Sunday Fighting Practice

Well War was a blast but I was sorely out of shape for the event. I don’t propose to be in the same condition next year!! I have started to exercise again and will be hosting a fighting practice Sundays from 2pm till 5pm. Once a month this will conflict with the local shires Revel and I hope to take the fighting practice to the Revel site if at all possible. I would like to start the practice right away but need to finish a couple extra shields and weapons so I will be kicking this off on August 26th. I will also start looking around for an indoor site for the winter. If a site cannot be found then I think I will switch between Roaring Waste and Cinnabar this winter. They both currently have Sunday fighting practices.

I would like to have a little more organization to this than we have used in the past. Instead of just strapping on armor and going at it, I would like to have a training schedule covering a different weapon each week. Also include melee tactics, shield walls and work together as a small unit. Stormvale has an Artisan Guild which meets weekly and has a guest lecturer covering some craft. I wouldn’t mind having a similar situation for the training sessions. People can volunteer to cover some aspect of fighting and as we grow we may even get guests from outside the group. I envision us all taking turns at some point in the training.

After the lesson portion was over it would be nice to practice the topic and try to refine some of the moves. We could break out groups or run some small melee’s as further practice. This would also allow someone who did not have their armor yet to work through and learn some of the basics. Then we will have our open practice as we have always run them. I would like to see the practices turn into 60 minutes of training and 120 minutes of fighting. This would fluctuate as the mix of attendees changed. If we have a lot of newer people we may train more and if everyone is pretty experienced then we may train less.

I would love to have Fencers show up as well but would need someone else to take charge of that portion of the operation. It will take enough time setting up the heavy weapons that I would rather not be responsible for Fencing. The best solution would be to have a fencing marshal who would like to take over that aspect of the training.

If not enough other people have complete sets of armor it may be necessary to use the first couple sessions to help people work on armor so we can field people to train and fight with. I have enough gear to equip myself and 1 and ¾ fighters. I need to make a set of arms and a couple swords and shields to be able to equip 2 other people at the same time. That will be my next priority and I hope to have it finished before the practice starts on August 26th. I have already committed this armor so it will only be available for loaner armor if they should fail to attend the practice. I need to make or scrounge at least one more set so I can guarantee to have loaner equipment.

Skalla