[Ansteorra-rapier] Proposed revision to rapier rules

[Chris Zakes]

At 06:43 AM 10/15/2012, Pug wrote:

>Tivar, no matter what we say, we aren't going to convince you that these are
>a risk. While they have been deemed "safe" in the past, there is a history
>of higher breakage with foils and epees than with heavy blades.
>Unfortunately while I can't produce statistics, I can produce results from a
>survey done in 2004 at
>http://www.therotunda.net/rapier/survey-1/q11-light-blades.shtml where
>several kingdoms pointed out that foils and epees break more frequently than
>heavy blades.

Which, I will point out is just random people repeating the SCA urban 
myth that "foils and epees break too easily", not providing hard 
numbers on actual breakages or injuries. As such, I say it's opinion, not data.

In 37 years of SCA rapier combat, we have hard data on *two* serious 
injuries from broken epees (punctured arm in the East Kingdom, and an 
in-and-out puncture of a fighter's pectoral muscle in Trimaris) and 
none from broken foils. In roughly 17 years of using heavy blades, we 
have hard data on one serious injury with an unbroken schlager 
(cracked larynx from an over-hard hit at Estrella War) and one 
comparatively minor injury from an untipped Del Tin (puncture through 
the fighter's leather glove and about two inches into his hand in Ansteorra.)

Three serious injuries across nearly four decades not a large enough 
statistical universe to say one blade type is safer than the other.


>While they are on our books, the majority of the fighters and
>marshals don't know how to inspect them properly and know what makes them
>unsafe now elevating our risk for a statistically insignificant usage.

How? If you were doing an armor inspection and Joe Newbie handed you 
an epee, would you say "Okay, looks good to me" or would you say "I 
don't know how to inspect this. 
Tivar/Dore/Connor/Aubrey/Gwenneth/Avery (or any other rapier marshal 
who's been around for more than five or ten years) would you inspect 
this blade, please?"


>It is particularly disturbing to me that we're authorizing people in a
>fighting style that people aren't actually using.

Except, as several people have said, there *are* people who are using 
these blades. My initial reaction when you proposed dropping the 
light blades was agreement, because they are, at best, poor 
simulators of what we're trying to do, and I didn't think anyone was 
still using them. When I learned differently, I changed my mind, 
because I have no interest in forcing people away from rapier combat 
just because some other rapier fighters don't like the safe and legal 
blades they're using.

         -Tivar Moondragon