Lord Baltimore's Challenge

 Once again, it's been a hot minute since I posted here. Good times, good times.

So yeah, I know that I've still got some yelling about Silver and more Fabris and Marozzo and knives and stuff sitting in my drafts folder, languishing and incomplete, but I'm going to instead write about some thoughts, takeaways, and ideas that I have from attending Lord Baltimore's Challenge this past weekend. I have a bunch of them, and they're varied, so buckle up.

The first day had three tournaments - sidesword, single rapier, and rapier/dagger. This was my first time playing in a judged tournament format, and it was interesting. We were encouraged to self-call hits if we felt something and the judges missed it, which did happen occasionally. The rules for the tournaments, assuming I'm remembering them correctly, went something like:

• Sidesword
  These rules were intended to represent a lethal duel.
• Each pairing was three passes, stopped when a single blow was struck. Points got totaled up over the course of the pool.
• Cut or thrust to the head or torso: 3 points
• Cut or thrust anywhere else: 1 point
• Opponent steps entirely out of the ring: 3 points
• If there is a simultaneous 3 point wound, neither fighter was awarded points for that pass. The pass was not refought. Consider parrying.
• If there is a 3 point wound struck at the same time as a 1 point wound, the fighter who struck the lethal blow receives 3 points and the other fighter gets nothing.
• When the first blow is struck, the other fighter can return an afterblow, but it has to be thrown immediately and they have a single tempo worth of action to use. (In practice, this wasn't all too different than "if you're already in motion..." in the SCA, but some exceptions happened.)
• After each pass, the ring director has the discretion to award a "technical point" to a fighter who displayed good skill with their blow. These only counted to break ties.
  
  
• Single Rapier
  Similar to the sidesword contest, these were intended to replicate a lethal fight. Rules were identical to sidesword with the following exceptions:
• Cut to the head was 3 points. Thrust to the head or torso was 3 points.
• Cut or thrust anywhere else was 1 point.

The last tournament was set up differently:

• Rapier and dagger
  This was more SCA rapier style, but with Very HEMA scoring. The rules were intended to replicate a contest or display of skill, rather than a lethal engagement.
• Thrust only! Head or torso was 3 points, anywhere else was 1 point. Leaving the ring was worth 3 points for your opponent.
• In the case of simultaneous blows, both scored.
• Bouts lasted 90 seconds or until a fighter reached 15 points. 
• When a blow landed, time stopped and the fighters reset.
• Technical points worked as before.

These were fought in round robin pools, and the top eight scoring fighters across all the pools advanced to a single elimination bracket. (They did top 16 last LBC but in the interest of time, it had to be reduced.) Through arcane math, points were normalized for the pools which had 5 fighters vs the ones who had 4. I wasn't particularly stressed about this though. (Which is a theme I'll come back to.) Also, ring directors applied the technical points somewhat differently - some tossed them around like candy, for any blow which was thrown in tempo and was clean. Notably, Guy Windsor was very strict with his use of them, handing them out only for what he felt were excellent displays of technical skill.

I helped judge the sidesword tournament; I didn't have the time to get together the higher armor required for it, and honestly I wasn't sure if my shoulder could have handled it. After being there, I suspect it could have, but it would have been extremely tired for the rapier and dagger tournament, which would have been upsetting. Judging was certainly fun, although stressful, and absolutely forced me to spin up the long disused fight recall skills.

Fighting in single rapier was enjoyable as all get out. Definitely a different setup than the SCA in a lot of ways, and pretty cut heavy, but it was still a good time. I didn't perform as well as I would have liked, but I'm simply not as used to dealing with cuts (which I will have to remedy), and next time I'd really consider going down to a 39" rapier blade with a little more heft to it. I did walk out of Guy's pool with three (3!) technical points though, which served as an excellent counter to my brain being a bit down on my fencing. I was disappointed that I didn't do better, but I wasn't really angry with myself. I just have some concrete things to work on, is all. If you know me at all well, this will strike you as a shockingly well-adjusted response. It sure surprised me!

Rapier and dagger went similarly. I thought I performed quite well, though of course I have some things I need to work on there as well. Things to improve, but I wasn't stressed or angry about them. The vagaries of points kept me out of the top 8, but that's fine. I was wiped the hell out anyway, so getting to run back to the hotel a little sooner than normal and grabbing a shower was worth it.

Let's pause here during my recounting of the day's events and poke at a couple things. It was really weird to not be actively annoyed at my perception of my fencing. I think there are a few different reasons why, but the big ones had a lot to do with the atmosphere: I was just there to fence my best fencing - I wanted to bring my Fabris game and do it as well as I could, and if I did it well enough I should therefore do well in the tournament and that's good! That was it, though. Nobody was sitting around judging me. There wasn't pressure to Fight As Well As A Master Of Defense Should. I didn't need to put on a show or maintain a level of skill or anything. There were zero expectations on me that I felt like I had to fulfill in terms of how well I fought. I imagine that it would have been quite similar, if not more striking, for people who don't have these fencing awards - nobody's watching and judging and opining on whether you're Good Enough or anything like that. You could just go and do your best, whatever it was in that moment, and that's all. This was so goddamn refreshing, y'all. 

Seriously like... is this what a mentally healthy examination of a day's fencing is? Weird.

Let's talk about another thing that came up during the tournament: stepping entirely out of the ring was equivalent to a fatal blow struck against you. I loved this. I loved this so much. You actually needed to pay attention to where you were. You couldn't just retreat endlessly. No recentering. Not even a hold and restart. You either stopped and parried, moved sideways, or you lost. I want to do this so badly. Sure, I mean, if I'm doing a By The Book kind of thing, I can pull up (for instance) a stage size from my blog posts about it and set up a list to those dimensions and say if you put a foot out you've fallen off and lose. That's a really specific setting, though - the type of person to enjoy a By The Book tournament would probably be tickled by that kind of historic note. But most fencers in most other tournaments? Maybe not so much. But I want to do it anyway. 

The rings were 8 meters in diameter, which was plenty of room for us. They were using these foam interlocking pieces sold by Purpleheart Armory, though they aren't currently listed on their site. When they were, they were something like $535, which is a bit prohibitive to casually pick up. (This sounded like a lot to me, then I did the math about how long that circumference would be.) They were really cool though - not remotely a tripping hazard, but enough to give you feedback if you stepped on it, and enough that you can see them while you fight. Much better than ropes as a boundary if you're using this kind of rule. Other concerns for doing this in a tournament would be that lists must be of a uniform size and shape. I prefer circles for this because, honestly, no corners to get stuck in. So I'll be idly poking around for ideas for making this kind of list work. Lilias suggested cable covers, which might be a good place to start, if I can find some which aren't expensive and also can take a curve. We'll see.

Moving on! Sunday had classes - which is one of the two biggest reasons for me to go to these kinds of things! 

I ended up starting with Kaja Sadowski's classes on Godinho's two sword material, which was tons of fun to play with, great to learn about, and honestly a chill movement warmup for the morning. To summarize: Godinho's two sword material is all about crowd control and surviving. Not beating everyone there, but living until help comes or you get away. It's really cool and playing around with it in that context is great.

I followed these up with Guy Windsor's classes on Controlling The Story, which was about both mindset things and also maintaining blade control, as well as his class on diagnosing and figuring out fixes for fencing problems. These were excellent, and I'm looking forward to applying the lessons learned here in building drills and fixing the problems I noted the day before.

The other big reason I go to these things? The people. Getting to hang out and socialize and chat about nerdy sword things with other nerdy sword people is a joy. I was lucky enough to be able to spend time with David Biggs, and he generously let us examine and (carefully) take out some of the Actual For Reals Very Sharp antiques that he had. I've noticed it before, but I was struck by it again - these blades vanish if they're pointed at you correctly. Remy got some pictures of us with them (all the photo credit is his, and thank you for letting me use them), and as weird as it is to see it in this form, let me tell you, it's bonkers scary to experience it.

Here I am in my "I have been on a plane and traveling and am tired" Fabris stance. Spot where the blade is. For bonus points, tell me if you can guess the size of it and how far it is from you.

Remy's here in a more upright Capo Ferro stance. There isn't much more of the blade to see in here, either.

Finally, here I am with Guy Windsor, as we show each other how scary it is and why using swords properly was a thing people did.

The third picture really illustrates a lot to me - if anyone ever thinks, "Why do I need to find my opponent's sword? I can just take a bazillion other positions that work well," I think they're missing a really important historical point - actual rapiers are scary, they're sharp, and it's really hard to see them clearly. Our simulators have tips which stand out, and wider blade geometry which makes a difference too. If someone was pointing something like this at you, trying to put your sword right in the way and doing your best to close that line is what hopefully keeps you from panicking and dying.

Anyway! This was an absolutely amazing time, I had tons of fun, I got to see people I haven't seen in literally years and catch up with them and also be giant sword nerds with them and I cannot wait to see if this happens again next year. If it does, I will absolutely be there.