I am teaching a class on Fiore’s system at Emerald Hastilude III, an equestrian focused event, on Aug 31, 2024. The class will give a sampling of plays from across Fiore’s manual including a dagger play, a variety of sword plays, and then some work trying to figure out some of his horseback plays. Because Fiore’s manual describes a consistent system, many of the non-horse plays can be directly adapted for use on horseback when at appropriate range. So, understanding the system is a much better approach than just understanding the 36 horse plates from the manual. The techniques will apply to the SCA’s Rossfechten ruleset which is about mounted sword play. We will probably make a video recording of the class that I will link here once it is ready.
Here are links to various slide sets, videos, and web pages related to the class:
- Fiore’s Mounted Combat plays
- Intro to Fiore’s Longsword plays from Pennsic 2024
- Video of plates, translations, and clips of Llwyd doing the longsword plays
- Learn Fiore YouTube channel
- Learn Fiore website with lots more slides, articles, and flash cards
I will be teaching two sessions of Introduction to Fiore’s Italian Longsword at Pennsic 2024. The two identical sessions will be on Thursday, August 1 and Friday, August 2 both at 10am on Rapier List 3. If you would like to take either class, there is no need to sign up, just put the class on your schedule and join me on the field! The class will cover the plays in the video and documentation slides below but will be interactive instead of a lecture. No armor is necessary; everything will be slow, controlled, and choreographed. If you have a longsword simulator/waster please bring it. I will have a half dozen or so available for use during the class.
- PDF of the class documentation in slides
- Video of plates, translations, and clips of Llwyd doing the plays
- Learn Fiore YouTube channel
I just posted a new video describing a sword combat visualization technique called “the wall”. It is intended to help a fencer build a mental model of how swords can move in three-dimensional space and how to move their sword and body to be safe and to put your opponent at risk. It can be used to understand how a system works and why some plays work the way that they do. And it can be used to prune your decision tree during a full speed fight. But, the wall is a tool not a system. In particular, the wall only implicitly addresses tempo and measure. For a longer prose and photo discussion of the wall see my article at https://baronllwyd.org/the-wall .
This video has a whole lot of NEW in it. It’s a new topic, uses 90% new hardware, 100% new software, has composited special effects, and adds a couple of YouTube features for the first time. A list of all of the gear used for this video is available at https://lloydtech.org/my-vlogging-gear .
The Learn Fiore website has articles, pictures, flashcards and more! Check it for news on both our online and in person class schedule. https://learnfiore.org/
And don’t forget to like and subscribe!
I was pretty happy with the recording of my online Fiore Dagger part 1 class recently. So, I decided to go back and record several other classes that I previously taught online, but did not record at the original time. Here are the links to the videos and slides for the new recordings.
- Fiore’s Sword in One Hand
- Fiore’s Sword in Two Hands
- Fiore’s Armored Sword
- Fiore’s Longsword for SCA Combat (a best of collection of the previous 3 classes)
- Kingdom A&S booth video – clips from all of the online class plays with no audio, designed to go with me and a display of my other teaching materials: handouts, flashcards, books, etc. in a noisy room
Atlantia's February University session will be held online on Feb 3 and 4, 2024. I will be teaching two classes. The class slides are linked below. The full Fiore presentation with video is too large to post, so the slides and included videos are linked separately:
- QR Codes, Digital Business Cards, and Video Switching - New Tech for the SCA
- Medieval Dagger Play I: Fiore's Guide to Getting Close to Your Friends
- Slides without video (pdf)
- Video without slides (YouTube links) Plates 1-10, Plates 11-21
- YouTube recording of class