PLVA - 'Tis But a Scratch: Tournament and Open Sparring Day

'Tis But a Scratch: Longsword Tournament, Games, and Open Sparring is taking a year off in 2025!!

We hope to return in 2026, but in the meantime, enjoy this highlight reel!

'Tis But a Scratch Tournament

For those interested in TBaS, we run a continuous rule set with instant win conditions in place.

Please take special note that we have a very specific list of swords that will be accepted for the tournament and the ruleset allows for dagger-on-hip and grappling.

We have loaner swords on hand that meet the requirements.

Regarding taking a year off from 'Tis But

We were very pleased with the event last year and were grateful for favorable feedback from the people who showed up and competed. So it will return!

The hiatus for now reflects our view that what makes for a good competitive event ultimately is well trained judges who can deliver consistent interpretations of the rules. So, for us, judge training is essential and we simply did not have the capacity to embark on another round early this year with the intensity we did last.

That’s a long-winded way of saying we are working on judge training in the background now to lay the foundation for the next bigger and better TBaS in 2026! There’s a chance it’ll be a fall event in 2026, but we’ll see what happens.