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.

The actual article has now been published, including a short video featuring sound-bites of some of WMAs leading figures. Make of it what you will, it is beneficial to us all that WMA is being legitimized as a real and credible martial art.

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!

According to Cecil Longino at SwordForum, USA Today will be having a feature on Western Martial Arts, especially the Historical European Martial Arts, in their next issue. This is good news - it is relatively rare that a major news or information source seems to directly cover the western martial arts. I’ll be looking for it.

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.

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.

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.

Frank Docherty has recently opened the North West London School of Defense. The school has been added to the organizations page here at At the Sword.

A bit about the instructor:

I have been trained by Maister T. Brown for the last 15 years and have progressed to become his senior instructor. Along with studying at his school in Mill Hill, I teach in the North West London school of defense.

And the introductory level studies:

Within these levels both unarmed and weapon skills are taught, the weapons that are taught at these levels areCudgel, Backsword, Quarterstaff, Sword & Buckler, and Sword & Dagger.

Risto Rautiainen over at MyArmoury posted up quite a few images he took at the Tallinn Museum. There are some pretty good shots of various types of armour and weaponry, including a Zweihander, a wooden club, several axes and polearms, maille, and some suits of plate armour.