Aurum Tábor Archery and Fencing Tournament

imago has been collaborating with the Aurum Tábor group for a few years now – we always send a few prizes for the winners of their archery and, more recently, fencing tournaments. The tournament always takes place in August. And this year is no exception! You can still sign up for the event via the Facebook event page. We invite everyone who wields a sword and commands an arrow!

And now, I'll hand it over to Jan Svěchota, who will tell us about the Aurum Tábor group and, most importantly, vividly describe the history and course of the aforementioned tournaments.

A little bit about Aurum Tábor

The year 2013 was our year zero, when the Aurum Tábor group was formed. We first focused on a fire show, which we tried to perfect with every training session and performance. For the first few years, not many people heard about us. We had the occasional performance at smaller events, which felt huge to us at the time, and we truly enjoyed them. The greatest reward was the applause and praise from the audience; that drove us forward and gave us a huge desire to improve.

After a few years, we decided to add stage fencing and theater to our repertoire, as most of us had fenced before and wanted to return to it.

Our biggest success was when we, as a group, got our first opportunity to perform at the Tábor Meetings in 2016.

Since 2017, we finally started to reap the rewards of our hard work. Small events turned into larger ones, such as performances for LEGO Kladno, the opening of the spa season in Karlovy Vary, the International Bagpipe Festival in Strakonice, Foodfest in Dětenice, medieval castle festivals, and so on.

From a maximum of 2 events per year, we suddenly jumped to 20 to 30 events per year.

In other words, nothing comes all at once, nothing falls into anyone's lap for free; the important thing is to persevere – to follow your dream and not be discouraged by doubts and obstacles.

It is important to follow your dream. – You have to dream. Perhaps while at a historical encampment, see photo.

Archery Tournament – The Beginnings

In 2019, I (Jenda) and Tom (we call him Léťa) received an invitation to an archery tournament in Semtěš. We didn't know anyone there; in fact, we didn't even know where it was. Nevertheless, we decided to give it a try. It was the best decision we ever made; not only did we meet a lot of truly great people whom we are still friends with today, but we also experienced the great atmosphere of a historical tournament.

That's how the idea was born to organize our own archery tournament with a historical theme, which meant – medieval facilities (encampment), participants dressed in period costumes, we scattered a few handmade targets around the forest (usually stuffed boxes with various animal pictures on them), one straw target (we didn't have more), and we shot for some medals and a bottle of good booze.

The first year was truly a trial run; we didn't know how many people would come, if there would be enough drinks, if there would be enough seating, and did we even have any seating? Would there be enough food? And how would we actually manage it all in an open field with no power supply? Fortunately, there is a football pitch 200 meters from the field – the caretaker allowed us to run a cable from the pitch all the way to the field, so we connected a ton of extension cords. We solved the seating with empty wooden spools covered with old bed sheets. We borrowed a gas grill, and we were ready to start.

16 people participated in the first year, and even under those Neanderthal conditions, we enjoyed it immensely.

Subsequent years of the tournament = further development

After the first year, we had plenty to improve for the next one. Both the targets and the facilities. We also put effort into the medals, which we made out of wood with the placement burned into them. And at the second year, we already started reaching out to various potential sponsors who might want to contribute a little something to our, still modest, tournament, and from that moment on, we established a partnership with what was then still Fantasyobchod (which continues to this day!).

There were already 23 archers at the second year. The third year had 26 archers. The fourth year had 38 archers.

The Fifth Year – This time with a fencing tournament too

The fifth year was our most important and, in our opinion, most successful one so far, as our group was celebrating 10 years since its founding, so we decided to make the fifth year a bit more interesting and richer. In addition to the traditional archery tournament, which already had 45 archers participating, we simultaneously organized a fencing tournament, which was supposed to have 10 fencers. Although there were only 5 of us in the end, the tournament was still a success, and at the end, the Tábor medieval music band Dei Gratia played for us.

The fencers also enjoyed the tournament thanks to the great referees. The head referee, Tomáš H., handled his role brilliantly, both with his costume and his judging, where he didn't give anyone a single point for free. He also had two "line" referees at his disposal, who acted as his extended eyes.

About the course and conditions of the fencing tournament

…and a few useful tips for it.

Safety is important in a fencing tournament, so a helmet is an essential part of the armor, under which you wear padding, also known as a gambeson cap, followed by a gambeson and gloves. Since these are not choreographed fights, these three things are essential. It's also good to have a chainmail shirt, a coif, and if you are doing an older period, you can choose lamellar armor, or in the case of a later period, it will be plate armor.

It is true that the more we have on, the more protected we are, but with every extra kilo, we are also less mobile.

At our tournament, 2 Vikings and 3 Gothics (High Middle Ages) faced off, and it was beautiful to see how the Vikings had the upper hand, mainly thanks to their round fist shields and helmets with nose guards (Norman helmets), because they don't obstruct the view as much, and as for body "protection," it is also lighter, making the fencers more mobile.

Whereas the Gothics usually have larger heater shields, which are held with the entire forearm, making them harder to manipulate compared to a fist grip. Gothics also tend to have thicker gambesons and longer chainmail shirts, and as if that voluntary self-torture wasn't enough, they put a wool surcoat over it all. As for helmets, the ideal choice is a kettle hat; although it has a larger target area, you can breathe well in it, and visibility is a significant benefit. If you have a skull cap or a bascinet, you have a perfectly protected face, but your only viewports are two narrow slits.

As for the tournament itself, there are certainly many ways to handle it. We chose a system of 3 winning hits. It is important to set the rules at the beginning, i.e., scoring and non-scoring areas, which weapons are allowed, and which are prohibited.

Non-scoring areas – these are the parts of the body that are unprotected or less protected, such as the neck, groin, from the knees to the feet, and arms below the elbows. Other parts are scoring, meaning that if a cut lands in these areas, it counts as a point. Only cuts are allowed, not thrusting or stabbing.

Prohibited weapons are those over which the fighter does not have 100% control, such as impact weapons -> flails, maces, morning stars…, or thrusting weapons, such as spears, since stabbing is prohibited. Axes, however, are allowed.

If you are facing such a mishmash tournament where there are both Vikings and Gothics, and you know that as a Gothic you don't have much of a chance, I have one golden piece of advice for you. I found the tactic of using a hand-and-a-half sword effective against Vikings. It is important to have only one longer weapon in your hand and not let the Vikings get too close to your body, because at close range, this weapon is, well, you know what it's good for… It is important to react in time, perhaps with a feint and a quick movement. It's good to occasionally fake a cut to the head and immediately cut to the side. This "dirty trick" worked for me 3 times in a row on the same opponent.

Archery Tournament

Our tournament runs in a parkour style, which means we have a circuit of about 1 to 2 km prepared, on which targets are placed. The terrain of the circuit is chosen so that you shoot downhill, then uphill, and also on flat ground. Targets are chosen according to the terrain – throughout the time we have been involved in archery, we have purchased many different targets: straw target mats, 2D and 3D foam animal targets, and in addition, we have targets made of cardboard and stuffed jute sacks that we made ourselves.

Each target has its specific scoring, and here too, there are places that count and places that don't.

At our tournament, we have a circuit where we start on a field with a classic target, on which a classic paper target with scoring from 0 to 10 points is attached, shooting from 15 meters with 5 arrows. Then we continue into the forest, where we set up – what else but animal targets and various figures.

Our best "treat" of the tournament is the cradle, or seesaw. It's an ordinary board attached to half a log, which creates the aforementioned seesaw, on which the archer must stand and balance so that no edge of the board touches the ground. To be absolutely sure that the archer isn't touching, we installed squeaky dog toys on both ends using duct tape. Once the archer balances and stops laughing at the constant squeaking of the toys, only then can they pull an arrow from their quiver, aim at the target, and shoot. Usually, this discipline takes the longest of all.

We always try to make our tournament more interesting so it's not just ordinary shooting at a static target, so we sometimes come up with various moving targets, where we stretch a string and use a pulley to lower the targets, and the archer has only one attempt to hit the target in motion.

Another bit of fun is parachute shooting. Various targets are placed on the edge of the field, they are marked off with tape, for example, and 50 to 70 meters are paced out, where a stake is driven in – from there, you shoot with a parachute arc, which means you don't aim exactly at the target, but shoot into the air. The arrow then flies in an arc, and if the archer is lucky, they hit the target; if not, and their draw was too strong, they spend half the day looking for their arrow in the bushes.

Another fun discipline, which usually shakes up the scores a lot and often decides the final placement, is the grouping. This means I have to shoot 3 arrows into the target mat, as close to each other as possible, which gives me 3 reference points; I take a tailor's tape measure and wrap it from one arrow to the last one and subtract the measured value in cm from 100. The resulting number is the points for the grouping, so if I'm skillful, I can have, say, 90 points. However, if I miss the target with one arrow, I automatically get 0 points. It can also happen that the spread in the target is so large that even the tape measure won't be enough.

The final discipline, which we all love, is the King's Retreat. For this discipline, we also build a large structure on which we hang safety nets for stray arrows. We place a target on a tripod in front of the screen, usually a round straw target, and pace out 15 meters; that is the starting stake. The archer must hit the target with one arrow (anywhere) to advance to the next mark, i.e., 5 meters further. If they miss, they have one more repair attempt, then they are eliminated. The furthest an archer has reached with us is 70 meters, which unfortunately they couldn't defend, as they were already shooting over a smaller horizon.

After the tournament is over, the hardest part awaits the organizers – adding up all the points and announcing the winners. Then it's just a well-deserved beer, good food, and enjoying the well-earned relaxation. Sometimes we come up with a side program, for example, at the first year, we shot with a slingshot at a LEGO figure. It wasn't easy at all!

If you are still interested, and perhaps even more so than at the beginning of the article, the Aurum Tábor group invites you to this year's 6th annual tournament.

author: Jan Svěchota