ARCH - Ideas for an Archery Tournament

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Galen of Bristol here!

(Hey!  Is this the first post to the Ansteorra-Archery list?)

One of the things I'm going to really like about being Baron of Elfsea
is that I'll be able to do -- on a regular basis -- something I've only 
gotten to do once:  host a formal archery tourney.

I think back to the Robin Hood stories, and the tournament held
by the Sheriff of Nottingham as a ruse to lure Robin Hood right
into his castle, and how Robin came in disguise and won the
prize.  No film version of Robin Hood is complete without the 
Archery Tourney sequence.  Even Disney's appalling animated
version of Robin does a pretty good job on this part.

Once, long ago, back in Bryn Gwlad, my household held a
weekend-long archery competition.  The archers were presented
in a march of precedence.  We held a royal round, a novice
shoot, and a combat archery team competition with live armored
targets.  The audience was fully as big for this event as it would
have been for a similar sized chivalric tourney, the event itself
drew more participants than the previous Baronial Champion
Tourney.

I had gotten the idea to do this when I noticed, at that prior
Bryn Gwlad baronial championship tourney, the number of
archers who were out shooting in a light rain was greater than
the number of chivalric and duello combatants combined.  I
thought, "these people deserve their own event".  So we held
one.  Eventually, I hope Elfsea will hold a primarily archery
event.  In the meantime, on a smaller scale, I'm looking forward
to doing what I posted to the Ansteorra list:

"The tournament to choose the next Archery Defender of Elfsea (in 
September) will be as high-persona, with as much pageantry, as I 
can arrange.  Never mind getting a noble to sponsor you, archers 
will need to hire heralds.  There'll be prizes for style as well as the 
title that goes to the victor, be sure to look good, and consider how 
your persona would conduct himself in such a tourney.  There'll be 
a prize for the best herald.  The Baron & Baroness (and hopefully
the King & Queen) will be sitting in their thrones behind the shooting 
line watching, cheering and wagering.  Hopefully, many more spectators 
will join us.  This will be the first thing Saturday morning at the event,
_right_ after morning court, while the fighters are just getting started 
with armor inspection.  If the archers come out and make this a 
success, it'll be a new tradition in Elfsea."

Now, I'm thinking of doing this as a simple Royal Round, due to time
constraints.  I still have to preside over rapier and chivalric lists
that day, plus all the other things that will be get inserted into the
schedule, some of which will surely demand my attention.  But I'm
counting on this to start off the event with a bang, as it were, and I'm
hoping to come up with attractive enough prizes that all the best
archers in Ansteorra will want to come and compete, which will in
turn make the Archery Defender of Elfsea the title in the kingdom which
is most prized among the archers, simply because of who you'll have
had to beat to get there.

I plan to include having my herald announce the scores of
each round, so that the spectators can have a better idea
of what's happening.  Perhaps some version of a scoreboard
could provide a visual display of the progress of the competition.

Some things I hope to avoid:
- Inadequate pavillion space by the archery field, making it a trial
for spectators to stay and watch.
- Hiding the archery field someplace that's hard to find.

OK, guys, what am I leaving out?  

Do crossbows have an unfair advantage?  I don't think they do if
I throw in a timed round.

Will enough archers come to participate?  Is this attractive to
archers?  Or am I just imposing my tournament-mindset into
an activity that doesn't accodate it well?

What do you think?

- Galen of Bristol



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