Advice

I spent the evening discussing fighting techniques with a knight from Caid that I'm friends with. Mostly discussing footwork and moving from one stance to another fluidly. I've also been reading a bit on Bruce Lee.

SCA fighting is at its purest sense, a martial art, and so a lot of the more conceptual things that he talks about translate well. I've been pondering different shot combos to utilize as well. All in all, though I haven't done much fighting in the past week, I've been thinking about it a lot and analyzing my own style.

There are a lot of big melee events coming up soon, and I'm ready to get some good war-fighting in. It'll be a nice change from the tourney focus that I've been working on. First is Panhandle Skirmishes, followed by Gatalop.

A bit sluggish

I got to see some video that was taken at the last fighter practice. My form and stance looked really good, but something that I noticed is that all of my shots are so slow. It's really something I need to work on, but short of more pellwork (I seriously don't do it enough) I don't know what I can do.

I did put on some lighter gear this past weekend and do a bit of cut and thrust with one of the rapier guys. We came out about even for wins. It was a refreshing change, but didn't have the exhilarating thrill of heavy combat.

Tonight was supposed to be a fightnight at Ricks place, but everyone had to work or was otherwise preoccupied, so that didn't happen. Next time fighting is on Sunday. Hopefully I can work on the speed of my shots by then.

And so I return...

It's not that I abandoned this blog or anything. The truth is that I've had a crazy couple of months. But that's off-topic for the blog, so lets talk SCA.

I've been doing a lot of fighting with Cody and Cory, both of whom are new fighters and so they aren't very good. On one hand, it does feel good to be able to wreck everyone I'm fighting with, but on the other, I know that when I get the chance to fight the better people around here, I'm still going to get wrecked.

I have been working on a number of issues though. I'm swinging a lot faster and harder, and I've fixed a lot of the problems with my stance. Now it's just getting the finer points down. There have been a few issues in the shire over the various offices. These things happen from time to time, I suppose, but we are currently without a marshal. That means all "official" fighter practices are on hold, so we've been calling up friends and arranging smaller little "fight nights" at each others houses to keep up skills.

I'll try to update this blog at least once a week from now on. Promise.

Numbers

When I came back to the SCA a few months ago, I decided to come back with others in tow. Since then I have gotten three new fighters into our local group, and I have anywhere between three and six more who are interested, depending on how many of them are serious. For the SCA, which seems to be dying a slow and painful death, this is a great thing.

For our local group, this is nothing short of a godsend. The lack of unbelted fighters made forming a war unit nearly impossible. Now, we will be able to field at very least, a small group.

I'm excited for other reasons as well. Since all of the new fighters are my friends, there is an extra level of friendly competition there. They're determined to get better than me, and I'm determined that they never will!

For now, the only issue I have found with bringing in so many people is that it becomes extremely awkward to arm them all. Luckily we have a ton of armorers on the gulf coast, and almost everyone has converted their garage to a shop of some form. Still, materials are starting to get a bit scarce.

Ultimate goal? To take the field at Gulf Wars next year with 10-15 people in our unit.

Until next time...

Arabian Nights 2011

Arabian Nights ended today. It is the biggest local event that we put on each year, and as always there was a great turnout. Living just two blocks away from the event site, I wasn't sure if I was going to stay on site or go home for the weekend, and in the end I wound up staying one night and going home the next.

The "Lion of the Desert" tournament was awesome, as always. Duke Boru won, which isn't a surprise to anyone. The best way to describe him is "God with a stick." The tournament is a double-elimination style, and while I lost my first fight and went to the losers bracket, I won the second so I did advance beyond the first round in a way. That's good news for me, as it is the first time I've ever won a fight in a tournament. My next fight saw me losing again and out of the competition.

I'd call it a success.

I did some pickup fighting the night before with some of the fighters who had arrived on site earlier, and got some good tips from a guy named Thomas. I also spent a good bit of time fighting a guy from Mississippi, though I cannot remember his name or the name of where he was from. He was a cool guy though.

After the tourney was over, I asked Duke Boru if he could fight with me and train me for a bit, which he did. Being the only left-handed fighter in the local group, much of what I know about fighting is through trial and error, and I have no idea how to fight another lefty.. Thanks to him I was able to get some good training on just that, and he showed me a few great techniques for fighting other lefties.

Aside from the fighting, I spent a lot of the weekend hanging out with Sir Thorfinn. He started fighting in Arenal, but moved to Caid about 8 years ago. He happened to be in town so he came to the event. He's a really cool guy to hang out with, and his presence caused me to become aware that we have no Greek personae in the area. It is mostly Viking or Norman, though I am a Byzantine myself.

There is plenty that I want to talk about on this blog, but I figure it can wait for another post. No need to be too long-winded, especially because as of this moment, there are no readers!

So until next time I suppose.

First post!

What to say, and where should I start?

I guess I will start by saying that I was inspired to keep an SCA Fighting blog after following Gunnvor's fighting blog for some time. I suppose calling it "Niketas' Fighting Blog" is a bit of a ripoff of her blog's name, but the name will do for now. I'll think of something witty later.

An introduction to my hundreds of non-existant readers might also be in order. My name is Niketas Kamaterus, I am a heavy weapons fighter in the SCA, (Society for Creative Anachronism)and I live in the Shire of Arenal in the kingdom of Meridies.

I'm not a great fighter, though I will be. Like anything else, it takes time and effort. I suppose I want to keep a blog about fighting in the SCA because I often find myself thinking about it, and it is sometimes difficult to find people willing to listen to you rant about it unless they are also SCA members.

I'm going to take a bit to look around here and figure all of this blog stuff out and then I'll make a post about this weekends event, Arabian Nights.