accuracy question

[Alex Kurtzman]

At the beginning of a karate class a couple of months ago my sensei was relating a story that a friend of his in the SCA asked him to duel at a get together so my sensei was pitted with his fillipino escrima against an SCA swordsman. As the story went eventually after warding off a flurry of sword attacks my sensei found that the SCA fighter would turn cock his body before a strike, and expose his sides to thrusts from the escrima sticks and after recieving a few good thrusts called the fight off. My sensei suggested he didn't know how accurate SCA fighting was to medieval europe, so I told him to look into the arma since, having seen SCA practices at my college, I've always thought of the SCA as being fine fighting, but not overly concerned with accuracy, but since then I have been wondering. . . just how accurate would people consider the SCA fighting to be?

[Jake_Norwood]

Hi Alex.

First, my background. I've got friends in the SCA, and in high school I fought for about a year with them in two states (both of which had very, very different approaches to combat and roughness). I had a good time, but everything I learned in that year (plus some boffer fighting) was replaced and improved upon after 3 months of training with the HACA (that's the ARMA's old name).

SCA combat, other than that it involves hitting people with things, has almost nothing to do with actual historical swordsmanship as we now understand it. The limitations of the SCA's rules make thier combat a martial sport of sorts. These same rules either outlaw historical technique (striking to the hands or lower legs, or strikes from greater than 90 degrees in many kingdoms) or encourage bad techniques (the round rattan sticks make flat hits as good as edge hits, despite official rulings otherwise; also, the footwork is too close and too small, again due to the lower-leg issue). Most importantly, however, is the misconception that a sword can break metal armor with any degree of dependability when striking with the edge. The SCA essentially practices a stickfighting game suitable for less athletic individuals in armor which in little-to-no-way resembles either armored or unarmored combat with a medieval or renaissance sword.

I'm not attacking SCA combat as an invalid activity, but rather showing that it's a different animal from the martial arts of the day, and therefore very different from what we do. I'd also say that it's martially innefective against someone trained without the SCA rule structure.

Jake

[Casper Bradak]

I second that. I "fought" in the SCA for around a decade before I found the ARMA in 99. It has nothing to do with medieval combat, and the more educated ones will say so.
It somewhat resembles certain late medieval tourney games, but even that is quite a stretch.

[Brian Hunt]

As an old SCA hand myself, I will have to add my voice to that of Jake and Casper on the realism of SCA combat.

Brian Hunt.
GFS

[Patrick Hardin]

I agree with what everybody has said. I've done a little cross-training with the SCA before, and what they do is a game, not combat. It can be summed up by saying, "The SCA trains to play, the ARMA trains to fight."

Patrick Hardin

[James_Knowles]

Yet another "I agree with Jake." <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

I headed up the club in Logan, UT from 1989-1994 IIRC. (In their jargon: "I was seneschal of the Shire of Cote du Ciel A.S. XXIV-XXIX.")

I participated in the "heavy fighting" initially but quite frankly became bored and frustrated with it because (a) I was interested in longsword, and (b) the rules were such that longsword is pretty useless, and (c) the attitude was that a serious person should really learn to hit with a big stick and hide behind an oversized shield. I switched to the shinai "light fighting" that was experimental at the time, and enjoyed greatly that equally anhistorical sport.

I too am not saying it a bad activity. It's a game that a lot of people enjoy and it can be a lot of fun. Just don't mistake it for anything resembling historical accuracy.

[JeanryChandler]

I never fought in the SCA but did somewhat similar stick fighting for many years. The key difference was that we fought full force, full contact, "no holds barred" and used much less in the way of armor.

I have fought three escrima / arnis practitioners now and I was able to beat them about 9 bouts out of ten when they used their escrima sticks. They did a bit better when using my swords, but I still won. You can see part of one match from earlier this year here (he's only using one stick here but he tried two sticks first).

http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/e/deodand23/henry1.mpeg

I went through a perod where I was fighting anyone who would show up to a fight, and have faced SCA fighters, staff fighters, sport fencers, kendo fighters and all sorts of generic psychos.

I know it is very popular these days but my experience with escrima is that basically no form of EMA can deal with a large shield or even a small one as in that clip. The escrima sticks are too small, and they only seem to have one guard to work from. It's easy to strike their legs for example. I see it as more of an augmented unarmed combat thing than a weapon technique.

Most SCA fighters suffer from the obvious deficiency of their sport- they don't know how to protect the "forbidden" strike zones. Some of the hard core ones however are quite good, I wouldn't utterly dismiss them all in terms of pure skill.

But I will say this, the only pepole I ever fought with weapons who were truly daunting were ARMA trained fighters. I was able to hold my own with the shield, but longsword v. longsword against jake was like being a candle flame in a hurricane. I never had that much trouble with any opponent before.

Since doing some WMA training I've been able to defeat spears and staffs with the longsword, something I could never do in the old days.

DB

[Ryan Ricks]

that shield sounded an aweful lot like a stop sign being smacked with a stick <img src="/forum/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" />

[JeanryChandler]

Actually, I have a stop sign shield. That one is my 'ultimate weapon', reserved for my most challenging opponents. It's a great shield, I only wish I could find an historical example of just one shield with a similar shape so I could justify it's use on an historical basis:)

The shield I used in the match you see above is much smaller, a large buckler or a perhaps a targe depending on your perspective. It is 20" diameter, made of 1/4" plywood, center grip with a boss made out of a stainless steel mixing bowl, which is probably a bit too light weight as it got a little dented up by those unpadded rataan sticks the escrima guys use.

JR

[Ryan Ricks]

yeah i remember you said you had one. i won't ask you how you got it, but how much does it weigh? i'm guessing you didn't trim the corners off to make it round