hanksgiving eve.  Man, this was indeed a cool and brutal practice.  I'm sitting here feeling the soreness and the bruises, but am pretty happy.  There must have been at least 10 fighters @ practice, ranging from very experienced (Owen, Ox, Gunny) to brand new (two new fighters and one who got authorized tonight).

We ran the bear pit after a couple of warm-up fights.  I had forgotten my judicial spear at home, so I used my (Gilyan's) five foot axe and started out florentine. Did some pick up fights with Ivo and Owen.   Ivo was fighting with a long bastard sword (short great sword), and did fairly well with it.  Owen was fighting seven and a half foot glaive, and was fighting a style, that I'll call, for the sake of discussion, "Beat the livin tar out of the florentine fighter".

See, a long while back at a Weisenfeuer fighter practice, I'd been fighting Llygodin, and he'd been fighting florentine and I was fighting 7 and a half foot glaive.  Well, after he wooped up on me three or four times with me in the standard glaive stance (basically, he'd deflect the first thrust and then run up the weapon and beat me upside the head), I tried a stance with the glaive held point backwards and resting upon my hip.   It brings a ton of power, and basically allows you to put a two handed shot against a single handed block unless the florentine fighter double ups his weapons.  And if they do that, you can change the angle of the shot to hit the gap or weak areas of the two weapons.

So Owen was playing xylophone on my ribs (although I did get him once or twice), and thankfully, his thrusting tip broke, ending the pain.  :)  I need to get back with him and discuss the fights.  They basically broke down into a huge gamble.  If I got the block of the first shot, I won, otherwise Owen won.  We need to see if there is a way to tip the balance one way or the other.

Ever since I lost both florentine fights at Guardian, and since people were picking them because they knew it was my weakest style, I have been working on getting a good florentine game  so that people won't be able to do it to me any more.  It work reasonably well tonight, although once again I have a couple of new bruises.  I did fairly well, IIRC, I think I won the majority of my fights going around the circle. 

An aside: Ivo had commented that he had read through this site earlier, and he had commented that he thought my sense of humor had migrated in a less than desirable direction  (more vulgar) since he knew me.  Not sure if its a matter of how well he knows me or if indeed my vulgarity level has increased.  I'll have to consider it.

Thats it for this report,

Centurion Jean Paul de Sens
Squire to Sir Asoph Hearts

P.S. Oh yeah, I got made a centurion back in July... never got a chance to write about it :)