Meyer’s 1570 text provides a description of the many guard positions in his system, which seems overly complicated, however it’s important to remember two things:

1) All positions are just variations on the 4 fundamental/principal guards – Tag, Alber, Ochs, and Pflug.

2) The positions are transitional points as you move through cuts and parries, so occur organially during your fencing motions – they’re generally not intended to be positions to wait in at length for your opponent’s attack.