
Inside the World of International Medieval Combat - MichaelAO
https://www.buzzfeed.com/timchester/inside-the-violent-geeky-world-of-hardcore-international-med?utm_term=.ui2qyQyRP#.yde3o8oMW
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mattkevan
Battle of the Nations have held the UK national tournament in our local park
for the last couple of years. My wife and I went to watch the first year,
thinking it would be a quaint medieval reenactment thing.

It wasn't. A few minutes into the first bout we realised they were dead
serious and properly going for each other. It was a lot of fun, but there was
definitely an odd feeling of 'how much should I be enjoying this?' as it was
so violent. Basically two people in full armour beating the crap out of each
other with a heavy metal bar and a big wooden plank.

A fun day out for all the family.

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scotty79
Team fights are even better. There's better dynamic and tactic to observe.

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morley
I found this video of a team fight:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjJT-8bY6x4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjJT-8bY6x4)

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gvurrdon
It's certainly an activity that requires a lot of fitness; sparring/bouting
without all that armour on is tiring enough for me.

But, I hear from mediaeval HEMAists that it's not really quite the same as
mediaeval combat in that thrusting into the gaps of the armour has been
replaced (for obvious safety reasons) with bludgeoning and that it is not
based on any particular historical systems.

I wouldn't know, not specialising in that period myself.

~~~
dspillett
_> I hear from mediaeval HEMAists that it's not really quite the same as
mediaeval combat_

As soon as anything becomes a sport it deviates from how it works in real
life. It has to, especially when the thing is combat based because killing
someone in the name of sport simply isn't cricket.

I'm a member of a group that practices medieval sword, dagger, and unarmed
techniques - with a view to being martially sound and historically accurate
(within the limits of not actually maiming each other - there are things we
know how to do that we would never try on a live training partner or in a
tournament). Other groups have a different set of priorities: re-enactors tend
to be very detailed about the look of the uniforms, equipment, and formations,
but are much from lax/free with the actual combat techniques; people doing it
for sport obviously can't be entirely accurate both for safety and audience
entertainment reasons; and so on.

 _> I wouldn't know, not specialising in that period myself._

Even those that do don't 100% know how people back then trained and fought
because the surviving manuscripts are not complete and even if they were would
not contain all the information a modern audience would need as there was a
certain amount of play combat kids would have been exposed to very early that
didn't need to be taught - no one writing the training down thought that some
of those details would ever need writing down. As with many historical
studies, working out how the masters intended their work to be trained out is
often therefor an exercise in reading between the lines (filling in the gaps
with morsels of information from other sources and sometimes just from what we
know about how the human body and the materials in the weapons and
clothes/armour physically work) and of course this leads to multiple differing
interpretations. This isn't just an issue when looking as far back as medieval
periods: there are a few parts of the original Fairbairn/Sykes techniques from
WWII (modified versions of which are still in use today by many forces),
including the areas that were deliberately simple overall so they could be
taught quickly to new intakes of soldiers who were sometimes completely
inexperienced at fighting, where people can't entirely find agreement about
how to translate the written instructions to useful physical techniques.

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pavel_lishin
> _Even those that do don 't 100% know how people back then trained and fought
> because the surviving manuscripts are not complete and even if they were
> would not contain all the information a modern audience would need_

My wife and I did HEMA for a bit, and as I understand it, most of the
knowledge in longsword combat comes from Liechtenauer, who - and he was not
unique in this - would write down his training techniques, but almost as a
riddle, to ensure that it would not be enough to just read his book and apply
it - you'd have to actually have to pay him, or his students, to come and
teach you.

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rcarmo
Loved the photo caption: "We’ve got a lot of people who work in IT; they’ve
obviously got a lot of anger to work out."

~~~
lostboys67
Lol reminds me of the Charlie Bradbury (Felicia Day) in supernatural - there
is one episode set around a LARP

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cup
>I overhear one particularly worrying account from a fighter talking about
receiving a head blow from a pole axe: “My right vision completely went; there
were sparkly lights and stuff. I spent a week in a brain-fog haze, walking
around like a zombie.”

This sport sounds like a great way to earn a concussion and acquired brain
injury.

~~~
ygra
Like plenty of other violent sports. No shortage there.

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marmot777
Your post ironically will probably draw more people to this activity. Their
choice of course. It seems a bit nuts to me but then again I used to climb
mountains every now and again. That might seem nuts to some people.

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dghf
> More GBH than LARP, it substitutes foam weaponry for real steel and scripted
> acting for unpredictable scuffling

This sentence confused me deeply, given it contradicts the rest of the
article, until I realised they meant to say "it substitutes real steel for
foam weaponry and unpredictable scuffling for scripted acting". Or, if you
prefer, "it substitutes foam weaponry _with_ real steel and scripted acting
_with_ unpredictable scuffling". You substitute new for old, and old with new
(but in the latter case you may as well say "replace").

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dre85
I have a friend who does this and I went to watch one of their events. He says
he only does 1-on-1 fights for safety reasons and I can understand why. At
least you always have your opponent in front of you in this case. The group
fights are super fast and dynamic and the biggest strategy is basically
covering distance quickly, teaming up on people, and tackling from behind.
They're less about weapons and more about American football-style tackles from
the side/back while the opponent is busy sword fighting with your team mate.
The armour is also so padded and thick that ordinary weapons like swords are
really more for just point fighting. Two handed weapons definitely do more
damage. Also, getting jabbed in the face with the edge of a wooden shield
looks pretty serious, not to mention quick and unexpected! Watching their
event was super exciting, but at the same time there's a looming feeling that
someone will get seriously hurt at any second.

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kefka
Yeah, "Reenactment is for pussies", eh?

I'm part of the SCA. I've done fencing (heavy rapier) and some heavy. Yes, the
heavies use rattan (wood) for their weapons. That's because we like our
fighters to live afterwards, and be relatively uninjured. Have injuries
happened? Yep. Have deaths happened? Yep. But the SCA's policies on fighting
are battle-tested, over melees of thousands of fighters.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrueFTheV-Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrueFTheV-Y)

This article is just 'Not Even
Wrong'([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong))
- There's ways to do mostly safe fighting, and ways to be a douchebag that can
end up breaking bones and killing people. This is certainly the latter.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I've fought both European re-enactment and SCA, and they're both totally
different styles, and both about as safe as each other. I wouldn't say the SCA
method is the only safe way of doing this. But I don't think they're too
worried about safety anyway.

Re-enactment (in Europe anyway, I can't speak about US or Japanese re-
enactment) has always has two sides:

The desire to recreate historical costume and practices

vs

The desire to get drunk in a castle with your mates and have a damn good fight

As re-enactment spread east through Europe from the UK, the latter tendency
became more pronounced. The Russians and Poles get a real reputation in the
European scene for fighting dirty, hitting hard and not taking their shots.

This sport developed from that. Their gear is almost completely unrelated to
what was actually used in the time period they say they portray, and safety
takes a back seat to "not being a pussy". I suspect the rules around drinking
are more lax than you'd expect from a conventional re-enactment society too.
They're all about the "beer and bash".

I expect that there'll be a few more splits as they evolve, with the safety-
conscious moving to a more toned-down style while the real nutters keep the
rules rough and accumulate scar tissue.

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JabavuAdams
Part of me is like yes, yes, yes, do it. And then I realise that I already
have chronic knee, shoulder, and brain injuries.

