So how does one construct scenarios that faithfully replicates the uneasy balance between legal and social norms, social honor, and/or alcohol for the 15th century burgher when choosing which social and legal lines to cross?
We don't.
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Registration for Longpoint 2017 opens tomorrow. On the eve of opening the highest registration caps we’ve ever managed, I wanted to put down some of our thoughts about why we’re doing what we’re doing, and maybe a little about where we’re going with it.
No aspect of Longpoint has grown more than its tournament scene. Every year we’ve added more slots, more events, or both. It’s easy--in that haze of competition and games--to lose focus on what motivates Longpoint as an event, from the rules we use to the events we host. Most of our thoughts on the role of the Longpoint rules and why the Triathlon is the competitive core of the event can be found here and here. In a nutshell, we want to push the boundaries of the modern application of historical technique, in form, spirit, and practice, so that should the ancient masters walk in on us, they’d look past the black knickers and stripey socks to say, “Yeah, that looks about right.”
We don’t see competition and the medals that come at the top of it as the culmination of the art; they’re just tools and motivators, getting us out of bed and into the training hall. Better competitions and better competitors force us to train harder, evaluate our interpretations more critically, and to improve year over year.
They’re also a ton of fun. So much so, in fact, that not only have the last several years sold out, but 2016’s longsword tournament sold out in just about 24 hours. That left a lot of people out that we wanted in, and we promised to expand for 2017. So, we’ve expanded the open longsword tournament to 160 fighters, split between Tier A and Tier B, the ladies’ to 40, and the the Rookie Training Tournament to 36. Part of what’s made this possible is our move to the Baltimore Downtown Hilton, by the Inner Harbor and Camden Yards, which more than doubles the amount of space we’ve had for the last several years.
Space alone, however, doesn’t make a 160-fighter tournament possible. The greatest hurdle for running large competitions isn’t space or time, but staff. How do we get the requisite 130-plus judges, directors, and table staff necessary to pull such a thing off? This is where Saturday’s post about tournament tiers comes in. Switching to tiers within in the open longsword, effectively splitting it into two tournaments, isn’t about some added layer of sportification; it was the only way to gin up enough qualified judges for a 160-fighter longsword tournament.
It works like this: because Longpoint has always endeavored to be the community’s “most professional” competitive venue, we’ve consistently shied away from allowing competitors to judge any event they are competing in, either through self-judging or by judging a different pool in the same tournament. The latter practice is common throughout the Longpoint Historical Fencing League and other regional events, but has never been welcome at Longpoint prime. Now, when combined with the understanding that all competitors are also de facto potential (nay, probable) tournament staffers, Longsword judges for Tier A can be pulled from Tier B, and for Tier B from Tier A--all without any competitor ever having the opportunity or temptation to influence the outcome of his or her own tournament.
For the past few years we’ve rotated through Sword and Buckler, Messer, Saber, Singlestick, and Rapier as our second (and sometimes third) fencing tournament. For 2017, based on the success (and fun) of the highly informal Longpoint 2016 Saber Invitational, we’ll be running four auxiliary tournaments at Longpoint this year: Sword and Buckler, Rapier, Messer, and Singlestick. Registrants will be able to register for one, and registering automatically enrolls each competitor as a judge or staffer for one of the other events. As this is our first year doing this, the enrollment caps will be somewhat lower than our rotating tournament caps in previous years, but we anticipate these to grow with time and resources over the next few events if all goes well.
On Sunday, in addition to generic open sparring times throughout the weekend, we’ll be designating certain times and places for enthusiasts of different weapon types to come together for unstructured free play. For example, there will be a saber focused block, a staff/spear focused block, a rapier focused block, plus sidesword, messer, montante, and whatever else we can fit in. The idea is that if you’ve got something other than a longsword and you want to come fence with it, we’ll tell you when and where to be so that you’re not alone. We’ll also make sure that longsword fencers have a chance to go toe-to-to with those they didn’t manage to face in the open.
This year will also be Longpoint’s most ambitious class and lecture schedule yet. In addition to bringing back several regulars, we’re pulling in new faces. Already-confirmed instructors/lecturers include Christoph Amberger, Francesco Loda, Kristian Ruokonen, Michael Chidester, Cory Winslow, and Tristan Zukowski. We will also be pulling a number of instructors from our open call for class submissions that went out a few weeks ago, something new to Longpoint that I’m very excited about. Interested parties should note that the open call for submission ends at midnight Eastern Standard Time on registration day, Tuesday, January 10th.
I don’t really know where else to put this, so think of this as a heads-up. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be revising our equipment standards based on the growth of new equipment options and our observations on safety and performance of said equipment. Our goal is to keep as many options open to our fencers as possible without allowing equipment that is less safe or otherwise unacceptable when compared to the community/industry standard. These changes will be announced in a future blog post.
Some of these changes--mostly minor ones--will be in effect for Longpoint 2017 (particularly those that apply to the safety of our fighters). Others will be applied in 2018 or even 2019, such as eventual standardized minimum and maximum measurements for competitive weaponry (feders, etc.). While less restrictive standards may be published for 2017 (any standard models of approved brands will be allowed as in previous years), we recognize that a small number of fencers may need to procure new equipment (generally shorter swords) for 2018 or 2019. We’ll let you know as soon as we have all the information necessary to make the best decision for the event.
Longpoint 2017 will be our most ambitious year by about double up from anything we’ve done before. As the event grows our priorities will always be to the arts we practice and the community that we serve, allowing us to grow and stay intimate simultaneously. We’re very much looking forward to having you come and grow with us, and I hope to see tournament registration last at least 48 hours this time...
Queue up! Registration for Longpoint 2017 opens here at 12:00 PM EST, tomorrow, Tuesday, January 10, 2017.
~Jake Norwood
Longpoint Director, President
Maestro Francesco Loda and Tim Kaufman in the Rapier and Dagger finals. We saw a lot of Tim this weekend...
Paired Technique competition winners, from third to first: Dustin Reagan & Ben Floyd, Ben Strickling & Casper Anderson, Arto Fama & Ties Kool
It’s been nearly a month since we closed to book on Longpoint 2016. It seems trite, six years in, to say, “2016 was our best Longpoint ever,” but...Longpoint 2016 was our best Longpoint ever.
It’s encouraging to me (thrilling, even) to feel like that’s true for the second year in a row. So, given that I’m in a self-congratulating mood, what are we congratulating ourselves for?
Emma Graf and Jazzy Bucci... consummate professionals
The biggest impact came from some internal stuff that we changed between this year and last. Instead of quilting together judging teams based on availability, we pre-built director/judge teams that worked together throughout the weekend. They trained together, competed in the staff training tournament together, and then judged together as a cohesive unit for the rest of the weekend. As a result, judges were happier and more alert, directors were able to make course corrections that actually stuck, and fighters complained less and complimented judging quality more than any previous year. Still not perfect (HEMA gods forbid!), but the difference was tangible.
Longpoint, though known for its competitions, is a hybrid competitive/workshop event. This year we put more money and planning into bringing out in-demand instructors and gave each of them two classes so that double-booked participants didn’t have to miss out just because the instructor they wanted to see was scheduled at the same time that they were staffing or fighting. We added two more lecturers, as well. Class attendance went up by an estimated 50% and participants reported that the experience of making classes and competitions was less stressful this year.
Rookie Training Tournament Coach Ties Kool instructs his team to act as judges. Each Rookie Team fights two rounds and staffs one, getting to experience longsword competition from both perspectives.
On the Media front, we really engaged with Facebook and Twitter, issuing real-time updates all weekend. Standings and scores were published online right away, and our media chief Dave Kaufman streamed about ten hours of the event live on our Facebook page. The weekend live streams saw over 15,000 unique viewers, including 1,700 unique viewers during the finals. Add the roughly 50 participants and staff and the over 250 members of the Turf Valley audience and we estimate about 2,000 people watched the finals live. And then, totally independent of Longpoint itself, Jayson Barrons (our new HEMA Alliance President) saw to the recording of basically every single match all weekend.
Finally, our sponsors (and sponsorship director Tim Kaufman) really came through this year with the most and best prizes and support of any year so far. They all deserve mention, but above all stand Purpleheart Armory, which supplied the custom directors staves, the fancy new competition rings, and many of the trophies and medals; and Albion Swords, which provided one of their beautiful sharps for the triathlon winner for the fourth year in a row. Our other generous sponsors included Baltimore Knife and Sword, Black Horse Blades, Swords.cz (Pavel Moc), Arms & Armor, Castille Armory, Danelli Armories, SPES USA, St. Mark, Sparring Gloves, PBT Historical Fencing, Wiktenauer, and the HEMA Alliance. It’s the most we’ve had in any single year, and it really made a difference.
The Longpoint Historical Fencing League top eight: (left to right) Josh Parise, Mike Edelson, Travis Mayott, Dave Kaufman, Toby Hall, Jake Norwood, Kristian Ruokonen, and Tim Kaufman. We take no responsibility for Dave.
We ran on schedule this year, in keeping with (most) previous years. Only one or two blips (ahem, grappling finals, ahem) marring our Swiss-watch-like performance. The lion’s share of thanks for that goes to our staff director, Emma Graf, our event/logistics director Ben Michels, our lead ring boss, Jazzy Bucci, our tournament managers (Edelson, Cotter-Reilly, Winslow, Grandy, Bahnick, Runacres, Kool, Norwood), and our directors (Edelson, Widegren, Petterson, Chidester, Parise, Grandy).
The Rookie Training Tournament, one of our major innovations from last year, was an even larger success in its second year. The quality of rookie is going up year to year, for which I credit not our “celebrity coaches” (Petterson, Ruokonen, Strickling, Kool, Edelson, Norwood) but rather all of the regular coaches and instructors out there doing better and better training every year. Beyond just that, the Rookie Training Tournament is just plain fun for everyone, and we look forward to offering more opportunities for rookies through both Longpoint and the Longpoint Historical Fencing League over the next few years.
Veronique McMillan sporting the Longpoint staff patch. Veronique also took all of the photos in this post. Click here to see her whole collection of Longpoint 2016 photos.
And then there’s this: we ran a huge tournament, again. It was our biggest year ever with 250 registered from 12 nations. No other HEMA event anywhere in the world matches Longpoint for scope, size, and complexity, though some might in one or two of those categories. We hosted 18 different competitions or divisions this year, including four longsword events, five Grappling divisions, three cutting divisions, a rapier tournament, a saber tournament, paired technique, the armored passage at arms, the team competition, and the triathlon.
We tried a few things this year that were more obvious to non-staffers as well. We ran our saber invitational as an informal, partially self-judged affair that was more about bringing saber enthusiasts together to fence then it was about who won (for the record, Matt Easton won, and by a fair margin). It was a pleasant exercise for all involved, particularly on a weary Sunday morning.
We also held the first-ever Longpoint Historical Fencing League Top Eight Final, where the league’s top eight fencers competed for double points in a last effort to hold or increase their league standings. Kristian Ruokonen won the Top Eight Final and Jake Norwood, who placed third in the Top Eight Final, moved up from second place to first and overall champion in the league standings.
Lastly, we went out of our way to recognize those who work so hard for all of us with custom staffs for directors and special staff patches for all judges, table staff, etc. The patches, initially intended to be sewn to shirts and vests for next year, made an immediate, taped-on showing throughout the weekend.
So we did a bunch of great stuff (and the stuff we didn’t do so well I didn’t mention). We’re super great. Longpoint is the best! HYPE TRAIN!!!
Proof.
What made this Longpoint the best yet, though, really wasn’t how super smart and handsome/beautiful/clever Jake and Ben and Emma and Mike and company are (though we totally are, if you can't tell). What made this Longpoint the best was the family that we have become over the years. Even as it grows, it grows like a family reunion and not some soulless corporate event.
Longpoint 2016 was special because, for the first time ever, I got to fence in the open longsword...which I was neither running, director, staffing, nor managing in any way. And I got to get obliterated, out-schielhau-ed (TWICE!) by the mighty Eric Wiggins.
Longpoint 2016 was special because, in the Open Longsword finals, after Kristian Ruokonen defeated his close friend Tim Kaufman for first place, they broke out cans of Coors Light in front of two thousand people. Kristian also went on to win the Triathlon which is significant for many reasons, not the least of which being it's the first time a European has done so. Based on Kristian's performance and that of guys like Arto Fama and Ties Kool, I expect we'll see more of this in the future.
Longpoint 2016 was special because we said goodbye to Turf Valley after four years of fencing, family, and old-fashioned growth to the point of just not fitting in the space anymore.
Longpoint 2016 was special because one club sent its instructor a giant, pink and black knitted sword cozy with fuzzy blue balls...and had me present it to said instructor (Joe Brassey, a Longpoint first-timer) in front of 280 dinner guests and who knows how many live stream watchers.
Longpoint 2016 was special because one of our family, Bill Frisbee, suffered some major losses this year only to have the bulk of his $9,000 harness stolen from his car while driving to Longpoint. He missed competing in the Passage at Arms and had told me that he was giving up harnischfechten altogether as replacing the lost armor just wasn’t achievable...and we, the Longpoint family, pulled together and presented him, through the Armor Fairy Danya Rowden, with $7,000 collected that weekend to get our own “Chief Ironskin” back into his iron skin. I’ve never seen so many grown men (and women) crying all at once. I have never been so blown away by the love that our HEMA family has for its own.
Not a dry eye in the room. Proof!
Dayna Rowden, "The Armor Fairy," Bill Frisbee, and $7,000. #HEMAfamily. Proof!
More proof.
Longpoint 2016 was the best Longpoint so far.
Longpoint's new home. Veronique didn't take this pic, so I guess I lied earlier. #NotAllPics
So how are we going to beat that in 2017? How do we plan on making sure that I spend 1,400 words explaining why 2017 was the best Longpoint ever, for the third year in a row? Time will tell, but here’s what we’ve got so far:
Longpoint is moving to the Baltimore Hilton Garden Inn Inner Harbor, July 6-9, 2017. Our new location has more than twice as much floor space, allowing us to double the number of active rings. It has more than double the hotel rooms of Turf Valley, as well, so you run less risk of ending up at some far away hotel. The new locale is sandwiched between the Baltimore Convention Center and Camden Yards (the field is visible from many of the rooms), and is surrounded by restaurants, bars, and tourist attractions (Inner Harbor, historic ships, the National Aquarium, the Maryland Science Center, concerts, and more). It’s reachable by light rail directly from BWI airport as well, making getting to the event easier and cheaper than ever.
We’re going to double the size of the longsword tournaments, implementing an objective divisioning approach for rookies, intermediate, and our most experienced competitors. We’re going to implement focused open fencing times to bring enthusiasts of different weapons and arts an organized (albeit unstructured) opportunity to come together and fence casually without worrying that no one else will be on the floor at their chosen time with their favorite weapon. Plus more classes, more lectures, and more stuff generally. The t-shirts are going to be awesome, too.
And Bill will be there, gleaming in his new armor, facing all challengers in an expanded Passage at Arms. Or he better be!
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to fight in my own Longsword tournament again.
Thank you all for making 2016 the best Longpoint I’ve ever been to. I can’t wait to see what we do together next year.
Jake Norwood
Longpoint Director, President
The 2016 Longpoint Rapier rules have been updated and can be downloaded on the rotating tournaments page or here.
Official Longpoint 2016 rules for the Open Steel Longsword, Ladies' Longsword, Staff Invitational Longsword, and Rookie Training Tournament have been posted on the Event Overview and Triathlon pages, along with a video explaining some of the most recent changes and demonstrating this year's semaphores.
As noted in the video, if you're new to Longpoint, you want to read everything. If you're a competitor coming back, please read the General Information section and the Cheat Sheet at the back. You may also benefit from reading the detailed scoring criteria in the Judges' section. If you're staffing please read the entire document in great detail.
Looking forward to seeing you all on the 21st!
~Jake and Crew
p.s. for the lazy:
Longpoint has partnered with the International Martial Arts Festival (IMAF) to host what we hope to be an annual event at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, October 13-16, 2016.
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Ben Floyd ( blue) and Axel Pettersson (Green) face off in Open Longsword finals.
Longpoint 2015 was a complete success.
That seems like the kind of thing that the guy who runs an event would say about his event, so I need to back up a little. Longpoint as we know it started in 2011, on the heels of something called the Mid-Atlantic HEMA Gathering in 2010, which had also been a complete success in its 30-attendee glory. In 2012 we premiered the Longpoint Rules in their first incarnation and that year, too, was a complete success.
2013 was harder for us. The event grew considerably, becoming a real international attraction, and we went from being this fun, modest event into something bigger. More attendees, more competitions, and more organizational challenges. The changes to the rules that year were a step in the right direction, but judging struggled. We had attendee drama for the first time. While reviews were generally good, it just wasn't much fun for the Bens and me.
Then came 2014, another year of massive growth. Some of our experiments worked, others didn't, and we had finally reached that size where people start griping about the event online--not because they didn't have a good time, but because it's easy to complain about an institution (particularly an imperfect one). I didn't enjoy myself in 2014, and Ben and I had started to question if all the effort was worth it.
In its fifth year, however, Longpoint brought the joy back to me.
Dustin Reagan, Longpoint 2015 Champion
I think 2015 was Longpoint's best year yet. The obvious reasons are plentiful. We broke our record for attendees (over 220 without counting spectators). At 100 fighters, we held the largest open steel Longsword tournament in the world (and that's not counting over 30 ladies and 30 rookies). We had a dozen countries represented, including the absolute best fighters from the US and Northern Europe--guys like Axel Petterson, Ties Kool, Dustin Reagan, Nathan Grepares, Eliisa Keskinen, Kiana Shurkin, Ben Strickling, Kristine Konsmo, Bill Grandy, and Kristian Ruokonen (to name just a few). We also held our first rapier tournament, first armored passage at arms, and first Rookie Training tournament.
And then Dustin Reagan broke the proverbial sound barrier. He won cutting, he took second in his weight class in Ringen, and he triumphed in the open longsword. Not only was he the first (US) American to win Longpoint's triathlon, but he was the first American to win a major, open longsword tournament which a European champion had entered. Rumor has it Dustin was thinking about retiring this year, having earned a reputation as one of the US's best fighters (but one who had never managed to pull off gold in the longsword). I suspect he's reconsidering that.
But that's the obvious stuff. The less obvious stuff is what really made 2015 a complete success for me. The rules this year, while not yet 100 percent where we want them, were the best iteration of the Longpoint rules yet (with no small thanks to Mike Chidester, who drafted most of this year's changes). After-event surveys suggested higher-than-usual satisfaction with the judging. We also pulled off the most logistically complex Longpoint yet with a fraction of last year's stress. Success!
First Annual Passage at Arms
The greatest victory of them all, however, was that despite Longpoint's growth, it remained a family event. I was quite concerned that, since almost doubling last year’s attendence, Longpoint's closeness and sense of community would be diminished; that Longpoint would become an event of competing strangers. But the opposite happened instead. The family just grew. Old friends made new ones. Our shared, communal love of the historical European martial arts and, yes, SWORDS!, was the dominating theme. It's a wonderful thing to be surrounded by those who understand ones passions, and Longpoint 2015 was the best place in ages to feel that.
I hear 2016 will be even better. We're going to change less next year than we have in past years. We have one more year at Turf Valley, so the emphasis is going to be on doing what we did this last year...only better. We are in the process of selecting our rotational tournaments and refining our logistics, judging, and rules based on 2015's feedback. In just a few weeks we'll be testing our first round of rules modifications at Pittsburgh's Blood on the River. For the first time in a few years, I'm thrilled with the prospect and potential of next year's Longpoint. I hope you'll join me.
Jake Norwood
Longpoint Director
Post Script: It would be impossible to thank everyone who deserves it to the degree warranted for their help in making Longpoint 2015 happen. The lion's share of credit for eveything goes to Ben Michels and Emma Graff. Mike Edelson and "Evil" Ben Jarashow are indespensible. Mike Chidester (with Edelson's help) convinced me to go the direction we did with the rules, and I'm incredibly grateful. Jess Finley, Keith Cotter-Reilley, Tim Hall, Cory Winslow, and Mike Edelson made any tournament that didn't say "longsword" on it happen, almost completely independently. Dave Kauffman ran our Livestream and Tim Kauffman (no relation) managed our sponsors. The members of NYHFA, CKDF, MKDF, NHKDF, MEMAG, and Broken Plow provided hundreds of hours of labor in running registration, judging, the medical table, scoring tables, ring bossing, and so forth. Erin Baezner, Rob Runacres, and Ties Kool helped manage the tournaments and made my life easier than its been since 2011; I pray daily that you all come back next year. The VAF crew helped run a thing that doesn't happen and which we don't talk about. A shout out to our sponsors and vendors is in order, but most especially Albion Swords, Baltimore Sword and Knife Works, Purpleheart Armory, SPES USA, the Arte of the Booke, and the HEMA Alliance. Longpoint is a community event--almost a hundred people volunteered in some capacity for some period of time to make Longpoint happen. It is quite literally not possible without you all, and I thank you.
Things are busy over here so this will be short.
The Draft Longpoint 2015 Longsword Rules are available here. These are the rules that will be tested at Fechtschule New York this weekend. We have also prepared a cheat sheet for Directors and Judges here.
These rules are very much still in draft format, so typos, etc., are to be expected. The format is a hybrid of what we saw in 2013 and 2014, with a few additional changes for ease of use, clarity, or to attempt to deal with artifacts that we feel have become common in competitive fencing over the last two years.
These rules are something of a departure from previous Rules Laboratory entries this year in that they do not use NHFL-style weighted afterblows. More discussion will follow Fechtschule New York, with the final rules published at least 30 days before Longpoint 2015 begins.
Thanks,
Jake & the Longpoint 2015 Crew
Shortpoint went off last Saturday without a hitch, with about 75 fighters showing up for a day of informal sparring, a handful of classes, and the first real pressure tests of the rules variations posted in Rules Laboratory 2.
The first round of testers were primarily complete beginners to HEMA tournament judging, forcing a quick training session. Throughout the training session I was reminded how hard it is to accurately watch two fencers at the same time, identifying targets, evaluating blows for quality, and generally trying to maintain the feedback resolution that defines Longpoint’s CQTC rules. Shortly after teaching these new judges the “basic” Longpoint rules (think 2013), we shifted to testing Shortpoint Option #1:
“German Quality Priority. All strikes are judged independently, without regard to doubles or afterblows. All points are counted for each fighter (i.e., no subtraction).”
We tried this with four judges watching all of the action, but it was a disaster. Then we shifted to Longpoint 2014-style judging with two judges watching one fighter each and the fight director (referee) adjudicating the calls. Rather suddenly the quality of calls improved. Significantly.
We continued the tests with sword and buckler, and again with more experienced judges. In each case, this approach worked better than every other. After only a short amount of testing of the other three options from the rules laboratory, fighters, observers, and judges unanimously agreed to continue working on the two-judge-per-fighter, quality-over-priority model. The next several hours, then, were devoted to working out the bugs.
Before I go into detail outlining how these rules will work for Fechtschule New York (and probably for Longpoint 2015), I want to discuss why we’ve moved in this direction at all, as it’s quite a bit different from where the Longpoint rules started and the general state of US HEMA tournaments in their early years. What drove us this direction?
“All of our early tests indicate that rules systems which don’t penalize doubles and afterblows lead to sloppier fencing among beginners but have the opposite effect at higher levels. Rewarding clean hits (instead of punishing poor ones) pushes skilled fencers harder and promotes better technique. We feel it’s time to hold our fencers to a higher standard—but we also believe that reward systems are more effective at promoting such behavior than punishments are.
The accuracy of this judging system led to some interesting observations. Most noteworthy was that many blows which would have been scored for only one fighter (aka a clean blow) under any other rule set often came out as a scoring blow for one fighter and contact without quality for the other fighter. This irritated some fencers (including me) at first, but on further reflection it became apparent that we rarely fence as cleanly as we imagine. The effect on the score in such situations is marginal (just the “clean hit” bonus point); the effect on our egos has been more lasting…”
Two judges will focus on each fighter. Last year this resulted in some confusion of the priority of landed blows, and led to the nice-sounding but inconsistently applied “Double without defense” ruling. The planned 2015 rules eschew the concept of afterblows and double-hits altogether, taking cues from old German Fechtschule rules. Every blow is evaluated independently of its priority in the action. When a judge for either fighter sees their fighter land a hit, the judge will call “Point.” The fight director will follow a moment later with “halt.” The best blow landed before the director calls halt is scored by the judges.
To reward fencers who land clean blows with no afterblow or double-hit, a clean hit bonus point will be awarded to fighters who score a quality (or better) strike without their opponent scoring contact. Note that blows which make contact without quality cannot earn the clean hit bonus point.
This means that a fighter can earn up to seven (7) points in a single blow, assuming the blow is assessed for quality, target, control, and is a clean hit.
The updated rules for grappling and ring-outs followed the model published in the second Rules Laboratory post. To recap:
Matches will end when one fighter has a lead of 9 points on the other, or at time. We have reduced this from 2014's 14 point margin to partially regain the fear of being hit and losing quickly from 2013's rules, where one hit could get you all the points you needed to win.
We’re sure you’re going to have questions and comments. We invite you to discuss them on the Longpoint Facebook Page. Questions posted to other locations may not be noticed or answered; we will do everything we can to address your questions on our official page, however.
I got to use and abuse the heavier of the two feder models during our rules tests. These tests will be continuing for a few weeks. Initial impressions are positive—the weapon handles well and appears resistant to breaking. The temper on this initial model may be a bit soft, but not by much, and Kerry over at Baltimore Sword and Knife Co. seems genuinely interested in tweaking this thing until it’s right. This isn’t an approved blade for Longpoint yet, but if things continue moving in this direction, it will be.
Oh yeah. I had a really amazing time at Shortpoint this year. Everything went great, the fights were a blast, and it was wonderful to see 75 of my closest friends for eight hours of mayhem. We should do this more often.
--Jake
Longpoint 2015 Early Registration opens on December 3rd, in just under three weeks. To get ready, we have completely overhauled our registration process as one of many upgrades we’re making to the Longpoint™ experience. Previous years’ clunky configuration of PayPal buttons has been replaced with a new storefront which simplifies registration options and allows users to easily add in extras such as additional T-shirts or post-tournament banquets. All registration options, extras, and merchandise selected will be visible in a shopping cart prior to check out.
The new storefront will also allow us to add in new merchandise this year, and put up and take down additional registration options based on availability, tournament caps, or stock.
The pricing model for Longpont 2015 is similar (but not identical) to last year’s. As in 2014, base registration includes all classes and workshops (except cutting), use of open floor space, spectating for all competitions, one seat at the event banquet Saturday night, and one Longpoint 2015 T-shirt in a size of your choice.
Just like last year, we are selling 40 early bird registrations for $160 between December 3, 2014 and January 2, 2015. On January 3rd base registration goes up to $205. Base registration price will rise to $225 on May 1st and to $250 on July 1st for those last-minute types. Our $10 registration discount for all Full/Voting HEMA Alliance Members applies on all base registration prices starting January 3rd, and a coupon code will be passed to the HEMA Alliance.
Weekend only registration is still just $125 and comes with everything that base registration does, though Weekend-only registrants will not be able to sign up for any competition except for the Rookie Training Tournament.
Sunday's 3-hour Introduction to German Longsword Workshop is included in all base registration prices or can be registered for separately for just $50.
As in previous years, the Intro to Longsword cutting is an additional $20, added to any registration type.
In a slight change from last year, every individual tournament is a separate $20 line item in the store (i.e., base registration no longer includes one free tournament). Space in every tournament is limited, so we encourage competitors to sign up early. Qualifying teams and competitors are automatically enrolled in the Team Award competition and the Longpoint Triathlon at no additional cost.
Every year, we have to balance the success of the previous year with the risk of shooting for the success of the previous year. This means that we account for every cost we incur on a spreadsheet, enter a line item for every source of income, and then balance the expenses and income based on about 60%-70% of our attendance from the previous year. During this process, 'nice-to-haves' get sectioned off from the expenses sheet in an effort to keep the event as cheap as reasonably possible. Once we hit our break-even point, and we are confident that we will, a majority of the funds that come in from that point forward get applied back to those 'nice-to-have' items that make the event run smoother and more professionally.
Using this method, we've always finished the event in the black and with enough money to seed the next year, which is exactly what we want.
We are going to attempt something new this year with shirts. Along with being able to order extra shirts through the item in the store, we are offering to ship shirts, after the event, to anyone who cannot attend or cannot convince someone to bring their shirt back to them. We have had multiple requests over the years to buy our shirts from people who could not make it. We will also be looking into offering a women's and wicking version of the event shirt.
There are a few other store items that we are looking into including, and we will announce them if they get added!
Refunds will be available until February 28th, 2015. For purchases made after February 28th, refunds will be processed if submitted within 7 days of purchase.
In the coming weeks we will release planned changes to our rules sets and a sense of our vision for where these changes might go in 2016.
To see the new Longpoint storefront before it opens on December 3rd, click here. All details subject to change without notice (though we’ll try really hard not to do that and to give lots of warning if we need to).
~The Longpoint 2015 Crew
