The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

Last weekend, Ruairc, Letia, Ibrahim, and myself piled in a car and headed up to Night on the Town.

Blacksword Tournament:

The day started off as many events do, with a Blacksword tournament. Blacksword tournaments are fought single pass, single elim with double kills counting as a loss for both fighters. This one had a bit of a twist. The top 4 fighters from the tournament were to serve as team captains for the rest of the day.

I decided to fight sword and dagger for the tournament. I have a fairly solid dagger game, but I’ve been mostly practicing single sword at practice. I’ve been making some changes to my guard based on recommendations that Dante made back in January and I hadn’t quite applied them to dagger yet. I made sure to do some warm-up fights with Ibrahim before the tournament to get a feel for it. Ruairc seemed to think it wasn’t fair that I was taking sword and dagger in my warm-up and decided to tease me about it. I faced Tibbie first in the tournament, then a new fencer from Black Diamond named Hector. His form was unmistakably Spanish and so after the fight I had a brief chat with him. He’s apparently been studying Destreza down at Aldemere’s practice. He seems pretty excited about the whole sword-fighting thing, so hopefully he becomes a regular at events. My third pairing was Aedan. I managed to catch his sword on my dagger and landed a shot down the center line to his chest. At that point, I knew I was going to be one of the 4 commanders and I faced Brian in the semi-finals. IIRC he recovered from an attack just inside my measure and I landed a lunge on his helmet. Benjamin was my opponent for the finals. I tend to have difficulty with Ben because on top of being skilled, he’s also pretty darned fast. He likes to use beat attacks and go for the legs though, and if you can catch a moment where his sword is off-line (from the beat or the leg attack recovery) and avoid his dagger, he’s usually pretty squared up with his center-line exposed. I managed to exploit that and won the tournament.

Melees:

The top four fighters from the tournament were in order, myself, Ben, Alessandro, and Brian. Alessandro abdicated his position as a team captain in favor of Letia. As the winner of the tournament, I had the first draft pick. We then took turns picking people until we were out of people. My team included the following: Dante, Aedan, Sir Jos, Ilaria, Ibrahim, Hector, a newcomer named Harvey, a knight whose name I don’t know, and a scholar named Ross.

For most of the day, my team was allied with Brian’s team (yellow), forming team orange (we’re creative with names, aren’t we?). Brian’s team had Connor, Sir Roland, Geoffrey, Alric, Baron Drogo, Her Majesty Lynnette, A woman named Derr?, an armoured fighter named Griffin, and somebody else.

Each team had 10 people. I’m not sure which team everybody on the other side was on specifically, but notably the blue and green teams (team teal?) included Celric, Alessandro, Benjamin, Letia, Caitlyn, Angeline, Bomi, Katsumi, and Simone.

Challenge of Strategy:

The first scenario was the challenge of strategy, or as I called it “Red Rover.” In this scenario, provosts were worth 3 points, free scholars and sea dragons were worth 2 points, and everybody else was worth 1 point. The team in control sent out a number of fighters worth less than or equal to 10 points and then the other team responded with a number of fighters worth less than or equal to that value. This allows for one team to send forward 3 provosts and a scholar for instance while the other team responds with 5 free scholars, for instance. When a person was killed, they were eliminated entirely. Teams could not re-use fighters until they had used everybody.

As the winner of the tournament, I had to go first. We initially sent out a 10 point team using the various armoured fighters and her Majesty. Letia and Ben sent out a whole bunch of scholars who defeated our squad with few casualties :-(.

As the winner of the match, Letia and Ben gained control and sent out a 10 point team made up of a mix of point values and we did the same. Once again, Letia and Ben won.

The third round went similarly with a mixture of point values on both sides. I was part of this round and got killed, but Connor managed to survive, giving us our first win.

Now that we had control again, we re-evaluated the situation. Letia and Ben had used all of their 1 point people early on, which meant that we could force them to fight outnumbered. We did that for several rounds, sending a provost and two scholars, for instance, when they could only match our point value with a provost and a free scholar. This resulted in us winning a series of matches until Letia and Ben completed the first cycle through their team. This gave them back all of their scholars, so we sent out Brian, Derr, Ibrahim, Drogo, and Harvey? for a total of 8 points. That match was pretty close. Letia and Ben’s team had the numerical advantage. The initial split was Ibrahim, Drogo, and Derr to the left and Harvey and Brian to the right. Team Teal sent 2 fighters after Brian and Harvey (Draco and Bomi?) and 4 fighters after our other 3. Drogo and Ibrahim did a good job of giving ground and staying alive while Brian tried to knock out some of the fighters he was facing to relieve the rest of the line. At some point Harvey got legged and Bomi (I think) shifted to his right and stabbed Derr. This left Brian in a 1v1 and Ibrahim and Drogo in a 5v2. The two of them managed to stay alive while Brian killed his guy. Fortunately three of the 5 hesitated in going forward, making it a 2v2 fight with 3 people simply strung out to the right. Brian on this and hit them on their left flank. In this confusion, Ibrahim, Drogo, and Brian managed to kill all 5 of the remaining Teal team fighters. It was a fairly exciting match to watch. The Orange team success mostly hinged on the Teal team’s hesitancy, but it also relied on Drogo and Ibrahim playing precisely their part in occupying a much greater number of fencers for as long as it took until their teammates could bail them out.

At the end of that match, Teal team was out of fighters and so the victory went to Orange.

Woods Battle:

The woods battle was a fairly typical “Domination” style battle. There were 3 flags running across the middle of the field along a road. The uphill side used a shed as their rez point and had a fairly clear (but slightly longer I think) path to all three flags and should have had fairly easy control of the road itself. The downhill side had a clear path to the middle and “bottom” flag, but not a terribly clear path to the “top” flag. Furthermore it was difficult to reinforce between the middle and bottom flags for that side, as there was substantial brush between them. Roughly speaking, the uphill side had the advantage, but we fought two 30-min woods battles and switched sides in between, so that should have worked itself out.

We started on the uphill side. We initially observed that whoever controlled the middle flag would be able to control the top flag fairly easily as well and chose to focus on those two flags. Brian was to command the bulk of our forces at that flag. We sent Connor to command the bottom flag with Aedan, Dante, and Sir Roland. The thought was that they would be relatively self-sufficient and be able to serve as a nasty skirmish unit. I took command of a small reserve unit made up of people who I thought could survive being sent hither and yon throughout the battle. I took Ibrahim, Ilaria, and Ross. Roughly speaking, my role was to regulate the allocation of forces between the middle and bottom in response to changes in our opponents’ disposition.

In the first battle, I positioned myself on the road. This placement allowed me to see both the middle and bottom flags easily, ward off any “junglers” who tried to come through the bushes between the flags, and also to lend a hand at either flag if need be. It was apparent early on that we needed more help at the top flag so I sent Ross. We ended up contesting the bottom flag with our goon squad, but didn’t quite have control so I sent Ilaria and Ibrahim there initially. After a little while, we needed more help at the middle so I sent Ibrahim there for a stint before sending him back to the bottom for the rest of the battle. For the most part, we had locked down control of all 3 flags. The bottom flag was taken by Teal occasionally, but infrequently. The deciding factor seemed to be Benjamin. We were in control except for when Benjamin popped up. He’d be enough to tip the balance and take the flag for Teal. I spent a bit of time in the middle of that battle simply countering Benjamin’s attempts to run around the left flank of our middle flag unit. After a while I got tired of it, so I hunted down Ilaria and placed her on that flank. That seemed to mostly put a stop to Benjamin turning that flank and causing the loss of the middle flag. As we neared the end of the fight, the Teal team significantly reduced their efforts for the bottom flag and put everybody in the middle. I countered this by moving Roland up to the middle and joining the fight myself. The last 3 minutes involved some pretty tense fighting, but we managed to push them out of the flag area at the very end and secured a 6-0 victory in the first half of the woods.

We were on the downhill side for the second woods battle. We started in roughly the same way, focusing our efforts on the middle and top flags while sending our goon squad to contest the bottom flag. I had far less ability to move between the middle and top, but it became rather apparent that we were in fairly uncontested control of the middle throughout the fight. I think this was because the Teal team devoted more resources to the top flag and the bottom flag (since they had an easier path this time) which split their attention. Meanwhile the goon squad wasn’t faring as well at the bottom. I initially sent Ibrahim to reinforce them, but ultimately ended up spending much of the battle there myself. We ended up winning the second woods battle too, but I’m not certain of how the points ended up.

Merchant Escort Battle:

After a break for lunch, we reconvened on the field for the merchant escort battle. In this scenario, one team had an unarmed merchant. Their goal was to get the merchant past a certain line. The other team was defending. Each team took a turn on offense and defense with the winner being the team that got their merchant past the line fastest or the team that killed the merchant fastest.

We were the first team on offense. I went looking for the fastest person on our team and it turns out that Hector used to play cornerback in high school and is a professional dancer, so we made him our merchant. Our plan was simple. We formed a line across the field, put some of our heavier hitters on our left and advanced quickly at lay-on. I was in command of the left while Brian commanded the right as a “decoy” merchant. My goal on the left was to push forward using our heavy hitters such that we could create an opening for Hector to run through. When we reached engagement, I called the order to step and simply repeated it. Each time the defending team stepped backwards as our line advanced and so we simply walked them backwards across the line. Our merchant crossed the line at 45 seconds.

The second go-round had us on the defense. We lined up and ensured that our team knew that we needed to take as much territory as possible at lay on and to avoid giving ground. When the Teal team advanced, they created a swarm in the middle of the field. This allowed our flanks to slightly encircle them. I took the opportunity to walk behind their advancing swarm. I spotted their merchant, killed a few scholars who were behind him, and stabbed him in the chest, ending the battle. I heard someone say that we won in 25 seconds. It was hard to tell because we had a “hold” at initial contact due to Dante stabbing Celric in the solar plexus which resulted in Celric screaming and collapsing on the ground.

Grand Melees:

The next two battles were grand melees of a sort. In the first one, it was a 4-way battle between the color teams (red v yellow v blue v green). We agreed to continue our alliance with Brian until blue and green were dead, but that didn’t end up working out for us. I think green won the battle.

The second time around was also red v yellow v blue v green, but was to be fought to the last man with their team receiving the point. Red team got pinched in a corner between green and yellow and we were killed off rather early. There was some treachery between blue and green and ultimately Connor was the last man standing, giving the victory to yellow. This made Yellow team the victor for the day when combined with their allied victories in the woods, merchant battle, and challenge of strategy.

Cut and Thrust Tournament:

The last activity of the day was a cut and thrust tournament. It was good to see some C&T activities at an event. It was a best of 3 double elim tournamenet. While I have worked through a little bit of Bolognese and a little bit of Fiore longsword more recently (and even brought my two-hander), by the end of the day I felt far more confident in my ability to fight C&T using Capo Ferro.

I faced an armored fighter named Griffin in the first pairing. He was using a broadsword and heater shield. I took my rapier and dagger. I won the first pass with a riverso to his head and the second using a thrust to his visor over his shield.

My second pairing was Giacomo. I won the first pass by stabbing him in the gut with my dagger. Giacomo won the next two passes with a cut to my right ankle and calf respectively. I fought most of the C&T tournament using a refused guard with my dagger high and forward to catch cuts coming in from my left. I have been having some difficulty keeping my weight on my back leg using this guard since making some slight adjustments that Dante suggested back in January.

My final pairing was against Benjamin (who went on to win the tournament). I can’t quite remember what happened during those fights specifically, but that might be because I fought Benjamin a lot on Saturday (and Sunday).

Sunday Practice at Loriella Park:

Since we were already in the area, we stuck around for Dante’s practice on Sunday. Bomi, Benjamin, and Dante were there and we got quite a bit of sparring in over the 3 and a half hours we were there.