Stronghold Historical Combat

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! ⚔️

Mordhau Historical Combat is officially becoming STRONGHOLD HISTORICAL COMBAT!

After years of growth, new opportunities, and exciting changes, we felt it was time for a fresh look and a new name to represent where we’re headed. While our name and branding are changing, we’re still proudly owned and operated by the same founding team you've come to know and trust.

And we’re bringing some BIG changes with us:

🛡️ 4 new instructors joining us for this next chapter (making us 9 instructors in total)
⚔️ Buhurt (armored combat) is officially being added to our schedule
🏰 A brand new studio where we can continue building our community and training together
🔥 A fresh identity, while keeping the same passion for historical combat

We’re incredibly excited to enter this next phase as STRONGHOLD HISTORICAL COMBAT and can’t wait to share everything we have planned.

📍 NEW LOCATION — FALL 2026
Suite C4
1350 S Gilbert Road
Mesa, AZ 85204

The name may be changing, but the fight continues. ⚔️

We look forward to welcoming everyone into the Stronghold!

We are pleased to welcome and introduce our newest instructor at Mordhau; Piper Maerker!

Piper will be offering smallsword classes on the first Monday of every month starting Monday, August 3rd at 7:00pm.

She brings a wealth of competitive experience and success to the table, and her ability to transform that experience into lessons for our membership is unparalleled.

Welcome to the instructor team, Piper! We are proud to have you!

Our Instructor, Rob, will be offering a lecture at Cactus Cup and we are thrilled to have so many of our wonderful community members sharing their knowledge!

Cactus Cup welcomes Rob Pickett as an instructor! Rob is an instructor at Mordhau Historical Combat. He has over fifty-five years experience across a wide range of martial arts and combat sports. Rob’s passion is integrating practical swordcraft with historical and philosophical research. His work examines how the warrior mindsets of different cultures shape tactical and strategic decision-making in individual combat.

We are very excited to have our own Leigh Walker offering a workshop at Cactus Cup! Leigh has been an invaluable asset to our community as she has spearheaded our safety and emergency preparedness protocols for our school, and she is the Event Medic & Safety Coordinator for Cactus Cup.

She will be offering a workshop at Cactus Cup on emergency preparedness for HEMA schools to help elevate current standards in our community.

Way to go, Leigh!

Cactus Cup welcomes Leigh Walker as an instructor! Leigh is the Safety & Medic Coordinator for Cactus Cup, blending her professional and HEMA experience to bring the highest quality in safety standards for HEMA tournaments. She has been practicing HEMA at Mordhau Historical Combat since late 2023 after stumbling across the organization by accident and found a home there. When pretending to be an adult with responsibilities she works as a paramedic having worked in a variety of healthcare settings over the last 15 years. Leigh has been an asset to her local HEMA community assisting and leading professional classes and community events, and advising on the emergency preparedness protocols for Mordhau Historical Combat and Cactus Cup.

We were joined by the prolific Robert Childs over the weekend for an intensive rapier workshop. It was an exciting experience for our rapier enthusiasts and we were honored to host him!

Today we hosted our last MordMini Tournament before Cactus Cup! Congrats to our finalists in Open Saber and Open Sword & Buckler!

Open Saber:
🥇Adi R., Mordhau Historical Combat
🥈Piper M., Mordhau
🥉Josh M., Mordhau

Open S&B
🥇Robert P., Ironwood Historical Swordsmanship
🥈Zach H., Mordhau
🥉Piper M., Mordhau

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to GRACE RUDIAK for winning GOLD in Open Cutting at Orange Slice this weekend!!! Grace was part of our competitive cutting team, and as a whole, our entire team saw incredible success and achieved personal bests! Way to go, everyone!

Our team spent the weekend at to teach classes! We had a Vampire Slayer Training class on Saturday and a Longsword for Witchers class on Sunday! The classes were incredibly well attended and we had a blast! See you next year, PFF! ⚔️

We're here to make friends and swing swords!
The Mordhau team is in San Diego this weekend at the SpringSteel tournament hosted by San Diego Swordfighters. Wish them luck!

The Mordhau ladies hosted another Swords & Sweets installment last night. We swapped swords for lightsabers and stepped into the Star Wars universe for Sabers & Sweets! It was an unforgettable night!