The Helmet Shot- From Inside

[dukelogan]

yeah the wording causes some folks to support only the hardest blows should count. while they may be 100% right (and i think they may be) i dont believe that is really what we are doing. but it is what the wording suggests. i use the wording to argu against the wrist flicking and tap thrusting arguments so while i think they need to be changed they still have value.

this value should be very important when discussing head shots. some folks want to hear something, others want their helm moved, or their head, some want to be jarred. these seem to cover the extremes of force but i feel the thing we are missing in our responses is knowing more about the helm. for example, i may very well have been hit by shots that would have stunned others in their helms. but ive never been hit with any head shot that caused me any concern or discomfort. my helm is 18lbs, has a very secure and tight chin strap, fits my head with no wobble, is all glancing surfaces, etc. i think we can learn from this topic and would ask those answering from here out to tell a little more about their nugget bucket.

regards
logan

By "good" don't we mean having martial validity? Like Logan I have been hit with lotsa stuff- full beer bottles, pool cues, chairs etc.

Each "good" shot in one of these melees took a tiny bit of the fight out of me. Taking the whole fight out of me? You need to knock me out.

Thus, going down to the first good shot means accepting the first one (in the kill zone ) that has martial validity. A knot on my head? A brutal contusion? Split my scalp like a green pea? Cut the shit out of my face?

These are all good blows, because they would injure me.

This idea that a blow must make you want to sit down (while you are wearing armour for god's sake) is not the same thing as the idea of a sword blow having martial validity. If a sword point tippy-taps you in the eye, guess what? Your eye is gone! Scrapes across the front of your skull? Guess what? You are cut bad and ugly for life!!

Shearing tip shots are intenely dangerous with real swords- they WILL cut mail and whatever is beneath, and yet we consider tippy blows utterly without martial validity. Any blow that would bruise you through mail has martial validity. These people who are looking for an incapacitating blow are thinking in a way that should have nothing to do with the word "good."

An incapacitating blow with a steel sword would be nearly-incapacitating with a rattan club. By incapacitating I mean exactly that - making you unable to continue. The language of the Society Marshall's Handbook is (once again) fuc*ing retarded.

[raito]

and mempos/face plate have a tendency to cut your head if they are not very sturdy (like Nissans...).

Please explain. I've never seen a head cut by a mempo.

[Louis de Leon]

I tend to call light. At practice I will usually, at least once a night, have someone insist I not take a shot and continue fighting. Sometimes I am confused by the volume of noise a shot makes. Sometimes something will sound loud and I'll equate that with good, and it won't be.

My hat is a high peak bascinet, stainless, from Steel Mastery with a suspension lining.

If something hits high up and skips off the high peak, it makes a "chip" noise. I'll usually not call those. Anything lower it makes a "bap" or "thump" noise. Those are usually good. I call any thrust that touches my face grill with intentional positive force good, no matter what. Same as a cup shot. If you tap me there I'm done - I know what that would mean if you were really holding a sword.

A good shot from the edge of a sword will torque my head a little bit and make a satisfying thunking noise. A really good one will sting my cheeks. Occasionally I'll call a shot good on sound alone. If you can get my hat to make an impressive noise I'll call that.

I have a large fear of being thought of as a jerk on the field. I love this endeavor. I would hate to get a rep of being not fun to play with. So I'll fret for days over a questionable call. I have been thinking for almost two weeks over a torso thrust I called light. I obsess over things like this. It is difficult to strike a balance for me. I don't want to be a jerk, but at some level you do have to reject fluff that lands on you. Mistakes at the extremes make you a not-desirable fight.

And I haven't done it intentionally but I am in the same boat as Nissan. I have never called a shot excessive. And I have had a few. Not many, but a couple. My reason being is that if we were fighting for real, real weapons...I'd be in real trouble. That would mean I lost.

[Corby de la Flamme]

really? how sure are you of that?

Why yes your Grace. I am completely sure that a blow I call good to my helm is much much harder than I would ever want to be hit without my helmet.



I do, in fact, see Logan's point in his latest post. I had the opportunity to fight a west coast guy who is, quite literally, a legend--I do believe he was involved in the original codification of our rules back when A.S. was followed by a single digit.

He had read the rules about what we are supposed to be wearing for acknowledgment. And come to a conclusion so far away from the mainstream about judging blows that he was in essence playing an entirely different game. For example:

Hit him exactly an inch above the knee: just has to be a good hard shot.
Hit him mid thigh: has to be hard enough to cut through/lift a mail hauberk and cut through a mail chausse.
Hit him on the shoulder: Just a good hard shot.
Hit him in the body: has to be hard enough to cut through riveted chain and a leather chest protector.

Then there was his head.

Now, this guy had excellent timing. But he was no longer in anything resembling top physical condition. It is immodest but true to say that since I had a good rising leg wrap that could hit that spot "below the mail skirt" that I could put him on his knees a lot. And it is also true to say that once he was on his knees, I could hit his head pretty easily.

I have never, ever, ever had the combination of having to hit someone as absolutely hard as I could, and the ability to step up to that level without having to worry about getting hit first. I throw good wraps. Really good ones deep to the back of the head on a kneeling opponent. I landed a variety of them, of rising power. None were called.
I switched to flat snaps. Easier for him to block. I started throwing pretty hard, given the wrap experience. I ramped up, each one harder than the previous. I think he took the 4th or 5th one, which I believe I threw essential straight down onto the brow of his helmet, hitting about 5" from the basket. It was the hardest I have ever thrown a blow with a single sword.

Such was his conclusion about appropriate force to a medieval helm.

[Diglach Mac Cein]

And just because soem of us can take seriously hard hits with no real ill affects, doesn't mean we ALL can.

There is at least one fighting in the Midrealm, who IIRC didn't do a lot of combat or other sports that resulted in head blows, wore VERY good armor including a very good helm that had to quit due to repetitive trauma, and the real possibility of lasting damage.

And he was a big guy too - hitting a 250 pound, reasonably fit guy with a shot to the helm that "causes pain" is liable to do a lot more to a 5"4" 110 pound fighter.


.

[Vitus von Atzinger]

I judge a good blow to my helmet by the following factors-

1. Edgewise?
2. Did I get any shield on it?
3. Did I get enough shield on it?

As far as how it feels- until yesterday I would have told you that it doesn't need to just hit my helmet with some force. Regardless of the sound it must jar my head. I mean, jar my head like I-can-feel-the-energy-of-your-sword pass-through-my-helmet-and-through-my-entire-head kinda head jar.

If your grip was loose- I would not feel this energy beam pass through my head.
If your sword was too light- I would very likely not feel this energy beam pass through my head.
If your throwing technique was not perfect, I would very likely not feel this energy beam pass through my head.
This sounds crazy, but if your breathing was timed incorrectly I would very likely not feel this energy beam pass through my head.

A truly medieval sword blow gives me a headache. I would rather not have any more brain damage, thank you.

But I can get hit upside the helmet (Bedford calls it "slapping" as opposed to "driving") -even get my helmet dented- without your sword transfering all of this Technique w/ Ki energy through the surface of my armour.

I have been fighting so long now that I can even tell when I have been hit by a Ki master, as opposed to a person who did everything right. I don't want people who have this power hitting me with any weapon of any kind, unless thay are in total control of themselves. Crazy people, emotionally unstable people, depressed people and bitter, hateful people who can do it? They need to sit down until they are in control. If they can't control themselves with absolute mastery, they need to get out of this game because they have learned how to kill/incapacitate with a hand weapon.

Like Nissan said, that level of force has no business in our game. It's the way that Musashi broke skulls with a wooden sword. It's the way that people have accidently KILLED other people by punching them in the head.

But even slapping blows to my helmet have to be considered, because 99.99% of the people who are watching us know nothing of the Real Deal. To the average person, I just got owned and boned.

I can occasionally throw a perfect Ki-based blow, but that doesn't give me the right to always demand this perfect shot from other people. My #1 job should not have anything to do with this obsession with martial perfection and the application of it's unstoppable power.

No, my #1 job is to preserve the Dream for the ones who are here (or STILL here) because of that Dream. Those who have achieved absolute Mastery need to retire if they are now ruled more by their desire to judge Mastery in others than the desire to deliver the promise of a culture where the most powerful care about the opinions and fate of the weak.

If you want to be a unconquerable martial arts master, give your belt back. If you don't want to be a True Knight then take off your goddamn spurs. The True Knight isn't here to glorify anyone, or even to worship at the shrine of some type of blind and dumb Prowess God. The True Knight is here to deliver the impossible- might dominated by right.

When "the people" see me get slapped upside my helmet- they will think I just lost. If they think I have lost- I have lost. I am Powerful, and I have near-mastery of my weapons. I have proven myself in test after test after test in front of Giants and Legends. I am man enough to care about what these people think about what they just saw. If I just stop caring about how these things look, I will convince them all over again of that terrible fact that they wish to escape, that the powerful owe nothing to the weak.

I refuse to do it anymore. I'm going to start caring again about appearances again. I am going to start resisting the desire to just brazenly behave as if what I want to happen MUST happen.

[dukelogan]

corby i wasnt questioning your opinion of what you would like, or not like, to be hit with. how on earth could i? what i was replying to was this statement "A good shot with no helmet on? You are not going to get up and someone else has to call the ambulance." while your result certainly might be the case i dispute it as the absolute you suggest it to be. thats all.

regards
logan

really? how sure are you of that?

Why yes your Grace. I am completely sure that a blow I call good to my helm is much much harder than I would ever want to be hit without my helmet.

[Sigifrith Hauknefr]

and mempos/face plate have a tendency to cut your head if they are not very sturdy (like Nissans...).

Please explain. I've never seen a head cut by a mempo.

Ask Grettr the Slow... he came out to our practice and got a little cut. He also told us that if he hit at hard as we let him hit us at home they'd take his card.

Also, HRM Titus has an Ugo-made face plate (western) that would pretty much always cut his eyebrow when he took a a good shot at a particular angle.

Neither of these guys cared or worried about it. In both cases, I think they were NOT integral parts of the helmet.