Fighting in minimum armor

[Saritor]

So my question here is, for those of you who do fight in the minimum, how is it? Do you find yourself on the receiving end of a ton of unarmored blows (chest, shoulder, hip)? Do the pads underneath on the unarmored spots take a good bit of the sting out of the shot?

I fight in pretty close to minimum...the only visible armor is my helmet and my gorget (Working up to 16th C. Trained Band, a la the Lant Roll). Beyond that, I've got the splinted kidney belt, I'm usually wearing my fencing jacket under it, roller hockey pads, 5-piece aluminum knees and spring steel splinted vams & 3-piece elbows. Largest shield I own is an 18" buckler, and given that I suck, I'm usually on the losing end of most fights.

I do have somewhat decent footwork, which saves my legs more often than not. Most of my bruises still end up on my upper and lower thigh on the left leg, and lower right thigh, anterior.

I'm not sure I'd try it without the (plastic) plates over my hip and coccyx and the padding built in to the hockey shorts, though. They don't stop a LOT of force, but enough.

[Mikael d'Armstreet]

Way to go.
Thanks for making me worry, Nissan and Aaron, now you got me wanting to actually budget in thigh armor and of course i cant get cheap armor, nooo. It has to look cool and gothic.

If you are wearing "gothic" armor... you should have the cuisses already built into the leg.

As a good starter set I recommend Armstreet.
I have a pair of their legs, and have worn them for about 5 years now.[/quote

Thank you. Gothic armor is very hard to fight in, I recommend
XIII century cuirass (like this http://armstreet.com/store/armor/1/240.html)
or brigandine set's (http://armstreet.com/store/armor/1/141.html)
For European armor my choice is definitely set with brig

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spring steel splinted vams

Can you post an image or describe how you put yours together. Or you can just PM it to me.

[Saritor]

Can you post an image or describe how you put yours together. Or you can just PM it to me.

I bought them from Krag a while back, but I can't find the post. I'll dig them out and pm you some pictures in about an hour.