[Ansteorra-archery] Combat Archery - New Society Marshallate Ruling

[Eadric Anstapa]

Marlin and Amanda Stout wrote:
> Okay, I'd like a  couple of clarifications here, please.
>
> The descriptions given referred to UHMW/rubber stopper ammo. Is this a 
> rubber stopper as the striking surface of a UHMW round, or are some 
> kingdoms allowing use of rubber stoppers /instead/ of UHMW? If they're 
> allowing stoppers as the striking part of the round (without padding, 
> or with less padding) what is the chance that that's why this is 
> happening? That the structure of the round is compressible, and is 
> allowing it to penetrate where a straight UHMW/foam round may not?
>
You are confusing two separate blunt types.  There is UHMW cored blunts 
on fiberglass shafts  and there are rubber stopper blunt cores on 
siloflex shafts.  Rubber stopper of siloflex shafts are also called 
Omarad blunts.  Both are allowed in Ansteorra so all of our CA marshals 
should be familiar with them and know the difference and how to inspect 
them.  Both require side wraps now.

> Second, just how in Hell are we supposed to inspect the depth of foam 
> on the head of a round when the side is wrapped in a half-inch of 
> compressed foam? You can tell 'about' where the head ends, but not 
> enough to accurately measure it, especially if we're going to make the 
> owner cut off any excess. 
It's no different than inspecting a Fellwalker blunt.  Those have been 
around for a decade and in kingdoms where they are used marshals  can 
inspect then quick.  Our marshals will simply have to learn to do the 
same.  Like anything else our marshals will eb slow doing it at first 
but in time our skills will improve.


> Or are we supposed to allow a certain margin of error here, which the 
> ruling doesn't seem to allow?
In general in Ansteorra we have always allowed for a small margin of 
error. 

We have never worried if there was padding over one inch but now we have 
to. 

In general the way things have been practiced in Ansteorra is that we 
understand that if you but 1" of padding on a blunt and shoot and hit 
something with it have a dozen times you no longer have a full one inch 
due to compression.   To end if someones blunt was a little under 1" 
they would typically be allowed on the armored combat field as long as 
the marshal still deemed them safe  and they would bring it to the 
attention of the archer if the padding was starting to wear down too much.

We do likely need to set a 3/4" lower limit to give us some room to work 
with.

> What concerns me here is, we require no /less/ than 1" of padding on 
> our arrows. Now Society is telling us we can have no /more/ than 1", 
> and we are going to be a bit less able to accurately test the depth of 
> the padding. So, how can we be sure any of our ammo meets the new 
> requirements without disassembly? As a marshal who will have to 
> enforce this, I really want to know now, before I have to go inspect 
> somebody's ammo.
You will have to learn.  tear stuff apart, rebuild it correctly and 
perhaps incorrectly to learn how to inspect it.  I have 10 or so people 
coming over to my house this evening for learning

> What I would suggest would be that we look at coming up with some kind 
> of standard for how 'squishy' the foam in our rounds (and other 
> weapons) can be. Because I'd think that making the foam stiff enough 
> would help reduce the penetration problem, while still giving us the 
> compression we need for safety.
>
Thats not a new idea.  Remember any standard that you want set  is 
something that can be tested for quickly and accurately at an inspection 
point when you are going through thousands of pieces of ammo.


> And, before any yells at me about it, I know that this is a Society 
> mandate, and we have to enforce it now. What I'd like to see, though, 
> is that we start looking for a better answer now, so maybe we can get 
> the ruling adjusted later on into something safe, but easier to 
> administer.
Try to stay positive.  This isn't the end of the world.  Atenveldt, 
Artemesia, Outlands, Caid, and I think West have called for the heavy 
UHMW cored blunts with the sidewraps on all fiberglass shafted ammo for 
years and it hasn't presented a problem for them,  Granted, Ansteorra 
probably has as many combat archers as the first three of those kingdoms 
combined  but Caid and West have good archer populations that get along 
just fine.

Regards,

-EA