Fighting Journal May 28, 1999
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Jean Paul's Fighting Page

 

May 28,1999

ighter practice at Brendans. Post Castellan Tournement. Its been about a month since I made an entry into my Journal. In that time I have purchased a house, attended about 10 fighter practices, and 2 events. At the last Castellan tournment (the baronial tournement for the Barony of Northkeep), my good friend Owen ap Aeddan (i'll list his full name here someday) won the Baronial Armored Combat list (the call it the Drighten (sp?)). It was completely awesome, as this was the third tournement he won, but the first Baronial tournement. I also fought in the Drighten tournement, and did pretty well (won 5 fights out of 12 or so) and had a damn good time. Managed to beat a couple of people that I should have, came really close in another couple of fights. All in all I had a really good time.

Now before this event, I had been seriously contemplating taking a long break of a month or two from events and fighting. However, this event really turned me around, and I had some much fun that the idea of skipping events is now odious.

With that in mind I went to fighter practice last night @ Brendans. Brendan lives in one of the small towns outside of where I live, and because of his job, never gets to go down with me to Sir Hildebrandt's Fighter Practice. So Angus and I went out to his house to go give him a workout.

I have never started a practice as well as I did last night. I mentioned way back when that I was trying a new style that was pretty square (inspired by Duke Cariodocs web pages). Well, I am still working with it, but I had run into some problems. I had been holding my sword at about a 30 degree angle above horizontal, with the basket hilt on top of the right corner of my shield (more or less what they teach you to do in the shield wall). However, it was really allowing people to slot shot me on my left (my opponents right) and to scorpion me to no end. Last night, though I put the sword back where I normally carry it (parrallel to the ground going over my right shoulder ) and I started kicking some but. Angus pointed out two things about this style

1) It doesn't scream "hey theres a slot shot here!!!!" like the other way of holding the sword did and
2) It makes it harder for the opponent to know when my shot is coming. With the other stance, I would have to "cock" the shot before firing it.

So with the change I made, I won like the first eight fights against Brendan and Angus. It was awesome. Like I was pointing out on Iron Rose the other night, It feels so good to feel the practice pay off. After the first 8 or 10 fights, Brendan and Angus starting winning some again, but I feel I still gave better than I got for the whole night. After bout 20 or 30 S&S fights, I switched to Great Sword.

Now at Castellan this weekend, this extremely nice fellow (Asoph Hearts) kicked my ass all weekend. Now he was fighting glave and I was fighting S&S so I was pretty impressed when he was clubbing me like a baby seal. Afterword, he showed me what he was doing. Well, after the fight I was thinking that it would work with a great sword almost as well as would work with a glave, so I gave it a try. Hey! It worked. I killed Angus and Brendan both (they were fighting S&S) with a great sword. I was so happy :-)

After the GS fights, we picked up 4 foot axes, and again I was fighting really well. I went better than even with Brendan and Angus again. What a night !!!

As a post fight we were talking to Brendan's little (kind of ) brother, who is interested in fighting. However, he tore the rotator cup (work injury) in his right shoulder, and we are afraid of him ever being able to throw a shot without hurting himself or doing damage. We think though, that we try having him fight as a left-hander (he is a right hander normall) so that the right arm would just have to hold the shield up. I'll let ya know how it goes.

Jean Paul de Sens
Seconde, Lion Dragon Guard

 

 

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