Melee fighting

In my run-up posts to Uprising, I failed to cover one small detail, and it was pretty much shoved in my face Friday at Uprising. That little item was that the goal of a melee is different than that of a tournament. In a tournament, the goal is to take out your opponent without getting taken out yourself (and if you can do it with style, all the better). In a melee, the goal is to achieve your objective.

Sometimes, yes, that means kill everyone (like the keep battles or the battle of the sexes), but usually there's more to it than that. Thursday's bridge battles were a good example of that. In the first few (at least until the Marshal got tired of his 10-minute res battles lasting thirty seconds), the goal was to control the bridge. That simply meant get everyone from the other side off the bridge. In abattle like that, all you have to do (and all we did) was to keep advancing until you're standing on the far side of the bridge.

In a similar vein, the objective of the beer barrel battles was to get the beer and bring it back to your side. These ones were actually won by fencers who were not armed. Their whole job was to grab the barrels and run.

The family battles were where it became obvious that the majority of the fencers there were in melee mode. Yes, some of the objectives were to kill an entire family, but most were more selective. And when you think about it, why take on a dozen people when you're only trying to kill one person?

The big one, though, was the penultimate family battle, when the hero and heroine were trying to escape the father and all the father's troops had to do was catch them. Okay, it may be that I wasn't explicit enough when I explained the objective to my troops (I was the fater), but I have to give the hero's troops kudos on that battle. They presented my troops with a line far ahead of the objective and, in spite of multiple commands and haranguing to do otherwise, my troops chose to fight the line rather than go for the objective. In short, the hero's troops distracted mine from the objective and, in spite of any losses, won the battle. He picked the better tactics for that battle.

Of course, I got even in the final battle (and didn't even have to pay off the priest in the end), but that was because I did unto them what they'd done unto me and exploited a weakness in their tactics. Okay, here's what I thought was a no-brainer. If you're escorting a person and their death means you lose, don't put them in the front line. I suppose on paper, the hero's tactics were sound, almost, but they didn't adjust for the reality of the battle.

Their basic idea was to put the hero and heroine near the back of the line as they skirted the edge of the world. In theory, that put them as far away from the keep (and our troops) as possible while limiting the angles we could attack from. But we didn't come from the keep, we came from the ravine. This basically gave us a line-on-line battle, with the hero in the line. Needless to say, he died quickly. What would have been a better plan would have been to hug the edge of the world (as they did) but instead of forming a line, form a square, with the hero and heroine against the edge of the world. That might just have required me paying off the priest.

Balance

In my last post, I talked about how armored fighters don't tend to be impressed with rapiers, and made the comment that they don't even like my 36". Sounds conceited, I know, but...

Many moons ago, when I was a happy newlywed, I did a study on period rapiers and how they compared to their counterparts in the SCA (you know, I might just have to resurrect that study because that was back before we expanded beyond schlagers). Basically, I compared the blades based on length (blade and overall), weight and balance. The short of it was that the SCA failed miserably. Too short, too light and with our balances waaaay off. The only group that consistently got anything right was the epee fencers. Surprisingly enough, an epee balances almost exactly the same as a period rapier. Go figure.

Anyway, when I built my 36" schlager, I based it off of that study (practice what you preach). It was still too short (this was before longer blades were readily available) and about a pound too light, but the balance was nearly spot-on. Okay, it's not quite tip-heavy enough; I need to shave about a quarter-ounce off the pommel. Not perfect, I admit, but darn close to the balance being in the 22-25% of the total length range that my study showed was the norm. In short, my 36" feels like a sword.

Here's how balance works. The more tip-heavy a sword is, the quicker it is. But, the less tip-heavy (pommel-heavy?) a sword is, the easier it is to control.

Think inertia and momentum. A tip-heavy sword takes more power (strength) to get going, but once you've started it moving, it keeps moving on it's own. A pommel-heavy sword is easier to get moving, but you have to apply power the whole way through. That's what makes a tip-heavy sword quicker.

Now, when it comes time to stop a tip-heavy sword, you actually have to use your power to stop it (think trying to stop a hammer in mid-swing). Not so with a pommel-heavy sword. All you have to do with one of those is stop applying power.

So the trick with a sword is to balance speed and control. If all you're ever going to do is point drills, you want a sword that's pommel-heavy. Likewise, if all you care about is getting your blade going fast, you want it as tip-heavy as you can get. The tendency I've seen up here in the north is for slow, easy to control swords with their balance point at or below the quillons. While this does improve tip control, it makes the blade slower than a snail on valium. Not a good thing if you're up against some young buck who's just chugged a case of Red Bull.

As you can probably tell, I like my balance point out in front of my quillons. This does mean that I have to work harder at tip control and that I do need a bit more wrist strength. But, hey, I'm old and slow and need all the help I can get. And besides, it's period.

The hockey stick from heck

As anyone who's encountered me in the last six months knows, I got myself a new sword for Christmas: a 40" Alchem with as much curve as I could get. The responses I've gotten to the sword haven't been mixed, so much as polarized. Although the majority of responses seem to be at one end of the spectrum.

Almost no one's response to the sword has been meh. Everyone seems to either love it (the majority) or hate it (Yes, there are a few). Okay, that's not quite true. There are quite a few people up here who hate it - or at least hate fighting against it. That's probably the most common response, "I hate that #$%^ thing! Where can I get one?" The scary part is that that's against someone who doesn't really know how to effectively use a curved blade.

I think the most interesting part is the reaction I've gotten from armored fighters who've played with it. Now, the usual reaction of a heavy being handed a rapier (even my 36") is a look of confusion, followed by a fairly meh response. Not with this thing. Oh, you still get that initial look of confusion ("Why does this wire weenie think I'd care?"), but it's followed by a look of concern as they realizing they're starting to have unnatural feelings towards a rapier, and finally, a big, ear-to-ear grin.

You see, the Hockey Stick from Heck (so dubbed by Don Adam, one of the sword's first victims) not only looks like a sword, but it balances like a sabre (no, it's NOT a scimitar) should and it's approaching the weight of what a sword should be. When you hold it, you know it wasn't meant for thrusting. You feel it wanting to slice and cut and get in close. Or, as one knight put it, "I couldn't use this. Someone would get hurt. I'd use it the way you're supposed to."

Which leads to my problem: how do I use a sabre as a sabre, but still fight legally and safely? I mean lopping off body parts is pretty frowned upon by the SCA, at least in the rapier community. Sure, I can keep using it as a standard rapier, but even that's got its problems. The tip is 4" to the left of where it should be, for starters. What I need to do is find a manual on sabre (period, preferably) and try and modify that for positive pressure.

The only problem is that I'm not sure where to begin. What would be a good style? Kendo? Kali? Sabre? All of those are edge-intensive forms, but which would work best? And where do I even find the manuals?

Anyone have any ideas?