When we decided to host our first major invitational event, we spent sometime debating about the format. We considered haivng a series of classes, and we considered having one or two well known instructors for a weekend retreat in our beautiful locale.

But when we really sat down and thought about it, we realized what we really wanted was something that would really appeal to us, to the reasons we founded academie duello in the first place, and the reason we’ve been invovled in the WMA scene for so long.

It’s not the history, it’s not the study or analysis. It’s nothing more than the sheer, simple joy of a well fought bout. Nothing appeals to us, and our students, more than that.

We know a lot of our friends feel the same way.

So we decided to invite our friends to come a spend a weekend fighting with us. We knew our various friends would all get along really well with each, as they all shared that simple joy of combat and challenge. When we looked at the list of friends we collected together, we saw that they were amongst the finest fighters we knew. From there, it was only a small step to making the decision to invite the people who had a wide-ranging reputation for excellence in weapon combat, in many disciplines.

There have only been rare gatherings like this before, and we thought that a simple free-form weekend, while appealing, just wasn’t quite enough to really showcase the potential of this weekend. To really do that, we decided to make the entire weekend an accolade tournament.

Continue reading about the tournament format...