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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 5372609" data-attributes="member: 77019">SCA heavy combat, as I understand it (it's been a while since I talked to any SCA people about this) is based on the premise of a 10th or 11th Century warrior wearing a mail hauberk with an open-faced helmet and possibly some shin-splints. They have a theory that you should hit hard enough to do damage through the mail, which I think is unlikely. So in theory every fighter on the field, whether they are wearing a full milanese harness or a bare minimum helmet, kidney belt and gloves, is supposed to be wearing mail hauberk etc.  So yeah, I would say if they are holding fights under that assumption, you should have to go around the armor to score hits, the face, the lower legs, the forearms. They could armor up those spots. Or if they want to pretend everyone is unarmored they could just wear the armor and fight more or less as they do today. Or they could assume harnischefechten (everyone is armored, like in a 15th Century battlefield) and allow grappling, half-swording, throws, etc. It can be done, there are re-enactment groups in Eastern Europe who do full contact battles with steel weapons and include punches kicks, throws etc. There is a group at the Ren Faire in Louisiana which does basically kick-boxing with SCA style rattan and padded weapons and they don't get any serious injuries.  I know the guys we trained some of them in fencing. Ultimately I don't really care how SCA runs their battles, I realize it's challenging making fighting rules for battles involving thousands of people, I just don't want them to keep disseminating half truths about historical combat to rationalize how they want or need to structure their events. G.</blockquote>

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