King's Hunt 2011, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying (kind of) and Enjoy the Ride.

Not going to lie, folks. Despite the Zen I was cultivating during the week, I did not get a lot of sleep on Thursday night. We were due to leave immediately after work on Friday, and there was still some last-minute prep to do before and during packing, and then there was maggots (yes, you read that right), and at 12:45 AM I realized I'd forgotten a fairly major last minute bit of packing, which, once that was fixed, left me laying awake thinking about what else I might have forgotten and and and...

And everything turned out fine. Yep. No emergencies, no injuries, no temper tantrums, not even any uncomfortable calls or discussions.

Saturday
Saturday we ran Blood of Heroes, and it went great. It was very clean and fun to watch, with good behavior from everyone. I was a little nervous about the active marshaling that's often required in BoH (no one likes to get yelled at for apparently no reason, after all) but everyone was really receptive and willing to go with the flow. I cleared things up quickly with the folks who I thought might be confused by the calls I made, and everything seemed to go well. Overall, it was a really responsible and skilled group of people (and I had some very experienced and sensitive marshals working with me), so there was nothing to complain about at all. :)

After a break for lunch, the White Scarves took over to run a tournament for the unscarved fighters. This is something of an annual tradition in Caid--it's basically a tournament the White Scarves sponsor and choose not to participate in. This gives the other fighters an opportunity to showcase their skills, as well as giving the White Scarves a chance to compare and contrast fighters from different areas and track individual fighters' progress without having to worry about having to keep their own heads in the game, fighting-wise.

First of all, it was really hard to transition from the marshal brain to the fighting brain. It took me longer than usual to warm up and drag my brain from the marshaling vision (looking at everything and making judgment calls) to the fighting headspace (looking at nothing specific and reacting automatically). I hadn't expected that at all--hadn't given it any thought, to be honest, but in retrospect it seems like a pretty obvious thing to have to compensate for.

I was pretty pleased with how I fought during the Tourney. I had a nice warmup with Laertes and Don Alex Baird, which sort of helped get my head in gear. My first fight was against another lefty, and we double-killed the first time with identical shots to each other's ribs, which made us laugh. She ended up getting me the second time around.

My next fight was against someone I used to fight a lot in Isles, but who I hadn't fenced in awhile. She does great buckler work, and I really enjoyed our fight--I ended up making good use of the side-shot Laertes and I have been drilling and ended up taking her arm, giving up my offhand when she switched, and eventually taking her out. It was a really nice, clean fight. It helped that she was faster than I'd expected--it helped pull my head into the fighting space a little bit more and overall gave a really enjoyable fight. Afterward, Alex Baird congratulated me on maintaining control of the fight and gave me a small token of acknowledgment, which made me smile.

Fight numero three was against a fellow I hadn't ever fenced before. It was simultaneously the most satisfying and the most frustrating of my fights--I felt like my head was finally in gear, but he had a few inches of reach on me and some neat little three-beat attacks I had trouble countering effectively. He liked to start a low attack and swing it high, which I didn't have any trouble avoiding but defending myself against them left me unbalanced for a moment and kept me from taking advantage of the potential counterattacks when he was extended. I had trouble getting his tempo, which eventually ended up with me dead. :)

I think we must have double-killed the first time (my memory of the fight isn't clear), but I remember laying a nice soft cut down the top of his head and having to refight it. The second time around, I felt like my defense and footwork were both really solid up until the end, but I was fighting his fight, not mine. He ended up getting me with the last shot of a three-beat pass, but it was okay--I felt good about my performance overall and felt like I was pretty on, mentally, just not quite put together enough to work through his tactics. Que sera sera.

I marshaled pretty much the rest of the day (and, for the record, enjoyment of my performance aside, I'm ready to start making it past third round now! Kthx). I got to see some really pretty fights from up close, and I actually really enjoy the ritual of salutes, inquiries, and the eventual lay on before every fight. Tristan der English ended up taking the win, and other fighters were called up for various recognitions

For the record, marshaling is exhausting. By the end of the night, I was pretty much too tired to pay attention to what I was eating at the feast, and when a friend of mine handed me a wine bottle for a drink just as someone else dropped another bottle in the recycling bin nearby, I about jumped out of my skin because I was convinced I'd dropped the bottle and the noise I'd heard was it shattering by our feet. My friend pretty much peed herself laughing. I ended up going to bed about an hour after dinner and slept all through the night (despite the Wheel! Of! SCOOOOOTCH! going on outside in camp).

Sunday
Sunday mid-morning I drummed up the interested fighters and we walked down the hill to do some melees in the trees. We ended up having a fun and relaxing hour or two and made it successfully through the new melee scenario I came up with. Marshaling the melees turned out to be slightly more nerve-wracking than Blood of Heroes, because there were trees everywhere and it was hard to see everything that was going on, but I had a few talented and eager volunteers helping to marshal and MiT, so everything ran smoothly. I was a little nervous about the crappy ground (gopher holes everywhere!) and folks being a bit more tired than the day before, but we ended up having some really clean fighting and the only people who fell in the holes did so off the field, and it was great because I didn't have to do any paperwork no one was hurt.

Speaking of paperwork, I wrote down the names of everyone who MiT'd with me in my little notebook, so if I didn't get to sign their paperwork, I can later. Writing stuff down's my mnemonic--I won't remember who did what, otherwise. ;)

Overall, I was flattered and pleased by how many people came up and thanked me and told me they'd had fun. That's one of those gestures that really mean a lot, but is easy to forget to do when you're tired from fighting. I'll have to keep it in mind next time I'm fighting and someone else is running things, too.

I also had a lot of help this past weekend, both with mundane things like fielding questions and more complicated things, like marshaling all day and giving advice on judgment calls--there were a couple of people who marshaled above and beyond the call of reasonable time commitment, a couple of people who came out of the woodwork asking if I needed help, a few of what I've gratefully come to think of as "the usual" supportive and awesome people being awesome and supportive, and overall a great time with great folks. Thanks, everybody!

On Melees, Marshaling, and a Mini-Manifesto

Sunday I playtested a new melee scenario I concocted on a very generous and patient group of people at the Darach practice. At first I was a little dubious that the scenario would work, and could see similar skepticism on the faces of the combatants as I described it to them, but when we were done running it, everyone came up and said they had a good time. Yay!

Playtesting the new scenario pretty much alleviated my fears of OMG IT'S GOING TO SUCK EVERYONE WILL HATE IT and now I've accepted that of course someone's going to hate it, because you can't please everyone, but most people will probably have a passably good time. Now I'm just down to finishing up a couple of props, making sure I don't break the prize for the tournament before Saturday afternoon, wrangling the eric up to site, and otherwise lassoing as many of the octopus' tentacles as I can before the event.

I was very lucky to have the crowd that I did--four White Scarves and a double-handful of Duelists, all of whom have vast melee experience and were happy to tell me what they thought worked, didn't work, and could be tweaked for even more fun. I was really happy to have such an experienced pool of fighters to test the scenario on, and really appreciated their honest feedback and enthusiasm to make the scenario even more fun. They even came up with a name for it--The Borgia Rings. ;) 

I plan to debut the scenario at King's Hunt, among some other tried-and-true melees that most folks seem to like. This is my first time running two days' worth of rapier and running melees, period, so I'm hoping it all goes well. I passed my Marshaling test almost two months ago, and while I've run tournaments and such before, they were always small (5-15 people) and I always had a Marshal supervising or signing off on everything that I did--I've never run multiple days' worth of scenarios and tournaments or been the Marshal-in-Charge for rapier before. It makes me a little nervous (I'm checking armor! I'm calling holds! I'm approving weird offhands! PEOPLE COULD DIE!!!!!!), but I'm excited too (I'm keeping us on schedule! I'm explaining things! I'm bringing up new scenarios! PEOPLE COULD DIE!!!!!...and then come up and tell me how much fun they had!) 

I really feel like this is one of those things that A Serious Rapier Fighter Should Do--become a marshal, try your hand at running some stuff, experiment with making up new scenarios, just to see what it feels like and to get some perspective. It may be that this weekend goes terribly and I come away from it never wanting to take on this level of responsibility again (although I doubt it will), but that doesn't mean the experience itself will have been bad. I think it's really important to try to do as many different things as possible, even if it only teaches you to appreciate what other folks put themselves through on a regular basis. 

On a more personal level, I'm looking forward to being able to give back to the community a little bit. I had an interesting conversation with a friend on Sunday after practice about getting and keeping new blood in Caid, and keeping the Kingdom going during a recession, and maintaining interest and contribution to the rapier community (and I'm totally summing up badly, but that's not the point). It came from a conversation about the roles of White Scarves as teachers in Caid, and possible methods for including more teaching and more teachers in the rapier community, not just from the White Scarves, but from the populace at large.

I'm sort of of two minds about this--I definitely believe any well-recognized (by awards, word of mouth, or whatever) fighter should be held to high standards in terms of contributions to community and behavior as well as skill, but I also think this kind of perspective can lead to people expecting more from better-recognized or higher-ranked fencers in the Kingdom (to wit, the White Scarves) than they do from themselves... which is, again, a good and a bad thing.

If that kind of expectation encourages the White Scarves, Duelists, and old hats in the community to contribute more, think of new and better ways to keep fighters interested and learning, it's a good thing. If that kind of expectation starts to impact the self-esteem of newer, unrecognized, or less skilled fighters, or encourages laziness because "Oh, So-and-So will take care of that, s/he always handles that stuff," it's a bad thing. We have a lot of really good examples for creativity, research, behavior, and skill in this Kingdom (plenty of whom aren't White Scarves), and I'd hate to see someone newer or less experienced stifle their own creativity because they worry they wouldn't live up to someone else's example or because it simply didn't occur to them to volunteer for something someone else habitually handled.

I don't know if this is a serious problem, or not, but it might be worth addressing anyway. I guess part of this (doing the marshal thang, running the rapier at King's Hunt, even, to a certain extent, this blog) is a gesture to less well-recognized fighters and also to myself--to put myself out there, do try new things, to be okay with screwing them up, to muse over questions and lessons, and generally to keep thinking, discussing, and talking. A lot. Like I do. ;)