[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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