Battle Of The Nations

Live video feed from Poland.

http://www.usaknights.org/index.html

From wikipedia:
The Battle of the Nations is an international medieval combat tournament and festival, held in Europe in April each year. It is a full contact competition, using blunted metal weapons, and a standardised list of rules.

The tradition for this combat/competition has largely come from Russia, where enthusiasts have held previous events where full contact "battles" of large numbers of armoured combatants, are held, often in historical sites. The emphasis is put on the combatants wearing historically accurate equipment and heraldry, and the use of apt weapons for the combat.

The heraldry, however, reflects the modern competition teams, rather than necessarily an historically correct heraldic device that may have been worn by combatants in the medieval period. The first tournament was held at the Khotyn Fortress in Poland in 2010.[1] The combatants depict armoured fighters from the 12th - 13th century.[2] A number of different forms of combat take place, including some involving individuals, 5 a side or 21 on each side. Over 200 armoured men at arms take place in the competition, and in addition to melee/hand to hand weapons, archery is also featured.[3]

US combatants entered a team for the first time in 2012, with a number of their members coming from the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that uses full contact.[4]

The 12 participating countries for 2012 are Sweden, The Baltic States (the three countries entering as one group), Germany, Austria, Italy, Quebec, Russia, the United States, Ireland, Denmark and France.[5] Other countries, including South Africa, and New Zealand are moving to include teams, and Australia plans to enter a team in 2013 Australia.[6] In 2011 25.000 attended the event, for 2012 at least 30.000 are expected.[7]

Right now it's one vs one battles but later on they will be having 21 vs 21 battles.

The larger battles are supposed to start in about 30 minutes.

Damn, anyone died today?