Actually, tactics win most wars. And as far as “Roman” practices, I fought with a unit for 2 years calling itself the ‘Roman VIIII Legion’ we tried our best.
Did you win most times?
My personal experience with medieval armor, unfortunately doesn’t extend into personally wearing anything more than reinforced leather and a metal bevor or gorget for sparing.
However I’ve seen instructors in full kit go through an entire hour class with a lot of hands on demonstrations, then spar for hours on end with the kit on.
So I find it hard to believe that people of the time period found it much more difficult to fight in armor.
They certainly came to the conclusion that it kept you alive more than it killed you in combat.
Win some, lose some. My participation was never a factor.
That was very interesting. How does someone know when he/she is “dead”?
Some things translate into SCA combat, some things do not. Simple strategies and tactics for maneuver and exchange are used all the time - its not just a bunch of guys having individual fights.
On the other hand, SCA fighters never have to worry about a horse unit smashing into their flank.
The honor system. If you recieve a blow that would have killed or wounded you in real life, you are honor-bound to accept it and act accordingly.
So how does that work with armour.
If someone jabs you in the centre of your chest with a sword can you say “There’s no way your sword would punch through my chest plate” or is it armour ignored for the purpose of hit effects?
Part of our training is something called “calibration” to help you judge what should be a “kill shot”. Its not the most fun part of training. Generally, if you have to ask if it was a kill shot, it probably wasnt. You take alot of glancing hits. I tend to take any solid clean hit to the head or torso as killing me. Clean meaning it didnt glance off of my sheild, sword, or part of something else first. It might not have really killed me IRL, but i figure if I didnt block it, I deserve to be killed by it.
Most of the time, you *know *they got you, nobody out there is pulling their punches or taking it easy on you, everyone is swinging full strength, the armor is functional and we could be killed or seriously injured without it..
<limps off feild>
and to add, some people don’t like to call their hits we usually call them “King”. 
actually we have a term for that, its called being a “rhinohide” and its a good way to end up getting your ass kicked by someone much better than you.
Although it’s been a few years (:D) I still hold (and have cites if neccessary) that early gunpowder shifted back and forth. People like to compress 50 years of change into an overnight change. That didn’t happen. Many strong pre=gunpowder castles were actually strengthened by it, until once again offensive firepower caught up with defensive in efficiency*
*Early cannon were really quite awful, mostly because of the combined inaccuracy and weight. Defensive cannon had a huge advatage for at least 50 years and msotly closer to a hundred, because you could mount heavier peices pre-sited on solid firing positions. Meanwhile, attackers had to cart giant cannon around with them, slowing them down and making raids impractical.
Re:dealing with a “rhino”.
Sometimes it was a guaranteed way to get ganged up on.
A couple of things to keep in mind about SCA combat are that the safety requirements for their rules tend to make the armor thicker and heavier than period armor. Period armor would often have plates of variable thickness, and a lot of armor in the later periods of armored combat, when manufacturing techniques were well-refined, had fluting to increase rigidity and strength while reducing weight even more. I don’t know if there’s anyone who even makes variable-thickness armor now, and I’m damn sure that most SCA members can’t afford it if there was an armorer who did.
The other thing is that SCA combat is recreational. It’s a fun weekend activity for most of them, and they may or may not do any fitness training outside of that. A very few of the guys I saw when I hung out with Society friends were in great shape and they tended to be the ones who trained semi-obessively and kicked everyone’s asses. The majority (probably 90%) looked like your average dude; many a beer-gut.
Any guy fighting in armor was a career soldier. A lot of his time was spent in fighting, training for fighting, or doing “sports” like hunting that fit quite well into his job’s skill set. It’s pretty safe to say that your average knight’s activity level was hugely different from that of our average first-world citizen, even if said citizen does strap on heavy armor and beat the crap out of other guys with an over-heavy poorly-balanced rattan sword for fun once a week.
SCA is probably the closest thing you can get to period combat, but there’re differences in both the equipment and the training. I’ve no doubt at all that combat was hugely tiring and draining (personal experience in martial arts and some screwing around with a friend’s armor a couple of times was enough to show me first-hand) but the fighting men were more fit, used to practically living in their armor on campaign, and their equipment was lighter than what SCA guys use now. So their mobility, speed, and endurance while fighting in armor would probably surprise you. Especially so if you’d participated in SCA.
The reason I say that last is that personal experience makes you appreciate how hard something is. I did gymnastics as a kid and while I never got to a high enough skill level to be really competitive, I could do many of the easy to moderate skills, and I’ve built back some ability in recent years. Looking at even lower-level competitive gymnasts, I sometimes think, “Fucking bastard, he makes that look so easy.” Guys who did heavy SCA combat would know, viscerally, how bloody tired you get in armor. Compared to them, I think even an average knight would look like a competitive gymnast does compared to me. He could casually do things that your weekend warrior would see and think, “Nuh-uh. I didn’t just see that. Dude can’t move that fast in armor.”
That doesn’t even touch the horse skills. Anyone ride? Training a horse to respond to a neck-rein is hard enough, even with a good cooperative horse. Combine that with basically dressage skills. Even more challenging, combat riding would require training the horse to respond to mostly seat and knee-pressure. Reliably. In the middle of a field filled with screaming horses and men, people shoving long sticks with pointy bits on the end at the poor animal, and nasty arrows falling out of the sky to spear you and your mount. Now think about having to be able to ride toward that while controlling a huge horse, wearing armor, with a heavy lance in one hand, at a gallop, and then weave your way through the melee after the charge (think: hitting a parked car at 25 miles an hour) trying to play whack-a-person with your sword while everyone around you tries to kill you. Sound like fun? You can damn-sure bet that those guys were absurdly strong compared to most modern couch-potatoes, because THAT is what they did for a living.
Although to be fair, i bet a fair number were out of shape drunks who spent most of their time whoring and diclng who had to get their armour back from the pawnshop (or the medieval equivalent theirof) when they were summoned to the banners.
helmets are the only place where this rule applies.
There are no rules for the thickness of armor plates in fact you dont need much coverage at all. Helmet, gorget (neck), kidneys, knees, hands/wrists and groin.
an example of a guy in legal armor.
Alot of care and technique goes into some guys armor. I watched one of our guys spend about 6 months making a nice set of legs with all manner of fluting and trussing of edges to increase rigidity. Also don’t underestimate how much time money some of these guys are willing to spend. Plenty of them actually make far more money than you might expect.
Wow, I guess some things have changed since I last hung out with Society guys. Admittedly that was over 10 years ago. There used to be fairly strict rules about most of the equipment.
If anything we are more strict now. I just had to make a new set of gauntlets because my old set no longer met specifications. You have to the best of my knowledge been required to wear a breastplate, shoulders, arms, leg plates, but its a good idea.
Couple shots of me in armor
Black helmet on right
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2064879/mistcynagua1.jpg
I am the one on the left
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2064879/pic%207.jpg
I’ll take a stab at it.
Like the abstract says “Armour design reflected a trade-off between protection and mobility”. If you’re a ground pounder mobility can be as protective as actual armor. If you’re really not planing to ever have to fight anywhere but from the back of your horse, the weight doesn’t matter much to you.
This really becomes obvious when you look to hastilude (a generic term used in the Middle Ages to refer to many kinds of martial games),
If you’re going to joust the most protective armor you can get, 'cause getting killed just jousting ain’t the way a knight wants to go out.
If you’re going to participate in Mêlée then you’re back to wanting better mobility.
If you’re only going to show off at the quintain then you might just want really, really flashy armor to attract the eye of the fairer sex.
If you were one of those knights, or wanted to be one and you had the gold for it, you’d probably own those three suits.
Maybe not surprisingly, that basic idea of three purpose dedicated suits can still be seen in modern military uniforms. Here’s the US Army’s basic three; combat, service, and mess.
CMC fnord!
I find it quite astounding that so many of you have used Wikipedia as a reference as it is not considered a reliable source. Anyone can make changes to Wikipedia. Try finding something from peer reviewed sources and quote those instead. Thank you.
You may find this: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/fact-vs-fiction/medieval-knights-on-a-treadmill-put-historical-myths-to-the-test interesting
There is a video too.
"But while the fact that wearing armor makes moving (and fighting) more difficult was always obvious, actually dressing volunteers in feudal-era garb and crunching the numbers turned up some interesting results. For instance, Askew says, he found that moving around in armor is actually much more taxing than carrying the same load, but in a backpack. This is partially because of how the weight is distributed. “A suit of medieval armor loads the lower limbs. You have 7 or 8 kilos [15 to 18 pounds] of armor on the legs, so when you swing your legs, your muscles are having to do much more work,”