For those who don't know what a snowball melee is, I'll try to sum up. First everybody fights a one-on-one fight. The winner of the 1-on-1 becomes the commander of the small team made up of the two people that just fought. Then each two person team fights another two person team, with the victors again absorbing the vanquished. This continues until there is only two teams, and you get a really big melee.

Owen's and mine 2 on 2 fight went ok. We fought a pair where one of the fighters carried a six-foot glave and the other a small cylinder shield and sword. Our plan was to immediately kill the glave and then deal with the shield-man. The plan worked fairly well, although Owen and I did collide a little bit going for the glave. However I stepped up and killed the glave while Owen kept the shield man off of my back. Interestingly enough, the shield man knew who Owen was, and threw a rap shot behind my head trying to hit Owen. I thought it was humorous that the chap would give up a open shot on me in a effort to kill Owen before he got hit by Owen. Actually in retrospect, I might do the same.

With two on one, I was able to arm the shieldman, and he quickly yielded, knowing that there would be many more fights that day, and not feeling the need to fight one on two with one short weapon and no shield.

We then absorbed the other two fighters, and waited for the four-on-four. The 4 on 4 fight was set up as a gate battle, best 2 out of 3. The "gate" was simply an opening between the trees, but it worked pretty well for conveying the feel. We won the toss and chose to defend the inside first. Owen, looking over our weapons, decided that we would be a lot more effective salleying out instead of staying inside and taking the charge. So we did this. The results were devasting. Our other shield-man and I waited in the entrance for the start of the battle. Owen came up behind me and pointed out a target for me to engage. When Owen yelled "CHARGE!!" we did and I quickly stepped up and engaged my opponent. I think he was pretty much surprised because I felled him with a shot or two, and then turned around to see a glave head shoot past me on my right. I then decided to discuss with this glaveman the error of his ways and when I was satisfied that he had understood my point, or perhaps my edge :-), I turned and looked for another opponent. While I had been discussing manners with the offending glaveman, my teammates and quickly dispatched one of the opponents shieldmen, and there was one left. Owen asked the remaining shieldman if he would like to yeild, but the shieldman refuted our kind-hearted offer, and after a moment of deperate fighting, fell to our weapons.

The second battle of the "gate" battles was personally, a bit irritating. We hit them as the formed a wall (the three shields they had made it pretty effective). I went right up on one of them and started thrusting with my thrusting tip. Now, I fought light weapons for bout 3-4 years before fighting heavy, and I know how to thrust and how to land that tip. This guy simply would not call it. It pissed me off. It pissed Owen off. Anyway, I got pretty upset and so when I got killed by one of the other team opponents I went to the side and cooled down. Thorvald (our current Northern Regional Warlord) came over and tried to cool me off a bit, but I was still kinda upset.

The third fight went really badly. We tried to stay inside this time (not paying attention to the fact that our weapons hadn't changed, and that we had determined last time that staying inside was a bad idea) and get munched pretty quick. I am ashamed to say that the same fellow who did not call me thrusting tip last time, instead of me thrusting @ his head, chest, and shoulders, I now was thrusting at his stomach and groin area. I was still pretty upset. But, we lost the fight, and they absorbed us.

Now we were to the 8-on-8 size fights. And for maximum enjoyment, it was a bridge battle. Two things I want to comment on

1) By the time you get beyond three or four people, you actually have to have a strategy to be successful in a melee.

2) In a bridge battle, the bridge itself is the greatest weapon.

However, the commander of our team didn't really seem to have a grasp on these concepts. In the first fight, his command were "Follow me!!". While inspirational, it was not particularly effective. However, I personally did pretty well, and manage to kill three opponents wham! wham! wham! However, I opened myself up after the last blow, and on of the opposing side opponents killed me then. Still it was cool, and I (for the first time) got compliments from the spectators. That was a great feeling. However, we still lost the battle.

The second fight went better. Owen and I suggested an alternate plan to the commander: "Lets push them off the bridge!" This worked much better. We ran out to the middle of the bridge and kept running. I push one fighter off and then died, but Owen, being his awesome self, managed to push off three other fighters and helped push the rest of them back to their side of the bridge.

The third fight didn't go very well, and we died pretty quickly.

Finally after this we were down to three teams, and it went to a three-way battle on the open field. This fight consisted of a lot of standing around, and then just went plain chaotic.

All-in-all, a good weekend of fighting.

Jean Paul le Pel
Seconde, Lion Dragon Guard