Better than expected
Gentle Readers,
I am lying in my bed after a lovely weekend away. We went south to visit Chez Arlette (I don't know if they have a preferred name for the house or not) and take in Ice Dragon. Ice Dragon was the driving force for the trip as I wanted to fight a bunch of people that I didn't know to get a sense of where I stood with regard to my personal skill.
The last (and first) time I went was 2 years ago. For some reason I had chosen to fight with Rapier and Buckler and I had my butt handed to me with every opponent. It didn't help that my pool was filled with lots of highly skilled aethelmarkian white scarves and their cadets. This time, either I got a much weaker pool or I was in a much better place skill wise as I did much better than I was worried I might.
I've been away from tournaments for some time and fighting strangers, especially ones from a different fighting culture, is never easy. However, this time I managed to force my game on them. I pulled off a beautiful Pallas Armata entry against someone who should have known better and managed some lovely Shieldhaus as entries into distance followed with a touch. In fact that was the shot that I used to kill the pool winner. Of the 12 fights, I lost 4 (I think. I can only remember 3 actual losses). The first one was a failure to control the sword of a legged opponent as I retreated out of distance (Meyer's Withdrawal), The second was a bad parry followed by a fluke shot. The third was a failure to be fully in synch with the Kingdom's fighting culture.
More frequent freeplay would have dealt with the last two and the first was the old problem of letting go of their blade within distance.
Another good thing: even with the very open hilt of the messer, I still had no problems defending the expected hand sniping. Even against the gentleman who I played with later who sniped a great deal in the tournament (with much success).
Another thing that I believe was contributing to my sloppiness was some combination of blood sugar and adrenaline shake which lasted much of the round.
Oh, there was also a great deal of sewing machine attacks. I found myself having difficulty with these, mostly because I didn't want to step in and get gut punched with a sword. I need to talk to Craig about how we used to deal with this particular problem.
Anyway, it was overall a very valuable trip. I'm feeling pretty positive about the trip. I think the daily practice is going to pay off in spades too.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.
I am lying in my bed after a lovely weekend away. We went south to visit Chez Arlette (I don't know if they have a preferred name for the house or not) and take in Ice Dragon. Ice Dragon was the driving force for the trip as I wanted to fight a bunch of people that I didn't know to get a sense of where I stood with regard to my personal skill.
The last (and first) time I went was 2 years ago. For some reason I had chosen to fight with Rapier and Buckler and I had my butt handed to me with every opponent. It didn't help that my pool was filled with lots of highly skilled aethelmarkian white scarves and their cadets. This time, either I got a much weaker pool or I was in a much better place skill wise as I did much better than I was worried I might.
I've been away from tournaments for some time and fighting strangers, especially ones from a different fighting culture, is never easy. However, this time I managed to force my game on them. I pulled off a beautiful Pallas Armata entry against someone who should have known better and managed some lovely Shieldhaus as entries into distance followed with a touch. In fact that was the shot that I used to kill the pool winner. Of the 12 fights, I lost 4 (I think. I can only remember 3 actual losses). The first one was a failure to control the sword of a legged opponent as I retreated out of distance (Meyer's Withdrawal), The second was a bad parry followed by a fluke shot. The third was a failure to be fully in synch with the Kingdom's fighting culture.
More frequent freeplay would have dealt with the last two and the first was the old problem of letting go of their blade within distance.
Another good thing: even with the very open hilt of the messer, I still had no problems defending the expected hand sniping. Even against the gentleman who I played with later who sniped a great deal in the tournament (with much success).
Another thing that I believe was contributing to my sloppiness was some combination of blood sugar and adrenaline shake which lasted much of the round.
Oh, there was also a great deal of sewing machine attacks. I found myself having difficulty with these, mostly because I didn't want to step in and get gut punched with a sword. I need to talk to Craig about how we used to deal with this particular problem.
Anyway, it was overall a very valuable trip. I'm feeling pretty positive about the trip. I think the daily practice is going to pay off in spades too.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.