Missile Combat Rules

[Black Jack]

Inigo . Crossbow? I thought they had been banned by the Pope!!

Fair point about swapping weapons though, I hadn't thought of that situation. I guess the thing to do is to work on a different anchor point to get a full 28" draw. It could be a bit of a hindrance to people coming across from other archery disciplines. Not only would they have to buy another bow, they would have to learn a quite different way of shooting.
Not impossible, obviously, but they would have to be keen![/quote]

[Inigo]

[griff]

feel free to shoot any christian norsemen to

[NigelT]

BlackJack - Inigo said exactly what I was going to say. That's exactly the reason we've done a blanket rule. The same reasoning applies to why we aren't allowing some people to use longer arrows.

Another way of thinking about this is that if you're not drawing to the full 28 inches that makes you safer and less likely to injure someone. If someone 7 foot tall picked up a bow and drew it to 36 inches it could increase the effective draw weight to 40 or 50 lbs!

What we've learnt so far:
This last weekend a couple of dozen people converged at Tatum Park to finish building the fort. Those there on Saturday afternoon put down their tools for an hour and fired arrows and bolts back and forth across the fort walls. No only was it quite easy to get accurate shots, a reasonable range was easily achievable with a 30lb bow. By the end of this session, most people were getting pretty accurate even over 20 to 30 meters. Some of the crossbows being used were only 15 to 20lbs draw and they were still achieving kills over this distance with fairly flat trajectory.

So, unless you're planning to shoot the eye out of a newt at 100 paces, I think you'll find that even if you can't do a full 28" draw you'll still be just as effective as everyone else. I can draw to 28" but I found that most of the time I was lobbing shots (in order to get over the walls) and was only 3/4 drawing anyway to avoid overshoot.

So for all those short and long armed archers out there, don't fret you'll have just as much fun as everyone else.

Nigel

[Kath]

It demonstrated also that volley fire is pretty darn safe....

The play we had was THE most fun, made the hard work worthwhile.....

[Inigo]

[Fungus]

Point taken
Oh sorry bad pun but Inigo does make valled point

[NigelT]

Hi Inigo,

We have made eye protection compulsory for the heavy archery. For the light archery we'll be briefing everyone involved and making sure they know to cover their eyes and heads when a volley is announced and NOT look up into it. We'll have a practise to ensure everyones on the same page. In this case volleys will only be launched in announced waves, there should be nobody on the field who is taken by surprise.

From the various accounts I've heard from people who've done volley fire overseas it is fairly safe provided people know what's happening. To an extent there is inate risk which cannot ever be fully mitigated, but we accept this or we don't play.

Nigel

[Kath]

I find that quite attacking......

quote 'How many eye injuries will we put up with before eye protection is compulsory?'

1. A few of us had some fun ensuring we all knew 'the rules'. We've been around for a while.... I think 10+ years at this game qualifies me to look at a situation and make a call as to whether I'm endangering other people or myself. I wore my sunglasses just in case. Like I do when I mountain bike...just in case. Like I wear my seatbelt (always)
2. The use of volley fire and flu flus demonstrated that you can see the trajectory as they are launced....and hear them coming. (Its great watching the flight path)
3. No one got hurt. We stopped when the light started to drop
4. No one is yet to get hurt (as far as I am aware)
5. We've discussed at length what saftey measure will be taken at NAAMA. (And I see Nigel just posted and I agree with his comment) so I'll shut up now.

[Inigo]

Cool. So that'd make the threshold about 3 eyes? maybe 4?

1 would just be a fluke after all and we wouldn't want to change things after just one fluke shot

[NigelT]

I've made a slight revision to the missile combat rules. The one attached here should be considered the final version applicable to NAAMA 2007.

The revision is around javelin use. After some discussion and testing last weekend we've decided to excempt javelins from the 5 meter minimum rule and the requirement to be lobbed. We are doing this to help fill the gap between 5m and spear range. A well padded javelin when thrown sensibly is reasonably safe to use with normal NAAMA armour - however javelins should be well padded to qualify for this exemption. A solid rubber blunted javelin without additional soft padding should not be used in this way and will have the same rules applied as for arrows.

With luck people will see this as an invaluable and versatile weapon and will make themselves a few.

Nigel


NOTE: Document moved to 'Reference' forum. Click here

[Inigo]

[Carl]

[NigelT]

[Black Jack]

Nigel & Inigo... I'm cool with the 30lb bow weight thing. Think I'll experiment with longer draws anyway. I've heard they keep your legs warmer as well.