Classic Weeks are the original camps based on the fantasy-medieval lore of the Six Houses that all adventurers know and love. All Classic Weeks include

• free role play and building in the castle village,
• the creation of individual props, costumes, arms & armor,
• playing tactical and exploratory games on the trails,
• and swimming or boating whenever there are safe places for water activities.

Adventurers will have elective opportunities over the course of each week to customize their experience and by Thursday and Friday campers can pretty much gravitate to their favorite activities as they like.

The Armory

Build anything you want for your character or your group.

Adventurers begin by designing their own arms and armor: the Realm can be a dangerous place after all. Work independently or collaborate with a team. Add spikes, fins, scales, plates, helmets, gauntlets, shields limited only by your imagination. Go classic or go mythic. Create your heirloom sword, ax, mace, halberd, spear or other deadly accoutrements. Use and improve what you make in daily games of capture the flag.

Or... scrap the arms and armor and work instead on magical tomes, artifacts of power, hoods, capes, crowns, wands and rings of power!

Or... work on a farmstead and corral, a shop in the village, a tavern with games of chance, a forest hut for your sorcerer or a library for your guild of wizened sages.

Each week will have optional special projects with visiting local artists. Create a village, work on a giant maze, focus on siege engines, specialty bows or on more advanced live-action games.

The Castle Village

Design and build an actual castle and fortified village to inhabit, employ your trade, defend or attack. Make walls festooned with battlements. Raise towers. Install a gatehouse with portcullis, arrow-loops and drop-holes for defense. Add a smithy, a tavern, an inn, a stables, a thieves' den, a sacred temple, catacombs beneath the castle, anything goes!

Later in the week this sprawling fortification becomes the locus for many free role playing activities. It's final size and the variety of activities that go on inside of its walls is up to our collective imagination. And for every person who manages to become Queen or King? Beware the Sword of Damocles that hangs over your head!

The Games

Develop group identities and team strategies in daily competitions of Capture the Flag and other tactical games. Each site usually hosts plenty of paved paths for bicycle patrols, open fields for pitched battles, shoreline beaches for longboat raids and woodland trails for haunted towers, wizardry and scouting! Some sites have caves, gorges and other extraordinary features to explore. Always seek magic or unusual characters in such remarkable places when you stumble into them.

Adventurers are divided into six different Esteemed Houses each with its own set of virtues and weaknesses. The Houses of Arko, Draech, Sahn-Gliér, Áquilah, Hákkarl and Hart collaborate and compete in games that seek to instill integrity, chivalry, creativity and collaborative play. Each House also possesses a growing history that you will develop and add to as your week progresses. 

Click here to view backstory ideas for games and props design!

Swimming & Boating

Swimming is available at sites where safe swimming spots are available. Sometimes when swimming is not available we still have the opportunity to use boats or even build them out of cardboard.

Classic Weeks usually follow the fantasy-medieval lore of the Six Houses. The lore and themes in the Band of Storms, however, sometimes diverges away from the fantasy genre of castles, knights, wizards and elves. You can still expect swordplay and trail games, but expect a very different type of co-created world on Weeks 9 and 10 at Tony Schmidt Regional Park. Iron Band is also serving a Tactical Theme Week this year.

Storms Week 9: The Skurgedome (inspired by 'The Hunger Games')

Tribute, expect to be engaged in Battles Royale as well as Strategic Capture the Flag! You must gather boons throughout the week by finishing impossible quests set by the game's sponsors. You will then use these gifts and whatever skills you have practiced to help bring yourself to victory in a culminating day-long event for the entertainment of our glorious district!

Storms Week 10: A Pirate's Murder Mystery

Arrg! The dread pirate Broadboard has been murdered! And bly me if their crew of miscreants now ain't at each other's throats, accusin' each other of mutiny, whilst lookin for the rumored treasure! But which of 'ems will find the infamous riches and solve the mystery of the murdered villain?

Iron Week 10: A Galactical Tactical

Iron Band's theme week will be a science fiction Tactical Week with nerf guns for ages 11-16. This is likely to be the world of the Six Houses but set in a futuristic realm still with swords and shields. The castle may be a space station, fortress or crashed starship. If you're familiar with the world of Dune, that may be what counselors and campers go for! But can they make a sandworm big enough??

All of our other camps are for girls, boys and all genders; yet it's also wonderful for some girls and nonbinary kids to have their own space. 

In all other ways this is a Classic Week of camp with all the same programs that kids of all genders have come to love!

These camps, like all our camps, may include staff of all genders.

A little different from Classic Weeks, make sure these camps are what your kids want and expect! Tactical Weeks trade the castle for a heightened focus on strategy and competition gaming. Theatrical Weeks trade a schedule for a heightened focus on role playing and creating-your-own-structure.

In both weeks the story is still king!

Tactical Weeks trade the castle activity for more time playing games and building props in the armory. We focus on playing a single extended game of Dominion all week long.

Tactical Weeks require much higher levels of maturity and fir play and feature stricter game rules, more competition and a greater focus on team strategy and battlefield tactics.

Come and test yourself: if you were transported into a tragic fantasy conflict of ascension, would you have the cunning, resourcefulness and character it would take to organize a warband and capture the throne?

Theatrical Weeks (or Free Role Play Weeks) have all the same activities as a Classic Week but tend to be slightly less focused on games and are almost completely without structure.

Campers are free to wonder from activity to activity as they wish. This can require more of an independent drive from campers and we suggest trying a Theatrical Week after experiencing a Classic or Tactical week first! 

In a Theatrical Week you and your friends will have a large responsibility for helping to create the world we will all be inhabiting. Be prepared to immerse yourself in your character and in the Realm at a much deeper level.

The Advanced Week is a new variation of a Classic Week that enthusiastic counselors in Iron Band designed for 2023. More info will be coming soon, but Classic Camps will follow a system of character classes somewhat aligned with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 5E, and a lore that includes factions and secret societies that campers can join for story-specific objectives during the week.