The Armour Archive

I have been asked to come up with a tourney for an upcoming event, and need a little feed back.

My idea:

Silver Helmet Tournament

All fighters who complete 25 bouts during the time alloted will be awarded the silver helmet medallion. In addition fighters are asked to display their heraldry (surcotes, banners, etc.).

At the end of the tourney there will be voting by both the fighters and the populous for the following awards:

Best Heraldic Display
Most Courteous
Most Fun Opponent (Fighters voting only)

My thoughts:

I'd like this to be a tournament about fighting a lot and having fun, not about victories. Anyone who wants to should be able to get a silver helmet, baring injuries of course. However I do want to keep the pace up so the fighters don't end out standing around too long and get bored.

My question:

I need to figure out how much time to allocate. A lot of it will depend on turn out, if I get 4 fighters there will be at least 50 fights for everyone to finish, but if I get 6 there would be 75 fights minimum.

What is a good average time to estimate for a bout? (Including getting the fighters in the list field, and out of it again.) That way I can adjust the timing based on my turn out.

Thank you for any advice

Bartok

Bartok,

I would schedule no more than 2-3 min per bout. Depending on the calibur oy your opponents most matches don't last that long.

Other suggestions for speeding up the tourney:
1) If you want matched weapons for alot of the bouts without alot of discussion by the participants have a sheild tree for one side. Split the fighters into arbitrary vennans and tennans with the vennans getting to chose weapons form by tapping the appropriate sheild. You can either paint a picture of the weapon on the shield or color code them and let the fighters know red shield= sword and board etc. (This also adds a bit of medival flair to the whole proceedings). Also with this approach as fighters are ready to fight they simply step up to the entrance of the list field (i.e. no waiting around as somebody gets their gauntlets on etc.) When a fighter is ready he/she is in line and ready to go. Along with this it would be good to have an experienced list minister/ herald that knows the combatants by sight so that they can mark down how many fights a person has had
2) Another technique I have used to speed up fighting especially with two handed weapons is the following: You have lost the bout if: You are hit with a good blow or thrust to the face or body, you are driven from the field (i.e. run into the edge of the list), you drop your weapon. I would explain this before the begining of the tournament so there are no hard feelings.

Hope this helps

Karl von Frettchenburg

It's hard to make a generalization about how long bouts really take. Very cautious fighters with large shields and good defenses can go for quite a while.
An approach I've been part of was to set up a barrier, and divide the fighters into two teams. Both teams form lines leading to the barrier where they face a fighter from the other side, whoever happens to be up. The winner stays at the barrier, and the defeated guy goes to the back of his line. The lines flow more quickly if there are two fighters from each team at the barrier (for a total of 4), since if your guy dies it's in your team's best interest to belly up to the bar pronto. I'd also recommend this be done with no shields, and probably no spears. Single sword works well.

Thanks guys, two to three minutes is very helpful!

Our calibur isn't terribly high, and if I incorporate some of those cool ideas they will be less likely to fight slowly.

I think I'll have it as a combination of fighting activities. Do 45 minutes of the single sword barrier thing. 45 minutes of matched weapons challenges. Throw in a couple other things, and that will keep it fresh, and provide distinct rest/water breaks.

Great ideas, thank you very much

Bartok

I live in Saskatchewan, so I understand about small events in isolated areas like you probably experience in Nova Scotia.

I need to say something here because if I lived within an hour of the event that you are describing, which I am guessing is close enough that you would consider me to be a local, I might not go to your event for the fighting as you describe. Single sword at a barrier can be fun. And matched challenges are ok. But I always like to just fight with the other guys. It doesn't matter if you just make sure there is time for lots of pick-up fighting, or if you had a winner hold the field pit for people to circle through. But I want the other guy to use whatever weapon style he is best with and I'll use whatever I am best with and we will go a few rounds.

If you have a bunch of newish guys, "Loser holds the field" is a great tourney style too. You need to make sure that there are multiple people who have a viable chance to lose or it just sucks for one guy. Also, this gives a lot of good practice for the people who need it. Then just cycle the fighters through as fast as they can. Whoever has the most wins after a preset time frame wins the tourney.

One of the benefits of an event is hopefully you get to fight some guys that you usually don't. Often I find that contrived weapon style tourney's are a forum for mediocricy. The good fighters don't fight to their potential because single sword at the barrier isn't neccessarily their best form. And the new fighters don't learn as much as they could because they are missing a good opportunity to have out of town better fighters teach them about their particular form.

So I say make sure that there is a big pit of guys fighting until they puke. Don't worry about the water breaks, the fighters will take water when they need it. Just make sure they fight lots. Make an All You Can Eat Rattan Buffet.