Weapon Binding ... fencers.

[Drifter Bob]

Thanks for the explanations.

Okay, I think I get it. Use your guard and your blade to push your opponent's blade into an inconvenient location. Good so far. Now this can be used to "set up" a disarm or a weapon trap if you catch his guard.
What does "trapping" his weapon mean?

Just incidentally, if you are talking about something from the medieval period or on the actual military battlefields of the Renaissance such as a longsword or arming sword fencing (bastard / greatsword or longsword in D&D terms) a bind in a practical sense means whenever you are pushing against the other weapon for a moment. If you are controlling the bind it generally means you have both the initiative in terms of timing, and your strong (the base or first third of your blade) against his center or weak third of his blade, and you are normally pushing it aside to follow up with a cut or thrust against him. A lot of times in a practical sense it means you have stopped his momentum cold and are controlling the pace of the fight, albiet for just a moment.

A 'beat' by contrast is when you simply knock his weapon aside, also often regaining initiative in the process.

There are many maneuvers which lead from the bind in the books of the old masters: windings, disengages and twitch cuts, push-over thrusts, grappling and all kinds of halfswording options, but from my experience with sparring it doesn't happen all that often with two handed swords, maybe once every few bouts, though that depends on the fighting styles of the antagonists. When it does it opens up a very interesting range of options! It is more frequent when fighting with other weapon combinations, sword and dagger especially, or when fighting against pole arms such as spears. It also seems to happen more often fighting in harness (heavy armor) than unarmored.

With the latter in particular, if you are using a shorter weapon, you will often try to 'bind' a spear, staff or pole-arm to the side, above, or (best of all) down while you rush in, closing the distance for a kill.

The Hollywood cliche of a bind is where you see in many (especially old) swashbuckling movies when both fencers are pushing against each others blades strong against strong for what seems like an eternity in actual fighting time (5 to 10 seconds or more), often to pause and pronounce some pithy dialogue .... I've almost never seen a bind like that in real life, they usually resolve in one way or another within a very short time indeed, rarely for more than half a second.

As for traps and using the hilt to disarm and such, I think that is much more prevalent with modern sport fencing than with medieval or Renaissance military techniques, though some what more so with Renaissance era civilian cut-and-thrust weapons such as rapiers/ sideswords with complex hilts.


J

 

[Xath]

The Hollywood cliche of a bind is where you see in many (especially old) swashbuckling movies when both fencers are pushing against each others blades strong against strong for what seems like an eternity in actual fighting time (5 to 10 seconds or more), often to pause and pronounce some pithy dialogue .... I've almost never seen a bind like that in real life,

That's because in modern fencing, a clashing of the bells (or guards) is known as a Couer a Couer (sp?) and will result in a yellow card for the instigator.

 

[Drifter Bob]

That's because in modern fencing, a clashing of the bells (or guards) is known as a Couer a Couer (sp?) and will result in a yellow card for the instigator.

Thats interesting, though with regard to my own observations, I wasn't referring so much to sport fencing, as to real fencing with longswords, arming swords, or at least rapiers.

J

 

[Darklone]

Actually many many parries in modern fencing or medieval reenaction groups are "binds".

It's simply catching the enemies blade and staying in contact to control him (and you). For what it can be used: See above, many nice examples have been explained.

The problem with an aggressive parry (knocking the opponents blade away) is this: He can use the momentum for the next attack. If you simply catch his blade and keep it, he's "running with full force into water".

 

[Drifter Bob]

The problem with an aggressive parry (knocking the opponents blade away) is this: He can use the momentum for the next attack. If you simply catch his blade and keep it, he's "running with full force into water".

You don't see too many binds in sport fencing because it comes into play most often resulting from cuts rather than thrusts. Though sport fencing epee's, sabers and foils lack the mass to pull it off, in longsword fencing a beat, ("knocking the opponents blade away") can be an effective technique, and incidentally is a good way to discomfit one of those foils or epees if you ever had to face one with a stick or a bat or a broader military sword. I've used that technique many times when sparring against sport fencers or rapier fencers, often peremptory to an immeditate twitch-cut to their hand, or wrist.

I mention this because a reference to D&D would include many other weapons than the kind of car-aerial type's used for sport fencing.


J

 

[Xath]

Well, I'm primarily a sabrist, but I've also done some choreographed stunt fight work. Sabre, more than any other of the sport fencing weapons uses binds, mainly because you can hit with the flat of the blade (unlike foil and epee where you can just use the point) I like binds in Sabre, because as Darklone said, using a bind steals your opponent's momentum, and if done correctly, can put them off balance, leaving them more vulnerable to attack. Parries are easier to do, but (in sabre) you just give them more momentum for the next attack. Parries are much more common in foil and epee.

In choreographed fighting, binds are also used alot (not just in the cheesy dramatic dialogue scenes) because they just look cool. Choreographed binds allow for wide circular sweeps of the blade and sword clashing sounds. A swashbuckling fight will use alot of binds....oh man that's cool in my head.