I will be teaching two classes at Atlantia's February 2025 Winter University on Saturday February 1, 2025. Attendance is free and open to anyone, but advanced registration through the University website is required. The classes are:

  • Medieval Dagger Play II: Fiore's Guide to Getting Close to Your Friends - This is the sequel to the earlier part 1 class that covered the first 21 plays of Fiore's dagger section.

  • Creating SCA classes for YouTube - Do you want to share your energy and excitement about your SCA interests beyond your local area? YouTube is an excellent way to do that, even for folks with no plan to become famous social media influencers. This class will discuss planning your video, equipment that you can use, and how YouTube works.

The class slides/notes will be added to this post before the classes are taught so that students may refer to their own copies. The classes will be recorded live and then posted to the Learn Fiore YouTube channel shortly afterward. Links to those recordings will also be added to this post.

I just posted a two new videos to YouTube. Both are Fiore-adjacent. By this I mean they describe non-Fiore ideas but they can be applied to a study of Fiore. Also, both videos use a Fiore play as an example of the concepts.

The first is about a fencing drill called the Chess Drill. A pair of unarmored fighters take turns moving. The moving fighter takes a single tempo action to make themselves safe and put the opponent at risk. In other words they take themselves out of check and put the other fighter in check. Then they switch roles and the other fighter gets a turn. The passive fighter should watch the moving fighter's actions, make suggestions if asked, and provide feedback if the movement would have been foolish in a real fight. The video shows examples of good and foolish moves. 

The second video is about the topic of feints and creating multi-intention combination attacks.

 

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:

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.

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!

  1. More new videos!
  2. February 2024 University Classes
  3. New Article Posted
  4. Website Updates

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