The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

We had our baronial spring event this weekend, which was melee-centric, and therefore more than deserving of discussion here.  Something about a theme to this blog matching up with, you know, rapier melees.  But first, practice!

Thursday

Thursday was the first time I’d picked up a sword in two weeks.  Goddamn work.  Damn it to hell.  I couldn’t even stay to fight the whole time, because I had to get back home to my laptop to check my e-mail.  This has just gotten ridiculous.

Galen was there, his first time out since he had appendix removed.  He and I warmed up against each other and I felt like I was doing a great impersonation of a punching bag.  My parries were big and slow, and my feet just didn’t bother moving.  The same happened against Giovan until about halfway through, when my brain finally woke up, dropped my weight, leaned forward to hide my target area, and I was suddenly able to fight, like, for reals.  I had a good hour of this, and it made me very proud.  Even fought Galen again, and now that we were both warmed up I did much, much better.  I know a number of my fencing journals end with Yakko, Wakko, and Dot spinning the Wheel of Morality and learning to “drop your weight dumbass”.  Hopefully one day I’ll remember it, too.

That TRX Suspension class (Youtube it, boys and girls), left me feeling like I’d pulled a rib muscle for four days.  WTFBBQDFB?!  Must do it again, tonight.

Le Tournoi de Grande Amitie
(“Tourney of Fat Friends”, you know, the ones that you have so you can feel skinny)

Saturday was the second holding of the Tourney of Friends.  Last year’s was a grand old time, and I looked forward to this year’s with a similar amount of enthusiasm.  Sure, Miguel and Caelia were off in far lands, but the scenarios sounded interesting, to say the least.  We’d worked through them at baronial practice a month ago, and figured out some of their breaking points.  I spent a bit of the day on Friday going over them again to figure out the rest of their breaking points (and which stupid questions would be asked, and how their answers would affect tactics).

The Scenarios

The overall setup was three roughly equal teams.

The first scenario was your basic “capture the gold” setup: Two teams on two different ships attacking a church on an island, defended by the third team.  Run through three times with each team defending once.

The second scenario was straight out of Double Dare: how quickly can your team transfer water from a bucket on the ship to a cup on the altar of the church?  Then it was run in reverse.

The last scenario was a VIP: Last team captain standing wins.

So, interesting scenarios, if a little contrived, but with lots of tactical variants to attempt.

The Invocation of Thumper’s Daddy

A great deal of the actual melee, unfortunately, falls under Thumper’s Daddy’s Rule.  This probably has much more to do with my own internal fuse being burnt down to just a little stub sticking out of the barrel labeled ACME TNT, but basically I did not have a good time in the melees.  As H. Ross Perot will demonstrate with a chart, tracking this trend over the past three events, we can see that I’ve been feeling shittier and shittier about melee.  I don’t really believe this to be melee’s fault, lest Ares strike me down, but something’s gotta change.  More on that later.

Basically, the marshals were systematically banning all the aforementioned tactical variants to attempt, forcing all three teams into using the same tactics.  Now, while the teams were ROUGHLY equal, it is impossible to make them equal in numbers and skill, which is where tactics come in to even things out.  Having tactics removed from the equation, then, meant that numbers and skill dictated victory.  Being on the team with no numerical or skill advantage (after the first round, when Cunning left to go fight heavy) meant there was no point in showing up.

So after the second round I didn’t.  I went and sat with Lady She Who Must Be Obeyed and Lady Livia as they talked scribbling and I ate a picnic lunch, then wandered the site and got to see all the stuff a fighter normally doesn’t get to see at an event.  So I have no idea how the rest of the fighting went.  I would just advise that the marshal who legislates least legislates best.  Also, if you’ve made bad decisions, don’t expect the fighters to save the day.  I don’t know if that was the expectation, but I often get that feeling (call it guilt, actually: “You’re a leader in the fencing community, you should be there to help other fighters get the most out of their event”).

Pickups

After the melee, I armored back up and fought pickups.  It was, mostly, 4 free scholars, 1 provost, and a guy who authorized after the melees.  Letia and Joe (hereafter known as Gavin) showed up for part of the time, between resting their busted ass and tending to their lady, respectively, and I’d heard rumor of two other scholars out fighting each other at the start of pickups, before I showed up.  But considering there were 8+ scholars fighting at the event, it seemed a low turnout of the blue-scarved class.  Especially since I fight everybody who was doing pickups (except the newly authorized fighter) on an almost weekly basis.

I remember a time when the rapier community pissed and moaned about provosts and free scholars not sticking around for pickups.  Now it seems the situation has completely reversed.  I wonder what can be done about that.  I have some ideas, let’s see if I can execute them without stomping on too many toes.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

So, yeah, another event where I didn’t enjoy myself.  Another week of feeling crappy.  Something’s got to change, and lo!  What ho!  I’ve got two job interviews this week, I feel great about both of them (my resume is a fucking battleship, and I do good interpersonal communication, though I must remember not to say ‘fucking’ in every sentence).  We’ll see how May feels.  If I don’t break my sword over my leg at Sapphire Joust, it will be a clear indication that the trend has turned around.  But at least this week nothing should stand in the way of fencing Tuesday and Thursday, and then armoring up for heavy on Saturday (and an hour or so of rapier, too).