Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Thought I'd share an archery target competition I've witnessed on a few occasions, which would serve well for our purposes in training and be enjoyable otherwise.

There are six targets, spaced at some appropriate distance from the firing line. Usually this is 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 yards or 15, 25, 35, 45, 55, and 65 yards. Whatever works for your site and abilities. They are staggered so as to be viewable and easily fired upon (not one behind the other).

Each target represents a soldier/orc/baddie. You get a time allotment to fire at each target, usually five seconds. Depending on the rules, you may either get only a set number of arrows to loose at each target or the number can be limited only by the time you have to fire.

Basically, you start at the furthest target, and every five seconds switch to the next nearest one, thereby simulating an advancing threat. Usually an announcer or recording will sound off each target (calling out 40, 40, 40, 40, 40, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30... etc.).

The targets themselves are visual representations, so a hit on a valid area (which excludes their shield and/or whatever "invulnerable" areas the rules designate) counts as one point. The archer with the greatest number of points takes the win. Let bliss ensue.

That would be a lot of fun. It's a lot of setup, I suppose, and you'll want a bunch of arrows, but neither of those are showstoppers.

Alternately, you can advance toward a far target and when the announcer says "target" you shoot...no known distances makes this more difficult. The challenge is to keep everyone on line as you advance so no one is out front.

That is hillarious that you suggested that!
I was just trying to come up with a thrown weapons twist for our next event and said to the Kingdom thrown weapons Martial that we should stagger the targets just as you suggested! I suppose we would start off with spear then go to axe at 2 ranges and the knife, but I think this would be a lot of fun!
We call it castle seige normally, but never staggered the targets to show the inward progression.

I like both versions. Odigan's version would be great for training large numbers of archers to reliably be able to shoot a known distance, for village defense say. Erich's version seems more Rangery and easier to set up. Well done, guys!

E.MacKermak wrote:Alternately, you can advance toward a far target and when the announcer says "target" you shoot...no known distances makes this more difficult. The challenge is to keep everyone on line as you advance so no one is out front.

This would be really great for the archery part of it and we normaly have one target line with several targets, with marks at 10 and 18 feet. The spear is thrown behind 20. I think Odigan's or Erich's would put alot of spice into my tournament.

Though just because of the rotations of axes and knives and the relative skill of judgeing variable distance. the advancing thrower would most likey have to advance to a marked point rather than doing it by feel as is somewhat more the archers skillset at the level of compitition I am dealing with.

We'll be trying this, in some form or another, at the next Indy Moot, so if you want to give it a try, come on out.