The Anatomy of a Fight: An Appendix

    Every fight consists of the same basic potential components.  The factors that are available to exploit rarely change, but a fighter's understanding and skill level determine how well they can manipulate them.  Today, I'll break down a combat engagement into both its component pieces, and in a future followup article, the timeline of a fight.  These components range from beginner level ideas up to advanced concepts.  The basic concepts are by far the most important, and the most advanced are useless without a certain level of basic competence.  You're guaranteed to look like an idiot if you throw an elaborate fake just to whiff your shot completely.  Solid basics strung together in creative ways trumps a single fancy gimmick move, and indicates a deeper understanding of the game.  I've included very simple explanations for each, though an essay could be written about any of these.

Basic Aspects:
This is the framework upon which everything else is built, build it well.
Range:  How close are you to your opponent?  What is your kill range and how does it compare to theirs?  If you lack range, expect to have to close.  Playing in their kill range but not yours has a one sided result.
Openings:  What potential shots do you see available to you right now?  Have you seen this opponent do something so far where they've created an opening for you?  Take advantage of it next time.
Hand-Eye Speed:  Do you swing and react faster than your opponent?  If so, maybe you should swing first and try to tag them before they're aware.  If not, expect to have to have to beat them in timing.
Foot Speed:  How quickly can you close distance and how agilely can you retreat?  This is even more critical in field battles.
Footwork: How smoothly, subtly and efficiently can you move?  How is your balance while attacking and while under duress?  This is a very important category with a high impact at top level.
Shot/Block Selection:  How wide of a shot and block selection does each fighter have?  How comfortable is each fighter with both their most frequently used and less frequently used options?

Intermediate Aspects:
I would describe these as effective and thorough utilization of the basics. 
Fakes: A fake is any kind of motion or telegraph intended to mislead your opponent.  These come in a wide variety, from eye and body fakes, to stutter steps and sword misdirection.  Very useful in conjunction with other abilities.

Timing: While timing itself is a very basic part of fighting, being able to control timing is much less simple.  Understanding both your potential timing and your opponents is critical for progression.  On a more advanced note being able to change ones timing mid-combat and playing the time between beats allow a ton of counter-play.
Angles: Once a fighter has accumulated a adequate shot selection, it becomes important to learn to use them to their fullest degree.  Skilled manipulation of angles allows that from any given position your potential opportunities multiply, as well as your understanding of when you're being threatened.
Combinations/Block-strike:  This ties in with shot selection as well.  Can you string a series of attacks together?  All quality fighters learn to do that while also expecting potential returns.
Denying:  Whether by stuffing a shot with a shield, stepping into a spear shot, or removing a potential shot, being able to deny your enemy opportunities strengthens your position.
Physicality:  Using your strength to do things like push a fighter over, lock up the enemy's weapon with your own, or shield-edging creates advantages and openings.



Advanced Aspects:
These are the mental disciplines that go beyond the actual use of weaponry.  Some of these come only with experience.
Threat levels:  Being able to quickly and accurately determine which targets are most dangerous based on the available information.  As you grow as a fighter, it becomes easier to interpret this information effectively.
Fighter Knowledge:  Simply put, if you understand what a fighter might do ahead of time, you're immediately at an advantage.  This might be either through personal experience or a second hand account, but it's a subtle and important thing to note.
Prediction:  Can you accurately determine what the fighter before you will do next?  Can you think a step ahead and use his actions against him?  In combination with skilled denying, prediction is a powerful tool.  Equally useful on the battlefield exploiting timing weaknesses. 

Baiting:  Through use of misdirection and the previous category, prediction, one can trick an opponent into attacking a false opening, thus creating your own opportunity.
Dynamic Movement:  If your basic footwork and foot-speed are good, using them in innovative aggressive manners can overwhelm an opponent who's not prepared.  It's like hitting the Nitrous at a critical time.
Intimidation:  Intimidation is not simply looking scary, it's about how to generate fear and how to use that fear effectively.  On a battlefield it can be used to stop-gap sections of line fighting, keeping fighters unwilling to risk the style of death you're offering.  In tournaments, killing intent can freeze weaker fighters, and cause even skilled fighters pause.  In a related vein, there's my favorite aspect...
Swagger:  Have you ever noticed how highly skilled fighters tend to carry themselves, both on and off the field?  These warriors know what they sacrificed for their skills (See my article on Fighter Quality), and it shows in their attitude.  They may be helpful and kind, but when it's game time they're all skill and style.  Intimidation and Swagger tend to directly correlate for very good reasons.

Hopefully my breakdown will help you pinpoint what your strengths and weaknesses are, and how to improve yourself.  Hunt well.

-The Golden Lion

Red Sword 101: An Introduction

    I'd like to talk a little bit about something that I'm well known to be a specialist of sorts with: great-swords.  I've spent the lion's share of my last seven years training, sparring, slaying and dying with a stick longer than four feet in my hands.  I love my great weapons, the elegance in a perfectly timed block and counter-strike combination, the brutality of a precise shoulder slot-shot so forceful that it blasts through a shield man's guard and the satisfaction of planting a stab so smooth your opponent never saw it coming.  In this piece, I'd like to explore the reasons for learning this particular style, it's strengths and weaknesses, the varieties of execution, the mindsets required behind effective red work and some common mistakes and misconceptions.


To Red or not to Red:
I am not a red weapon evangelical.  My goal is not to propagate the weapon set, I'd merely like to provide resources for those who've decided to take the path I did, and want to better themselves.  The red sword is certainly a double edged blade.  It provides additional range (with the exception of a min-red), armor bypass, shield-breaking and a certain psychological impact.  In return you're perpetually at a defensive disadvantage, limited to a single plane of defense, which must be kept far more active than a shield to be effective.  This same defensive tool is also your only offensive tool, meaning that at any given point in time, you can only utilize it for one or the other.  This means that effective red use requires smooth, conscious or muscle memory trained transitions between the two modes.  Great weapons can be paired with a buckler or a backshield to allow more defensive options, though I strongly believe them to be best used as an anti-missile option, not something to be relied on in most situations.

There's no "right" way to do red weapon.  When I decided to commit to it as a style, the only fighters really going hard with it were the Dark Angels.  Being friends with Xiao and Tiji, Rugged Lands bad-asses, and having watched Sir Soth crush his way through the War God tournament one year, I imagined the potential and knew that I'd found my calling.  My personal style is a primarily defense oriented mindset and I've practiced blade and hand blocking almost constantly.  I like to use my body language, stances, and defensive solidity to force fighter options into predictable patterns/locations, solidly meet that shot with a block and counter-strike accurately to a weak location.  I prefer shoulder slot shots, extreme close-work, and stab with a very high success rate.

Other fighters use vastly different styles, take Evias for example.  We both came up using the exact same kit , min-red and small backshield, and spent long, long hours sparring each other, but developed into vastly different fighters.  He has stronger footwork than I do, and uses it incredibly effectively in combination with his shield-evading outside work.  His angles are very hard to gauge, and his speed hard to counter.  Malkin, of No Quarter! has been fighting a local game Darkon for almost twenty years.  He is a much larger fighter than we are, and his kit consists of a 5-6foot single-edged greatsword and a buckler.  He is a distance striker, with very powerful, consistent down-chops and sweeps.  He doesn't spin and moves in a relatively linear fashion.  But his power at range is over-whelming and stepping close to him results in getting shoved over by a huge, powerful frame.  There's no wrong way to do it, you just have to find out how to make your style work.


In The Mind's Eye:
Most fighters who decide to learn red sword have already learned another style to some extent.  This is due to most experienced fighters encouraging newer fighters to sword and board, pole-arm or occasionally florentine.  I don't disagree with this practice, as red weapons are inherently more dangerous than other styles.  You are simply swinging more mass around, creating a higher chance of injury at higher force.  This is not to say that red weapons cannot be wielded safely, it just requires a higher degree of emphasis on control during the learning process.  The most skilled red fighters are not those who can swing hard enough to hurt, but those fighters who can turn a blast into a tap when they see a situation go awry.  Control is power with red swords.

Every weapon combination is accompanied by a required mindset.  This isn't to say that there isn't more than one way to approach that mindset, but the general idea is based off inherent advantages and disadvantages.  Reds are incredibly powerful field tools, in conjunction with a skilled SnB or two, a red battery can be nearly unstoppable.  In 1v1 situations, we're generally at a distinct disadvantage.  SnB fighters have a large passive blocking surface that can be actively used to cut angles or stuff shots and florentine fighters have two planes whose individual offensive and defensive options can be used independently.  In exchange we gain range advantage, leverage and power.

In Dagorhir, power is generated through efficient body mechanics not musculature.  Sure being ripped doesn't hurt, but it doesn't really help either.  Proper, smooth transfer of kinetic force from the origin (shoulders/core) to the hands is crucial.  Range is probably the most important advantage.  Given equivalent speed, you gain a potential extra swing with every 8 inches of blade length you add.  However the more range you add, the longer your recovery time, regardless of weapon weight.  If you want to force improvement, put yourself at a disadvantage even further.  To challenge myself, I like to play up top with SnB fighters, rather than resorting to lower quadrant swings.  This isn't to say you shouldn't chop legs in field fights, but you get out of training what you put into it.  Happy redding campers!

-The Golden Lion

So you wanna be the very best? (What makes a fighter great?)

        Dagorhir, for all it's multifaceted fun, is primarily a fighting game.  Everyone wants to be good at it, but what separates the merely good from the great?  What sets those fighters who serve as inspirations, aside from the pack?

These are the reasons the cream rises to the top.  No particular category outweighs any of the others, and the degrees factor in quite a bit.  A fighter who lacks in one category can make up for it in another.  Most top tier fighters are some combination of these attributes, but there is a vast range of "stat" variances.


Skill:
Skill encompasses most of the things that can be learned within the game: ability with weapons, knowledge of situational shot selection of both you and your opponent, knowledge of other fighters, field awareness, decision making and correct judgement of threat levels.  Fighters who fight regularly and mindfully tend to advance in this category as they gain age and experience, while they may experience a decline in the next category....


Physical Talent:
This category encompasses many individual traits that can contribute to ability, but in simplest terms being a more capable human being makes you a more dangerous fighter.  Speed allows more tactical options, both in foot-speed and hand-speed.  Strength allows a fighter to break through guards, wield larger weapons more ably and muscle openings in defenses.  Balance allows recovery from aggression and more attack options.  Size creates angle openings and contributes to intimidation in field encounters.

This category can be improved to some extent.  A weaker fighter can work out, and through his training may improve his combat abilities.  But this category also imposes a ceiling, a fighter who is extraordinarily low in natural talent may find difficulty improving consistently in other categories.  In the same regards anyone of even low middling natural talent can become a respected fighter by concentrating heavily on....


Learning Ability:
Possibly a better way to describe this would be learning willingness.  To gain skill, a fighter must both fight consistently and mindfully.  This doesn't mean swinging a sword in a field with your buddies.  It means thinking about what you're doing every time you do it and why you made those decisions.  Then whether or not you fail miserably, you think about why the result that came about did and how you could do it differently.  Better.  Watching video of your own fighting is a strong accelerator to the process, as it allows you to do your self-analyzing after the fact with a calm mindset.  Also helpful is finding a good mentor in the style you want to learn, a good sign of...


Dedication or as I like to put it The HUNGER:
This is the most important factor in who makes it to the top.  How badly do you want to be the best?  Will you be the last fighter on the field sparring after the day's fighting?  Will you drive to events twelve hours away to fight a brace of badass Numenorean knights?  Will you travel to the deep south to tangle with the RVNS and test yourself against the skilled Sons of Tara?  Go to the Aratari and match yourself against the cogs of No Quarter!?  There's a ton of very skilled fighters spread across this nation, every region's got their local badass.  The more you seek out to fight, learn and spar from, the better you get.  Simple as that.  You've gotta want it really bad.  The Hunger is what drives fighters.  Feed your Hunger.

-The Golden Lion

So, just who the fuck are you? (An Introduction)

So. Who the fuck am I?  And why the hell should you want to read anything I have to say?

Well, frankly, you probably shouldn't.  People call me the Liar King for fucks sake!  Who would listen to the poisoned words of such a renowned scoundrel?  Haha, too many damn people is who.  How do you think I became king? :D

In this wonderful, silly-serious world of ours I'm known as Exo.  And I fucking love sword fighting.  So.  Damn.  Much.

I've been fighting for some time.  Not as long as some, but probably more than most.  For me, the act and art of sword fighting are pure joy.  I can still remember the feelings and emotions of particular days 11 years ago, the sunlight and the smell of the air, the tension and the excitement.  The energy that accompanies feeling comfortable and at home with the world.

I started a stick jock, and I still am to some extent.  I take my fighting pretty seriously, but not quite like most other serious fighters do.  I fight not to win, but as an art, a form of expression and self-improvement.  I swing sticks because through that act, more than any other, I can feel eternity.  It's the reason I've been fighting greatsword near exclusively for the last 7 years.  For me, my style and fighting the way I want is as important as improvement itself, and this has dictated my skill progression over the years.

I'll cover skill plateaus and other meta fighting concepts in a future post, but I definitely feel like the next plateau I approach will be crested not through practice, but by deepening my understanding of the underlying most basic concepts of fighting.  To that extent, I'm going to be writing much of it out, as both teaching and writing seem to help me organize my thoughts.

In this blog I will try to cover a wide range of topics, such as: great-weapon from basics to advanced, line-fighting tactics and mindset, common mistakes and misunderstandings with fighting, how to improve actively and the occasional rant.  I hope you'll enjoy reading this!

-The Golden Lion