Over the last 6 months I have been Participating in the SCA as a heavy fighter, recreating pre 17th century knightly combat. One faction of this I have noticed is a tendency for people to focus on the sport aspects of Heavy fighting rather then the recreation aspects, with many people opting for minimal armor or close to it within our rule set. I find my self rather opposed to these noting that the SCA is dedicated to recreating all aspects of life in pre 17th century.
When asking people why they chose to wear minimal armor you will receive many responses ranging from “It’s to heavy”, to “I don’t get hit there anyway”, my personal opinion is that neither of these, or the plethora of similar reasons, truly make sense in the context of what we are attempting to achieve. By removing the weight and movement restrictions that wearing armor provides you are no longer attempting to participate in chivalric combat but in a sport that is only loosely based upon combat from this time period, as part of how and why things where done is due to the armor that was being worn by combatants.
On the other side of this argument is people who wear plenty of armor, however use modern substitutes (like zoombang, or plastic)for parts of there armor, with these I find myself being more sympathetic to there reasoning as much of this is based on improving the durability of there armor as they have found (and I have experienced) that some pieces of armor simply does not last, or gets badly damaged from being regularly hit, and replacing our equipment is not a cheap exercise, however there are a number of people who are going for these modern alternatives for reasons such as those above I find difficult to deal with this, particularly noting that a similar effect can be created with period materials.
So with my rant over with what I don’t like to see I would like to see more people wearing more armor, perhaps not to the amount that I am wearing, but to a standard where they are wearing some form of period armor on most valid target target areas what they may be hit.
I tend to play the combat more like a sport as you have to in some ways as we cant fight in the same way as you really would. There are rules and limitations for safety. But I still try to learn and adapt period techniques as best possible.
I have substitutes in my armour – plastic legs with leather coating, spring steel knees, elbows shoulders. These are for ease, durability, ease of care and also they are a bit lighter.
I think people should use the complete armour (meeting SCA standards) that matches close to persona…
However it is really hard to do.
Other thing to think about, as with us in reality, poorer people had cheaper more rubbish armour, and those with more coin had better. In same cases people had hand me downs, or if forced to fight, whatever old bits of armour they found laying around the town.
I see the importance of armour and i wear it. There are those who wear their armour under tabards ect, no-one can tell if they have period armour or if their kit is full protection or not. IN those cases i dont think it matters. And wearing armour covered was also period.