The event was great, as always! It was slightly different this year, due to a lot of the usual familiar faces (and personalities) being absent. But there were many more familiar people who were there, and some great new attendees and friends as well.
One highlight was that I got to meet (and fight against) Scott Farrell of
Chivalry Today. I didn't realize his podcast was still going on, just in a less frequent format, so we binge-listened to it on the drive home yesterday.
But of course the primary highlight is that this year I was invited to the Deed of Arms, as we talked about previously in this thread. Amusingly, they're usually overrun with people wanting to participate, so they asked some people to sit aside this time to get some of the new faces in... and then more people dropped out due to injuries or other problems leading up to the event. And even so, they still managed to get 15 total fighters onto the field. This has sent a clear message to the event organizers that there is a lot of harness among the community who attends, and a lot of interest in putting it to use. So in the future, they may expand into some additional harness workshops and practice periods.
For the Deed, they altered the format a little this year. Points were scored based on "armor as worn" as usual, with the caveat that the Poleaxe is designed to defeat armor, so that could hit anywhere. Also, there would be no "pause and reset" after each point. The fighters would just keep fighting while the judges counted the blows. The fight would end after
at least 5 total blows were struck (with occasional overruns due to the speed of the fight), or a "victory condition" was reached, such as throwing your opponent out of the lyst, or throwing your opponent to the ground while remaining standing yourself.
I got to pick my opponents, as the newcomers (the Venons) would challenge specific defenders (Tenons). I picked the ones I hadn't fought yet, disregarding the fact that they were probably some of the best fighters there.
My first fight in the deed was over way too quickly. We fought with longsword, and the dude got a shot to my hand, and then right after charged in and threw me. Fight over.
On the second fight, I went up against Scott Wilson (of Darkwood Armory), using poleaxes. I chose the poleaxe knowing that I'd probably get my ass handed to me with it. But that was partly the point.
My new Darkwood gauntlets were great. One of my parries caught his poleaxe such that the head clipped the edge of my pinky... and it was like "whatever"... (when is it "whatever" when a poleaxe is involved!?!?). I'm sure he won, but I never heard the score. I know I got at least one point when I counter-struck his leg. I was also setting up to pull his axe head to the ground (and had just gotten it there) when they called a halt, so I don't know if I would have landed a blow from that or not. But it wasn't the pure devastation upon me that I expected, and I didn't find out until later why that was. I was wearing a white belt, and Scott, being an old SCAdian, started re-evaluating and overthinking his approach to me, thinking I was an SCA knight. He decided to play a long-range game, thinking it would throw me off... but instead, that's what I wanted. So I still lost, just not as badly as I could have.
My third fight was supposed to be against Bob Charette, using the longsword. But he had been thrown out of the lyst on his previous fight, landed fairly hard, and
badly bent one of his MacPherson greaves. He was pretty put out, and had to stop. So I was asked to pick a new opponent out of a very short list (so no one would fight twice in rapid succession), so I chose Jessica Finley, because I knew she and I wouldn't go crazy on each other and would just have a fun fight. Our fight was a bit of a stab-fest, but it was fun, and rounded out at a score of 4 to 4, and then I landed a final blow on her in sudden death (unless it was a double counted for her instead, all I know is I got one in and then they called a halt).
So after all three "rounds" of the Deed were done, it ended nearly an hour early due to the new "keep fighting" format without the resets. So they had people line up to do some pickup fights for another 30 minutes. I challenged Scott Farrell with spears. I quickly got the score up to 4-0 in my favor. Knowing that one more point from either of us would end the match with a loss for him, he went in for the throw. Neither of us had a particularly good position on each other. I nearly escaped the throw, and then nearly took him down with me, but he managed to stay on his feet when I landed, so it turned into a quick victory for him. This is also what earned him the award for "First among Equals" afterward... Taking a severe losing position and turning it around at the last second, and staying in the game.
I also found out afterward that this year had the largest number of banners and heraldic display in the Deed to date. It was considered a huge success...
Thankfully the rain held off during the Deed. However, it struck while we were repacking the truck afterward. Oh well. Wet armor after all.
I didn't take as many pictures this year, but I do have a bunch. I still need to go through and do basic cropping/etc and get them posted.
