Learn Vadi’s Art of Arms, Move like Fiore, and Write Great Swordfights!


Hi!

I’m running a flash sale starting today, on the combined Philippo Vadi Longsword and Dagger courses bundle. Bought separately these courses cost $850. The Bundle is $600. And you can get 30% off the bundle for the next few days. Just put the code WELOVEVADI2025 into the little box at checkout. Hurrah!

That’s still a lot of money though, so you can also find both courses in the Mastering the Art of Arms and the Italian Medieval Combat subscriptions here.

Double Hurrah!

If you’re not sure about the courses, that’s fine. I’ve put up a blog post with a couple of sample videos here which may help.

I will send out a couple of email reminders before the sale ends. If you don’t want to receive them you can opt out with this link, which will take you to a rapier blog post, but also tell my email system to opt you out of the reminders.


Speaking of reminders, I have a couple of seminars coming up!

Suffolk, UK, October 18th:

Move Like Fiore: Improve your structure, flow, and control in Fiore’s art of arms

Good movement is the foundation of great fencing. It keeps you safe from injury, helps you control your level of force, protects your training partners, and lets you fight harder and longer without fatigue.

Event Details

  • When: Saturday, October 18 · 11am–5pm (with a lunch break)
  • Where: The Coddenham Centre, Mary Day Cl, Coddenham, Ipswich IP6 9PS
  • Cost: £50
  • Bring: Longsword, fencing mask, dagger (if you have one), water, lunch. Freeplay kit is optional, but bring it if you like.

Sign up here.

Helsinki, Finland, October 31st, November 1st and 2nd:

Join me for a varied weekend of workshops I’m teaching for the SHMS: Angelo Smallsword on the Friday night, Vadi’s Longsword on Saturday, and Fiore’s Pollax on Sunday. Details and sign-up instructions are here. Scroll down for details in English.


On the Podcast: Writing Great Sword Fights, with Sebastien de Castell

It’s a warm welcome back to the Sword Guy Podcast to Alexander Fürgut, who was It’s a welcome return for a previous guest, the brilliant writer Sebastien de Castell. His first published novel was Traitor’s Blade in 2014. Since then he has published the Greatcoats Quartet, the Spellslinger YA fantasy series, The Malevolent Seven and his latest Play of Shadows. He also has eight more books under contract, so there are plenty more to come!

Sebastien has written some of my favourite sword fights in all of literature, so when I decided to update my book, Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers and Martial Artists, it was a no-brainer to talk to Sebastien about how he approaches writing action scenes in his books.

We talk about more than just sword fights, and this conversation will be fascinating to any writer or anyone thinking about writing their first novel.

It’s not just a chat for novellists. As you’d expect on The Sword Guy Podcast, we do talk about weapons, like a pistol within a rapier, and other strange and unusual weapons that never quite caught on.

cheers,

Guy


P.S. just a reminder: you can pre-order From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: The Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi now!

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Guy Windsor's Swordschool

Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.

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