Medieval Combat Methods and Styles

[RTH]

Sadly, that's how a lot of supposed WMA practitioners (and a few well-known teachers) figure out their moves, too -- looking at the pictures. Less of a problem now than it was five years ago, yet still a problem as some of them have made themselves pretty prominent in the media (relatively speaking, of course! )

But if you want to learn more about that, you'd have to go visit Swordforum...


Though to get back to the thread, I'm awfully tired of swords in stories cutting through steel and rock and everything else. Lightsabers, maybe, steel, no. Maybe there should be a reference on pre-firearm myths and realities. (speaking of, Mythbusters is testing on Wed. whether a sword can cut throgh a gun barrel or not. I can already tell you what the results are going to be, but it'll still be fun to watch)

 

[zornhau]

Argh! Talhoffer is all SPECIAL MOVES

At least the technical terms are one of the few problems I don't have writing my fight scenes. I've got a copy of Tallhoffer's manual, and looked through a couple other fechtbucher, but I haven't quite learned all the terms, and I don't have the same level of experience at WMA as many of the others in this thread, just some epee fencing (which, I've learned, definitely isn't the same thing!). So mostly I've tried to think of a logical combination of moves, and then just taken my best stab (no pun intended) at describing the move based on how it looks in the drawings.

Seriously. Argh. There's about one Meisterhau illustrated - Krumphau IIRC - and that's the off hand variation.

Talhoffer is almost all special moves, variations and advanced concepts. It's like you're trying to write a road novel, but your only knowledge of cars comes from the illustrations from the Ruritanian State Police Advanced Combat Driving Course.

By far the best source for writing longsword fights is Tobler's "Fighting with the German Longsword" which, god help me, even has flow charts. Of course, some of his intepretations are probably wrong. And there's no substitute for actually learning to use a sword....