New Video of Armored Free-Play at Iron Door Studio

[John_Clements]

See:
http://www.thearma.org/Videos/Armored_Free-Play.htm

[Jeremiah Backhaus]

That just looked...FUN!!

-Jeremiah (GFS)

[JeremyDillon]

Wow. That's genuinely super-cool as hell. A knight in full harness on the field of battle would have been a veritable juggernaut. If I wasn't similarly armored, I'd probably just run the other way.

[Jim Churches]

Casper RULES!!! Guys, what a great fight. And what a nice change from some of the "other" armored fighting videos previously brought to attention here on the Forum and E_list.

Any particular reason for not wearing gauntlets? Maybe I'm just a sissy, but all that steel seems like it might pinch and abrade the digits more than I'm used to.

And quit staring at the camera!

Thanks for the great post.

[Keith Culbertson]

very nice work, especially showing the attacks against vulnerable points and using different parts of the sword and lots of ringen

-also, listened to the podcasts and hope for the best from the video shoot.

-as for the padded/control topic, definitely hard to get people to understand control right away, but progressive work through the various tools (padded, wasters, blunts) with less and less padding is something I will continue to reinforce when we train.

cheers!

[Axel Pettersson]

I can't remember the bsource, but some italian guy advised that, if you met a fully armoured man on the bttlefield, there should be atleast 4 of you ganging up on him to be sure to dispose him.

[Matt Bryant]

I can't remember the bsource, but some italian guy advised that, if you met a fully armoured man on the bttlefield, there should be atleast 4 of you ganging up on him to be sure to dispose him.

That makes perfect sense to me.

[Corey Roberts]

Thoroughly enjoyable to watch, if two guys make that much noise (and I'm also remembering Shane and Matt's demo at the gathering) I wonder what several thousand armoured individuals on the battlefield must have been like. Question how many arms and legs does a nice Harness like that cost?

[Brian Hunt]

Hi Cory,

I used to fight in the SCA and at both Estrella and Pennsic you can 3 to 4 thousand guys in armour out fighting at the same time. It sounds somewhat like the worst car wreck you have ever heard.

Brian Hunt
GFS

[JeremyDillon]

One question: Why do you fellas not wear any hand protection? I know that in unarmored free play there's a safety hazard with wearing plated gauntlets, but it seems like that hazard is greatly reduced since you're wearing full harness.

[Casper Bradak]

One question: Why do you fellas not wear any hand protection? I know that in unarmored free play there's a safety hazard with wearing plated gauntlets, but it seems like that hazard is greatly reduced since you're wearing full harness.

When you're fully armed, gauntlets are not an issue as far as the other guy's safety (as evidenced by the abundance of knee strikes, elbow and forearm strikes delivered in the video), only your own, really.

Presumably, we did it for the same reason that such a large portion of fully armed individuals in our source material decided not to wear hand protection.
Simply put, it just allows you a lot more manual dexterity, particularly with weapon control and agility.

Any particular reason for not wearing gauntlets? Maybe I'm just a sissy, but all that steel seems like it might pinch and abrade the digits more than I'm used to.

It doesn't seem to be a problem in my experience. There are certainly mean things you can do to the other guy's hands with your armour if you get ahold of them, or with certain other techniques, but there doesn't seem to be any incidental discomforts.

[CalebChow]

That was awesome! Love seeing full harness in action.

One question though: Do armor pieces really fall off so easily like that? I had the impression that each piece in a suit was strapped pretty sturdily.

[Casper Bradak]

One question though: Do armor pieces really fall off so easily like that? I had the impression that each piece in a suit was strapped pretty sturdily.

Well, it's not supposed to, and it's a fault not found in antique armour. The pieces that came off were all secured by spring pin latches that turned out to be unsuited for such hard use (but prior to that hadn't really been used enough for us to find out).
Easily preventable faults now that we know, such as with the addition of cotter pins.

[Aaron Pynenberg]

The armor is not quite historical, it's close but for the money we are not able to afford the armor that is exactly made. This causes us problems and all of these small issues made themselves apparent during our bouting. The biggest problem for me though was the gambeson. It is uniformly way to thick, and causes pinching in some areas that it should not. The chest, shoulders and elbows are where I notice it most. I hope that when I order a diffrent gambeson, that those issues go away.

Casper and I agreed that a man in harness would have been a terminator-type machine, hard to stop to say the least. Whe he and I went at it we were a little out of our realm of comfort, and we both realized very quickly how brutal that type of fighting could have been. I know understand things about harnessfechten very clearly. It was very, nasty buisness indeed-

Aaron Pynenberg (SFS) ARMA-Appleton Study Group Leader

[Aaron Pynenberg]

Hey Rod, Illusion made both of ours. I am in a difficult postion to reccomend them though. Here's the readout on them:

-Way too infrequent contact once you have an order placed. Several times they missed deadlines and were very slow to respond. I stayed on them and bugged them several times having even once threatened them with a Lawsuit before they responded. I tried telling them that I didn't care about the missed deadlines so much as no communication about it.

-The suit itself is well-made, and for the money I did get alot of value.

-Some of the shortcuts they make to make it affordable or not uniform: example on my chest piece they did not slide-rivet the two halves so that they are mobile, instaed to save time just riveted them in place even though they are two seperate pieces as they should be. They also did not place pins of any kind in the shins, so I have to have them installed, or strap them.

-The finish is very nicley done and the fluteing is executed very nicely.

-The Salle, and bevor came rivited together! It was not two sepaerate pieces, and the helmet is huge- also had no starps what-so-ever to strap it to my head. When I asked about it they said that the fit was sooo good I could just place it on my head! Yah right, so that it can wobble around at the slightest move-whatever.

-The full-fingered gauntlets are really nicely done, they are very well made, and as far as I can tell ultra-historical, I am quite fond of them.

-the overall fit and finish is very, very good. Once I get my gambeson woos worked out I will have an even better fit, but as you could see from the video I move pretty well in it as is.

-The legs are also very well done, are fitted with sliding-rivits, and fit me very well.

So, there you go- I waited about two and 1/2 years for mine, made all sorts of payments along the way to let them know I was serious, but did lose (literally) sleep over if I would ever see the suit. I did get it, and I am in general happy with the reults, especially for the money- AP