` (UTC)  As far as Reputation goes I would agree that most SCA people don't care how they are perceived by reenactment groups and most also would not care if their combative techniques are seen as authentic or not. The focus of most of the fighters within the SCA is to win whatever tournament or SCA ``war`` they are going to next participate in and the authenticity of the techniques used would be considered irrelevant. There are a few people who fight at SCA practices or events however that are more interested in supplementing or further refining their martial arts skills such as some people involved in the FMA. If one reads FMA forums they will see evidence of this. Speaking for myself I fought for many years at SCA practices and events and never once cared if any of the technique I was using was authentic or not. In my opinion authentic technique is not necessarily more effective in actual combat. For example I once had to use an SCA ``Wrap`` strike against a much larger person who was trying to kill me at the time and despite what these so called reenactors are saying, the strike worked as intended. Members of the WMA seem to mainly advocate striking with the pommel or quillion of ones weapon in a close in fight. I don't agree that The WMA teachers advise is that good since striking at an opponent with a pommel or quillion is more likely to provide the person one is fighting with any easy opportunity to do a disarm since the back of most weapons is almost always the easier part of a weapon to grab and hold on to. I have also seen WMA groups sparring with their blunted steel weapons and found their strikes simply are not as vigorous as those typical of SCA rattan sparring. In my opinion sparring with blunted steel mainly takes away from simulating sword combat rather than adds to it simply because the blows are not delivered of a force that would have been used against armored opponents in real battles. I have seen one so called   arming sword tournament put on by the WMA and I did not find the fighting or weapon weights to be particularly authentic. Apparently the technique they had learned in the WMA groups was not that useful in their sparring since throughout their entire tournament I didn't see points being awarded for the use of authentic fighting technique even though they were trying to award points for doing so.  08:00, 7 March 2008`