Hoof and Horn 1: Stances

Welcome to Hoof and Horn, a Bovine Guide to Belegarth. I’m Cow, and I like to whack my friends with foam bats.

My partner Herc joined Belegarth about a year ago and has been learning a lot from Rift, who has an old blog about fighting. I thought about reading it, but since I’ve been fighting seriously for about four years now, after fighting not-seriously off and on for almost 15 years, so I’m going to try my hand at writing down all of my thoughts about fighting myself. I hope this ends up being interesting for someone!

Stance

The first thing I talk to any new fighter about is their stance. There are a number of differences in how different people fight, but there is a basic stance that is pretty central for almost everyone, at least in single blue fighting. I think this makes sense as a basis off of which you can build–know the rules before you break them, etc.

The Feet

• Sword foot forward, pointed straight toward my enemy.

• Back foot is about hip width wide, and back slightly. Pointed 45 degrees out, so that my back toe is in line with my front heel.

From this stance, it should feel comfortable to both present a square profile, as well as a narrow, fencing profile, with the sword arm shoulder pointed directly forward.

This stance gives access to a variety of attacks, both sword side and crosses, and is stable for movement both on and off the line.

I tend to rest with a bit more weight on the back leg, maybe 60/40, and while I’m actively engaged I tend to shift back slightly more, around 70/30.

The Torso

In a neutral stance your torso should be upright, spine straight, with shoulders square.

The most important reason is that you’ll be in this stance a lot, and you don’t want to give yourself back problems.

Another important reason is that this gives you the ability to move your torso forward, backward, or to either side.

The third reason, and the one I will probably talk about the most, is that it allows you to transfer force from the ground, your hips, and your shoulders into your arms. If your spine or your shoulders are not squared, that power generation will become much harder and force you to rely on arm strength alone.

The Sword Arm

I have a strong preference for the denial guard as my base guard. There are many other guards, and I use many of them at different times, but the denial guard is my default, and I think also the easiest to understand.

This isn’t a very good picture; my sword hand is too wide and you can’t see my forearm

• The (primary/sword-side) denial guard has the sword arm at the level of the hips, in front and slightly outside of the span of the hips.

• The wrist should be flexed slightly outward, to create a little bit of space outside of the forearm. The true edge of a flatblade should point almost directly away from your spine.

• The tip of the sword can go in a few places, but I prefer to start from pointing about to your opponent’s matched side shoulder.

The purpose of the denial guard in single blue is to make it absolutely impossible to attack you on the guarded side. Therefore, your opponent will have to attack your opposite side or attempt a stab, and you can guard against basically every attack by simply sweeping the hilt of your sword across the line.

A good test of the denial guard is to have someone swing at your sword side over and over. By simply squeezing with your pinky to resist the attacks’ momentum and then resetting your guard each time, you should be able to take many repeated strong attacks without any additional movement.

Because you do not need to decide what to do to defend yourself, that frees up time to think about how you are going to counterattack.

When using this sweeping parry, it is ideal to end in another denial guard.

Another bad picture of a mediocre guard

• The (secondary/cross-body) denial guard has the sword arm at the level of the hips, in front and in line with the back-side hip.

• The wrist should be in line with the arm.

• The tip of the sword points at the opponent’s shoulder across from your sword arm.

Again, it should be possible to easily resist any attack on this side by squeezing with the pinky to tap the incoming attack and resetting.

Some notes on the differences between the sides:

• On the sword side, the wrist is turned out. This is because attacks from the sword side can go around the sword into the forearm. Creating extra space here makes that angle much harder to reach. In the cross-body guard, the arm will already be lined up directly behind the sword (from the direction you are denying) so the forearm is not vulnerable.

  • Additionally, the cross body guard does not let you put your full body into the strength of the block, so maintaining the arm alignment is necessary. On the sword side, if the true edge of your sword is pointed away from the spine, you can simply straighten your arm directly out to create as much block strength as you need.

• The cross-body guard does not need to go outside of the hip, because the sword side hip is noticeably further forward. It is very hard to directly attack the back side hip and should leave the attacker very vulnerable.

• The tip pointing at the opponent’s matched shoulder should maintain your sword as a complete line between the incoming attack and your body, while requiring the smallest possible adjustments in order to become a torso stab. This stops the opponent from simply walking forward to inside of your range.

The Off Hand

I keep my off hand in a fist, with the arm folded across my chest placing the hand just below my sword arm shoulder. This will protect my torso from many attacks, and gives me leeway to move the hand either up to block shots at my shoulder, or down, to block shots toward my sword-side torso. It can also sweep across to bring my hand to the other shoulder, or down past the hips to deflect stabs.

The fist is so that I don’t get hit in the fingers. Getting your fingers bent back, or worse, having a weapon come straight down on a finger, is probably the easiest way to break a bone in this game. Even a heavy lacrosse glove can’t do much to protect you.

When is this the right stance?

Every guard has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage of the denial guard is that it is difficult to attack out of. It gives strong defensive options, putting you in a good position to respond when your opponent attacks.

The denial guard IS good in single blue, because every attack your opponent makes leaves them significantly vulnerable. With sword and board, it is easy to deny almost every lane, so “the denial guard” is no longer specific enough to describe anything really.

The denial guard IS a good fit for fighting an opponent that you have not fought before, to be able to observe their attacks without having to put too much thought into defending yourself while remaining safe.

The denial guard IS a good fit against aggressive or impatient fighters, who will throw attacks even when they do not have an opening, allowing you to strongly block, then strike back at the arm or torso.

The denial guard is SOMETIMES a good fit to delay against a more skilled opponent in a team battle. Since the defensive options are simple, it will be harder for them to overwhelm you or push you out of position to get a safe kill. It will not give you a good chance at killing them, or even much chance of taking a limb. It is appropriate mostly when the rest of your team is doing well.

The denial guard is SOMETIMES a good fit against superior weapon sets. If you are playing a game where your opponents have spears, polearms, or shields, the denial guard can be a useful way of bringing your defenses back in line closer to a shield. A strong denial guard block can often open up a large enough tempo to allow you to counter with a deep hip wrap against a shielded opponent, or at least to get a safe leg hit. It can also let you close on a spear or pole, though mostly you will not be in guard in that fight. Against greatswords, denial guard won’t have enough blocking power. Against florentine, the threat of two attacks means the denial guard can’t do its job denying a lane.

The denial guard is NOT a good fit against slow-paced counter fighters on the field or in tournament qualifiers. If you and your opponent are both waiting for the other to make the first move, you can end up sitting there for a long time. This may be the right option for winning the match, but the delays can be very costly to your team or to your opportunity to win other fights.
The denial guard is NOT a good fit for winning difficult duels. The denial guard is a defensive tool. If you are in a duel, AND you need to kill your opponent, AND you cannot find avenues of attack, you probably need to try something riskier, rather than hoping you can keep up your form while waiting for your opponent to make a mistake.

Overall, the denial guard is useful in a lot of circumstances, especially for learning and surviving, which makes it a great place to start. I may talk about more stances later, though for me other stances are mostly improvisational.

This is the basis that I build on, and the first thing I talk to new fighters about if they want advice. Maybe more importantly, I can write a lot of words just about how I’m standing, so hopefully this sets some expectations for what these posts will be like.