IVC

As for the gear location and setups, it's going in the right direction. Who cares if the magazine is behind the hip or not, or what type of holster it is? Remember SS when there was no DOH holsters and it was the *front* of the grip that had to be above the belt? What's the purpose? Just let it be, let people run it the way they like it. It's not going to make anyone a better shooter and it's all equitable anyways because everyone gets to reposition the gear the way the like it. The same goes for trinkets such as magwells and thumb rests - it's easy enough to add pseudo-thumb rest and pseudo-magwell. And nobody ever won a major match because they pushed the limit with the gear.

Both CO and LO are fine, red dots are here to stay. And if anything, it's the Production that should get more in line with CO since production guns these days come out with larger capacity magazines and all sorts of small enhancements. It should be literally that Production and Limited mimic CO and LO (give or take major scoring in LO, I'm on the fence with that one). Anyone wanting to shoot lo-cap divisions or irons has plenty of choices.

Yet "start position" *requires* stance and 3.2.1 *requires* "start position" in the WSB.... Hmmm....

Appendix A3 (Glossary) defines the "Start Position" as "The location, shooting position and stance of the competitor..." But the same appendix also defines "Shooting position" as "The physical presentation of a person's body..." and, more importantly, the "Stance" as "The physical presentation of a person's limbs (e.g. hands by the side, arms crossed etc.)." If 3.2.1 *requires* specification of the "start position" and the definition of the "start position" includes *three* elements (uses keyword "and"; all three are required), one of them is the "stance" and the "stance" is defined as presentation of the limbs, with specific examples of hands and arms, I would say the Rule Book DOES say hands are a part of the start position.

To continue this discussion from a slightly different angle... WSB *must* include the start position, per 3.2.1. Position of the hands is part of the "start position." If the WSB does NOT contain the initial hands position, it's not compliant with 3.2.1. Explicitly stating "any hand position" does specify the starting position and passes the muster, but omitting it is in violation of 3.2.1. So, the lazy way of forgetting it is against the rules. Anyone disagrees on this interpretation of 3.2.1?

And this is why "the modern technique" defines principles and uses standardized metrics to measure performance, rather than trying to create "an image" or "the look" the way it was common in the past. Everyone is different and will have to fine-tune many details of individualized technique, from grip to gear position on the belt to mechanics of the draw and the reload. In fact, virtually all sports and activities these days have moved to this performance-based approach to training and defining the technique through effect on performance rather than the orthodoxy.

Draws and movement, luckily, are something that you would mostly train in dry fire anyways. Sure you need to confirm your dry fire training, but that's something you can do from time to time. If you have only one target at your live range you're somewhat limited but you can still make up your own drills. The key is to understand what you're trying to train, then find a setup and design drills that work for you. For example, if you're working on transitions, the goal is to look at the new target, present the gun, fire when you get the acceptable sight picture. You can do this by starting with gun pointed downrange but off target. If you want to do "back and forth" transitions, you'd have to work within the cone of fire that is available to you, but you'd generally have two (or more) aiming dots on the target, then move between them. Just make sure you account for potential misses so you don't damage anything when you push it hard. For different distances all you need is different size targets at the same distance. If you have only one target, you'd have to paste on it smaller targets, then do the transition drill above by shooting at the different areas of your target. If you pay attention to the different quality of the acceptable sight picture for different sizes of the target, you're training distance transitions. In fact, this is what you do in dry fire and where you'll train most of it, while using live fire to confirm you're doing it right.

Sizing and powder drop neck expander are the two problematic dies in any setup. That's why some of us started preprocessing the brass, where on pass one it's depriming, swaging (also used as a test for depriming problems), then sizing and neck expansion. The second pass keeps the universal depriming (just in case), there is no swaging (activator rod removed from the toolhead) and no sizing (would negate the neck expansion from step 1). Amazing how smooth the reloading can be if the brass is not fighting the press :-).

Also, check the tip of the swager rod as that can be a potential problem. It should be slightly beveled so that the upward force initially pushes the crimp to the side, not straight up.

There really isn't much of finesse there - if the swager rod gets stopped and it's *not* off center or otherwise impeded by anything other than the crimp, you can either power through it and force the swaging, or you can stop the press and remove the brass. The purpose of the swager is to force the opening of a certain size to ensure a primer will fit on the next station. So, the rod will either get through and make the opening, or it will stop the press before the potential kaboom at the next station. I'd check alignment to make sure the rod is in the center of the case, then make a decision on how much force is too much and either accept the stoppage or add some force. Of course, make sure the backer is set up correctly so you're not adding stress to the shellplate.

If you're just learning calling shots, I would separate it into two individual steps. First, you have to see the sights as you fire. Second, you have to register what you see and act upon that information (e.g., fire a follow-up in a match). From my experience, the harder of the two is the initial "seeing of the sights as you fire." Once you train your brain to "take the snapshot" of the sights as you fire, the next step, the processing of the information, is easier to train. This is because after you know what to "see" and "notice," you have all the information you need and the remaining training is about putting it to good use. One can argue it's the same thing, seeing and processing, but it's not really. If you try to mark your target without being sure that you're seeing what you need to see, you might be doing yourself a disservice by trying to "make up" location of the called shot when you don't have the information you need. It's akin to rushing a shot by blind point shooting and expecting that accuracy would come with time, when in reality you need to see and recognize the sights even when point shooting. A drill that worked really well for me, and which is in one (or more) of the standard training books, is to shoot at the berm without any target. Slow deliberate shots, shots off of a draw, transition and shoot, fast follow-ups, etc., all without any specific reference points. All you're looking at is the sights. You want to train your brain to see what is available out there and at speed at which it happens. You can also add a drill of "registering" in your brain how high the sights went in recoil (this is not part of shot calling, but it helps with forcing your brain to take a mental snapshot of sights on demand). The more you play around with just seeing the sights, the easier will it be in the next step to use that information and correlate it to an actual target to get to the shot calling.

What would be "each occurrence" in 10.2.2 and at what exact point in time would you asses the penalty? Keep in mind that you cannot define "occurrence" based on the number of shots pre/post reload, because NROI said so. And which 6 penalties would you assess that are NOT based on the incorrect number of shots pre/post reload, which is also something NROI claims you can't do.

Even though I agreed with you a few days back, I'm actually rethinking this. "Engage targets" is a generic phrase, where the penalty is assessed under the FTSAT (failure to shoot at a/the target), and is covered only in 9.5.7 as far as I can tell (I did keyword search and looked up in the index). The rule says: --------------------- 9.5.7 A competitor who fails to shoot at the face of each scoring target in a course of fire with at least one round will incur one procedural penalty per target for failure to shoot at the target, as well as appropriate penalties for misses (see Rule 10.2.7). --------------------- If we are to play games with the VC extra shots being per COF and ignore there is a mandatory reload in between (NROI explanation), the wording of 9.5.7 also only specifies "in a course of fire." So, if I do 4-4-4-reload, there is no penalty per 9.5.7 since the literal wording is per COF, not per substring (or whatever we call it). I don't see another way to get a FTSAT. More importantly, if 9.5.7 doesn't work and we go back to 10.2.2 which would penalize non-compliance with WSB in 4-4-4-reload, I'm more than happy to get a "per shot" procedural for non-compliance since I didn't fire any shots after the non-compliance - I'll take 0 x (-10). And if the NROI explanation stands, I can't get a procedural for firing too many shots prior to the reload, so I end up without procedurals. Thoughts?

A lot of skill is transferrable between divisions, especially the important things such as stage planning (assuming you don't change capacity much) movement, entry into positions, leaving positions, transitions, calling shots, etc. However, you will lose speed and consistency on classifiers, that's for sure. Are you at the stage where every small detail hurts your ranking, where you're pretty close to the top guys? Or are you at the stage where you're still working on the low hanging fruit associated with movement, low stance, shooting on the move, array engagement, etc.? If you switch guns, you can work on latter, but not on the former. My 2c.

Yeah, you're right. I thought it was too good to be true. But then I thought it was too good to be true that one can ignore "with only two rounds," yet NROI says otherwise. Either way, one can manipulate the number of shots when before/after reload is not symmetric, e.g., it's free style-reload-WHO. Shoot all but one free style, then add a single shot WHO. Anyways...

I would say that either both, 2-2-3-reload-2-2-1 and 4-4-4-reload ARE stacking or NEITHER IS. My plain English reading of the rules is that they both ARE stacking because it's not the correct number of shots per WSB - sure the total is correct, but that's not how the rule is worded and engaging target with 1 or 3 shots when 2 are specified is, at least to me, an incorrectly engaged target. But if the NROI says it's not and that the reading of the rule means that the incorrect number of shots applies only to the total (with which I disagree), then one cannot argue that there is anything wrong with 4-4-4-reload because that one ALSO entails the correct TOTAL number of shots. So, either both are wrong or both are right. I say both are wrong, but NROI says both are right, so the next time I'll shoot the El Prez 4-4-4-reload and then submit it for the question of the month and link back to the interpretation in the OP.

Even if we look at real life and for a moment forget it's a game, Virginia Count teaches you to be accountable for each shot. If anything VC is more applicable to self defense than Comstock simply because in real life there is huge accountability for any shot that can hit a bystander. But we are getting off track here, and I don't want to get flamed too much...

Per current rules, it's literally no different than shooting 4-4-4, stopping the timer on the 12th shot, then reloading to comply with the WSB. It's the same as in the past when a guy walked on the outside of the wall, stood on the support, shot the swinger before activating it, then before finishing the COF but after firing the last shot casually walked to the activator and stepped on it to avoid a procedural. The rules got changed after that to prevent that type of shooting, not to make it easier to do it. In this case, if the NROI explanation is that the reload must happen after engaging targets, 4-4-4 complies. And if the number of shots pre/post reload doesn't matter, than 4-4-4 also complies. Neither current rulebook nor the NROI explanation apply any differently to 4-4-4-reload than they do to 2-2-3-reload-2-2-1. And if I'm wrong, tell me why I'm wrong.

The same as any other course of fire - the ability to figure out the correct tradeoff between points and time. You can shoot as many shots as you want in VC, just some of them are treated as hitting a no-shoot. It's still the same HF calculation, just different penalties. Arguing against VC is similar to arguing against procedurals when using various contraptions that make shooting more difficult. A more practical gaming skill that VC tests is whether you fire a make-up shot on a called Mike in a VC course of fire (you always do). And how well you called that Mike to avoid the extra hits penalty.

It's not in the current rules and I'm going by the book at the moment. Let's see how it changes in the future, and it might very well be that this type of shooting will result in no procedural penalties due to the new transitioning rule. But in the meantime, it's important to stick to the current rules for two reasons. First, interpretation should be based on the rules as-written, without relying on additional sources that are not part of the rulebook, at least until those rules are changed. And second, we don't know which rules will get adopted, and it might even happen that this particular NROI post and associated comments influence what happens next.

The only limit would be that the number of procedurals cannot exceed the number of scoring shots (10.2.3). I don't see why one couldn't get multiple, not only the extra shots/hits on VC stage, but something like faulting the line and shooting free style when WSB requires WHO/SHO, or similar... Any thoughts on why it would/wouldn't work? (I haven't thought about this, it's just from the top of my head.)

9.4.5.3 x2. 10.2.2 is a no-go because of 10.2.2.1. It must be addressed under another rule. 10.2.4 doesn't seem to fit because there is some ambiguity about the definition of "point where the reload was required" (whether it's after 6 shots, after engaging each target, or after engaging each target with exactly two shots). If we define "point where the reload was required" to be after 6 shots or after 2-2-2, the shooter gets 7 procedurals because he never performed the mandatory reload. If we define "point where the reload was required" to be after engaging T1-T3, then the reload was at the correct point and there are no procedurals based on 10.2.4. However, regardless of 10.2.2/10.2.2.1 and 10.2.4, we have an issue with firing more/less shots per 9.4.5.3. My vote would be "two procedurals" as I put in the top line.

Nice video that shows progression of movement. One thing that would be interesting to see or document is an actual run at the range and comparing three types of reload other than standing reload: reload into position, reload while leaving the position and reload during the run. Timer is the best way to make the point and quantify the differences.

Shots fired, Lol. Waiting to see how this goes...

Agreed - Virginia Count has its place. It changes the risk-reward calculation in similar way that easy-hard (with no shoot)-easy target array would. The rules could be cleaned up quite easily. Just add a rule that VC penalizes with one procedural any incorrect shots fired on any target, which includes firing shots of the second string (the definition can call WSB-defined shots pre/post reload a "string") before the mandatory reload. So now, anything "El Prez-like" would have to be shot 2-2-2-reload-2-2-2. Any deviation is a procedural, while 2-1-reload-1-2-reload-2-2-2 is still allowed if malfunctions forces a non-mandatory reload. And even more complicated cases such as 2-2-reload-2-2-2-2 would be relatively easy to score with a bit of fine tuning of the rule wording. I believe this is what most of us would want to see, a common sense Virginia count where El Prez is still an El Prez. But at the moment, it's not about gaming but about consistency. USPSA went to great length (to their credit) to make the match experience uniform across different clubs and different match levels. It's very important that when any of us go to any new or unknown club, we know what the safety protocols are, what the commands are and how the stages are run. If there are VC stages that only a handful of RO/CRO-s will score one way, while everything else is scored the "common sense" way, it's a problem of uniformity. And based on the responses in the NROI blog referenced in the OP, pretty much everyone would score it in some other way.