Ted Elsner

YouTube video by Historical Fencing Network 2025 DEMAS Longsword Bronze Medal - Tom Ostrowski vs Kyle Lazzarevich

The Historical Fencing Network is a project we've created to make watching HEMA more enjoyable. Monthly live streams and weekly matches. youtu.be/-m4HOEnzGc0?...

Generally I'd only remove any tough stems

I wasn't looking to post political content on this platform. But this is the kind of fire we need right now. I would like to know more.

Holy shit! Democrats, if you’re looking for a fighter, you found one— @malcolmkenyatta.bsky.social for DNC Vice Chair.

Journey is indeed great coffee, can confirm.

One of the great things about this new project is that we get to explore context for less commonly used weapons. For our first rules we are focusing on basket hilted broadswords, be it the earlier German style or later British. Here we have our standard armored loadout.

We are intentionally avoiding doing pike (and other polearms) in our initial playtests. Pike just faces challenges in terms of being able to have enough people as well as safety concerns. We're starting with a focus on groups of around 5 people each and will grow it from there as needed.

Yes some of this is done in LARP and the SCA and even Bohurt. But we see an underserved area for HEMA people to enjoy. Our focus is on the historical training, but not necessarily the material culture side of things. Nor do you need a "character". Think something like Airsoft, but with swords

To keep things balance we are gamifying things a bit. Standard armor/weapons loadouts and roles. A certain hierarchy of effectiveness. Armor beats Shields. Shields beat Gunners. Gunners beat Armor.

In addition to the solo and group practice of military weapons like the pike and halberd, we are also working on war games for small units and tactics. How do you combine armored soldiers with early firearms?

HEMA is all about taking the sources and working with them to understand how the historical weapons were used. With Early Modern Military Sim we are doing the same thing. Working with sources from the late 1500s on how a military should be organized and soldiers trained. Drill, formation, and more

Limited by the size of videos I can upload, but we ran through several different iterations today. The muskets added a nice random element, and even came with the occasional misfire that had to be cleared before the gunner could get back into things. More to come.

Why yes, that is a nerf musket being used alongside sidesword and shield during today's Early Modern Military Sim testing

HEMA is great, but it's missing out on some of the elements that really make the SCA, Larp, and even reenactment fun. We're working on a project to fix that. Early Modern Military Sim. Steel weapons, half armor, and quite possibly nerf muskets. Would you like to know more?

Experimenting with rules for our Early Modern Military Sim games. Next time we put on the armor.