Cloak and Sword

[Devin Wilson]

Rob Hyatt had a stroke of creativity last Saturday and used his trenchcoat with his arming sword and it worked a lot better with a cutting sword than I thought it would be.

While there is the obvious use of throwing around the opponents sword or on his head, we discovered several other great ways of using it:

Blocking full-arm cuts:

punch your fist towards the incoming sword, much like as you would with a buckler, but keep your fist a couple of inches to the inside of the sword so it hits the cloak o few inches below your fist (the strong of the coat, if you will). The coat stops the blow and instantly tangles around the sword like Indian Jones' whip. Then you could either cut with your sword or tie up his arm in some lock. From the way coat gives and wraps when struck, it seems unlikely the a sword would cut through it, especially if you catch him on the strong.

Hiding your own attacks:

You don't have to even throw it over his head or near it. Often just throwing it up between you two can leave him unable to tell where you're cutting from.

Coverage:

Holding it in front of you, it dangles to the ground, providing excellant coverage of your legs.

Of course, you can't move a coat as fast as a buckler. Watch out for quick cuts to the coat hand.

Devin Wilson
Provo

[Guest]

Cloaks interest me, but I never quite understood how to hold them. I read somewhere that you're supposed to wrap it 3 times or so around your arm and grip the end, but I'm not sure if I'm getting enough protection when I do that. I also assume that you need a pretty big cloak.

[Guest]

Well, it's easy to figure out how to use a cloak effectively, especially if you're used to a dagger or buckler, but the grip thing still bothers me. If anyone has a useful link, I'd appreciate it.

[Devin Wilson]

I don't know of any links, but try this: Lay the coat flat on the ground and then simply grab a wad of it a third of the way down from the collar. That's all we did and it worked out well. Of course, you can also try other places (quarter way down, half way) or grab the collar itself and wrap it around your wrist once. It seemed to be enough to pad the arm against lighter cuts and slices. Any more would probably jsut sacrifice coverage for little gain in advantage. Of course, experiment with other ways and tell us if you find something else works better.

I would also like someone who has one to try this out against a blunt. I'm sure these moves are even better on steel.

[Devin Wilson]

Thrusts can easily make it through a cloak...if you don't react. But if you pull the cloak to the side once the point hits the cloak, it easily displaces the thrust.

Also, the person fight against the cloak seemed very vulnerable when in a low guard. It just seemed too hard to get around it or avoid getting bound up by an aggressive cloak attack. Any ideas how to get around this, or are low guards just foolish against a cloak wielding opponent?

[Guest]

I would think that cloaks are, for the most part, less protection than a buckler, but for the enemy, they seem like a constantly changing defense. There's a lot hanging down, so it looks like it covers more than it does, too. Also, when cuts are tangled, they lose most, if not all power. What I'm saying is that it's probably psychological for the most part, and the long guard is probably no less effective against a cloak than against a buckler.

[DavidEvans]

It depends on the type and size of cloak. The tendy, posh silk, velevt and satin drape beloved of courtiers, worn to display wealth not keep you warm could just be twirled once or twice around the arm and used rather like a bullfighter's cloak. The keep you warm and dry-ish full length cloak, made in fulled and felted broadcloth, is heavy enough to club someone to the ground! Broadcloth is surprisingly tricky to cut thro. A thrust that hits the arm may not go all the way thro the cloth, whilst any thrust elsewhere will just tangle up. My Broadcloth full length, hooded cloak weighs about 20lbs folded up.

[Devin Wilson]

We were using trenchcoats. They seemed heavy enough to block pretty well most of the way along the cloak. The protection seemed to break down at the last third or quarter.

[Guest]

20lbs on your half-extended arm? How long can you last like that?

[Guest]

Seeing that this post is refering specifically to me, I think I'd better put my two bits in. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

So we were practicing on February 14th and seeing that I have no significant other (for the moment anyway) and I had no pressing homework due to president's day, I wanted to practice longer than the normal 2 hours.

Devin and I decided to hang around after practice and play with our new stirling arms one handed "perfect wasters" (which are freaking awesome, btw!) which we had purchased to better interpret renaissance cut and thrust manuals.

We also wanted to play around with sword and buckler...seeing that John recently did an advanced seminar for us on that subject...but I don't own a buckler yet. However, Utah is still cold in February and we practice outside on Saturdays, so I had my nice heavy trenchcoat with me...

I first tried grabbing it and wrapping it once or twice around my hand, and had a lot of fun playing around with the nuances of sword and cloak. Here is what I found:

--It is very sneaky. Depending on how you use your cloak, they either can hardly see where your sword is (like if you are in tail with the right foot leading) or you can fake them out by flicking the bottom of the cloak at their face while simultaneously cutting, etc, or if your are really daring, throw the cloak at them. A few times it actually draped over their head completely, which effectively means they are dead, because by the time they take it off their head, they would have died 3 or 4 times over (you can't defend against a cut if you cannot see anything at all!). play around with it and have some fun! (I correct myself: Devin did discover an effective defense when this happens to you: drop your weapons and run away to fight another day!)

--Cloaks have more tangling capacity than you would give them credit for. You can flick the cloak at their sword to beat it aside (be careful, because if you miss, your cloak will keep going in the direction you flicked it...if you are not careful you will give them a big opening) or tangle it up for a half second or so, (while you kill them with your own sword) or you can trap their sword if they stay in a low guard and let you get too close (and while they try to either quickly retreat or untangle their sword, you can kill them in any number of creative ways).

--Also, as Devin mentioned, you can outright stop a full blown zornhau/miettelhau/unterhau at full speed with a cloak (straight vertical sheitelhaus and high horizontal zwerchaus are harder to defend against like this...it is better to pick another counter for those), IF you use it correctly. We figured this out quite by accident and I wouldn't believe myself if I had not seen it work with my own eyes when I executed the move. What happens is you bring the cloak into the arc of their attack, with your fist a few inches above where their sword will hit. When it does hit the cloak, something really intresting happens: the cloak is not a solid target, so it gives way to the sword, making the sword unable to cut through the cloak like it could if the cloak was pulled tight, but at the same time, the inertia of the cloak makes the bottom part of the cloak move in the opposite direction of the incoming sword, effectively wrapping up the sword, and absorbing all their energy. It actually works better the stronger and faster they cut! Meanwhile, you can be killing them with your sword in your other hand, and/or you can set up for a devestating grapple (just apply the same principles used with...say, rondel dagger or longsword grappling...), or...the possibilities are endless!

--Another thing that I have found helpful when using more than one weapon at a time: if you look at your opponent in any one spot, you will probably miss something and die, but if you look at, say the tree behind your opponent you actually can see everything he is doing and can react a lot better and faster. As you can guess this principle is not sword and cloak specific.

--If you don't fall for a feint, your legs are nigh invincible! Yep, the only time I got hit in the leg was when Devin did a sweet feint which ended up in my shin (he totally faked me out). So, if you are not faked out, your cloak can stop their attack cold (using that technique I explained above) while you kill them in brutally effective ways!

--I decided that I don't like wrapping it around my hand very much. If i just grab a fistfull of it about a half of a foot below the collar of my trenchcoat (I grabbed it underneath the trenchcoat, so my hand and wrist were covered with 'cloak', if that makes any sense at all), then it worked better for me (and was a lot easier to throw).

--If they decide to do some quick wrist cuts to your cloak arm, move it back (while doing appropriate footword for your particular situation) so they miss while you cut their hand off.

wow. that was a long post. If you made it all the way here, congratulations, you have a long attention span!

[Olgierd Pado]

Hi,

If I remember correctly, some general information on cloak &amp; sword can be found in Di Grassi's manual.

Cheers
Olgierd

[Brian Hunt]

Salvatore Fabris also has some nice plates on sword and cloak.

Brian Hunt
GFS

[DavidEvans]

That example is the full sized hooded and caped keep me warm and dryish cloak. Big enough to wear whilst riding, big enough to sleep in. You must remember that woolen cloth is a lot heavier then the stuff they make suits with now. I had a 16th Century outfit with lot of slashing and pretty bits that came in at 48lbs wieght packed up. Worn, I didn't notice the wieght because I was used to it. I was bloody warm at times!

[Guest]

Okay, Robert, now you've gone and made me start wanting a cloak...