The Armour Archive

SCA

current rules except 3 blows and your out... no acted out leg or arm shots.

Chris

My ideal rules system for me to personally enjoy fighting nearly exists... in the EMP. That's probably because I had a lot of input in creating those rules. Even there I would make a few tweaks. I don't like the way "substantial" is currently handled and a few other very minor things. Substantial was originally meant as an "out" to avoid having to get hit three times when it wasn't appropriate but it's turned into a strategy, "Going for substantial" by hitting really hard with greatweapons has become a common tactic which I don't like. Other than that I love it.

But for the SCA I would never want to see those rules in place because too many of our current fighters wouldn't be able to play. (Like my wife!) To my mind the best things we have going for us are accessibility and huge numbers. Those things do have value!

So I would make a few minor tweaks that wouldn't exclude except maybe a tiny minority of our current fighters who probably shouldn't be fighting anyway:

Get rid of acted wounds: Either three telling blows or "Vitus system" Not too particular on which. I actually prefer the experience of three telling but I think the other is more accessible to the masses.

Thrusting tip equals rounded corners on the rattan plus 1/2" of foam, 1" of foam for spears. I do actually think that's safer.

Full leg targetting. Our knees are already adequately protected and protecting the shins from ouchies just isn't that hard. No one is going to break a tibia.

Hands as legal targets. Again this is already protected. We get hit there all the time already.

Medieval Europe.

Redefine "grappling". Not Robert of Auk's silly version, something more akin to Hrothgar but also allow gauntleted hands on shields, grabbing blades, halfswording (with no crosschecking)

That would pretty much do it for me. I honestly think most of those things are just products of us being hidebound. Used to be knee protection was crap, used to be hand protection was hard to come by, used to be geeks thought grabbing blades was illogical, used to be playing dead and playing Black Knight from Monty Python was amusing. Now we know better.

G

3 Counted blows

No padding on thrusting tips for single handed weapons, round the corners and cover the end with light leather.

Thrusting tips for 9ft fiberglass spears the same as a great weapon.

Rubber axe heads are legal with no additional padding.

Grappling is allowed.

Great weapons negate shields, blows struck on a shield by a great weapon count as a blow.

No blows acted out.

Plate and chain is proof against combat archery.

Grieves are required armor.

I fight SCA rapier normally.

If I had a magic wand, I would expand C&T to: armored-as-worn (but only from authentic materials; no aluminum, plastic, etc.), and start phasing in WMA polearms and grappling, ASAP. It'd have a high authorization standard, obviously, and would probably be more WMA-focused than sport.

I'm mostly happy with the basic SCA ruleset. I would like to have seen 1"x 1.5" weapons and 3/4" bar-gaps. That would encourage sword shaped objects over stick shaped objects.

I'd also like a system where equipment choice involved some thought about balancing pros/cons.

Examples:
1) Presently in the SCA a thrust to a closed helm is the same as a thrust to a bar-grill. The bar-grill provides added visibility, cooling and ease of communication that the closed helm does not. Great helms are probably the cheapest get-em-on-the-field-fast helms... but very few people will use one because the rules of the sport favor all the pros to be in-favor of bar-grills.

2) Heavy plate on the forearm and a heavy metal basket impede hand and arm velocity and reduce endurance. A plastic splinted vambrace, half gauntlet and plastic basket hit are light, durable (at least dent resistant), fast and provide the same amount of protection (ie none). Therefore the pinnacle of fighting prowess often equip themselves in absolute minimalist armor because all of the pros (except maybe pain tolerance) are in favor of the plastic sport gear.

As a final change: I was informed that back in the dark ages of the SCA striking the knee and below had not yet been eliminated but knee fighting was the norm. Knee fighting is counter productive to the use of very long shields. If a person was struck in the knee it was quite common to quickly drop and throw a grass-cutter at your opponents ankles where the shot almost definitely wouldn't/couldn't be blocked. That would produce the 'two gay walruses fighting' image that someone so aptly describe. By raising the the target location to above the knee 2 problems were solved: fewer instant double leg fights and fewer blown ACLs from mass weapon impacts to the knee.

Now I don't know if the above history is true but if it was I would have rather abandoned knee fighting and kept NON-mass weapons using the ankle and up targets. Mass weapons get added kill zones at hip and shoulder, Non-mass weapons would get expanded target locations. Wearing greaves and sabatons would be as common as cuisses. Fighters with shorter shields would spend more time manipulating range to keep the foot/ankle away from their opponents weapons and I THINK (without evidence to support it) that this would encourage more active shield use to intercept a weapon at the hand and less shoulder-width-nose-to-knee static defense shields. I think smaller more mobile shields would benefit from the change while now the SCA rules favor the large ones.

My thoughts.
Sean

Violen wrote:Aparrently my statement was wrong.

Go figure.

Unfortunately, it is.

Making "low income" excuses for sub-reasonable "stuff" - note I did not write sub-optimal - merely breeds greater expense for the low-income participant. This has been demonstrated time and again by cost comparisons: It is less expensive to spend wisely than to throw money away on crap "just to get on the field". This is true whether in hard or soft kit.

Now, back to topic:

My perfect system? Modify the SCA rattan system to:

1. Eliminate knee-fighting across the board. You get hit below the waist, you're out. While I understand and respect the heroic aspect which draws some people to rattan combat - epic heroes holding off foes while plagued with wounds - it is a small way to improve realism, as well as reduce damage to joints (organic and metal).

2. Make great weapons defeat shields. I mean, please. My buckler stopped your poleaxe? Really?

3. Allow grappling/historical techniques. I love the idea of it, though I'm well aware that it'd be a complicated bitch to implement safely. In other "funny clothes on weekends" pursuits, hand-to-hand combat is conducted on a case-by-case basis with the consent of both parties involved. This usually entails looking the other guy in the eye, somehow communicating, "You, me, mano a mano, si?", pulling a rubber knife and having at it. I have a nice story which involves rolling downhill, bouncing off trees like a meat-filled pinball.

3a. Allow specific equipment (love the padded shield edges idea!) to promote things like punching someone in the face with a buckler.

4. Visible armour must have an authentic appearance - in other words, if it can be seen, it must be metal, leather, or some other demonstrably authentic look. Inspection before fighting will take this into consideration. In fact, if during a fight some piece of sport plastic pops out, you're out; either go "right", be exceedingly clever in how you hide your sport-plastic stuff, or doff your hard kit. One often sees pretty nice hard kit one a guy standing around, but when the fur starts to fly, one sees bits of plastic flapping around. Many larger SCA events are making great strides in appearance, with special tournaments and fights like the CotT and the Warriors of History affairs. Let's ramp that up to include everyone. The only visible substitution is bar-grilles on helmets and n00bs using loaner gear.

There. I think that's enough. For me, in case you can't tell, it's mostly about the look of the thing - I'm a sight-hound.

Bob