Cuts, Guards, and Frozen Man

[jester]

Frozen man targeting is a technique which helps fighters identify body positions and the lines of attack that are created in each. Over-simplified, but I'm not going to repost the entire essay from Sir Vitus, look for it at Legio Draconis.

In the middle ages fight-books dealt with this by distilling the many possible positions down into a few likely positions. These were guards and crossings. The point of these was to give the student a decision tree for the likely combat situations and provide instruction in principles to make him able to customize his actions for non-typical situations.

So.... If you were going to teach someone, what would the most common starting positions and crossings (positions after you've thrown the first blow) be? Start with right-handed sword and shield against matched weapons.