There aren’t really enough thoughts kicking around in my brain to warrant a full break down of last week’s fighting. Mainly, Dante came down and taught us Capo Ferro two Sundays ago, which was awesome, and we drilled it again this past Sunday. And on Saturday Nikulai authorized, I won a tourney, and I preached the Gospel of Giganti to another fencer. But we did run melee drills on Thursday, which seems to me the most interesting bit of information to provide in the build up to Pennsic. What did we drill?
The Town Battle
The field for the town battle is 200+ ft wide, which means that, at best, the run to rez point is going to be 100 ft, for 9 minutes, three times. So I set up a limited front (which is what the town battle will boil down to), and rez point 60 ft away (didn’t have the full 100 ft to use), and had the Kappellenfechters go at it, rezzing back to me for me to assign them to one side or the other.
Why the long rez run? That rez run exhausts fighters, makes their fighting sloppy and their thinking sloppy, and disincentivizes taking stupid risks. A short (<20 ft) rez run holds no penalty for death, and doesn’t wear out the fighters’ body and mind the same way. This way, fighters can actually work on necessary skills to be safe and effective (e.g. don’t join up on the near side of your line just because it’s close if there’s a gap on the other side; don’t run into the line and throw a shot while still running)
After 5 minutes, everybody was gassing a little bit, so I call that a successful drill, and a good reminder of the first rule of Zombieland.
Now to figure out what melee experiment to run today…
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