[Ansteorra-rapier] looking for input for this years GW

[Chandranath]

> Also: What did you all like about last year -- what did you hate?

Since you ask... :)

I'm not big on the castle battle (hey, it's lot of standing around for
some people, you know?), but it's okay.  Palace defense in principle has
a nicely authentic feel to it and it's a good time with some possibilities
for clever use of bottlenecked corridors and corners and so forth.

The ravine battle was frustrating.  So much potential for playing around
with terrain and trees and all that good stuff, but it was restricted
to a small space and effectively became a field battle with vaguely
tricky footing.  Conceptually there is great potential but I wasn't all
that enthralled by the way it came off.

The town battles were a blast.  For me, the melee high point of the War.
Authentic feel, great opportunity for use of restrictive paths, and no
end to opportunities to fight.  To me, the town battles are the perfect
form for rapier melee.

Finally, the field battles...

I guess I will never see the appeal of huge whopping lines of rapier
fighters slamming into each other.  It doesn't fit the weapons we use
(and the armor we don't) well.  As has been debated hotly of late, it
doesn't seem authentic at all.  Few people ever seem to come away bouncing
with joy.  (And of course, I'm biased since I was injured last year during
the final one.)  For me, these were the low point of rapier melee at the
War, which was a shame.  As Amerinda already said, the problems were
exacerbated by the fact that the drawn field was far too small for 150
fighters to get into it.  Indeed, the melees always seemed to turn into
something reasonable about the time 80% of the fighters were dead...

So there it is.

Chandra

--
Shri (Lord) Chandranath <chandra at plumes.org>, Insegnante of Mooneschadowe
"Per pale sable and gules, a decrescent argent."
mka Russ Smith (http://www.randomgang.com/)