Instant gratification messer fun!

[Sword Chick]

Hello,

I thought some of y'all might be interested in knowing (and perchance haven't heard yet) that Freelance Academy Press has a downloadable video with a companion PDF on an anonymous messer treatise from the Glasgow Fechtbuch.  It's well done, informative, inexpensive and you get it instantly.  Pretty good deal.

I got it yesterday and have only watched it once so far.  I especially enjoyed it because Das Bill had me working through some of those plays in my lessons before the holiday break.

You can get it here:

http://www.freelanceacademypress.com/GlasgowMesser.aspx

Enjoy!

[Sir Edward]

This looks awesome. I think I need to grab that.

[Sword Chick]

It is.  You do.

Remember, Das Bill said we are going into messer in class after the break.  Time to get ahead of the curve.   

[Sir William]

Anything related to sword instruction is awesome...I have very little knowledge regarding messers or how they were used; I just thought of them as single-edged swords much like a falchion or backsword.  I am learning, slowly.

[Sir Edward]

A lot of the messer techniques will apply to fairly average sized single-hand swords, but there are a few things that really are meant for the way the messers were built. The nagel comes to mind, which is a protrusion out the side of the guard. Some of the techniques assume you have one. Otherwise, it's all pretty adaptable.

[Sir William]

Huh...singlehand swords is where it's at for me...guess I should sign up for a class at some point so I can actually learn this stuff in real time.

[Sir Edward]

Absolutely! You won't regret it. It's a blast.

The historical techniques for single-hand usually fall into two categories-- Messer, and Sword & Buckler, since that's what most of the currently available surviving material covers. Either approach will give you a really good grasp of how to fight with a single sword.

Longsword tends to be taught a lot since it also historically was a good teaching weapon. What you learn can be scaled down to a single-hand sword, and also scaled up to a spear or poleaxe. There's also a lot of good surviving material on it. But you don't have to start there if you don't want to. Personally I found it easier to start there and then work in some of the added complexity of having your other hand do something different.