AEMMA recently put forth a public deed of arms in Ontario. In my opinion, the conditions of victory were quite nice, balancing historical accuracy and realism :

The conditions were. Timed bouts not exceeding 3 minutes in duration or until one of the following conditions were met.

1. 3 landed blows with the point within the limbs
2. Unbalanced and cast down
3. Forced from the lists
4. Disarmed

There are no videos yet, but that will no doubt change. Watch for updates.

Of course, if you just want to watch two guys in armour fighting, have a look at the ARMA video.

Recently, I’ve been working on putting up more and more info on the pages that are already available. For those who might not have been back terribly recently, I’ve added more to the following pages in the last couple of days:

• Online Manuscripts 
• Organizations
• Training Weapons

If anyone’s group isn’t featured on the Organizations page, they have an extra link to two to add to the Manuscripts page, or their favourite waster company isn’t on the training weapons page, please leave a comment either here on on the respective page and I’ll add the information ASAP!

The Medieval European Martial Arts Guild recently posted their interpretations of the Zornhau plays. I think the technical aspect at the bind is rather good, and that their use of literally accurate Vom Tag stances is also beneficial to the appearance of things. Period dress is something that usually bothers me, but here it seems to be done rather nicely - toned down and realistic, not showy and overbearing. There are some elements that are lacking, most notably a sense of actual martial spirit - the attacks themselves look as if they were done at less than full strength, aiming more to intercept and stop the sword than to attack the individual behind it.

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This week I pooled some money and went after a few things I’ve been looking at buying for a while.

I first decided on a fluted steel buckler from GDFB, supplied by Therion Arms. These bucklers are purportedly the modern day equivalent of munitions grade weaponry - cheap, ugly, but serviceable. Unfortunately the buckler has a grotesque offset handle which I understand to be completely historically inaccurate. That can easily be fixed, though. I’ll have a review up for both the initial and my customized version soon.

I also bought a messer waster coming from With Intent Wasters. These are the plastic wasters that bring about a good deal of controversey, but I think they are worth every penny and definitely look forward to getting mine. I have heard nothing but good things about it and look forward to being able to provide my opinions on it.

Lance Chan, who studies out of Hong Kong if I remember correctly (and I may not!), recently presented some introductory ideas about the German longsword to the Dharma Buddhism Association, making it one of if not the first presentations of German longsword material to the public in Cantonese. The Historical European Martial Arts are growing and spreading.

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Messerfechten (fighting with a messer, or long knife) appears to be one of the burgeoning arts - books are beginning to be published on it and it seems more and more people are experimenting with it all the time. Looking into it for my own personal studies, I’ve had a tough time finding a waster.

After a bit of research, I’ve found two makers, one American and one European. With Intent Wasters out of Wisconsin makes all their wasters out of a secret type of plastic that reacts much more like steel than wood - it bends, it slides, and it doesn’t bounce very much. Their messer waster is available for purchase at a price of $90 (without the price of shipping or tax), but is not posted up on their website yet.

Glorymade produces both wooden and steel messer trainers, but does not seem to have an English version of their website up so I am unable to provide pricing information.

Over at SwordForum a large number of short clips have cropped up of Khridoli, a Georgian martial art purportedly still taught by living masters. Some discussion has taken place as to the historical and martial validity of the techniques, and some have posted articles that reference the same group of individuals.

My personal opinion, after watching some of the videos and noting the connection to a documentary, is that what we see here is little more than well choreographed stage combat based in various historical sources.  As many pointed out the techniques appear to be both a mix of Fiore and German masters as well as traditional stage combat shield-striking.

More news as it comes.

The Guild of Armoursmiths have posted a rather good video showing a number of techniques with different weapons including longsword, messer, dagger, wrestling, and fighting in armour.

Take a look: (link)

Over at SwordForum a few longsword videos have been posted by an individual for critique. The videos are of freeplay, and the responses are both helpful and informative in their own right. There was some interesting discussion about the differences in interpretation and the differences between the masters themselves, especially regarding postures (leaning forward v. remaining upright) and the use of longer swings and greater zufechten distances.

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