Ildhafn Martial Academy 2025

Over the weekend of the 17 and 18th May 2025 Ildhafn hosted a martial academy. On offer was Armoured(heavy) combat, Fencing, Archery and Combat Archery.

I wanted to do all of the streams but as that wasn’t possible I decided to do the Armoured Combat stream.

Sir Eva von Danzig, a Knight and former Queen of Lochac had been persuaded to fly over from Innilgard(Adelaide) to impart some of her wisdom. In her first session she took us through some of the theory and preparedness for heavy combat. Then after a lovely lunch we armoured up and went through defensive exercises, practicing maintain range with an opponent, look to assess where a threat is coming from and how to move to best avoid it and take advantage of the resulting position. We then moved outside to do some full contact drills and pick-ups(free sparing).
The afternoon finished off a session on war tactics and brought the combat archers in so we could look at how to best work with them. This was followed by a couple of skirmishes.

The evening continued with period food and pleasant conversation. It was great to catch up with some people I rarely get to see.

Day two saw us back in armour to work on offensive skills, practicing at both the pell and with other combatants.
Over lunch I sat in on a talk about running lists, things to think about when organising a tournament and how to gauge how long you will need.
After lunch it was back to pick-ups for a few hours before starting the pack down.

While I was doing the armoured stuff, Táriq ibn Jelal was taking the fencers through Bolognese fencing. Mistress Angele Marie de Savigny taught combat archery and Trudy taught target archery.

All in all it was a great weekend. I came away with things to think about and not hurting too much.