Many thanks to Gil for uploading videos from the last couple BAT practices to You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brooklyn+fighter+practice&search_type=
There are some great vids. I'm really pleased to see the video of me fighting Oscad. Like I said, Oscad pushes me hard. I'd been getting the better of him lately but he's figured out a good counter to use on me and killed me with it Sunday, and almost killed me with it a couple more times. Like Thorsen, he's realized that it's the weakest spot in my defense (I always fight sword forward against Thorsen for that reason). I was working on ramping up against him because I've realized that I am fighting a bit too laid back recently. The biggest thing I notice in this video is that I am not extending my arm into my leg defense, and that I do not look as fast as I feel.
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jt4sKcunbY
The video of me fighting Timur is good too, mostly so he can see what I was talking about in our teaching seesion. But Gil cut it short and missed the part where I went all jade on him and just pasted him with a face thrust from a no-guard attitude, something which always feels good when I can pull it off.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
BAT Practice
BAT practice was really good today. We had seven fighters in armor of various skill levels. Oscad and I had some great fights. He is pushing me hard right now. I concentrated on being more agressive winc lately I had been laying back, and he seems more comfortable fighting me. He figured out a nice little coutner attack against me.
Gil hit me in the cup.
I also fought John, a new fighter witha lot of escrima experience, so he doesn't fight new; Timur, and Avram with greatswords.
Shoulder hurts a bit.
Everybody should come out to the BAT practice. It's a lot of fun.
Gil hit me in the cup.
I also fought John, a new fighter witha lot of escrima experience, so he doesn't fight new; Timur, and Avram with greatswords.
Shoulder hurts a bit.
Everybody should come out to the BAT practice. It's a lot of fun.
Monday, April 28, 2008
BAT Practice
We've got two new fighters at BAT practice and both of them are sponges. They listen carefully, they learn, and they execute. It is a joy to behold. In addition to them we had myself, Avram, Oscad, Timur, and Alexandre in armor yesterday. It was pretty relaxed. I didn't get to fight everybody but that was ok. I was mostly getting some helmet time, having missed Crown. Timur is coming along nicely. I showed him a thrust/molinee cut technique and he immediatley killed me with it. Good stuff.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
What to do on A Saturday when you should be at Crown
Search YouTube, of course! A hundred or more videos of Prova have been uploaded to Youtube in the past few days. Just type in “Prova Dura” and search for things added recently. I only found one of me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXWpE6yP0eI
(me and Christopher of Winterbourne)
But there are a lot from Sigurfirth’s field. A tribesman sent me a page where some of the azure field fights are indexed by round:
http://www.meowzettes.com/movies_laprovadura08.html
(index of Azure field by round).
I also found me and Sir Gabriel from Mudthaw, where I look like I’m moving through molasses. Embarrassing. It felt like a great fight at the time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExNYnL-cYRA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXWpE6yP0eI
(me and Christopher of Winterbourne)
But there are a lot from Sigurfirth’s field. A tribesman sent me a page where some of the azure field fights are indexed by round:
http://www.meowzettes.com/movies_laprovadura08.html
(index of Azure field by round).
I also found me and Sir Gabriel from Mudthaw, where I look like I’m moving through molasses. Embarrassing. It felt like a great fight at the time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExNYnL-cYRA
Friday, April 25, 2008
Crowns
I share an attitude common in the West Kingdom that Crown Tourney is what the SCA is really all about. Everything else is just window dressing. As a result I hardly ever miss a crown. Well, that and I know that the best chance I have to win strawberry leaves is to maximize every opportunity I have to win, because I've never been that guy who can win most anytime he wants. I've fought in more crowns than anybody else save William the Lucky (and I might have passed him). I believe my count is 75. One year I fought in five crown tourneys, all three in the West and both in the East. So to me missing crown is about the biggest disaster I ever face. I feel like an eight year old who has been sent to his room while his siblings get to go to the circus. I act like it too (ask my girlfriend).
Today is one of those days. I am in practice. I have been fighting very well. This is probably my best opportunity to win Crown since I moved to the East. I've fought in three tourney recently and done well. Prova was a great tuneup for Crown. I am not injured. And I'm sitting at home.
I'm at home because of mundane concerns--we had a tenant vacate our rental in Jersey City suddenly and we have to rent it by Wednesday. Also, I don't want to do the trip by myself, both for money (I can afford it by myself but it's a stretch) and for the fact that it's a 12 hour drive and on Sunday I'm likely to be very beat up.
But that's just whining.
This crown looks tough because all crowns look tough. There are two dukes who really want to win it, whom I've never beaten in a list, plus three knights who are going for it who give me fits. But I still wish I were there. There's nothing like a crown.
There are a number of reasons why I think crown should be the center of the SCA universe. One is because of the old Western reality that, int eh beginning, all events (save 12th Night) were crown tourneys. That and having three a year (plus in most parts of the kingdom two coronets) meant that you were always fighting in royal tourneys. There was a tradition early in the West that all fighters except dukes were expected to fight in crown (it's even in the ceremony that created the first dukes). And, of course, there's the simple fact that until I become one of those myself (A Duke that is) I will feel incomplete as a fighter. That old joke "once a fluke, twice a duke" rings in my ear from time to time.
So that's why I fight in every crown except this one. In 30 years of doing this it's easy to count the number of crowns I was eligible for but skipped: one I was banned from, two while I was prince of the mists, one while I was king, one when I was injured, and three because of distance: the Western crown that was held in An Tir and two of the crown that have been held in Canada, counting this one. I don't count the crown that was re-fought at Purgatorio when Radnor abdicated. That's eight in 30 years that I've missed, and most of those years I lived in the kingdom that holds three a year.
So forgive me if I'm grumpy today.
But what about you guys? What do you feel?
Today is one of those days. I am in practice. I have been fighting very well. This is probably my best opportunity to win Crown since I moved to the East. I've fought in three tourney recently and done well. Prova was a great tuneup for Crown. I am not injured. And I'm sitting at home.
I'm at home because of mundane concerns--we had a tenant vacate our rental in Jersey City suddenly and we have to rent it by Wednesday. Also, I don't want to do the trip by myself, both for money (I can afford it by myself but it's a stretch) and for the fact that it's a 12 hour drive and on Sunday I'm likely to be very beat up.
But that's just whining.
This crown looks tough because all crowns look tough. There are two dukes who really want to win it, whom I've never beaten in a list, plus three knights who are going for it who give me fits. But I still wish I were there. There's nothing like a crown.
There are a number of reasons why I think crown should be the center of the SCA universe. One is because of the old Western reality that, int eh beginning, all events (save 12th Night) were crown tourneys. That and having three a year (plus in most parts of the kingdom two coronets) meant that you were always fighting in royal tourneys. There was a tradition early in the West that all fighters except dukes were expected to fight in crown (it's even in the ceremony that created the first dukes). And, of course, there's the simple fact that until I become one of those myself (A Duke that is) I will feel incomplete as a fighter. That old joke "once a fluke, twice a duke" rings in my ear from time to time.
So that's why I fight in every crown except this one. In 30 years of doing this it's easy to count the number of crowns I was eligible for but skipped: one I was banned from, two while I was prince of the mists, one while I was king, one when I was injured, and three because of distance: the Western crown that was held in An Tir and two of the crown that have been held in Canada, counting this one. I don't count the crown that was re-fought at Purgatorio when Radnor abdicated. That's eight in 30 years that I've missed, and most of those years I lived in the kingdom that holds three a year.
So forgive me if I'm grumpy today.
But what about you guys? What do you feel?
Monday, April 21, 2008
La Prova Dura
La Prova Dura in the West was a lot of fun. I am definitely glad I went. It was good to be home.
La Prova Dura means "the proof ofendurance." There were 106 fighters. They ran six fields as round robins, with the winners of the six fields advancing to a final round robin. It was full of pomp and circumstance and lots of ceremony. The parade of fighters at the beginning took an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Some fighters walked in with groups and some individually, and most of them had a herald announce them. I walked in with “house Relentless” which was kind of the tribe and kind of not. It was a TOGUH list. There were Dukes all over the place, three reigning kings (Atenveldt, West and CAID), and knights from An Tir, East (me), CAID, Outands, Trimaris, and probably some kingdoms I’m forgetting. The fighters from CAID included Sir Freewind Bahadur, one of my all time favorite fighters.
Interstingly, unike a Western crown where there are 800 to 1,000 people in attendance but only 50-80 fighters (these days, there used to be 100 in the lists regularly). This time there were only around 350 in attendance including the fighters. That meant nearly everyone there was involved in the list in one way or another (there were some non-fighting activities going on, but those are for livejournal).
There were a couple of things that made it odd from my perspective. First off they seeded the fields like a normal list, but not quite. In a normal double elimination list in the West you seed the duke or top fighter at #1 on at field, the count in the middle of the pack (assuming one of each), viscounts above and below the count the knights in between. They are given odd numbers, with the duke being number 1. Then as they are challenged by unbelted fighters those fighters are given even numbers. At Prova, since everybody in the list has to fight everybody else that doesn’t make sense. They just seeded them with the duke at #1,the count at #2, viscount at #3, etc. So you can see here this is going. My first fight was against Duke Connor, the reigning prova champion. We had a great fight which he won. Talk about a wakeup call. My second fight was the #4 fighter, Magnus. He was having a great day and I did something stupid and handed him the fight on a silver platter. So after two fights I was pretty much out of the running and it was hard to keep my head in the serious place it needs to be to win. I had to fight the urge to say “oh, to hell with it” and start experimenting and playing around. I won my third fight, against Brion, the viscount on our field. After that I settled down. My first five fights were all knights and out of those I won all but those first two. Late in the list I fought Alvar, the remaining knight, and I won that too. Ferghis beat me with a good strike-thrust technique for my only other loss.
In looking at my own fighting it’s hard to analyze. For one thing I can’t remember each fight clearly. I know how I lost my three losses, but not how I won all my fourteen wins. I do remember few things:
Connor just beat me. He took my leg (I think I took his-that’s shaky) then got me with a back wrap after a good fight.
On Magnus I was tying a step/thrust and let my shield drift out as he was starting a blow (give him credit, he probably triggered off my movement) and he creamed me. I juked right into his blow and it hit so hard I bit my tongue. As Chis Farley would say, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!
Brion was fighting two sword. I took his leg and then hid my tip behind my back foot. As he threw at my leg I blocked with my shield and brought y sword up between his swords and hit him in the chin, a move hat has worked on Sir Douglas before.
Hmmm. Let’s see….
Ajax was a good tough fight but I got him walking into slow face thrust, one of my favorites. Firewalker was using a big center grip kite and he’s taller than me. I used Lucky’s Snap, pass to shield side, step around, strike combo, chaning the angle a bit to get his face.
Ummm. Robert of Woodesend and I fought with bucklers and I one-shotted him with the step/thrust.
I got one or two people with the hook thrust, but it wasn’t working until late in the day.
The fighting was strange because, as Connor pointed out, you never got a chance to get warm. It was like fighting the first two rounds of crown over and over again, where you wait forty minutes between fights. It’s supposed to be a proof of endurance, but the only endurance problems I had were due to jet lag. It’s only seventeen fights, after all. I fought 69 fights at Birka (they were proud of the fact that they had 856 fights in the tourney, as well they should be since the did it with all the pomp and circumstance of a crown tournament, but at Birka this year there were, ahem, 3691 fights). The only time I felt tired was going into my fight with Alvar. I was like “where am I? What is this stick doing in my hand? Oh! I’m supposed to hit him with it! Ok….” And I did. After that I started eating carbs and my focus came back. After Connor pointed out that bit about never getting warm, I realized that I was pacing myself more than was necessary. You are resting half an hour to 45 minutes between each fight. You may not get warm, but you have plenty of time to recover. I get much more exhausted late in crown after only seven or eight fights. After I realized this I tried to put myself in that mind space I’d bee in in the late rounds at Mudtaw, where win loose I was determined to dominate my opponent. That gave me the spring to finish strong. The other thing, of course, was that with the exception of Alvar, I had no knights in the last half of my day. That was so unlike a crown, where the fighting gets harder as the day goes on.
In the end, after seven hours of fighting, each of us fighting seventeen fights, our field played right to the seeding. Connor won with one loss, I was second with three losses, Brion and Magnus were tied for third with four losses, and so on. (Magnus, by the way, was a f*cking beast all day. When is Outland’s crown?). Finals came around and somebody asked me “who’s left?” I said “the king, the duke, the duke, the duke, the duke, and the duke.” Respectively they were King Gemini of the West, Duke Connor, Duke John of Skye, Duke Hauoc, Duke Fabian Arnet, and Duke Mathias from Atenveldt (who might live in the West now, I’m not sure). Mathias won the round robin final with four wins and one loss. He adds a little bit of fire to the shield debate: Fabian was fighting two sword, Gemini used his wankle and a small mace, Mathias used a normal sized heater (that is to say roughly chin to crotch), John a 24” square, Connor his bunny round, Hauoc his tiny little heater. The thing that stood out for me was that Mahias was able to take most of his opponents’ legs but his was almost impossible because of good heater shield work. He stood with a fairly wide, fairy square stance once he took someone’s legs, and blows to his leg either struck shield of hit low and he eventually struck home. In this case, his superior leg defense probably won him the tournament. Conclusion: given fighters of equal skills the fighter with the bigger shield will probably win. But we already knew that.
Those finals were, as you would expect, incredible. Total deep end of the pool stuff: five dukes and reigning king all at the top of their game. That was worth the price of admission right there. It was amazing to watch them work.
The next day was "La Prova di Amore," the proof of love. The ladies of the gallery voted on twelve fighters to be invited to fight in a second round robin. There was tie in which a kight from An Tir finished tied with Freewind. It was a lot of fun to watch.
I had great time and am really glad I went. The next one is in three years and might be held as the first weekend of a week long Beltane. That’d be fun. I decided that, as fun as this was, I like Crowns more. They are more intense and more exciting. You get into a flow in the late rounds that I didn’t experience here. This was a blast, but I’m looking forward to crown.
La Prova Dura means "the proof ofendurance." There were 106 fighters. They ran six fields as round robins, with the winners of the six fields advancing to a final round robin. It was full of pomp and circumstance and lots of ceremony. The parade of fighters at the beginning took an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Some fighters walked in with groups and some individually, and most of them had a herald announce them. I walked in with “house Relentless” which was kind of the tribe and kind of not. It was a TOGUH list. There were Dukes all over the place, three reigning kings (Atenveldt, West and CAID), and knights from An Tir, East (me), CAID, Outands, Trimaris, and probably some kingdoms I’m forgetting. The fighters from CAID included Sir Freewind Bahadur, one of my all time favorite fighters.
Interstingly, unike a Western crown where there are 800 to 1,000 people in attendance but only 50-80 fighters (these days, there used to be 100 in the lists regularly). This time there were only around 350 in attendance including the fighters. That meant nearly everyone there was involved in the list in one way or another (there were some non-fighting activities going on, but those are for livejournal).
There were a couple of things that made it odd from my perspective. First off they seeded the fields like a normal list, but not quite. In a normal double elimination list in the West you seed the duke or top fighter at #1 on at field, the count in the middle of the pack (assuming one of each), viscounts above and below the count the knights in between. They are given odd numbers, with the duke being number 1. Then as they are challenged by unbelted fighters those fighters are given even numbers. At Prova, since everybody in the list has to fight everybody else that doesn’t make sense. They just seeded them with the duke at #1,the count at #2, viscount at #3, etc. So you can see here this is going. My first fight was against Duke Connor, the reigning prova champion. We had a great fight which he won. Talk about a wakeup call. My second fight was the #4 fighter, Magnus. He was having a great day and I did something stupid and handed him the fight on a silver platter. So after two fights I was pretty much out of the running and it was hard to keep my head in the serious place it needs to be to win. I had to fight the urge to say “oh, to hell with it” and start experimenting and playing around. I won my third fight, against Brion, the viscount on our field. After that I settled down. My first five fights were all knights and out of those I won all but those first two. Late in the list I fought Alvar, the remaining knight, and I won that too. Ferghis beat me with a good strike-thrust technique for my only other loss.
In looking at my own fighting it’s hard to analyze. For one thing I can’t remember each fight clearly. I know how I lost my three losses, but not how I won all my fourteen wins. I do remember few things:
Connor just beat me. He took my leg (I think I took his-that’s shaky) then got me with a back wrap after a good fight.
On Magnus I was tying a step/thrust and let my shield drift out as he was starting a blow (give him credit, he probably triggered off my movement) and he creamed me. I juked right into his blow and it hit so hard I bit my tongue. As Chis Farley would say, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!
Brion was fighting two sword. I took his leg and then hid my tip behind my back foot. As he threw at my leg I blocked with my shield and brought y sword up between his swords and hit him in the chin, a move hat has worked on Sir Douglas before.
Hmmm. Let’s see….
Ajax was a good tough fight but I got him walking into slow face thrust, one of my favorites. Firewalker was using a big center grip kite and he’s taller than me. I used Lucky’s Snap, pass to shield side, step around, strike combo, chaning the angle a bit to get his face.
Ummm. Robert of Woodesend and I fought with bucklers and I one-shotted him with the step/thrust.
I got one or two people with the hook thrust, but it wasn’t working until late in the day.
The fighting was strange because, as Connor pointed out, you never got a chance to get warm. It was like fighting the first two rounds of crown over and over again, where you wait forty minutes between fights. It’s supposed to be a proof of endurance, but the only endurance problems I had were due to jet lag. It’s only seventeen fights, after all. I fought 69 fights at Birka (they were proud of the fact that they had 856 fights in the tourney, as well they should be since the did it with all the pomp and circumstance of a crown tournament, but at Birka this year there were, ahem, 3691 fights). The only time I felt tired was going into my fight with Alvar. I was like “where am I? What is this stick doing in my hand? Oh! I’m supposed to hit him with it! Ok….” And I did. After that I started eating carbs and my focus came back. After Connor pointed out that bit about never getting warm, I realized that I was pacing myself more than was necessary. You are resting half an hour to 45 minutes between each fight. You may not get warm, but you have plenty of time to recover. I get much more exhausted late in crown after only seven or eight fights. After I realized this I tried to put myself in that mind space I’d bee in in the late rounds at Mudtaw, where win loose I was determined to dominate my opponent. That gave me the spring to finish strong. The other thing, of course, was that with the exception of Alvar, I had no knights in the last half of my day. That was so unlike a crown, where the fighting gets harder as the day goes on.
In the end, after seven hours of fighting, each of us fighting seventeen fights, our field played right to the seeding. Connor won with one loss, I was second with three losses, Brion and Magnus were tied for third with four losses, and so on. (Magnus, by the way, was a f*cking beast all day. When is Outland’s crown?). Finals came around and somebody asked me “who’s left?” I said “the king, the duke, the duke, the duke, the duke, and the duke.” Respectively they were King Gemini of the West, Duke Connor, Duke John of Skye, Duke Hauoc, Duke Fabian Arnet, and Duke Mathias from Atenveldt (who might live in the West now, I’m not sure). Mathias won the round robin final with four wins and one loss. He adds a little bit of fire to the shield debate: Fabian was fighting two sword, Gemini used his wankle and a small mace, Mathias used a normal sized heater (that is to say roughly chin to crotch), John a 24” square, Connor his bunny round, Hauoc his tiny little heater. The thing that stood out for me was that Mahias was able to take most of his opponents’ legs but his was almost impossible because of good heater shield work. He stood with a fairly wide, fairy square stance once he took someone’s legs, and blows to his leg either struck shield of hit low and he eventually struck home. In this case, his superior leg defense probably won him the tournament. Conclusion: given fighters of equal skills the fighter with the bigger shield will probably win. But we already knew that.
Those finals were, as you would expect, incredible. Total deep end of the pool stuff: five dukes and reigning king all at the top of their game. That was worth the price of admission right there. It was amazing to watch them work.
The next day was "La Prova di Amore," the proof of love. The ladies of the gallery voted on twelve fighters to be invited to fight in a second round robin. There was tie in which a kight from An Tir finished tied with Freewind. It was a lot of fun to watch.
I had great time and am really glad I went. The next one is in three years and might be held as the first weekend of a week long Beltane. That’d be fun. I decided that, as fun as this was, I like Crowns more. They are more intense and more exciting. You get into a flow in the late rounds that I didn’t experience here. This was a blast, but I’m looking forward to crown.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Coronation
Wow. There was a nice little tourney at Coronation. It was on asphalt and a slope, which made for some difficult footing issues. It was, at his Majesty's whim, a bear-pit with value assigned to each fighter--1 point for a fighter without an award or rank or anything, two points for (squires maybe? not sure about two points), three points for members of the Order of the Tigers Combatant, four for a knight and five for a Ryoal Peer. Since I was the only knight or royal peer in the tourney, every body wanted to kill me bad.
I finished tied for first with Federach, an OTC whom I had double killed with in the first fight. Appropriately, his majesty gave him the prize (which annoyed my sweetie, who thought I deserved a prize too, not knowing that she's the only prize I really need--an no, she does not read this blog as far as I know).
It was a lot of fun. I was still out of sorts with the switch back to the bunny round, trying to figure it out. My leg is so much more vulnerable with the bunny round than with the center grip and my offence is so much better.
I killed with the edge and with the point. Probably my best fight was my second fight with Federach. He fights with a small scuta and normally his defense is incrdibly tight. I took his leg somehow and noticed that on his knees he points the bottom of his shield a bit forward. I scooped it up with the front corner of my bunny round and stabbed him in the armpit. If he'd had a heater I couldn't have done that, but the wide bottom of his scuta gave me something to hook.
My defense was a bit sloppy. Lucas at one point touched me with something that he later said was a ranging shot that he hadn't expected to land so he hadn't put power into it. A knight would have known better and taken my head off. Sloppy defense.
But I had a good time. It was fun.
But next week is la Prova Dura out in the West, which will be a real test of fortitude (fighting in Prova the week before crown is either going to be a terrible idea or a great idea, depending on how fast I recover: I suspect the former, if my recovery from Mudthaw and Birka are any indication).
I finished tied for first with Federach, an OTC whom I had double killed with in the first fight. Appropriately, his majesty gave him the prize (which annoyed my sweetie, who thought I deserved a prize too, not knowing that she's the only prize I really need--an no, she does not read this blog as far as I know).
It was a lot of fun. I was still out of sorts with the switch back to the bunny round, trying to figure it out. My leg is so much more vulnerable with the bunny round than with the center grip and my offence is so much better.
I killed with the edge and with the point. Probably my best fight was my second fight with Federach. He fights with a small scuta and normally his defense is incrdibly tight. I took his leg somehow and noticed that on his knees he points the bottom of his shield a bit forward. I scooped it up with the front corner of my bunny round and stabbed him in the armpit. If he'd had a heater I couldn't have done that, but the wide bottom of his scuta gave me something to hook.
My defense was a bit sloppy. Lucas at one point touched me with something that he later said was a ranging shot that he hadn't expected to land so he hadn't put power into it. A knight would have known better and taken my head off. Sloppy defense.
But I had a good time. It was fun.
But next week is la Prova Dura out in the West, which will be a real test of fortitude (fighting in Prova the week before crown is either going to be a terrible idea or a great idea, depending on how fast I recover: I suspect the former, if my recovery from Mudthaw and Birka are any indication).
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