ANST - Balls - uh huh huh huh

Scott White swhite at cimedia.com
Thu Aug 21 08:29:53 PDT 1997


>RE-BAR?!!  I am stunned.  No wonder they aren't allowing tennis balls.

You SHOULD be stunned. It was a boneheaded thing to do. We had an ugly
incident in the first castle battle wherein a crew of bozo engineers
weighted their projectiles with re-bar.

This really boils my blood. Siege weapons are on a highly experimental
footing in SCA warfare -- it's only gonna take one bad incident to get ALL
siege engineers banned from the field, or, worse yet, hurt someone. Let's
use our heads, folks.

That being said, it's still just an unconfirmed rumor at this point that
tennis balls won't be allowed.

>Why are you weighing tennis balls at all?  It's a heavy fighter's
>responsibility to realize that if he or she is hit by a tennis ball to fall
>dead

Yes, but catapults and trebs deliver indirect fire, usually a single tennis
ball or a taped four-ball pyramid falling down from above. These light
projectiles, when you don't see them coming, feel like your buddy's sword
accidentally tapping the top of your helm when you're in the middle of your
army.

I'm a proponent of weighting catapult and trebuchet ammo with dried beans
or corn up to the maximum weight limit (I don't know what that is, I don't
have an indirect-fire weapon).

My ballista bolts are capped with unweighted tennis balls and work just
fine for me.

>Do you want to make a tennis ball more effective?  Get it moving faster. 

I disagree with this. Siege weapons, even our 1/2-scale models, are still
powerful and potentially dangerous machines. I'd rather err on the side of
a lighter throw than scale up the power. That gets into spooky territory.

>The easiest and cheapest way I know is to use a sling. 

Sounds like fun! The Estrella rules indicate that only a face shot would
kill with these, though -- how 'bout Gulf?

Gnith
<swhite at cimedia.com>
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