30th Year
I have some great footage from that fight with Aradd; who, I should mention, is extremely bendy.
This was a first time event for a number of reasons. First time Jill and I have traveled to an event with Colin, I hope there will be more. The first time I traveled to an event with a likely protege. And the first time I single handedly brought a tourney to a halt because of bad reporting. ; )
All and all I have to say it was a very fine event. Friday I picked up Amanda from Frederick and then we loaded and did some last minute weapons repair. Before packing up Jill and heading down to meet up with Colin. We even managed to shoehorn in some time to play a bit before we left which was fun, and a good warm up for the bardics and Elephant Stomp. Got to Colin's, ate Pizza for dinner, loaded and let out for site. As everyone who tried to navigate there via GPS knows, the site was... elusive, but we arrived and set up the Pavillion. It was short work with four of us and aside from being hot work in the sodden blanket that passed for air this weekend I think we managed everything in about an hour.
After a run into town for some water and other forgotten essentials, (candy and frappachino among them) Amanda Colin and I wandered about for a bit before settling at a camp fairly bristling with musicians. Good instrumentalists are a rare find in my experience, and this camp had a number so I wasn't going anywhere. In fact we determined then and there to find our way back on Saturday night in hopes of hearing and playing more. They wrapped up around 2:00 and I was asleep by 2:30.
Up moderately early Sat, made coffee and breakfast. Armored up a bit early because I wanted to help with the authorizations as well as get some work in with a shield I was borrowing (nice shield but it didn't work for me at all) Did one quick re-authorization and one longish polearm authorization before we ran out of time and had to get set for the tourney. First was the Rose Tourney, which was divided up into three heats, each with 16 fighters maybe? I think they did five rounds anyway. Best two out of three with no eliminations which I have to say makes for a better day of fighting than a double elimination. Everyone is guaranteed 10 fights, more if you win at least once. WT won all his fights for 50 points with a number of us coming in "second" with the same score of 47. They would have run a final round to codify the winners a bit more but we were running out of time and there was a long delay while the heavens opened up and we had to clear the field to make way for Noah and his menagerie to load aboard the ark.
After the Rose tourney was great weapons, the very reason I was excited about this event. Unfortunately my day was hampered by armor problems. I completely refitted my gauntlets before the event, only to have failure after failure. I was tying them back together after every round. and of course with rivets flying everywhere and leather and ties breaking they did not do their proper job of keeping my hands from becoming jelly. After some early hard knocks I knew I was in trouble but kept at it till the end. In sound hindsight I should have stopped earlier but I love me some great sword fighting. I smashed both thumbs proper, but my left is the worst. I'll be out for a bit to heal up, and that meant I missed the pole arm tourney on Sunday which seriously dampened my cheer I assure you. But I did have the bardic to look forward to that night so we piled into the van and headed out for strip mall chinese!
Not sure why all chinese buffets are in strip malls but that is in fact the natural habitat. This one was better than most, and I think we all left well stuffed.
I'll post about the bardic and sunday tomorrow.
-Justus