Pennsic Wrap Up

The simple thing to say is that I fought every battle with spear and every pickup with bunny round and a new sword (right length, right balance). I am resisting the two big temptations right now, which are (a) to switch to a kite and (b) to switch back to my center-grip round, both of which would cover my leg a bit better.

In the battles I was mostly using a rattan spear because they are lighter, the tip is smaller, and I could put one together for $25 instead of $50. It was not a good experiment. I used a piece of shaved rattan that wasn't overly wigly but was a bit. By the end of the war it was drooping a bit. I got some good kills with it, but I was almost completely unable to kill anybody in the body with it. It flexed too much. Waste of time. Those days when Cian wasn't fighting and I fought with his fiberglass spear I did much better. Ironically, in both the town battle and the mountain pass battle (same day) I was killed multiple times by an outlands spearman using a rattan spear.

We were badlly outnumbered. So much so that, to prove the point that the battles should be one on the field and not by politicking for six months ahead of time, Konrad conceded the war at opening ceremonies. Lutr tried to talk him out of it but it was no go. Konrad was right: the wwar is too importnat to some people and it is way too political. I'm glad he stuck to his guns. IMHO Lutr didn't handle it as gracefully as he could have. He should have met Konrad on the field Monday morning, evened up the sides and went at it. He didn't For the first day he kept all his allies, and later when he started to send us some troops the Mid still had numbers. We did win a few of the battles anyway, which felt glorious:

The Gates of Rome was a tie. We had the upper gate and we held it most of the day, but at the very end the Midrealm charged, a hold was called, and their momentum carried them forward (we all stopped, they didn't for a sec). We were pushed all the way off the gate and then, two seconds later, it was over. That ended up deciding the battle as a draw. Had we held that gate we would have won.

The Woods: we lost (i heard we won, but apparently not). It was a long res battle with abig push at the end.

Town battle: we lost, but our group held the two gates we were assigned to. They never got into our courtyard to take the point, so we were happy. Great spear duels with a bunch of guys from Calontir and Outlands, and some good charges by CAID.

Mountain Pass: we lost. The took all the points. Since we were lined up against mostly the same buys, it seemed like a continuation of the town battle.

Bridge battle. This was probably our great moment of glory. There were five bridges, three battles of half an hour each. The first battle was a draw. I think our bridge was officially "contested," meaning that neither side controlled enough of it to witn the point. According to Lutr, we killed nearly three times our number, as they were comitting all their reserves to our bridge as the battle went on. The second battle we lined up on the second bridge from the south, facing the tuchux and a few others. They charged, we held, we fought and repulsed their charges. Once again, they sent their reserves onto our bridge. But this time we blew through them, wrapped around, and hit Dark Moon in the rear on the middle bridge. As our bridge crumbled the first bridge began to give way, and Atlantia broke through and headed up the hill. We swept all three bridges and won the battle. Then we lined up and did exactly the same thing again.

We fought five field battles. I had a blast in all five. we won the two that mattered.

We won the belted champions but lost the unbelted champions. Heroics was interesting. We won even though Darius, Lucan, and Andreas all lost (to Ranvaldr, Edmund, and Uther, respectively). Gregor was the only Eastern duke who won his fight, one shoting Morgan Sheridan in one of the most beautiful shots I've ever seen. Our allies and our unbelteds really saved our asses, particularly Ulf, who was awesome.

I was also assisting Manfred in commanding the SRA. That was fun, and I think I did what I was called upon to do. Most of my command duties came in the woods, wherein I was coordinating our left flank and keeping it in line with An Tir. I fought with Serpentius the whole time, and Joseph and Horace were doing great jobs commanding. Just like the rest of my war, my spear fighting got better and better, and I was having more and more fun, each progressive day. By Friday I was having a blast and slaying mightily. The field battles are always my favorites, and we had some great ones this year.

In pickups I did great but I didn't get a lot of work. Had some good fights with Thorsen on Sunday. He said that I was fighting better than he had ever seen me fight. I pointed out that he still beat me. The ony other top level fighter I fought all week was Sir Ian from CAID, who beat me two of three, though I did figure out the counters to his Dirk-like offense pretty quickly. My other fights were against a lot of unbelteds because there weren't that many knights doing pickups, or at least I didn't see them. I did see Flieg, beck and Reinmar out there, but I wanted to fight guys I didn't know like the back of my hand whom I'd been fighting for more than twenty years (in Beck's case since before I authorized). I learned three things worth noting:

1) the way I have my bunny round strapped, just a bit on the low side with a lot of shield above my hand, I can't hold it in my normal closed form position because the corner is too high (I knew that pare) by it is great for a medium-crouch open form a la Paul or early Jade, and I am now fast enough once more to make that work.

2) because I can't hold it in my normal closed from I can't quite take the goofy foot stance that I've been working on, using Hauoc's technique. But it all works out if I move push the shield just a bit to the right, which also covers my right leg a bit more (one of the thigns about the center grip was that it covered my leg fighting goofy foot better than the bunny round).

3) once again, my thrusts are arcing and micing instead of going straight out. This is a bad habit I fall into when I get out of practice even for a week. I struggled with it the whole war.

I killed lots of guys in pickups. Only two of the unbelteds I fought made me sweat, and I still won more than I lost off of them. I felt ok. But I didn't get my ten fights with Darius and I didn't get to really work with any big guns, so I feel unsatisfied.

Great war.