AG Open 2023

Introduction

On May 4th 2023 I took a car ride up with Dan Evans and Ryhs Grayson from Steel City Historical Fencing up to Plymoth Michigan for Ars Gladii’s second rendition of their huge tournament: AG Open 2023. I’d signed up for 2 events: Open Longsword which gets separated into either C tier for beginners, B tier for intermediates, and A tier for advanced fighters, the Longsword Relay. Aside from the tournament they had a star studded line up of instructors teaching a myriad of subjects and an impressive line up of vendors. First let’s discuss the elephant in the room:

The Tournament’s Ruleset

For the most part the rules were the same as usual; however there were some pretty big exceptions:

- repeated doubles result in loss of points for fighters. If three double-hits are recorded in a pool play match, the match is a loss for both fighters

- clear afterblows count as -1 point per event

- one-handed strikes aren't permitted unless grappling (i.e. no geislings)

- cuts to the torso are +1 point, not +2 as they are in Ohio

- only the top 50% of fighters in the pool round advance to the elimination bracket

The first rule feels very harsh. When you’re fighting at quick speed it becomes very difficult to notice the subtleties of your opponent’s actions to avoid doubling. In that sense they can feel unavoidable at times which is why I feel that this rule is unnecessarily punitive. Image playing a piano at a recital except all of the incorrect keys are electrified. So long as you’re perfect you won’t feel a thing, but one misstep could cost you a point and three could cost you the whole match. So … you know … no pressure.

Initially I thought the second rule subtracted a point from the person who performed the after blow … but upon further clarification it subtracted it from the person who received it. Without any tempo rules, it essentially gives your opponent the ability to nullify your points by flailing wildly after being attacked. In cases where there was a tie and only a clean hit would end the match, fights that should have only lasted 1 minute 30 seconds dragged on for 10+ minutes!

Rule 3 should have just been “no geislings”. One handed thrusts are perfectly martial. If they’re good enough for rapier, side sword, small sword, arming sword, saber, dagger, and sharpened pencil they are good enough for longsword. That is a hill I am ready and willing to die on. Now I will get off my soap box.

Rule 4 seems … ok. But Rule 5 I’m not a fan of … but for the sake of squeezing in 3 tournaments into one day … I get it. Thankfully there’s other stuff for people to do besides fight. With all of that out of the way, let’s discuss the tournament itself.

Longsword Tier A

In my pool there were a few new faces but most I’d already met. Nate Wallace and I go way back. A lefty from Ohio, he’s been on the HEMA scene almost as long as I have, but he’d been out of the tournament circuit for a while. Ours was a really tough fight. We were neck and neck until the end when I managed to pull off this awesome ass thrust.

Match winning thrust!

My next fight was against Aiden Whitherspoon. I remember this kid from way back when he first started fighting. He used to be “easy to kill”, but he’s been training with Medieval European Martial Arts Guild (MEMAG) Crossing Fight School. He’s gone on to win gold at Ascalon’s 2022 Longsword Tier A competition and really makes me proud to know him. It was as pleasant to fight him again after all these years; if not a little intimidating. Still, I’m no pushover. Our fight was close. I scored points, he scored points. But in the end he got me with a solid thrust to the chest.

Then there was my fight with Stephen Cheney. For those who don’t know, he’s basically the Kobe Bryant of fencing. More medals than you can shake a stick at, wrote an actual book on the subject, he’s as decorated as they come. The last time we got to fight was at Ram Point 2018. In that tournament, only one exchange would be traded in which he beat me with a single geisling. In response, I fell to me knees and shouted “NOOOOO” dramatically. He later apologized saying he only allows himself one of those strikes per tournament and he was intimidated by me enough to whip it out. At the time I’d not experienced such flattery from a fencer of that caliber. This would be the first time in years he and I would get to fight in an exchange more than one strike long. Part of me had always wondered how I would have fared if I’d had more time. Well now I know. He whopped my ass. I did manage to get 2 points on him but this was a fight that was good and satisfying, but not long or close. In my defense he would go onto win Gold in the whole event so at least he kicked literally everyone else’s asses too. Sadly my two wins and two losses didn’t put in the top 50% of fighters to go onto eliminations, but at this level of competition consistently getting medals and getting into the elimination bracket is much more difficult. Had this been all I was signed up for I would have felt really disappointed to come all this way, but thankfully there was a whole lot more going on.

The Classes

While I had some time to kill until the end of the day I decided to pop over to the class room to see what lessons were being offered. Kat Dunham was getting ready to teach a class on how an ecological approach to training can help engage students by building their confidence and guiding them towards becoming better fencers as opposed to the old school method of beating the mistakes out of them.

During the class it was refreshing to hear that a lot of the methods I’ve been using in my teaching align with the ecological approach. I know first hand how demoralizing it can be to have a teacher tell you you’re doing it wrong and chastise you for not doing it exactly the way it’s “supposed to be”. I also strive to make the process of training inherently fun so that instead of getting bent out of shape about getting it right, students just do the exercise for the exercise’s sake and improve naturally over time. It takes longer than the old school approach, but in my experience it leads to less attrition. What was most enlightening is that she highlighted certain types of students I’ve had in the past who would get really down on themselves for not doing it “right”. In my attempt to show them the “right way” I had inadvertently been demoralizing them when they still didn’t get it. Those students typically didn’t come back, and when they didn’t it felt like a failure on my part. Kat’s suggestion is to shift their focus from a goal oriented approach to a progress oriented approach where students strive to improve rather than master the technique the first time they try it. This has the added benefit of teaching them to learn in baby steps and not beat themselves up about not getting it perfect on the first go around.

The Vendors

When I wasn’t fighting or learning, I got to embark on my other favorite thing to do: shopping! Of the vendors present I wanted to highlight a few of my favorites.

Ox And Blow Sportswear

I’d never heard of these guys before the tournament. Initially they lured me in with these dope ass stickers!

What I hadn’t realized was that they have a whole bunch of cool clothes for sale and they do custom orders. Sadly they do not sell these dope ass stickers on-line so you’ll have to contact them if you’re oozing with jealousy.

Purple Heart Armory

I ran into Natasha Darce again! A super pleasant person, she’s always been one of my favorite HEMA equipment vendors. They have stuff in stock in the US, their customer service is exceptional, and they even gave us a discount code “HH” which saves you 5% on any of your purchases! She almost tempted me into some new light sparing gloves, but they didn’t have my size in stock. That’s ok, the club is in the market for some plastrons though so I’ll get some later.

Seven Embers Forge

As you may have guessed from the fact that I run a fencing club … I have a lot of swords, yet the only sword I didn’t have at the time was a side sword. I’ve seen advertisements for side sword competitions in Maryland and through the SCA, yet for ages I told myself “No, Chris. Be responsible. Think of the club! You can’t get yourself competition weapons when there’s still club weapons to buy!” And for ages I abstained from buying any more competition weapons for myself … until I saw this beauty!

Now this isn’t exactly the sword I bought. The cross guard and pommel on mine are blue, but this was a much better picture than what I tried to take with my shitty camera.

It was gorgeous! Stunning! I picked it up and swung it. The balance was perfect. It fit in my hand like it was made just for me. The weight was in the handle so cutting was effortless, but the blade was so light I could disengage and thrust in the blink of an eye! And the handle … the coper wire threaded and wrapped around the handle looked so elegant! There was a similarly gorgeous saber next to it but it had these big ass loops for a guard which (although beautiful) invites skilled fencers to target your hands. I knew this was the sword for me, but I walked away lest I give into the impulse to buy it.

When I returned later, someone had bought the saber! It is at this point that my scarcity fear loomed its ugly head. After the seller said she’d knock $20 off the price, I caved and bought it. If you’re reading this, don’t tell my husbands.

Coaching for Tier B Longsword

After I had finished spending oodles of money, I coached for some of my friends from Steel City who were fighting in Tier B longsword. What I saw next was … rough. Initially I’d expected the double rules to come up often but the rule that came up the most in a negative way was the after blow rule. Basically it caused the fights to drag on for ages past when they should have. In one instance when the two fighters were tied and a clean hit was needed to end the exchange, the fight went on for an additional 8 minutes past the end of the clock because one fighter would hit, and the other fighter would immediately after blow and cancel it out. In tournaments where tempo is a factor, there is a limited amount of time a fighter has to strike their opponent for it to count, but without that rule in place the match just dragged on and on. I coached my fighter to strike the hands then immediately parry on this left and thankfully that ended the madness. In another fight I’d seen a fairly seasoned fighter end up doubling out and losing the match, she then rage quit and stormed off in frustration.

As I was watching the Tier B fights, I wondered to myself why I didn’t feel this level of frustration when I was fighting in Tier A. It wouldn’t be until almost a week later as I was drafting this blog post that I realized something fairly profound. Before Flowerpoint 2017, I was a good fighter, but I was reckless. My whole strategy was to strike as quickly and in rapid succession until my opponent fell before me. When I competed in that tournament, the rules were fairly simple. Everyone starts off at 0 points, and loses points every time they get hit. It was meant to teach people to be more defensive. At the time, since offense was my only tactic, I did very poorly and it was the most humbling experience I’d ever felt. Since then I developed a much more defensive strategy when fighting. I move very little until I’m ready to attack. Only when I see an opening I can attack and an avenue of escape do I go in for attacks. I think about my opponent’s offensive options for reprisals when I attack and I account for them as I’m retreating. Because of this, I do well in tournaments and the rules didn’t affect me much. Mind you I still had two doubles in one match, but both my opponent and I slowed down afterwards and finished the rest of the fight cleanly. So too did the fencers who made it to the top of Tier B. AG Open had taught them the lesson that Flowerpoint had taught me.

The ruleset felt punitive towards aspects of fencing that are very difficult to control; especially at higher levels, but when I saw the quality of the fencing from the people at the top it definitely feels as though the ruleset achieved its goals. Was it fun having points negated because your opponent got a hit on you after the fact? No. So although I wouldn't call the ruleset enjoyable I would consider it a hard lesson every fencer owes themselves to experience if they seriously want to refine their fencing abilities.

The Longsword Relay

Ok, now that I’ve addressed the bad stuff, let’s talk about the most fun I’ve had at a fencing tournament in years: the Longsword Relay. The basic premise is that every school is allowed to put together a team of 3 people. Both teams pick the order in which their fighters will deploy. Whenever a team gets 5 points scored against them, they switch to the next fighter. The first team to score 15 points wins. Being the only one from Hilt and Helm to make it, I was thrown into a pickup team. To form the pickup teams, they mix up all of the loose fighters together and select a Tier A, Tier B, and Tier C fighter at random to form the team. My team mates were DJ Nero from Texas and Stephen Briggs from Alberta, Canada. Since DJ was the least experienced tournament fighter we put him up front, followed by Stephen, and I was the anchor. This worked out beautifully because the two of them wore down the fighters so I didn’t have to kick everyone’s ass by myself. During our first fight, DJ knocked out their Tier C fighter then scored a few points on their Tier B fighter before getting knocked out. Stephen knocked out their Tier B fighter but was out matched by their Tier A fighter. It is at that point I strutted my gay ass out onto the field, waved “hi” like an anime character, then thrusted their dude right in the chest! I’ve never felt more like the big boss at the end of a dungeon in my life. “Fight my two evil henchmen, only then will you face me!”

For years, I have only ever fought in the tri-state area of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. I’m used to fighting more or less the same bunch of people and everyone knows how dangerous my thrust game is. It was wildly refreshing to try out my tactics against people who’d never seen or fought me before and be reminded of how utterly terrifying I can be! The “ooohs” and “aaahs” of new people seeing how fast my “Phantom Thrust” (as they call it) filled me with a level of excitement and joy I haven’t felt in ages. The name; by the way, comes from the fact that the thrust comes out of nowhere, is lightning fast, and just the threat of it is enough to stop someone from charging in and make them shutter in fear. Check out this video from one of our fights. In it, the one other team that was as hard to kill as us managed to knock out both of my team mates, then I managed to knock out their two and face their anchor fighter. And we were the only team in the pool to get him to actually fight!

In the end, our team came in 9th. For a bunch of random fighters cobbled together at the last minute, we did damn good and I’m super proud of both of my team mates! This is a tournament format I definitely intend to steal for future events.

Conclusion

So all in all, I’m super glad I came out to Michigan for this tournament. The rules were very tough and brutal, but challenging and fair. They had an awesome selection of classes and vendors. The longsword relay was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a longsword tournament and I will happily steal their format.