Kelno wears chainmail armor on the blisteringly hot field of battle.
His sword raised to his enemies, he deflects an arrow with his shield as he feints left and a fireball spell barely misses his head. He presses onward even as his friend, the wizard Serpentes, is struck down.
In the middle of the action, as bodies rush towards each other and war cries and incantations fill the air, it’s easy to forget that the field is Joaquin Murrieta Park, his sword is a foam-padded stick and that fireball is probably just a tennis ball wrapped in red cloth.
The armor — and the heat — are still real, though.
Tucson is seeing a resurgence in the number of people playing Amtgard, a battle game with role-playing elements founded 32 years ago in El Paso, Texas. The game has more than 300 chapters, mostly in the United States and Canada.
Alex Taylor, aka Kelno, is a recent recruit in the Shire of Obsidian Gate, aka Tucson. He is quick to point out how strange, aka kind of silly, the whole thing may seem from the outside.
“You can tell people about this all you want and it will reach some of them, but until you actually do it you think it’s ridiculous,” he laughed. “We’re dressing in costumes in a park, in a field, right?”
About six months ago an old friend in Yuma convinced him to try the game and he’s been a player ever since.
“They talked me into putting on a set of chainmail with a gambeson underneath, which is kind of a big quilted jacket, and hit people with foam,” he said. “It was so much more fun than I could’ve ever imagined.”
Since he started, Taylor said, he’s lost 45 pounds (on “the chainmail armor diet”) and recuperated from a back injury he had two years ago.
“Prior to starting to do this I could not stand for longer than five minutes or walk more than a 100 yards,” he said. “I don’t even notice my back injury anymore and that’s more than two years of physical therapy ever did for me.”
Taylor’s conversion has been instrumental in bringing more people to the game, said Jeff Hamilton, head of the local Amtgard chapter or, as Sir Stefan, sheriff of the Shire of Obsidian Gate.
“He’s been a recruiting dream for us. He’s brought in so many members,” he said. “And the more people you get, the more attention you attract. We’ve had people walk up, who bring in more people, so you get this positive spiral of growth.”
The chapter has about 30 active members and the game is now averaging 22 people showing up every Sunday.
Hamilton, who started playing about 20 years ago in the Seattle area, said Amtgard was all about community.
“If I didn’t have the friends that I have, I wouldn’t still be playing this game. For me it’s the camaraderie, the friendship,” he said. “I’ve got friends all over the country that I’ve met through this game.”
The game has a nationally recognized rulebook and a reward system that allows members to move up in the ranks of their chosen class, players said. Participants can also dedicate themselves to different areas and attain a knighthood.
As a serpent knight, Hamilton wears a white belt trimmed in green. His knighthood came from focusing on crafting. There are also sword knights who specialize in combat, flame knights who concentrate on service and crown knights who are recognized for leadership.
But there is no pressure to be a knight or advance in anything, Hamilton said, what really matters is getting together and having fun.
Everyone plays
A young warrior in green approaches Ananias, the healer. He will walk away disappointed.
“Sorry, I did not bring my polearm today,” says Dawn Bullis as she pushes one of her daughters on the swing.
When she plays a monk she uses a double-ended polearm, but right now she’s a healer, she said. In her time in the game she has played several classes, including a scout and a barbarian.
“I played as a warrior during my pregnancy so I had a shield to cover my belly,” Bullis said.
Watching a pregnant woman wailing away on some foe or having little warriors trail behind their parents is not uncommon for Amtgard in Tucson, players said.
“It’s definitely a family-oriented group, a lot of kids running around that are less than six years old. If you’ve got children, bring them,” said Erich Sandwell-Weiss, who plays as the wizard Serpentes.
The makeup of Amtgard groups varies across the country, but Tucson has a nice mix of people in different stages of their lives and different levels of nerdom, players said.
“This is a pretty unusual park in that we have lots of professionals, couples, people in their 30s and up, with kids,” Taylor, aka Kelno, said. “We have teenagers, too, but the Yuma park is entirely composed of them, they have like three adults.”
Lisa del Castillo was brought into the group by Taylor and said she would hardly consider herself the traditional target audience.
“I’m not even into the superhero or comic book stuff, really. I pretty much went from zero to 60 here,” she said. “I enjoy it because it’s empowering, it builds your confidence and it’s like a team sport. It’s pretty cool.”
Sandwell-Weiss, who plays a security guard in real life, said you can’t judge an Amtgard player by their garb.
“Looking at some of these people, they do things you’d never expect,” he said. “Stefan, the sheriff, he’s a Border Patrol agent. Bulshivick, aka Tim, he’s done all sorts of stuff, he was a private investigator now he’s a real estate agent.”
The group is as much a community of like-minded people as it is anything else, Taylor said, and they are very welcoming to newcomers.
“Anyone considering coming down here should know they don’t have to worry about being excellent at anything. They don’t need to worry about having equipment, they don’t need to worry about period dress or whatever,” he said.
“Just bring yourself and some water and we’ll figure it out.”
The heat of battle
An Amtgard Sunday in Tucson depends on how many people show up and how hot it is, players said.
There are people that won’t play at all during the summer, chapter head Hamilton said, so you’ll only see them for six months out of the year.
“Then you have people like me that are absolutely crazy. I have played in 110-degree heat, 100 percent humidity, wearing full leather armor, for two or three hours, no shade, in a big battle,” he said.
“But if it’s time for you to get out of the heat it’s time for you to get out of the heat, go sit down, no one’s going to dog you for it.”
Tournaments, a succession of small bouts and duels, works best during the summer, Taylor said.
“It helps keep people engaged while also giving them adequate time to hydrate and rest. When it’s cooler out, we plan on doing class games every week,” he said.
Class games involve all player classes duking it out in large-scale battles, often with a set objective.
Some places that experience weather extremes often go through slump periods, players said, which curiously bodes well for the Tucson group this year.
“We’ve been growing in the summer, which is weird, normally that doesn’t happen in the Southwest,” Taylor said. “Hopefully we’ll continue to follow that same model, which means we’ll have 50 people out here in the winter.”
Still, hot or cold, a large group or a small one, Hamilton said there is no substitute for playing in person.
“I don’t mean any disrespect to any gamer anywhere, because I’m a gamer, I’ve played on almost every platform, I’ve played tabletop, and there’s no comparison,” he said.
“It’s one thing to be good with a keyboard, it’s one thing to be lucky with dice, but it’s something else entirely to come out here and actually do it.”
