  Putting the pointy end of the weapon towards your opponent may serve to ward off newer fighters as well as ward off shots to your arms.  However, what you sacrifice is an effective guard against wrap shots, or really any shot that comes in either above below your center line.  A person who attempts to exploit an outside lane is going to have an easy time doing so.  If you want to try to get a block and your blade is in front of you the only way to get that block is to use the blade of your weapon to intercept the swing.

What is best

Aside from crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you and hearing the lamentations of their women.

Pommel forward, bottom hand forward; keeping your bottom hand as your forward hand (whether that's your dominant one or not) will give you the block you want around your hips as a red fighter.  If you keep your top hand forward you push your bottom hand in towards your body which stops you from cutting off those angles.  Additionally when you pull your hand back, it tends to ride up as the weight of the red tipping forward is generally counterbalanced by pulling the pommel close to one's center of mass.

Top hand back; keep the hand on top of the weapon back.  With a red range control is super important as your ability to kill your opponent is going to largely depend on how well you can keep them away from you.  If you find yourself blocking repeatedly you are probably close to dead.  Putting your weapon in front of you let's your opponent know EXACTLY how far you can swing.  If you keep the blade part back it's much harder for them to guess and much easier for you to get shots to land that they won't be expecting.  Also, by keeping you top hand as your back hand you have access to many more swings then if your weapon is as far out in front of you as it will go.  Block with the handle not the blade; When you block with the handle it means you can ALSO swing.  In fact if you catch the block at just the right angle you can actually steal the momentum of their swing and convert it into one of your own by effectively using your handle as a lever to throw the shot.  This is particularly spectacular against sword and board where, once they throw for your torso and you snipe their arm in response, they simply can't hit you anymore.

Back hand forward WITH same leg forward; this is more personal preference then I think it is directly core to the fighting style but let me say a word about it anyways.  If you fight with you pommel forward and you match your feet to that hand it means that the easiest shots to land on you are going to be your arm holding the weapon and the leg that's forward.  It means that the hardest shots to land will be the arm responsible for swinging the weapon and your torso.  If you flip your feet you basically push the side of your body closer to your opponents swing arc and make torso shots more likely.

What works for me...

May not work for you but what that doesn't mean that this is somehow bad advice.  You need to figure out what works for you, and what mechanics you can make cooperate with whatever your build is.  There isn't really a wrong answer, as long as you've spent time thinking about and engineering your stance.  The reason why I write about this particular bit of stance is that people doing things that I think are obviously wrong who have never even taken the time to question why they do things that way annoys me.  If your form was handed to you by someone else, examine it.  Try to figure out why they told you to do the things they suggested you do.  It may be that there's a really good idea in there, or it may be that they, just like you, simply learned it from someone else and have been mindlessly repeating that same form ever since.  In the end, there's something to be said for having to figure it out yourself.

Design Decisions

Aright, now that I've talked about box, line and lane I can move on.

Defaults

There's sort of a default configuration as far as what's considered good stance.  You want to have your weight evenly(ish) distributed between both legs so that they can both move quickly.  You want to make sure that you don't cross planes; IE, you aren't sitting with your feet parallel or one directly in front of the other as this makes it more difficult to either evade backwards or side to side since you now have to move through your own body.  A good default stance for your weapons is to have them in front of your body so that they are directly in front of your arms, thereby absorbing any arm snipes.  For your torso it's a good idea generally to be standing upright (IE, not hunched over) and with the torso slightly angled (as this reduces the area a person can easily stab).  Generally speaking have your knees a little bit bent and your elbows a little bit bent is useful as well.  If you know me on facebook here's an image of me in a vaguely neutral stance (my left arm is a bit high, providing a potential shot at my arm).  If not I'm sure that somewhere on the internet is a picture of someone in a default stance.  If anyone goes to the effort to look that up please drop it in the comments.  Any alteration to this basic stance has consequences.  Changing this stance isn't inherently good or bad so long as you're aware of what those consequences are and fortunately for you, this post is all about getting into those.

Potential Energy

Any joint in your body can either by bent or can be extended.  If a joint is bent then it's storing potential energy, this means that when you take a shot and extend that joint you'll get a sudden surge of speed by burning that stored energy.  You can either use this to increase the speed at which you throw, the angle on your shot, or the distance that it travels.  If a joint is extended then the speed at which you can generate one short motion is enhanced.  That's vague, so let me break that down a bit with an example.

Suppose the basic stance above, left foot and hand forward, right foot and hand back, fighting single blue.  In this position your left hand is further forward which means that shots thrown from that hand will travel the shortest distance before hitting a viable target.  This also means that with the elbow joint partially bent you'll be able to generate a snap shot that goes very very fast.  The right hand by contrast won't be able to throw shots as quickly as the distance between it's "neutral" or guard position and its strike is a much greater distance then between your left hand and it's target zones.  This means that if you want to take a bunch of quick shots, fighting with your sword in your left hand makes a lot more sense.  That back hand still has some advantages though.  The back hand is coiled up, because your shoulder is back.  This means that when you throw with that hand (caveats: [because of Bogan] when your feet don't move and without bending over/giving up a shot on your back) you actually have more reach and can hit targets that are farther away.  Additionally the shot itself will be thrown with more velocity making it harder to block or counter.  Finally, having your back hand throw a swing gives you access to more angles and more potential shots because you have time to change the direction of the shot as it's being thrown.  This is an example of coiling up JUST your shoulder and elbow.  You can also coil your legs allowing you to take deeper, longer steps by putting more bend into your knees and ankles or you can leave them uncoiled to take short fast steps.  You can also coil your body by compressing yourself and turning in one direction; when you throw a shot to the opposite direction as you coiled you then gain that additional potential energy.

Front Hand vs Back Hand

So, why choose one hand over the other?

Choose the forward hand as your sword hand if you think that you're faster then your opponent, or you tend to be a more technical fighter.  Having the extra speed to throw shots with will mean that you can hit your enemy before they hit you, often either taking out their arm or going straight in for a body shot as soon as they get into range.  This is also an excellent tactic for hand-matching, wherein you try to beat their sword with your sword by landing a block into a quick counter blow.  Additionally with a weapon in your opponents face they may hesitate to go for torso swings, instead opting to fight the weapon in front of them instead of you.  That having been said, it is my that the downside of this stance is that with your weapon all the way extended in front of you makes it easier for your opponent to land torso swings if they can get past your guard.  Also, with a weapon in front of you if they do somehow break your guard you have very little time to react.

Choose the back hand as your sword hand if you find yourself relying more on trick shots and deception.  Fighting with the hand back will allow you to throw more shots at more angles which will make your attacks hard to predict and as a bonus, since they'll move faster when you do throw them they'll be even harder to throw counters against.  A hand held back is an excellent chance to use a 3-split (under 4 way) which will mean your opponent dies if they got your swing wrong just once.  Since people sometimes fight a sword rather then a person, having your sword back will cause them to have to swing far away from their own box/guard which leaves them more vulnerable to a counter strike, especially if you have better body mechanics.  That having been said it's my opinion that fighting this way makes it much easier to snipe your other hand.  If you know that swing is coming and you're in a single blue duel, you may be able to get a more valuable counter strike (sword arm or torso for off hand), but on the other hand you may just be down a limb.

Torso

You can modify the position of your torso on basically two axis.  You can be standing up tall or leaned over modifying your vertical axis and you can be turned or flat, rotating on your horizontal axis.  You can also lean forward or backwards, though generally it's a good idea to be in a neutral position.  The only reason I can think to lean forward or backwards would be to try to feint with some part of your body.  Doing this gives you nothing and generates openings for your opponent.

Dropping low (or just being short) will give you access to angles that aren't swung at all the time, often allowing you to pop shots up underneath a person's guard, whether that's a shield or just a sword, making torso swings (especially around the hips/stomach) much easier to land.  Dropping low however does make it so that your opponent will have a much easier time throwing an overhand vertical wrap shot on you, thereby bypassing the top of a shield or other guard.

Standing tall (or just being tall) will make the overhand vertical wrap shot a much easier shot to throw.  Additionally this allows you to work over a person's weapon, often sniping their sword arm, or working around a polearm's guard.  The disadvantage of standing tall is that it takes some spring out of your legs and the result is that it much easier to have someone hit them.  Additionally, depending on the differential between their relative and your height you may expose yourself to shots to your hips and torso.

Legs

While a good neutral stance has your weight distributed evenly between both legs you can of course choose to put more weight in your front or back foot.  Putting more weight on your back foot will allow you to get your front foot out of the way faster when avoiding a leg sweep.  Putting more weight on your forward foot will mean that you can step forward a bit faster.

Do what works

These are your design decisions.  Some things are innate, like how flexible, how fast, or how tall you are and will effect what decisions you can/should make.  Within those parameters though it's up to you to decide exactly what decisions you want to make, whether it's tuning things to be an in close aggressive fighter who works low angles, or a long range person who sits defensively and waits for the other person to make a mistake.  There isn't necessarily a right or wrong set of design decisions as it all eventually boils down to personal choice.  That having been said, contextually, you can make better or worse decisions.  Against a person who is already taller then you, doing anything to make it easier for them to hit you in the back is probably detrimental.

Flow

The thing about design decisions is that they aren't static.  You can change the position of each part of your body moment to moment as the fight ebbs and flows.  ...and so can your opponent.  What this means is that it's important for you to be aware of what design decisions you're making moment to moment, and as you improve, being able to track what design decisions your opponent is making moment to moment.  If they suddenly got tall, they may be about to take a wrap shot, if they suddenly got low, expect that you may need to guard your hips/torso.  As much of fighting it's not so much about making the "right" call, as it is about being aware of what's going on.  From there it's all up to your own judgement which is something that you can hone over time.

Tags

I'm going to start adding tags to entries (and I've started to re-tag old things).

Here are the tags I'm going to use so far:

[Get better]
solo - how to improve as a fighter when fighting by yourself
fieldwork - how to either move around on a field or how to fight better with teammates

[Independently irrelevant]
meta - big picture ideas that I think are important but won't necessarily help you improve
fundamentals - technical definitions of things so that I can talk about them in future without having
to re-explain my terminology

[Structure/Formatting]
updates - something about the blog or it's structure.

If it isn't tagged with anything it's either my own random opinion about things or ruminations on the meta of the sport as a whole.  Since those things are often harder to distinguish I'm just going to leave them untagged.

Box, Line, and Lane

As I start to dive into more technical stuff about how a body moves and how and why you choose to line up different pieces in any particular configuration I have to spend some time laying groundwork so that I can talk about this stuff without having to constantly re-iterate big picture ideas.  So this is the first of those.  I'll figure out some way to better organize that eventually.  For now you'll just have to keep reading these forewords :-P.

Box

A box is the hit zone that determines death.  Any target area that can kill you in one shot is considered part of that box.  The box is also probably an idea from other things, but as a person with no formal training I don't have anything else to point at, sorry.  The box, generally speaking is the quadrant's provided by drawing lines from shoulder to shoulder, from shoulders to hips and from hip to hip.  This target zone represents a persons "box" and when I start talking about a person defending their box what I mean is that they are keeping their guard set up in such a way that it passively absorbs swings to anything bounded by this region.  A good guard will hover over your box so that without moving you aren't likely to be killed in one hit.  When you block a shot that's out wide (like a wrap shot) then you're blocking outside of your box.  Even if that shot is for your back, moving your weapon/shield far away from your body to prevent a shot from hitting you uncovers the area I think of as your "box".  Additionally the box only refers to your FRONT side as there isn't a passive guard that I know of that's going to protect the box bounded shoulders and hips on your back that also guards your front side well.  (Though you could totally do that with a back shield if you don't use a shield for anything else).

Line

The "line" as I think of it your center line, it's the line that you'd draw from your solar plexus to your opponents solar plexus.  So long as you're fighting a person you'll be looking at each other, and in doing so you generate that line.  Assuming that you've guarded your box well and your opponent has done the same neither you nor your opponent will have any good or obvious shots so long as the line remains unbroken.  As a result a lot of discussions going forward  will talk about breaking your opponents line; IE being the person who clears your opponents center line to the left or right proactively in order to open up a series of shots that weren't previously available to you.  It's important to note that when you break your opponents center line you also create a similar set of openings on yourself.  But by being the one to initiate the movement you have the advantage of knowing in advance what openings exist, whereas your opponent has to spend time reacting to your movement rather then proactively taking shots at the openings that you've exposed.  Since, at least theoretically, no good shots exist when both people are center line even (facing one another) much of fighting comes down to finding creative ways to work your shots around a person's center line.  I suspect that's why the high cross is so popular despite it being a bad shot.  (Bad because 1, it's predictable, 2, it has a low rate of success, 3, it leaves your arm way open when thrown).

Lane

A lane is established by a weapon.  To the outside of the weapon is the outside lane, to the inside of the weapon is the inside lane.  If you're holding a sword in your right hand then your outside lane is anything to the right of your weapon and your inside lane is going to be anything that's your arm on in.  If you're fighting florentine then you'll generate two sets of lanes.  If you're fighting with a polearm then this theory still applies except that now your inside and outside lanes are determine by where you place your hands.  If your front hand is your right hand then your outside lane will be everything to your left and your inside lane is everything to your right.  Generally speaking whenever you can catch a BLOCK to your OUTSIDE lane you gain advantage by being able to RETURN shots to their INSIDE lane.

keeping it short and sweet for theorycrafting.  that's all for this post.

Habits

Humans are creatures of habit.  We tend to find things that we are comfortable with and stick to them.  Newer fighters have habits primarily because they have a limited set of options.  The inability to have many swings to pick from means they'll throw the same few shots over and over again.  A more veteran fighter tends to have more shots selection but they also tend to have much more ingrained habits.  If you can find a thing they do wrong it's much much easier to punish them for their mistakes because those habits are so deeply ingrained.

I am of the opinion that one of my greatest strengths as a fighter isn't my actual skill at fighting but rather the diversity of styles and shots that I know.  I've been fighting long enough that I can fight competently with florentine, long swords or shot swords, sword and board, with a strap or punch shield, red, whether it's a sword or glaive, spear, or with archery equipment, either running between the lines (combat arching) or standing in back and taking my time picking shots (sniping).  For each set of things that I've learned how to do I've also tried to learn a number of different styles.  For florentine I have several distinct styles for sword and board I have about 4, for reds there's 3, for arching 2, for spear there's 2 as well.

For the sake of clarifying terms a "style" is reflected by saying a default stance that is your "neutral" stance which makes certain swings/guards easier then others.  Truly mastering these different styles though means being able to switch between them seamlessly so that they aren't easily distinguishable.  Once you learn the bread and butter shots from each style it becomes easier to know where the swings will be coming from.  Even if you know every conceivable swing from any given stance, each stance is built from a number of design decisions (where you place your feet, how you position your body/hips, where your guard rests, where you position your melee weapon for strikes, etc) that make certain swings and guards more effective and other swings/guards less effective.  For instance, picking up a tower shield is going to skyrocket your board side defense, but the cost is that your board also limits some of your board side swings that you'd normally be able to take as well.  This post is about both using your opponents habits to your advantage and breaking your own habits so that you aren't as easy to read.

At some point I should write a post on "design decisions" to flush that out more... I don't think I'm getting to it tonight though.  In the interim the short version is the position of your body matters.  A hand that is further back is coiled, which means it has more reach then a hand out in front, and it can throw shots with a greater selection of angle.  An arm that's out in front doesn't have the same amount of reach as an arm that's kept coiled but it can make a straight slashing strike much faster then a coiled hand.  Neither one of these stances is INHERENTLY better.  It's all based on the context of who you're fighting and how they're fighting.  I have tended to prefer to be coiled because I like to make it hard for my opponent to predict my shots but that there are plenty of times where I'll switch stance to make a quick sniping shot easier.  It just depends on who I'm up against.  There are many more design decisions as far as where you place each piece of your body, that is only meant to be one concrete example.

Bad Habits

One of the easiest exploits is to determine your opponents patterns so you can exploit them.  Depending on who you're fighting and who they've been fighting they may be particularly vulnerable to certain swings.  I met a fighter who had been fighting for 5 years and had a relatively large shield but they never learned proper footwork.  It meant that I could consistently get them to step and then snipe their leg.  In a field battle this became my go to move since eliminating them as a person with mobility was good math.  It wasn't that my opponent was unskilled.  They won plenty of fights against me normally, but within the context of a field fight they always got murdered because I could simply return with friends and work angles in order to win.  Plenty of people have bad habits, his particular tell was that when he stepped he crossed planes, so he'd either have one foot directly in front of the other or he'd have his feet perfectly parallel which meant that when I swung at a leg he had no place to dodge.

There are innumerable bad habits that fighters have developed over the years so I'm not going to spend too much time on going through specific ones.  The point is that as a fighter you need to recognize patterns.  You can use feints (check under "The swing that wasn't") to determine what these habits are without exposing yourself to swings or you can throw actual swings if you feel confident doing so in order to watch how your opponent reacts.  If you notice that they consistently move the same way when you throw or feint a swing then you can plan around that.  There was a time when I was fighting Sir Shatosen where he'd bite hard on a high cross feint.  In doing so his shield moved away from his shoulder meaning I could lay swings down on that particular target zone.  By contrast Sir Cheeseheart still gets me with a darkside swing after he feints an opening with his shoulder.  I keep swinging for a shot that historically just hasn't been there and he keeps punishing that swing by railing me in the side because I have developed that bad habit.  And just in case it wasn't clear, yes, I too, after 12 years of fighting, have developed bad habits and a series of feints that I'll always almost bite on because I'm human too.  No one is immune to having developed bad habits and patterns.  Better fighters know more swings so they can often disguise these bad habits but I promise you they're there.

The thing is once you see the pattern you should be able to also see the exploit.  Against Shato I knew that once he flinched I'd have an easy shoulder pick.  With Cheese he knows that once he sees me swing at the shoulder that's not there he's got an easy side swing because that hand isn't available to block.  If I move my other hand cover that side he can just swing at the other arm.

Chess master

If you fight a person more then once and they aren't totally new then they'll try to learn your bad habits.  If you're conscious about how you fight and what swings you throw then you can teach them a set of habits only to then do something else (see the section labelled "mindfuck").  The 3 split is an excellent example of this where you (apparently) throw a high cross, only to turn it into a shield side shoulder pick or a torso swing.  If your opponent gets too used to a high cross they'll leave the other 2 shots open.  If the opponent gets used to the other two swings then you can go right back to using the high cross.  Baiting with your body (under "brought to you by admiral ackbar"), so long as you always do it the same way may also convince an opponent that they have an easy swing, when in fact you're waiting for it.  This becomes an expectation they have of an opening that they can try to exploit.  The longer you fight a person the better these tactics work because a person gets used to the swings they expect you to throw.  This means that when you break that set of patterns they are expecting it's even more effective then against a person who has never fought you before.

Flow like water

You can also go the opposite direction.  Rather then throwing shots that are easy to read and consistent in the hopes that you'll train your opponent you can instead throw none of the same shots.  I generally call this kind of fighting a "flow state" in which you seamlessly transition between as many styles as you have and throw shots that are unpredictable so that you cannot be read or reacted to effectively.  Up north Asher/Callous is an excellent example of this.  By switching between bizarre and seemingly ineffective stances he becomes VERY hard to read which means that most people can't tell where his swings are going to come from.  With a back shield and the experience he has doing this he actually has very good defense, so these things that look like they'd be ineffective don't actually leave him that exposed.  What he loses from being unpredictable is that he can't play chess by setting expectations and breaking them he gains in having people be unable to predict what shots he'll throw.  Especially for fighters that have never fought him before this off-putting fighting style leaves them feeling confused and often disrupts their own rhythm as they aren't sure how to respond to this.

Do what works for you

If you're a tactical fighter you may find that setting and breaking expectations is what works best for you.  If you just like to swing stick and don't want to think too much about it being an unpredictable or "flow state" fighter may be more to your liking.  Whatever you choose to do, play to your strengths.  It is infinitely more important that you fight the way that makes sense to you then that you go with well established knowledge or "the correct approach".  It's my personal opinion that there is no "correct approach", at best there's better and worse approaches to a given problem, but most of that's contextual.  I feel like for the most part it's all about mastery, any fighter can be good at using any weapons set in any way that suites them.  It is the case that certain weapon sets are more useful then others in specific situations but a good fighter who is skilled with their weapon set is going to do better in a situation where that weapon set is disadvantageous then they will picking up a weapon set that's better suited to the situation that they are bad with.  In particular I knew a guy who only fought dual daggers, and someone managed to make that effective.  I also knew a fighter who was somewhere in the vicinity of 300+ pounds who fought primarily dual flails, and in spite of having lots of mass to swing at it was nearly impossible to hit him because he was so adept at his blocks.  Don't let anyone tell you that simply because of what gear you've picked up you're doing it wrong.  As long as you're willing to grind at it you can be good with anything.  Though having said that, I definitely think some weapon sets are more optimal then others.  I may be competent at fighting dual javelins but I certainly wouldn't make that my go to weapon set :-P.

Mistakes (yours)

To be human is to err.  While I'd hope that everyone does there best to not obviously fuck up it happens sometimes.  It's not a question of IF but rather a question of when.  What separates the good folks from the bad ones is how they handle it.

Totally feeling that hit a minute later...

Hit taking is the most obvious place where mistakes happen.  It's why trying to proactively communicate is so important as it can defuse a bad situation before it happens.  That having been said from time to time a person just has so much adrenaline going through them that when they say they didn't feel a thing they aren't lying even though someone hit them with more then sufficient force for it to be a good swing.  Sometimes after you walk away from a fight you'll feel a sting that wasn't there before.  This tends to be a good sign that someone, at some point, killed you.  If you notice RIGHT after a fight is over, do the good thing, tell them they're alive, call your shot late and try again the next round.  If you notice the shot and the round is over, go talk to to the person who you think landed that hit and apologize, tell them it was good and it just took you a while to notice.  If that person is dead a while back, or you don't know when you got hit just drop dead on the spot, at the very least that means you aren't tipping the tides of the battle as a corpse.  Mistakes happen and that's just the reality of it all.  If you find that this happens to you often though, it might be time to spend some time working on your shot taking so that you're more aware of the shots you get hit with.  Once you have a bad reputation for shrugging hits its difficult to reverse that trend even if you've become honorable in the interim.  As a general rule it takes about 2 weeks of time to change a perception with people you fight with all the time of good behavior to erase a bad reputation, and that's 2 weeks of consistently doing everything right.  If you aren't perfect or people don't fight with you as often it can take much longer.

Right to the face...

Face shots happen and are unfortunate.  Sometimes they happen even when you take perfectly safe swings.  While those may not be your fault you should still endeavor to handle them graciously by taking a step back and ensuring your opponent is okay before you keep unloading swings on them.  Sometimes though face shots are TOTALLY your fault.  You were the guy who took a 12 to 6 with a glaive and maybe you were aiming for a shoulder but it came right down on their dome.  Maybe you were throwing a shot with a blue for a shoulder pick and you hit them in the side of the head.  Maybe you were throwing a shot on a fighter coming up behind you.  Whatever the case is, if you've thrown a shot that your opponent in no way drove into their head the above becomes even more true.  Take a step back, make sure they're okay and then DON'T THROW THAT SHOT AGAIN.  I cannot count the number of times that a person has thrown an unsafe swing to either my, or some other fighters face, only to then throw the EXACT same swing multiple more times, often leading to multiple more head shots.  If you find that a particular shot is often hitting people in the face then it's time to stop throwing that swing.  Take some time to learn with a pell, practice the shot in slow motion, and then when you do go to try to throw that shot on other fighters again throw it without much force until you're positive you can control it.  That way at least if you make a mistake again you aren't trucking a person right in the face.

Miscommunication

Sometimes you haven't made any real mistakes, but you've communicated something in a way that is confusing.  You've called armor multiple times without specifying the target location so that people know you aren't cheating, you've called "good" to refer to a shot but not to say dead and they are confused, or you've taken a moment to think about a shot and a person has confused this with you being dead.  Whatever it happens to be just make sure that you fix that miscommunication before continuing to fight.  If a person thinks you're dead because of your miscommunication make sure you let them know you're alive before hitting them in the back.  This is different from backing someone.  If they know that you're alive and you've simply gotten behind them without them noticing that's a totally legit kill.  This is in the case where a person was aggressing on you and they've backed off because they think you're dead, either because you've backed off or because you are displaying a dead person's behavior (like weapon on head) and THEN you hit them in the back.  What you communicate to that individual with that bad communication/bad behavior is that they should simply wail on you until you call dead, and generally speaking no one wants to be hit repeatedly after they've already died.  So! If you appear dead and then step back in for whatever reason just let them know.  If you're wearing armor and someone steps up to fight you, tell them the state of your armor and where it is so they aren't confused when you call it.  If you get hit in your armor make sure you call not just armor but also which piece is broken.

It's not the mistakes that matter...

Perception is infinitely more important then reality.  What a person thinks is the case will ultimately determine how they behave much more then the truth of what actually unfolded.  When a person's perceptions don't match reality that's when there tends to be problems.  If you can communicate to a person what happened that will often change their perception of reality which may be enough to fix whatever aggravation they are feeling.  Failing that, if a person believes (correctly or not) that you made a mistake, and you can be gracious about it that may also alleviate their aggravation.  This is one of those things where it's less about what happened and more about how it's handled.  Being friendly, owning up to mistakes, and keeping to a positive attitude will make the game more fun for everyone because there will always be mistakes.

Mistakes (theirs)

This is sort of going to dovetail off of the post on being a new person, the TLDR of which was, swing, even if you think you'll lose, because simply standing there will get you just as dead as attempting to hit someone.  There's more to it then that but I've already written on it here

To be human is to err

We're all human.  That means that we all make mistakes.  This is as true for a top tier fighter as it is for a person who is brand new.  As you learn to become more precise with your swings those mistakes become less apparent.  When your opponent's block is only a few inches away from their passive guard it's harder to tell that they made a mistake compared to when their block is a few feet outside of their starting guard.  But a mistake is a mistake and it means that in either case there's an opening you can capitalize on.

One in a million

As a fighter becomes better their movements gain more efficiency.  Having high efficiency of movements means that they're very fast, to the point where if you haven't trained your eyes the shots and blocks become invisible.  But even if you can't see the exchanges shots are still being thrown that can miss and blocks are still being thrown that can be missed.  Making those swings and blocks faster does nothing to change the basics of the game, it just means it's over sooner.  When top tier fighters fight each other they tend to throw a flurry of swings that have guard patterns built into them.  Newer fighters tend to throw one shot and then take a long time to recover back to neutral.  A top tier fighter who is moving and active is constantly generating openings that they can be hit by as they move.  The thing that stops them from dying immediately is simply their positioning.  If they move well they know exactly who can swing at them and then shift their guard to the strikes that are most likely to be thrown at them.  The simple truth is no matter how good you are you simply can't block every part of your body at the same time.  This is why a good fighter that gets legged and outnumbered is generally screwed.  Once they have to block from multiple angles they're going to die.  Since a fighter can't inherently block swings from every angle all at once this means that they are always vulnerable lots of possible swings that shift instant to instant as they move.  If you're a new person fighting a vet you can throw the same shot a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times and miss.  But you only need that vet to make a mistake one time in a million blocks to win.  One mistake on their part where they either blocked too quickly and returned to neutral, or blocked the wrong place, or simply were distracted and didn't block at all, and they're dead.  Sure, in an ideal situation you'd go for a swing you'd know would connect but chances are that shot doesn't exist.  You are just as capable of making a mistake throwing a swing as the person is in blocking one.  However, if you aggress and they make a mistake then they die.  If you defend and you make a mistake then you're dead instead.  It's always better to be on offense then is to be on defense because the first mistake wins.

Improving the odds

Swinging blindly and hoping to land the one in a millionth shot on a vet is by no means a winning strategy (though it sure beats blocking until THEY make a mistake).  But there are things you can do to improve your odds.  The first thing being, work angles.  My favorite thing to do on the field when I have people to work with is to closeline an opponent at 45 degree angles.  By breaking their center line from two angles, they are either force to defend at extreme angles, or turn to face someone to unbreak their line.  The problem being of course that once they turn to face on individual they give their back to the other one.  The correct solution is of course to backpedal and not get closelined... but as anyone will tell you, it's much easier to run forward then backward.  For fighting an opponent who still has mobility a 45 degree angle attack is going to be best (just imagine an equilateral triangle) if an opponent is legged you can make their life more difficult and switch to being directly in front and behind that opponent.  Now, they have to fight forward and backwards simultaneously which makes blocking nearly impossible.  If you outnumber your opponent by more then 2 people they you just add folks to more sides.  Think of your opponent as the center of a compass.  With 2 attackers you cover north and south.  With a third a person steps in at east.  With a fourth a person steps in at west.  Too often I see a line of 3 people simply all walk forward in a line, hoping that numbers will overwhelm their opponent.  It's not that this CAN'T work... but you're not really getting anything from those numbers.  Additionally, there's problems with pacing where, if one person is faster then the rest they get there first and then are fighting in a 1v1 which probably ends badly if you need to outnumber an individual to kill them.

The swing that isn't

Another way you can improve your odds is that you can throw feints.  Feints are shots that aren't actually thrown.  If I pump my weapon like I'm going for a high cross and you move your board that way, I can then throw a wrap for the shield side.  A shot that I've seen up north used by Zale a lot that at least used to eat Morder's lunch was a stab feint, where he'd do half the stab motion to provoke a response, and then after they'd flinched actually follow through.  The beauty of a feint is that even if your opponent doesn't fall for your feint (AKA "bite on it") then you haven't lost anything because you haven't actually thrown a shot.  This means that you can invite them to make an error basically for free and you only have to follow through if they bite on it.

The swing that was many

One of the pieces of tech that's stuck in my head recently is something that I've been calling the 3 split.  I don't think I can do it justice on a blog, so if you're really curious about learning this, come find me, that having been said, let's see what I can do.  The gist of the 3 split is that for any 1 swing that you make you can then turn it into 3 additional swings.  If you throw a shot straight, IE a slash of some kind then that sets your initial swing.  As an example, let's use the ever infamous high cross as swing 1.  Swing 2 happens when you flick your wrist up.  This turns the high cross into shield side shoulder pick.  Swing 3 happens when you flick your wrist down.  This turns the high cross into a sword side slot/stomach shot.  Swing 4 is actually a stab.  Instead of finishing your swing 1 you pull the shot short so that it misses and then you rotate your hips into a stab.  This means that everytime I throw a high cross I'm actually seeking 3 targets.  I only need my opponent to leave one of those 3 shots open to get the hit to land.  If they don't cover all 4 gaps or they mistake my swing by overblocking one of those target zones then they'll leave another one open.  For instance, if they're used to the high cross (swing 1) and up flick (swing 2) so they overblock to the outside with their weapon and overblock their shoulder with their shield then they leave themselves exposed to a down flick (swing 3).  If they overblock for a swing 1 and swing 3 combo then that tends to leave the swing 2 pick open.

Another good example of this kind of trickery is the stab reverse.  You simply throw a stab and if the person goes to parry the block with their weapon you rotate your weapon over theirs in a sweep and take arm.  If they don't block the stab at all... well, then you just stab them.  Either way it tends to be a win win.

Brought to you by Admiral Ackbar

Also known as "IT'S A TRAP".  If you're fighting a top tier fighter and you see a very obvious opening... it's probably too good to be true.  As human beings it's hard for us to not bite on what appears to be an easy swing.  I cannot count the number of top tier fighters I've convinced to swing at my shoulder when I drop my shield in an obvious way.  About 90% of the time it gets me the arm and about 10% of the time they're faster then I am and they get the shoulder.  Given those odds I'm pretty happy to use my shoulder as bait.  While it's not my first choice for a feint when it works it's extremely effective.  Peter the Quick once said something in one of his videos that stuck with me.  I'm paraphrasing but the gist of it was that when you leave obvious openings by throwing obvious swings you tend to get a pretty consistent counterblow.  The majority of fighters will swing at the opening that is most apparent, (especially if you appear to be off balance or it looks like your fighting is sloppy... tactics I clearly never use ;) ), and this means that if you present them with obvious targets you can often lead their swings to be thrown where you want them to be thrown.  By way of caveats let me say that for all the benefits of feinting with your body when you make a mistake this absolutely gets you killed, so start with the other stuff first.  That having been said, if you appear to be a new fighter baiting with your body by leaving apparent openings works great because most fighters will believe that they can land that swing.  If you're ready for the swing that you've invited this often means you can get a low risk counter shot while exposing yourself to minimal risk.  The risks two main risks are that either they're faster then you or they swing somewhere other then the opening you've given them.

And against my better my better judgement let's talk about some practical applications of this... if you find yourself fighting me the main counterblows I tend to get are a counterblow when someone swings at my front leg, an arm snipe when someone misses a stab, and a left handed block to my right side when I throw a cross with my right arm into a counterblow.  The leg that's out front appears to be an easy target 'cause it's close.  The stab looks open when I fight florentine because I tend to have my arms to the side rather then right over my chest.  When I throw a cross I tend to hyper extend, sometimes throwing my weight with the swing to get an extreme angle, this creates a VERY obvious opening and gives the impression that I'm off balance.  The reason the leg sweep doesn't work is because most of my weight isn't on that foot so I can move it very quickly if a shot comes down, and I've trained my reflexes to counterblow for the shoulder immediately when I have to move the foot to dodge a leg sweep.  The reason the stab doesn't usually work is because my body is angled so you actually have to get a pretty precise stab to have it land, and my weapons are offset so I can try to parry with my front and then my back hand if I happen to screw up the block with one side.  The reason why the side swing tends not to work is because 1) I'm not actually that off balance.  I've got slow motion video to prove it :-P 2) I've learned how to throw a cross block throw which is where people tend to throw and 3) because my body is torqued to such an extreme degree if you move your sword to swing you've almost always guaranteed me a torso shot.

So remember.  Everyone is human.  No one is invincible.  In the end the game comes down to 2 key components.  1) Can you throw a swing you can hit the other guy with? and 2) Can you block the shot the other guy throws so you don't get taken out yourself?  The first person to make a mistake doing either of those things potentially loses, so if you can learn how to play smart you can often outwit your enemy even when the odds are against you, be that skill or numbers.