ANST - Re: History Repeats Itself Again and again and again

Tue Apr 17 22:22:48 PDT 2001

This thread and some of the attitudes portrayed therin are getting a little
bit disturbing.

For the record, I love having combat archery on the field.  It makes the
game more exciting, and rewards those who can truly pay attention to the
whole battlefield, and penalizes those who over-focus.  The flight of arrows
I saw at my first Gulf Wars ( VII ) still sticks in my mind and is one of my
best memories.

However, like everyone, I do know how important my eyes are.  I just paid
several thousand dollars to fix them so that I don't have to wear glasses
anymore.  And before, the idea of an arrow entering the grill of my helm did
not bother me because I knew that they eye-glasses I wore to fight in would
probably stop them.

On the other heand, I do know the pain of having to have helms specially
made to allow me to put on eye protection.  They cost more, are more
complex, and more prone to breakage (due to hinge weaknesses) than standard
helms that do not allow any goggles or glasses inside of them.  The fact is
that the majority of helms would not be usable with goggles.

So, you say, "How about the screen?"

Well, ok, the screen will fit on almost any helm.  And adding it shouldn't
be THAT big of a deal.  But the fact is, excluding Gulf Wars, most melee
events don't draw the hundreds of archers the GW does.  I'd bet a ratio of
one archer to every 15 standard fighters might be a good estimate (based on
my recollection of the War of 3 Kings and Bordermarch Melees).  So, to
permit the one person to fight in the style they want, it would require 15
people to change their armour.  That seems to be a bit un-equitable to me.

It would be akin to me saying "I want to fight with one inch thrusting tips.
Therefore all fighters who I fight against must  have bar grills 3/4"
apart."  I'd get run out of town.

I guess that part of this thread that bothers me is the militant attitude of
"We wanna do this so you will fix it so that we can".  I don't think that
attitude is the one that combat archers want to foster.  I think an attitude
of "Wow, that fact that someone got a nock in their eye is terrible.  Lets
come up with the most effective way to make sure thats the only occurrence
of it."

For what its worth,
Jean Paul de Sens

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ansteorra at ansteorra.org
[mailto:owner-ansteorra at ansteorra.org]On Behalf Of Tenryuou at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2001 10:52 PM
To: ansteorra at ansteorra.org
Subject: ANST - Re: History Repeats Itself Again and again and again

> Agreed - efficient and common sense.  It does not make sense, in my
> opinion, to ask 1,000 fighters to all don the special archery armor for
> the archery scenarios, when we could ask the 200 archers to modify their
> arrows.

Okay, what sense are you using there?  Which will take more modifying?
1,000 helms or 7,000 to 10,000 arrows?  It's not the 200 archers you have to
modify.  It's the things flying at you.  Unless someone is going to be
launching archers with catapults at the next war.

Now answer me this:
Do you wear goggles/eye protection in the shop with all those flying bits of
wood and other stuff?
Do you wear goggles/eye protection in the chemistry lab with all those
potentially explosive chemicals?
Do you wear goggles/eye protection at construction sites with even more
flying bits of sharp things?
Do you wear goggles/eye protection on a motorcycle with all those 70 mile an
hour bugs?
Do you give a damn about your eyes in the first place?

As someone with glasses, I know how valuable my eyes are.  People with 20/20
seem to forget that and not protect them.

There is a simple solution to this problem.  Use your head.  If you like
your eyes and choose to preserve them against the small chance that you'll
see an arrow coming at you the wrong way, buy some shop safety goggles, or
light frame normal glasses, or $2 sunglasses, or lexan, or the wire mesh, or
cloth, or a different helm, or sit out, or some perforated metal, or a
tighter front grill!!  There's something that can be modified to fix any
helm.  Hell, several layers of clear packing tape would fix the whole damn
problem!  JUST THINK ABOUT IT!

Also, are you going to trust every single one of those archers to modify
their arrows?  Especially if they fly worse?  There is going to be one
spiteful archer out there that will sneak in "bad" arrows just for the
purpose of having ones that fly good.  You going to trust them with your
eyes?

Or of course, you can sit there and bitch about the archers and how terrible
this is and how arrows must be changed and how unfair it is and how things
aren't right and how things aren't period like good little SCAers always do.

In true service to my clan,
Suiko of the Scorpion Clan

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