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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6251463" data-attributes="member: 177">\My experience is with the SCA.  I've been in open field, bridge, and woods battles with hundreds of people on each side of the fight, as well as small-group (like in the film above) and one-on-one tournament fights.That film isn't too bad.  I'd add a couple of notes:In the film, he notes that spears are really for group work.  He's correct, but really, anyone who is alone against multiple opponents is in trouble.  In a fight that small, yes, lodging your spear in the other guy's shield is a problem, as you lose your weapon.  In a larger battle, the spears can get insanely long, and the spearmen are standing behind the guys with shields, and then sticking the spear in the shield is done to take down the shield, and allow the sword-and-board guy in front to get a hit.  Cooperation matters!That bunch had spears and shield and sword/handaxe and shield.  But it didn't have any of what I'd call polearms (what I typically use).  Polearms lack the reach of a full 12'  long spear, but you really can't run up them like a spear, either.My experience has bucklers as being, basically, a second weapon that is only useful for block/parry.  Note something - LARP combat often uses *any* touch is a hit, and your armor is damage reduction.  The result is that everyone is extremely mobile, as you're not actually wearing armor.Re-enactment fighting usually uses real armor - those guys in the film were probably wearing chainmail hauberks under the tabards - and something more like "any hit that I can feel through my armor enough that I really don't want you to hit me like that again" is a hit.  In the SCA, it is basically "anything I can feel through the armor, almost any hit to the head, but face, hands, and below the knee are not valid targets".  So, a buckler in heavy-list combat isn't there to fully control the enemy's weapon.  It is there to deflect *enough* so that you can call a hit "not enough".This is where each person's particular abilities come into play.   I do better in single combat with my polearm than I do with a sword and shield.</blockquote>

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