"Greetings, All!

It's no secret that a number of us in the WMA/HEMA community are actively working on rule-sets for tournaments. In recent threads on this subject (both on US and European sites), I've noticed that there is a certain subset of our community that has a visceral reaction to the idea of tournaments.

Andreas also won a backsword/sabre martial challenge against Martin Austwick of the English Martial Arts Academy, UK.

Anders Korsberg, Mikael Widegren and Magnus Hagelberg also competed for GHFS, Mikael winning his first fight against the famed Fabrice Cognot of De Taille et d'Estoc, France.

Axel Pettersson of GHFS took home first place in the open longsword tournament with 40 participants, defeating Anders Linnard, also of GHFS, in the finals by sudden death. Scott Hellroth reached the first round of the knockout finals, before being defeated by Dennis Ljungqvist, KuHFS, who went on to take 3rd place.

Nina Trollvige was only one point from reaching the Womens longsword finals.

The website with several translations and transcriptions can be found here: www.destreza.us/index.html

A video series where Puck and Mary teach some Destreza can be seen here: www.youtube.com/watch

From the Destreza website:

"During the 1500s a new system of swordplay began to develop in Europe unlike any the world had ever seen. The Spanish created a new, universal method of fighting based on Reason and Mathematics that could be taught to any student. They called the system La Verdadera Destreza, the True Art.

Jacob Sutor (also spelled "Jakob Sutor") was a German fencing master who published a fighting manual in 1612, called the Neues Künstliches Fechtbuch. The book was mostly an updated version (or outright plagiarism) of Joachim Meyer's work.

Sutor's Fechtbuch includes techniques for the long sword, dussack, rapier (which appears to be an early form of the weapon more similar to a cut and thrust sword), rapier and main gauche, rapier and cloak, case of rapiers, staff, pole axe, and the flail