Hornfest Longsword Tournament Ruleset

Intensity Rating - Blue Square

Targets

Strikes allowed

Modifiers

Once a strike of sufficient quality is called, the referee & judge will confer to determine how many points to award the participant (0-2 points). 

This means in general, Doubles are worth 0, a strike with afterblow is worth 1 point, and a strike with no afterblow is worth 2 points. There are some additional incentives to strike the head however, as seen above in the clean exchange section, and below in the Doubles: Targeting section.

Penalties

Each penalty results in a loss of points and a warning card. In the standard procedure, the first penalty will result in a warning alongside -2 points, and the second will result in a loss. Two losses due to penalties across the entire event will result in ejection from the event.

Event Rules

Time: 3 Minutes continuous

• The timer will run for 3 minutes continuously and not pause at any point (unless there is a safety concern, or something of equal importance, obviously).

Match Format: Each match can go to a maximum of 7 exchanges

• Doubles, some low quality hits, or no consensus results will count as one of the exchanges and no score is awarded. This is to promote cleaner fencing by making your hits as clear and clean as possible, without getting hit before or after.

• If a judge or ref made a mistake by calling a strike, but then immediately realizes that they made a mistake, the fencing will resume and that exchange is not counted towards the 7.

• If at any point a competitor surpasses 6 or more points beyond that of the other competitor, the match will end.

• In pools, fights can end on a draw. In elimination brackets or finals, the match will go to sudden death where the first clean hit (no afterblow) will win the match. 

Self-Calling Highly Encouraged

• Due to the high difficulty and imperfect nature of judging, self-calling is highly encouraged in this event and may have to be relied on on some occasions. Self-calling can ONLY be done if it’s to the detriment of yourself. Eg; calling back a strike on your opponent because the judges made a mistake or you weren’t happy with the quality. Or, calling a hit on yourself because it was missed.

• In a perfect scenario, the judges don’t have to call anything, as the fight is completely self called by the competitors. We can’t stress enough how much this leads to a cleaner, fairer and generally happier tournament with high moral and camaraderie.

Tournament Format: A & B Tier

• There will be 2 rounds of pools with all participants. Pools round 1 will seed 2 different tournament tiers: Tier A and Tier B.
  • This is to maximize quality matches for all participants involved as everyone in round 2 will be competing against others close to their skill level. 
    • The top 1-3 winners of each pool (Exact numbers TBD based on final reg numbers) will be seeded into tier A elimination pools
    • The rest of the pools will be seeded into tier B elimination pools
  • The winners of each tier elimination pools will enter their own single elimination bracket to determine gold/silver/bronze
    
    
• Total pool scores and rankings are calculated automatically throughout HEMA Scorecard, and the formula is as follows:
  • • Total Score = + [Points For] - [Points Against] - [Doubles Penalty]
    • In the case of odd pool numbers (eg: some pools of 6, some pools of 5) Scorecard automatically adjusts to take this into account.
      
      

Grappling: Grappling is allowed, but takedowns, sweeps, joint locks, submissions, or striking are not.

• Grapples will be left uninterrupted until a clear stalemate or a scoring action occurs.
  • This means that grappling will be allowed to be resolved without judge/ref interference. The only way to end a grapple is for one of the participants to perform a scoring action, or if clearly no ability to improve position is attempted.

Doubles

• In this tournament, doubles are highly punitive in the context of the rulesets. There are no limits to doubles in standard matches during pools, however each double represents 2 major negative outcomes:
  • Double Penalty = 1 double -> 0=0 | 2 doubles -> 0+1 =1 | 3 doubles -> 0+1+2 = 3, etc.
  • This is designed so if you double a couple times in a matchbut fence the rest of the tournament cleanly, your total score will hardly be affected with only -1 point. But if someone doubles in every single one of their matches, they will be heavily penalized for not fencing cleanly across the event. Let's say someone doubles 6 times across 10 fights, they will have a penalty of -15 points. 8 doubles is -28 points, etc.
    
    
• A double is scored as an exchange, therefore both participants lose a scoring opportunity out of the 7. If you double 3 times in a match, you have lost over 40% of your potential scoring actions, and will have a -3 modifier to your total score.
• Doubles exponentially negatively impact your score in pool standings. The formula for doubles is:
• Quality:
• Both strikes must be of quality for it to be considered a double. If competitor A strikes Competitor B with a good quality hit, and competitor B panic flails with the flat, or has insufficient rotation, hits with the tip etc etc, the contact of competitor B is disregarded and competitor A is awarded the points.
  
  
• Targeting 
  • Realistically, receiving a cut to the arm or leg is not ideal, however, it is clearly in favour of the combatant that cut their opponent’s head. They are wounded, their opponent is dead. This is an experimental rule inspired by FMA combat outlooks, and we will be interested in hearing feedback about it after the event.
    
    
• Not all doubles are created equal. If there’s a double but one is to the head, while the other is to a superficial target (arms or legs), then only the head strike will count (it would only count as 1 point as it’s not a clean exchange)

Doubles vs Afterblow

• Afterblows: The afterblow is a valid scoring hit landing as the next action after a clean (aka non-double) hit. Any attack, step, or feint consumes the chance for an afterblow. 

• Double Hits:  A double hit is defined as any time both fighters land valid scoring actions that were “in-flight” at the same time. It is possible for the hits to not be simultaneous, so long as the later hit was already moving forward when the first hit landed.
• Example: [A] is circling their sword around to chamber when the strike from [B] lands, after which [B] swings the sword forward and strikes [A]. The attack from [B] was not started before they were struck, but landed within the 1 action afterblow window. This is an afterblow.
  
  
• Example: [A] sees [B] circle their sword back to chamber, and launches an attack into the opening. By the time [A]’s strike lands the attack from [B] has already begun moving forward, and the attack from [B] lands shortly after. This is a double hit because both attacks were in flight at the same time.
  
  
• Example: [A] sees an opening on [B] before they start any action. [B] then circles around in order to chamber the attack, and then strikes. This is not an afterblow, because that initial chamber has “eaten” their afterblow window, and the strike is therefore out of scope.