Clement's Essay

Having sport fenced for a while, then taken a heavy class (not ARMA but using the Tallhoffer book for sword technique), and now a year plus into a rapier/smallsword class (having covered various styles including an early Spanish style, Agrippa, Capo Ferro, Fabris, Angelo, and now Donald McBane) I found myself chuckling at the article, not because it was wrong but because it was very right.

Timing on an attack has very little to do with speed. If all you get it down to is who can attack faster than there is very little skill involved and almost makes it a matter of who has more natural speed to get their arm moving forward. Distance, or the fact that you can hit your opponent is the key to all fighting that I've ever seen. The kicker of course is that normally, if you can hit your opponent, they can hit you. It's who realizes it first that wins.

Anyway, my point was that TROS does an excellent job of capturing the dynamic feel of combat without bogging it down in a strict, mechanics heavy system. I don't think anybody is going to use TROS as a source material for a critical paper on medieval swordsmanship, but that's not it's function. As Clement's so aptly points out, the idea is for it to make a logical sense and maintain playability. Well done Jake.