MTFC E & Under Epee

MTFC E & Under Epee, Nov 10, 2013. This was my 14th 15th tournament [edit: Ask Fred isn't showing my tournaments correctly, weird].
[edit: The results have been posted on Ask Fred; fixing a few mistakes; link: http://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=24003&highlight_competitor_id=91067&event_id=96313 ]

Vinti blade, nice and black! My first FIE maraging steel blade. Feels great—almost springy, hard to explain.

There were just enough fencers to make it a D1 event. In the final count I think it was 15 fencers, 5 Es (needs to be 15 and 4 to be a D1). We had three pools of five fencers. My pool was me, Robert Lampson, Gregory Hopper, Donald Lake, and John Comes. I had five epees, all of which had passed the shim and weigh test when I checked them last Wednesday. The newest epee addition is a lovely Vinti FIE blade I had gotten a few weeks ago. Also, I figured out I could fit the epees in a camping chair bag, making it a lot easier to carry them. I still don't have a proper fencing bag.

My first pool bout was against Robert Lampson. I hooked up and brought the Vinti blade epee up for inspection. The ref was Craig Haworth, of all people. That was cool. A couple weeks earlier he had earned his E in foil, so now he's rated in all three weapons (having earned his epee E by beating me, naturally). Anyway, he tested my epee and to my surprise it failed the weight test. Failed the weight test?? I'd never had that happen before, or even seen it happen. And I had just tested it a few days earlier, argh! So I got a yellow card for that and went to get my next favorite epee—the other one with a Dragonetti grip. Craig tested it—and it was completely dead. What?? Getting ridiculous here! Okay, fine, I have three more epees, I'll get another. The second weapon failure turned the yellow card into a red card and thus one point against me. Robert Lampson started a point up before we even began fencing. So I got out one of my epees with a regular Visconti grip. That one passed the tests and the bout began at 0-1.

We fenced for a minute or so, with Robert scoring once or twice. At some point I made a hard beat-parry and, get this, my blade broke! Craig didn't notice at first and I moved back and held my hand up. "Um, half my epee is gone..." Really, about half the blade had snapped off and apparently went flying across the room. Gregory found it and I went to get a *fourth* epee. At least that one passed the tests and you don't get carded for having an epee break. But my focus was a little off, shall we say, for a while. I lost to Robert, 3-5 I think 2-5.

That really put the butter on the spinach.

Next I fenced Gregory Hopper. We had fenced twice before—once in a pool and once in a DE bout, and I had won both times (although the pool bout ended 5-4). Well, not this time. It ended 2-5, or maybe 3-5 (the results are still not online, I think MTFC is having computer trouble today—I'll add a link when there is one). I could blame the loss on my epee troubles making me distracted, or that the epee I ended up using was not canted enough and throwing my aim off, but actually Gregory fenced quite well. He's clearly been practicing! Still, even he said, afterward, that I had 2 or 3 times almost hit but simply missed. It's possibly he was fencing well and my aim was off. Also, I am pretty sure I made a foot hit, but Craig called it as a floor hit (we weren't on a grounded strip). My tip was on the floor, but I thought I had slid it to Gregory's foot. Hard to say for sure though.

Next up was Donald Lake. I've fenced him a number of times; I think I've always won. And, I don't know, maybe over time I've been getting better. It seemed fairly easy to work the distance and score with straight shots to his shoulder. He got a couple points, but I won, 5-2 I think 5-3.

My final pool bout was against John Comes, who I've also fenced a number of times, sometimes winning sometimes losing. I particularly remember losing a DE bout to him at RCFC. At the start of the pool I had figured he would be the hardest fencer, but he seemed to be having a bit of an off day (although in the DEs he did much better and came in 2nd place overall). Our pool bout was similar to the one we had at the Subway Games at RCFC last August: I found myself able to catch his attacks and score with strong parries and blade takes. In this case I actually shut him out, winning 5-0. That made up for the rough start to the pools!

During the time between the pools and the DEs I fixed my Vinti epee, the one that had failed the weight test. At first I thought I'd just try taking the tip apart and putting it back together, but then figured I could replace the tip with the one from the blade that had broken. Craig let me test it with his weight, and then helped me test it on a strip. It worked! When I mentioned it to Amber, and how I had never failed a weight test before, she said usually it means the big spring is just worn out. It shouldn't have been, since the blade and tip is only a few weeks old, but whatever. I fixed it and it worked great for the rest of the tournament.

Yea, it's, like, black. A black blade, just like Elric's.

My first DE was against Amber Race. As when we've fenced at SAS I tended to push her back to the end of the strip. But after I got a few points up I began to wait her out more and she was reluctant to attack. When she did attack I was usually able to counterattack or parry-riposte and score. The ref was George Peebles. Near the end of the first period, after a point was scored, I glanced at the time remaining. It was about 20 seconds. I pushed Amber back to her end of the strip and waited for an opening or for time to run out. But time kept passing, more than 20 seconds, and George didn't call time. I couldn't see the machine from where I was so I just kept on. Eventually there was some action and an obvious point scored, but the machine didn't register. The machine showed about 30 seconds. I assumed time had run out and that was the rest period time showing. I said as much to George but he didn't believe me and had us continue fencing. No points were scored before time ran out. Then George was confused when the machine showed 3 minutes instead of 1 for the rest period. He fiddled with it a bit before admitting I had probably been right in the first place. After a minute we were ready to start the second period but after George's fiddling the machine showed a score of 0-0. I asked what the score was and George seemed to not know. As he worked to reset the machine I said I thought it was 7-5. Amber sportingly said no, it was 8-5. George agreed after thinking about it.

With a three point lead I played things safe and slowly built a larger lead. As the second period wound down the score got to something like 14-10. When there was less than 30 seconds in the period I simply held back, waiting for Amber to come to me, but she also stayed back. When the time got to about 10 seconds George called non-combativity, to my surprise. So instead of letting the period end he moved us straight into the third period. Okay, whatever. It was over soon enough, 15-10 or 15-11 15-8.

Because I had only done mediocre in the pools my second DE bout was against the 1st place seed, a kid I hadn't met before named Luke LaRocque. When I saw I was to fence the top seed, who had won all his pool bouts with an indicator of +15, I quailed a little. But talking to Amber, who had been in his pool, well, she said he had done so well because he was in "the easy pool" and that I shouldn't worry too much. She also described his style as being flashy and big, but somewhat wild and uncontrolled—that his height (about 6'2" or 3") had been an advantage in his pool ("made up mostly of short women", she said), but shouldn't be a major concern for me (I'm 6'0"). She suggested I watch for openings in his overly "big" style. And that's pretty much what I did.

Luke's style was "big", active and attack-focused, but also, just like she said, rather wild. Some of the wildness was deliberate—he was, as the kids at RCFC might say, of the Varney school of fencing (meaning John Varney's son)—seeking to confuse or throw people off by being somewhat "unorthodox". But some of his wildness was simply overreacting or using overly large motions. I found I was able to do well by keeping good distance and using a variety of feints, second intentions, and generally setting up patterns in order to draw out certain attacks, or breaking the patterns when the timing was just so. I used a lot of slow "sweeping 4" type motions, mostly with the aim of either drawing an attack in 6 which I could stop with a strong parry 6 or, if he came close, parry prime, or attacking low in a 4-5 cross kind of way. I never did a real 4-5 cross but I did score at least once with the low flicky motion of the cross while his blade went over my half duck. In a couple other cases I scored with a prime or "prime-ish" parry-riposte. That always feels nice.

For most of the bout I was up a point or two. Two or three times he tied it up. A couple times he pulled a point or two ahead but I managed to regain a lead again. It went rather quickly. Luke rarely waited long before attacking. I was up 10-9. But near the end of the 1st period I made a couple of mistakes and he got a couple good hits, including a nice fast flick that surprised me. I made an ill-advised, badly planned attack that failed (he scored). The period ended with Luke up, 12-10. Charlie gave me a pep talk and was cheering me on, which was nice. In the second period I knew I had to score a good number of single lights. I continued to work on distance and timing—and also tried to "break up his preparations", as Charlie suggested. After a feint he made an overly large charge and I was able to score with a nice counterattack. 12-11! But then, alas, a series of touches that were close but his, 13-11, 14-11. I got one more point in there, but it ended 15-12. I'm not sure exactly how those last touches went. Perhaps I wasn't keeping distance as well, in my desire to make single light points. Maybe trying to break up his preparations made me get a little too close. Maybe I was thinking too much about single lights and looking for openings. Maybe at the end he reined in his wildness and simply didn't make the kind of mistakes I was looking for. Maybe a little of all of those things.

In any case, thus went another almost-E rating. Had I won that bout I would have gotten that E. So it goes. A good tournament nonetheless. Although I lost to Luke I mostly felt in control of the bout, and it was a very exciting, fast-paced bout. It felt good to be able to face someone I had never fenced, or even watched before, and be able to assess things with a decently calm clarity of mind, while working hard physically. It was especially nice to be able to see aspects of his fencing I could take advantage of, devise plans to do so, and actually carry them out fairly well. There was one parry prime riposte I made that felt especially well done.

And there's always next time, and the time after that. In just a week there is an open mixed epee event at SAS. Currently there are 19 fencers signed up, and it would be an A1 event. I don't hope to win or anything, but I plan to do well, damnit! Plus, looks like lots of people I like fencing: Toby and Andrew Lee, Chris Winters, Russ, Carlo Malaguzzi, Gregory Hopper, John and Mathew Comes, Jim Henderson, Joel, and even Luke LaRocque. Perhaps I can avenge myself.