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Boy howdy has it been a busy month for swords. To start with, I had the pleasure of attending my second ever HEMA tournament a few weeks ago. The “Four Openings Rapier Tournament” is now in it’s second year of operation and is put on by Adam Franti and his team over at the Lansing Longsword Guild. It’s a really fun rapier tournament that draws all sorts of fencers from a variety of HEMA schools across the Midwest. I had initially messed up my math and thought it was happening a week later, but one of my friends corrected me the Wednesday before it kicked off and thankfully I was still able to get in. I drove out there with my buddy Jim and crashed with a friend of a friend I had met once the month before.

The tournament consisted of five parts over two days. The first piece was what was called a “fechtschule” style tournament. This was a real format back in 16th century Germany where fencers would fight to “the bloom” (first blood from the head). Thankfully we didn’t have any blood, but it was interesting nonetheless to only be able to score with cuts to the head only using rapiers. When I’d gone last year, this part tripped me up the most, but thankfully things clicked in a bit more this time around. Next was the single rapier portion. We were split into four different pools and got to fight everyone round robin style with each fight consisting of five judged passes. I’m primarily used to self-called as opposed to judged fighting, but everything seemed to run really smoothly. I’ve heard of judged tournaments where judges are missing things left and right or are clearly biased in favor of this or that school. We didn’t have any of that, though. All the judges did a great job, plus all the fighters were constantly stepping up to the plate in order to call a shot on themselves that wasn’t seen or take back a shot that they didn’t think landed right.

Day two involved half of the fencers advancing to the sword and dagger pools. Both Jim and I advanced along with all my friends who were there from the Chicago Swordplay School, as well as my one friend who joined us from Champaign-Urbana. Despite the event taking place two states away, Illinois was still representing strong throughout the whole thing.

Normally pulling out a dagger gives me an advantage against HEMA fencers who almost exclusively train single sword, but everyone that day was on their game and wouldn’t let me knife them in the face. After a really intense pool, both Jim and I advanced to the final four. For this we fought the other three fencers first with single rapier, then again with rapier and dagger. From there, depending on how many points each fencer had received, we were split up into a final fight for either third place or first. Jim and I went 60/40 (him) and then 60/40 (me), a huge surprise coming from two people who have been fencing each other on a weekly basis for almost sixteen years. Thankfully I was able to do better in my other fights and make it to the fight for first, whereas Jim ended up competing for third.

With our final rounds Jim was able to cleanly win against one of our Meyerist friends. I was stuck fighting someone who’s control of tempo was almost as good as mine. However, I was able to emerge victorious with four wins, one loss, and one double.

In addition to having a winner for whoever won the most fights, my friend Sid was also voted the fencer who best embodies the spirit of the game and got to rep Chi city with me at the end of the day.

Overall it was a great weekend filled with swords and friends both new and old. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

A few days later, I had the opportunity for my second (and final) appearance on the show “Simply SCAdian, No Title Required”. It’s a truly wonderful show that spotlights folks in our organization who haven’t yet been recognized as peers (our highest award level). I had the chance to go on a few months back as part of a panel, but this time it was just me and Zsof, the show’s wonderful host. Both times I’ve been on I had a lot of fun, but after my elevation to the Midrealm’s order of defense this weekend, I won’t be able to guest spot on it anymore. If you have some time or just want to listen to me talk about swords while you do the dishes, please feel free to check it out here:

Finally, I’m going to be teaching a few classes at the upcoming Royal University of the Midrealm next month. One of them is a panel talking about how the pillars of various European swordplay systems compare. The other one is going to be walking people through the theory that’s going to be laid out in my upcoming book, “Bolognese Longsword For The Modern Practitioner”. If you can make it, the event is going to be on November 18th in the Chicago suburbs. Would love to see you all there.