I stumbled on this, walking back to camp one day. "Hmm, that looks like a rapier melee, waiting to happen." And it was. This is the Trimaris side. Can you see (click to enlarge) the crowns, sitting on the hill, upper right? And mid-distance is somebody else, and I think there may be a third faction in the far background.
However, once they got started, it was clear that a rapier melee is a footrace with funny clothes. First, you have to run down to the action.
(I’m safely behind the waterbearers, there.)
Then, once you get poked to death, which will happen quickly, since rapier has a greater target area than heavy weapons (=no armor), you have to run back to camp to get resurrected.
Which you accomplish by striking the white pole with your blade. Then you turn around and run back to the action.
I was sitting on this hill thinking, "if I had appropriate gear, I could do that now, regardless of still learning how to lunge." I’m also thinking that melee may not be my favorite sort of rapier action.
I also watched the rapier fort battle, later in the week. Again, the most interesting part were the pickup fights afterwards.
Resurrection battles are so fun! You get lots of experience, lots of aerobic exercise, and even an inexperienced fighter can be useful by being a warm body in the right place at the right time. Very often resurrection battles’ winner is determined by which side has control of an objective–a flag or something–at one or more clocked times. since, of course, if everyone is getting resurrected, you can’t fight “to the last man”.
Melee describes any sort of battle for large numbers of fighters. Not all of them are as energetic as this, but I still like most of them better than tournament-style single combat.