Research and Discussion Forums

Part of your concern has a root in the accuracy of medieval art. I'm not familiar with the first book you mentioned but in many others (including Flos Duellatorum) the artwork is often imperfect. In one manual (by Hans Talhoffer) the swords seem to be about six feet in length, and yet the techniques...

By brother-in-law is a Washington State Trooper and saw a lot of similarities in what we do in ARMA. When I showed him the barehanded stuff in the Codex Wallerstein, he said that nothing changed since the middle ages. He later mentioned one difference: the nature of his job means that he has to subd...

In some ways it is good that ARMA goes through so many first-timers to get a regular: it shows we're maintaining high standards. I think everyone's posts have explained most of the phenomenon. I have wondered if study group sub-culture could be a less common factor. In Provo I've noticed common inte...

Ugh....I've never seen first hand misconceptions that bad. What's really sad is that his even undermines himself. If thrusts were so bad, then why are so many of the manuals he mentions about cutting swords? He also misrepresents firearms. He implies that they eliminated armor in the 13th century! M...

My personal feeling here is that a Vom Tag is more than adequate for casting out a Zornhau - has anyone else ever come up with a good use for the Zornhut other than this? For simply striking a zornhau, yeah, vom tage is enough. Zornhut just gives you too much space to move through to be worth the e...

When you're in kron, Ryan, I think you're have the right ideaa about countering, but also try this: when you feel him releasing his pressure on your sword as he begins the twich, shove your blade down and against his arms and towards his face and neck. This tangles up his arms and if you might even ...

An excellent tactic I find for a littler guy (like myself: 5' 7'' 150lbs) is nach. It avoids dealing with the higher strength and leverage of the other guy and leaves an opening to close the distance of his longer arms. The trick is just developing the good sense of distance and reaction do pull it ...

We were using trenchcoats. They seemed heavy enough to block pretty well most of the way along the cloak. The protection seemed to break down at the last third or quarter.

Thrusts can easily make it through a cloak...if you don't react. But if you pull the cloak to the side once the point hits the cloak, it easily displaces the thrust. Also, the person fight against the cloak seemed very vulnerable when in a low guard. It just seemed too hard to get around it or avoid...

I don't know of any links, but try this: Lay the coat flat on the ground and then simply grab a wad of it a third of the way down from the collar. That's all we did and it worked out well. Of course, you can also try other places (quarter way down, half way) or grab the collar itself and wrap it aro...

Rob Hyatt had a stroke of creativity last Saturday and used his trenchcoat with his arming sword and it worked a lot better with a cutting sword than I thought it would be. While there is the obvious use of throwing around the opponents sword or on his head, we discovered several other great ways of...