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!

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.

Hugh Knight, over the The School of Battle, has posted a diatribe against test-cutting, lamenting its practice in the Historical European Martial Arts Community. He concludes:

 So, test cutting has no historical provenance, no relationship to sword training, and teaches sword habits that can, at best, be termed “dreadful”. All it does is pander to a misplaced romantic desire to “cut something” with your sharp new sword, and there’s simply no value in that.

My own thoughts are a bit different than Hugh’s and will be forthcoming.