October 1, 2023 Melee Practice

In my capacity as Northern Regional Commander for Atlantia's armored fighters, I hosted a melee practice on October 1, 2023.  Video footage of the practice can be found on Sir Bumi's site here.

The goal was to practice single death field battles only.   

Why single deaths?

As I discuss in Chapter 8 of my The Art of SCA Melee"  manual, everyone remembers the big single death field battles.  It's the most akin to historical fighting we can get.  "The single death field battle is where the wheat is separated from the chaff.  An army’s reputation rides or dies based on its performance in this scenario."

Plus, selfishly, single death field battles are super easy to organize and involve no props or complicated instructions.

Teams were given strategies to implement, such as flanking, designating a boomerang, dividing into subunits, working with uneven numbers, bookends, etc., tactics I talk about in my manual .  We ran 11 single death bouts.  Sir Bumi has breakdown and analysis on his youtube channel, here.

At the end, participants received favors I commissioned from Duchess Mary Grace.   The favors are a token of appreciation for making the time to come to the practice.  They are also meant to serve as identifiers for the army.  With 70+ armored fighters in Atlantia, can a new fighter from Baltimore, MD recognize a new fighter from Myrtle Beach. SC?  Probably not :-)