My advice for working from home is split into two components.

Are you performing inspections at LBC 2018? This is the guide for you.

The Pennsic rapier conventions have been finalized, but only available on Facebook at the moment. The rules will be made available on the Pennsic website in the near future and in the Pennsic Book available on site. While all combatants should review the full published rule set, I have put together this (unfortunately long) reduction of the rules to identify the specific items of note that may impact you.

Since starting my stint as Kingdom Cut and Thrust champion during Dietrich and Thora’s reign, I’ve been looking for effective and cheap ways to get onto the C&T field. This is what I’ve put together thus far. This guide requires buying a few things in bulk, but individually, the same can be done for only a few more dollars.

The SRM posted new C&T rules requiring additional hand protection. What follows is a draft guide for inspections for the new rules. The intent is to provide a repeatable and reasonable way to inspect armor under the new guidelines.

The Society Rapier Marshal has released the final report from the rules committee convened by the previous SRM. You can read the report here. I am sharing it with permission. My comments will come later.

Maybe my first HEMA event should have been something besides the largest event of its kind. With almost 300 competitors across 12 different events, Longpoint was a unique experience. I’ll probably give HEMA another shot, because that many people loving swords is something amazing, but it was not all peaches and cream.

I needed to test some word cloud software for project for work. The following are examples of Atlantian data of interest.

In Atlantia, we have a recurring tournament format called Blacksword, which is used to inform decisions on who should represent our community in champion tournaments. This tournament is fought as a Single Elimination bracket, where double kills count as a loss for both parties. All results are recorded. In the 2016 season, the following is the top 30 Elo rankings for heavy rapier Blacksword tournaments, with a total of 108 competitors.

Rapier tournaments are traditionally fought until one combatant takes a disabling or killing blow. A recent fad in the Cut & Thrust scene is use a tournament style similar to armored combat called Counted Blows. In this tournament style, combat continues until a clock runs out, with victory going to the combatant with the most valid blows as judged by third parties.

During the many vigils of Gulfwars, there was much discussion about the various things “required” to become a provost of Atlantia. To that end, I’ve started gathering a list of things you might want to do if you ever have dreams of becoming a provost of Atlantia.

Atlantia is about to join the C&T melee experiment. The original experiment proposal describes a number of goals and rules from the society. Within Atlantia, our KRM has published an adhoc set of requirements.

Last month, I published a survey sent out a survey regarding the inclusion of Spears in Atlantian rapier. We had a total of 71 submissions, with a wide variety of results. With the ability to provide free-form answers for those that desired additional changes before support rapier spear, I transposed answers that were effectively different spear construction and a variation of “never” into those values for easier analysis. Free form answers have been included at the end of the results.