[Ansteorra-archery] Gothic questions.

Eadric Anstapa eadric at scabrewer.com
Sat Sep 12 19:00:22 PDT 2009


Caladin,  I don't think that for a second anyone believes that the 
format and schedules of the melee events in our kingdom is your 
responsibility nor is it your fault if they don't work out.  It is the 
responsibility of the branches that sponsor the events, their autocrats, 
and marshals in charge.  But thanks for asking.

I hope that Gothic War was a great event for the larger fighting 
populace.  With the tournaments, the Centurion Meet and Beat, etc. it 
looks as if the larger armored combat community got their fill of 
fighting.  However, for combat archers it is a completely different matter.

There are maybe 4 events a year where combat archers really get a chance 
to do their thing.  Thats not a complaint, just a statement.  Most 
fighter practices can't accommodate CA either because they are held on 
school grounds, in a city, park, or someplace similar where bows an 
crossbows are simply not allowed  or because the location doesn't allow 
for adequate boundary and buffer zone to keep things safe.  Most sites 
can accommodate small unit practices and drills, but not CA.  So, we 
depend on those few Melee events to give us the combat time that we crave.

Gothic war staff habitually doesn't do a good job of setting up their 
battlefields.  Again this year there was no marked boundary on the 
battlefield.  While a clearly marked boundary is not strictly required 
by the rules,  the lack of it sure makes responsible archers nervous.   
Similarly as noted again this year the bridge for the bridge battles was 
setup this year in an area that simply could not safely accommodate CA.

They started with field battles and of course SCA field battles aren't 
good for CA because they very seldom stay static long enough for the 
archers to be really effective and because quite often  brute squared 
are sent to clobber the archers.  If an archers gets off 10 arrows in a 
field battle then than has been a exceptional field battle as far as 
most combat archers are concerned because only getting off 2 or 3 shots 
in a field battle is more typical.  So quite honestly most archers look 
forward to the end of the field battles and the start of something 
different where that can me more effective.

Since the only battles that took place at the event that could 
accommodate CA were the field battles, and since the total time spent in 
those battles that could accommodate CA was maybe 20 minutes the event 
was a complete waste as far as combat archery was concerned.

Before the first field battle even started the marshals were wanting to 
know where Caladin was and one of them said something like  "Someone go 
roll Caladin out of his tent so we can see what he wants us to do!".  If 
there was a plan to have some good active melee scenarios then I sure 
didn't see it.  It seems as if from the very beginning they were waiting 
on you to show up and direct training exercises.  Of course you did what 
they expected and the bulk of the time spent out on the field where we 
could have actually had CA was spent doing training exercises rather 
than battles, most of it done helms-off.

When they moved over to  do the bridge battles  the opportunity for CA 
that day was ended since the location chosen for the bridge battle could 
not safely accommodate CA.  We were told that there would be plenty of 
CA opportunity for us on Sunday afternoon so we cleaned up and prepared 
for that.  We made sure we were at the melee field at Noon on Sunday so 
that we would have plenty of time to inspect anything that needed to be 
inspect and be ready and not miss a second of any CA opportunity.  The 
melees were supposed to start at 2PM so we made sure that we were all in 
armor and ready to go at 2.  Time slipped by, nobody else showed up, 
then finally around 3:30  they actually sent somebody down to the 
battlefield to tell us that the Sunday melees had been canceled because 
the fighter had spent themselves in the tournaments and didn't have 
energy left for melees.

Perhaps the event sponsors had exactly the event they wanted.  I am told 
they purposely threw in all the tournaments and split up the schedule 
that way so that people would not day trip and so that they would stay 
until Sunday afternoon for melee opportunity.  To do that and then not 
do everything in your power to assure that those melees happen is quite 
honestly deception.

To say that it was disappointing is an understatement.  Giving up a long 
weekend, driving 7 hours each way and spending $100 in gas to get to an 
event that was handled like that was frankly infuriating.  When on 
Saturday, before fighting,  we voiced some of our concerns with the way 
that the battlefields were setup to one of the event stewards  the 
response we got was "What do you expect?  It's Gothic."

Well,  What I expect is that Gothic wont be on my event calendar for 
years to come.  This is not the first time that I have been wildly 
disappointed in Gothic and I far as I can tell the only way that it will 
be the last time that I am disappointed by Gothic is if I simply skip 
Gothic.  Instead, I'll save the time and money to prepare for and attend 
melee events that focus on melee experience and where the sponsors are 
concerned with making sure that it is a good experience.

Sorry it took me so long to reply.  It's been a really hectic week at 
work and quite honestly I just didn't want to spend any more time 
thinking about Gothic and preferred instead to try and look forward to 
good melees at 3 Queens and BAM.

Thanks for your concern.

-EA

Eric Brown wrote:
>
> I agree that dedicated Melee events for fighting and dedicated war 
> colleges for training are better.
>
> In fact as a personal note I greatly prefer them that way too.
>
> But as much as I've been bitching about training, when they woke me up 
> that morning to tell me I was training after the scenarios,
> I had to go with it. You can't squash initiative and expect it to 
> grow, just because it's not happening the way you wanted it to.
>
> Honestly I expected about 10 min of refresher, but we were having 
> trouble doing refuses, one of the most basic commands, so I tried to 
> focus on that.
> Then I wanted a actual fight to cement the knowledge, and had to make 
> something up on the fly, when i only had time to teach 1 thing.
> (so I snuck in a second command that was easy to teach, to make a very 
> artificial scenario)
>
> But enough about what we (I) did wrong,I think I had a pretty good 
> grasp on that up front. Does anyone else have suggestions for 
> _improvement_?
>
> Cal-
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