Hail Chaos Wars Attendees,
The Weapons Check staff would like to introduce themselves and give you some information about Weapons Check at Chaos Wars this year.
Your Head of Weapons Check is Apprentice Antoinette.
Your Assistant Head of Weapons Check is Varadin.
Your Head of Shield Check is Warmaster Hakan.
Your Head of Blue Check is Squire Guts.
Your Head of Red/Polearm Check is Squire Nenharma.
Your Head of Missile Check is Sir Oroku
We would like to let you know a few things before Chaos Wars in order to make your Chaos Wars Weapons Check Experience as painless as possible.
1) Covers- Please have a cover that fits your weapon, nothing overly large that leaves dog ears, and nothing that is so torn up that it exposes foam. It’s a quick fix at home but is one that is hard to fix on site guys. Please fix your covers before the event. Also note that cloth tape is not a cloth cover.
2) Pommels- A pommel must be secured and you shouldn't be able to feel core through the bottom of it. Check the bottoms for core. It is a quick fix but it’s a common fail point. A sword can wobble a bit, when held by only the pommel, so long as the pommel is not just holding on by threads. As long as we can't feel core and we are not worried the pommel is going to fly off in the next day of fighting you are good.
3) Tips- Twisting and core punching through at the tip is a very common occurrence in any type of swung weapon. Double check your tips. Using a flat hand push on the side of your weapon, If you can feel an obvious core on your palm it’s time to re-blade your weapon, at the very least at some foam on the side.
4) Haft padding- If a quick chop with my forearm to your haft padding hurts, it’s not haft padding. Things rest at odd angles and break down. Do a check on your haft padding. Check the Book of War to make sure you have enough half padding on your weapon. Don't have a really nice spear fail because of a dead spot near the head of the spear or too little half padding.
5) Tape your colors- If you have a weapon that stabs mark it green. If it is not marked for green, we will not check it for green (spears not included). If you have a min red or max blue please have tape on them. We do not want to waste our time measuring your weapon if we don't have to. Fast check makes everyone happy. If you don’t have tape, we will have a tape station. But for the love of our sanity and yours mark your weapons.
6) Weight- If you feel like something MIGHT be too light, go to the post office and weigh it. If you are worried that your exactly 24 oz carbon fiber war pole might fail, add an ounce. Double check the weight rules in the Book of War is your worried something might be too heavy or too light.
7) Shields- If you have had your shield forever and you know it’s held together by tape and sheer force of will, take some time and fix it. Cover the bolts and check the edges to make sure the foam isn’t coming free of the core. Grab hold of the handle and shake the **** out of it to make sure the handles or straps stay where they are supposed to stay.
8) Cross guards- With growing popularity, remember these are checked on a template. Make sure you aren't going through a 2 inch template more than .5 inches.
9) Arrows- Draw stops are in fact a thing. If your arrow is longer than 28 inches, it must have a draw stop at 28 inches. If it does not have one, it will fail. Check the fletching and replace it if you need to. A little tape at the tops of the fletching goes a long way to making sure you don’t have to replace your fletching all the time.
10) Mark Your Gear- We are not responsible if your gear grows legs and walks off. There will be a lot of gear coming through weapons check and we cannot watch all of it all the time. If your gear is generic Forged Foam, Warlord, Fomeathus, or Gorg gear and you haven’t marked it as yours in some matter, then there is a higher chance it will go missing. People don’t mean to take other peoples gear but one black FF sword looks like another black FF sword. Take 15 minutes before the event and mark your gear. Mark the cover and the blade, write on the foam. Make it yours and you are less likely to lose it.
11) Failed Weapons- We will be impounding and quarantining failed weapons. Any weapon that fails will be able to be picked up at the end of the day at troll. If your weapon fails, it will get a fail sticker that lists a reason, so when you pick it up at the end of the fighting day, you understand why it failed and you can try and fix it. This is so we know that people are not taking failed weapons onto the field and compromising the safety of others.
We want weapons check to be quick and painless for you and for us. We are not monsters out to ruin your day by failing your gear. We want to make sure that you and the 300 other people on the field are able to continue fighting safely and with gear that won’t hurt anyone. If something almost fails at home, it’s likely going to fail at the event, so fix it or leave it at home. We don’t want to fail your gear, we want you to be able to fight but know that we will fail it if it needs to fail.
Help us help you by checking your gear before the event. If you aren’t sure about something, ask someone close to you to take a look at it for you and get their opinion. Don’t be that guy that holds up check because you are arguing with us over something listed above. Take some time, check you gear before Chaos.
If you have any questions before Chaos Wars about weapons check please message Antoinette on Facebook or email her at [url]antoinette@belegarth.com[/url]. If you have any questions about weapons check at Chaos Wars please come find Antoinette or Varadin and ask them.
From Your Weapons Check Team.