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 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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