[Ansteorra-announce] New Society Combat Rules for Armoured Combat

[Jean Paul de Sens]

Good morning gentles.  I meant to post this information earlier, but have
been extremely busy.  The Society Earl Marshal, in conjuction with the
Kingdom Earl Marshals, has published a revision to the Society Combat Rules
on his website:

http://www.sca.org/officers/marshal/combat/armored/index.html

For the most part, these revisions are (IMO) a positive growth for SCA
combat.  Halfswording is now allowed across the SCA, and the previous
arguments about which kind of shield to body and body to body contacts have
been made more explicit, and more properly reflect the manner in whcihc we
were already fighting (which was kind of rule bending).

I would encourage every armoured combatant and especially every marshal to

a) Download the new copy of the rules.
b) read it.  Please, pretty please with sugar on top.
c) Print out a copy and keep it in your armour bag, box, car, event tote,
something.  When people ask "is it legal if...."

While most of the revisions are minor, there are a couple that I would like
to point out.

1) There's got to be 1/4 of padding around your neck.  It can be in the
gorget, or it can be in the aventail, but you have to have it.
2) Dropped weapons.  If in the process of hitting you, and a weapon is
dropped, it used to be that you did not have to call it.  That ignored
circumstances like "he hit me so hard it knocked the weapon out of his
hand".  In those situations, after you recover consciousness and stop
wobbling, you should probably call it good even if he did drop it.
3) No change was made to face thrusts, they still should be "substantially
lighter" than a body thrust.  That does *not* mean that you have to take
some goofy, wimpy, thrust to the face.  Use your good judgement.  If the
thrust would have continued forward, and done significant damage to your
lightly armoured face, call it.
4) In single sword fights, you cannot use your gauntlet to block a shot.
That's target substitution, and results in the loss of the arm.

That's the big ones.  No major changes to the way we do it, and a lot of the
things that we do are no longer in the grey area, but have been placed
firmly in the "OK" area.

Going forward, it is my plan to revise Ansteorra's rules to only include
those aspects of armour and weapons that are necessary in *addition* to
corpora, and then yank out all of the redundant information.  To do so will
require pretty much the assistance of the entire fighting body of the
kingdom so that we can, collectively, codify the way we want our kingdom to
be armoured, and the way we want weapons made and used.  To that end, I
would really, really,  encourage every fighter to read the new rules, and be
ready for when I open discussion on the new rulebook.

Finally, if you'll notice on the SEM's web site, compliance date for the
kingdom is the end of this year, so I expect that everyone will have their
gear up to snuff by then.

Sieur Jean Paul de Sens
Kingdom Earl Marshal

-- 
I want to fight and to strive, to vie with my opponents and friends, and at
the end of the day cry out "ENOUGH!!! For I can lift my arms no longer"

That is what is good in life.
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