Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Face thrusts (ooh, anoth
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 05:14:02

Wulfgar Silberbaer said...

>If anybody lives in a kingdom with full-force face-thrusting, please
>tell me more about it. How is it done? What helm requirements are there?

We allow face-thrusts in Ansteorra, and I am a spearman, so I feel
like I have some knowledge.

Let me start by saying that I strongly oppose any system that does
not allow face thrusts because I can't understand why a shield
wall, with all of the fighters poking their heads far above their
shields, should be effectively safe from spearmen.  If I can't hit
them in the face, they can look around all they want.  If I *can*
hit them in the face, they have to learn to be careful about when
they poke their heads up.  This is much more realistic.

Our system assumes an open-faced helm, so (in theory) a light blow
to the face should be called.  In practice, starting with this
fighting season, I have noticed that fighters are not calling
face-thrusts as light as they used to, and so I am using more force
than I would be using otherwise.  (This isn't a trend I like, just
what I have noticed.)  Prior to this trend, I think I used about
half-power when thrusting at a face.  On occasion I would run into
a fighter that would not take that (even in the face) as a good
shot, and it was easy to up the power.

Once a fighter took a good, solid (but not excessive) blow to the
center of his face and didn't call it.  I was starting to line up
on another fighter when I saw that he had not called the shot and
was still open, so I hit him again harder. (But still far from as h
ard as I could.)  As soon as the melee was over he came to me and
told me that I had hit him too hard.  My feeling is that if you
will not call the easy ones, you have to expect the hard ones.

At TFYC I got bloody-well-mad when during the 7-man-mellee's, I hit
another spearman in the face, nice & solid, just how I like them, I
thought he was dead, I began to line up on another fighter, and
this spearman hit me with about the same shot I had hit him with.
I had to call it, but felt like he had not only rhino'd through my
shot, but used the advantage given him because of my belief that he
was dead to kill me.  I went over and talked to him after the fight
and it turns out he was the king of some-place.  And he wasn't the
least bit appologetic.

What this lead's up to is this:  If fighters will not call a light
shot to the face, we should be giving them full-force shots the
first time.  But I am opposed to this because, in my oppinion, it
IS NOT SAFE.  I feel pretty sure that if I hit almost anyone with a
full-force, blast-them-away shot that it could easily do serious
damage.

Also, we have just begun (in the last year or maybe two)
allowing use of fiberglass spears.  I am told that we are the last
kingdom to allow them, but I don't know that for sure.  These are
great (from a spearman's point of view) in that they are light,
very straight, and they don't "flex", so your point stays online
where you want it.  They also hit harder than a rattan equivilent,
because the rattan will flex on impact, and the fiberglass doesn't.
As I understand it, our reason for allowing them is primarily to
keep other kingdoms from having a weapons-advantage, even though a
fairly large number of the fighter here (not all) consider them
unsafe.  I use one myself for a similar reason.

I remember a barrier battle when I was getting very few chances to
throw a shot, due to swordsmen on my team pressing forward against
me, when the shields in front of me suddenly gapped a few inches.
I couldn't see what was on the other side, but I knew that anyone
who I *did* hit would be "the enemy", so I thrust long and deep.  I
connected with something, but didn't know what.  Shortly afterwards
I found I that I had hit my roommate just above the kidney belt
hard enough that it knocked the breath out of him, and the
chirurgeon who checked him out said he couldn't fight more that
day.  (Luckily it was the last battle of the day.)  I was using a
rattan spear, and I have often worried about that same thing
happening with a fiberglass one.  I think whoever I hit might be
seriously hurt.

I have never seen an signifigant injury caused by a face thrust,
but a couple of times have seen fighters using helms that, due to
the padding/strapping arrangement, could be rotated backwards
during a hard thrust far enough that either the bars or face-plate
could press against the nose.  There are not many of these around
and in theory the armour inspection should check for it and warn
the fighter to fix it, but it is a possibility.

The bottom line is that I think face-thrust should be allowed, and
that helm's should be considered to be open-faced, which means a
light blow should be called as good.  Before I started reading this
thread, I didn't know that some kingdoms considered their helm's to
be closed-faced.

Stephen Whitis/Stephen of the Grove
Steppes/Ansteorra  FIDO 1:124/4229
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