Pennsic 46 - War Points and Tournaments

Tournaments!

I only managed to participate in two tournaments this year, but they were both good experiences. On Wednesday after the Woods Battle all of us folks who work from manuals trekked our way to the fencing field in order to fight in the By the Book tournament. Despite the wretched timing, I think there was a bigger turnout than last year, which was great! Because of the wretched timing, it ran up against the Edmund the Lame Memorial Tournament, and was changed from its normal round robin setup, which was less great.

There were three lists, each with about 10 people. We ended up fighting double elimination, just to get done in time for Eastern Court. I fought Rafael of the Thieves of Hearts first, and we had a close fight, but he eventually won. I followed that up by fighting Remy (a thing I definitely never do). This was particularly unfortunate since I don't think that my Fabris fighting is the best way for me to fight him (I don't have specific thoughts on the why of this, but I probably should develop some). I stuck by the point of the tournament and stayed within the realms of Fabris, and he did in fact defeat me.

I admit, I've never been more ok with getting out of a tournament quickly. A shower before court was calling my name.

It turned out sticking to Fabris as well as I could was definitely the right play. I ended up winning the prize for best showing the style I intended to! For this I (amusingly) acquired a new book on I33.

The other tournament I took part in was the Ladies' Tourney. 40 women came out to play for that one, which was amazing. Each list had 10 people - mine included both Rowan and Camille, but I got to fight 7 people who I didn't know, too. I had specifically decided to make it to this tournament so that I could be there for women fencers, and try to be a role model (it's still occasionally strange to think of myself as a role model, but I do realize it's true). So I made myself make conversation and be more gregarious than I might normally be in a tournament. It ended up being quite fun, and I had several good fights. I made it out of my pool into the single elimination, best two of three, final 8.

I fought Eirne from Eoldermere. I had never fought her before, and she was a unique combination of quite tall and very aggressive. She's also quite fast. I won the first pass, but she adjusted quickly to my own aggression and she daggered me the other two fights. I was particularly vulnerable to that style, since I was fighting buckler, and I applaud her quick learning in the fights.

She went on to fight in the finals against Isolde. They had some vicious (but courteous!) fights, and in the end Isolde won the day.

I was very glad to have fought in that tournament, and I'm likely to participate again.

War Points!

Tuesday, the longest day, and yet not as long as I was worried it would be. The weather I'm sure helped with that feeling. It was gorgeous.

There were four Field Battles, each worth a war point. The Handsome Boys were holding down the north side of the field. The intention was that we push through the other side, with the Thieves and the Calivers, and be the hammer to the anvil that was waiting on the other side of the field. When this was planned, there was a single caveat- that we probably wouldn't be able to do this if we ended up across from Atlantia. And of course, we did end up in that position, and we did not generally manage to break through. But we held out long enough for people to our south do turn into a hammer, and it was amazing. I know that the Southern Army was the hammer at times (and they were inducted into the Blue Tyger Legion for their efforts!), and Loch Levan was able to find an internal flank and open them like a can. We won all four runs, but we had to work for them. The army really came together for these fights.

The Ruins Battle was much the same as in previous years, although the flags seemed even more off centered than usual. The Handsome Boys spent the first two thirds of the battle smashing into the other side up by the castle. We tried to find holes all up and down their line, and down into the building, and while we had some good pushes we never managed to get through. We did keep them very busy, and so our compatriots to the south were able to take advantage and own the flags down there.

After we switched sides, taking and keeping the top two flags became much easier, thanks to the distance difference. I believe that I heard that we mostly retained the southern flags, too. So again, the army worked beautifully. 

Wednesday was the Woods Battle. Our job was flag three, which the enemy barely tried to touch. They had one push where they almost got to our flag, and then they never really tried again. We had skirmishers out in front of the line, and the other side didn't want to get past them. So our line did a great job, even if we did a lot of looking pretty. Sometimes it's exactly what a soldier needs to do.

The other two flags had much more pressure on them, but still came away successful. 

And last we had the Stronghold Battle on Friday. This first came into being last year, and was an interesting experiment, but ended up being a very small amount of fighting. Two changes this year made the entire war point much more fun - the defending team had an easier time rezzing, and we ran three times for each side. The times for the three runs were added, and the lower cumulative time won the war point.

The Purple side defended first. Handsome Boys were with the Thieves of Hearts on the right side. We would send some people forward to distract their line, and then stand for as long as we could. We had some issues with falling back with the rest of the army, and so we had to recover from a few gaps. But in the end we held them off for something like 6, 4, and 3 minutes (I don't have the specific times, unfortunately.) Good on them for adjusting and learning. This scenario really shows that sort of thing.

When we attacked, we were very aggressive. The flanks especially were told to push through and around, and each time one side or the other managed to do that. As our general, Remy carried a standard to whichever our closest rez point was so everyone could see how far we had gotten, and this was extremely useful.

I love this war point. I love the short, intense fighting, on both sides. I look forward to seeing it continue to morph and grow.

The Purple Army did a fantastic job all week, and it was an absolute pleasure to fight alongside you. Thank you also to the other side for for being skilled and courteous opponents. 

Malocchio's MoD Glove

This is the second set of MoD gloves that I'll have made. I was very proud of the first set, but this pair was going to be very different for three reasons:
 - Malocchio wanted gloves he could fight in, when the time was right. Goldwork and silk shading doesn't lend itself to that.
 - Malocchio's girlfriend Jen was helping me with this set. We live a couple hours apart and she isn't exactly full of free time.
 - I also didn't have the months of time to devote to the gloves before the elevation. Luckily reasons 1 and 2 align well with this problem!

Jen did the design work on the gloves. We went back and forth with several options before settling on this design, with the MoD symbol on the top of the cuff and the sleepy lion on the bottom:

Then, of course, this languished for a few weeks. As the days ticked by I slowly removed aspects of the design from my mental equation - goodbye, sun. Goodbye lion. Goodbye to the neat designs around the medallion.
Luckily, I had planned for this. Each major aspect was to be embroidered on gold linen and then appliqued onto the glove. Which meant that we could even add the lion and other decoration later if we wanted to.

Turns out I sure didn't take progress pictures of this one.
Anyway, Jen and I met over the Christmas break to exchange supplies and have a tracing party. That border is pretty great and also a pain to get onto fabric in any way.

She took the two borders away to embroider them. I took away the two medallions. What we didn't think of was that I would really need to applique the border on before doing the medallion part, so we didn't get to work in parallel quite as much as planned. Liadan made the cord used around the outside of the appliques. It is reminiscent of the cords the Handsome Boys use to denote their Handsome Boy status, and also does a fine job of covering up any sins in my applique.

Despite the assorted delays in the process I was only sewing for maybe an hour on the day of the elevation, so that's much improved from previous projects. The other glove has a long was to go, but we'll get there.

Pennsic XLV

Pennsic was warm, and humid. But that didn't stop me from having a great time, and being very busy.

I went to command meetings with Countess Marguerite as the leaders of the Handsome Boys. These were generally fast and organized. And more often than not, the plans that were put in place by General Malocchio were very successful.

I moved a lot of hay bales, and so did many other people. Thank you to everyone who helped out with that - without you we would never have gotten to fight.

I went to a class on padded embroidery. The kit was fantastic, but the class was far too short to get to everything, and unfortunately the bits I'd hoped to see (detached button stitch around wire frames) were all at the end. Hopefully the kit will prove useful on its own.

I did some heralding, mostly behind the scenes, but I read a little.

I played music vaguely in public and it went ok, and want to see about starting to get involved playing music for dancing. Because who needs free time.

I fought my fellow Handsome Boys for our annual Handsomest Boy prize. I'm actually not terribly pleased with my fighting in that tournament, but the important part is that we continue to go together every year and celebrate the awesome people in our number. Congratulations to Urraka and Catalina!

I slogged through a long, late battle on Monday. I spent most of my time up at the castle with the Handsome Boy and Calivers, and generally speaking we had a delightful, friendly time. The flag traded hands in a way that we expected, but we were always able to get it back. We managed to not lose anyone to the heat - people took breaks, but no one was ever out for the battle.
I was occasionally sent further down the line the orchard, and helped with a good push, and stopped a break through in our line.
If not for the ridiculous holds and how late we started I would have come out of this battling feeling only good things about my performance and the performance of my unit.

I ran through Tuesday's battle. The speed certainly made up for Monday's pain. Six total minutes fighting, with not a single hold. It was fast, it was furious, and I really enjoyed it. Being the defenders first was a little disheartening - they did it so quickly! We never got to rez! But it turns out that's just how the battle works. We did amazing when we were on the offense, and tore through their lines. And we did it 46 seconds faster than they did!
I think this could be a really fun battle to run several times in row. It's faster even than the field battle, and that could make for some interesting adjustments in tactics as you went.

I was really looking forward to the woods on Thursday, and was sad about all of the weather problems. I'm kind of glad we didn't do the backup battle, partially because I was done with moving hay bales by then. Next year, hopefully, we can get our woods on again.

I was frustrated by Friday's field battle. Our first run had a lot of small mistakes that added up. We spread out too much on our end, and we paid the price. The second run went much better, but we still couldn't pull it out. On the third go, the troops were moved around. It was now the Handsome Boys job to push instead of hold, and once again they pushed gloriously.

I did pickups with a lot of great people - although not as many as I may have liked. That's been a common theme I've heard.

I fought in the Ansteorra tournament. I didn't do as well as I would have liked, but I had good opponents (all from Ansteorra!) and good feedback. Primarily - watch my distance, and make sure I turn my hand all the way to seconda or quarta when gaining the blade. Both of these mistakes got me killed. Both of them are fixable.

I fought in the By the Book Tournament for the very first time. I used Fabris, of course, and I was doing quite well. Unfortunately, the heat of the day and some visible lightning caused all battlefield activities to be canceled before we could finish the tournament. Next year I'll definitely be doing this one again.

Best of all, I watched people I love and respect be recognized in a variety of ways. Lupold and Sorcha were brought into the OGR. Dionisio and Doroga were made OSRs. The Handsome Boys were recognized by induction to the Blue Tyger Legion (which will have its own post when I figure out the words).

The Handsome Boys

When I first decided to take the leap from "Random Pennsic Goer" to "Actual Member of the SCA" it was fencing that was the catalyst. 

Malocchio, Dionisio and I decided on a whim that fencing looked fun. We went and got ourselves starter sets from Zen, talked to Osprey in Darkwood for a little bit, and suddenly we found ourselves on the field getting taught by strangers. 

We peer pressured a bunch of our friends into joining us and decided that we needed a completely ridiculous name that did not take itself seriously at all. Thus the Handsome Boys Modeling Academy was born.

That was back in 2010. Five years seems like such a short time for how far we've come.

The Handsome Boys now have about 21 active members (very few of them overlap with the first group we pressured), a registered name, and a badge all our own. We also fielded around 25 people for Pennsic this year, making us one of the largest single units out there.

We've also grown from a bunch of punk kids out to make fun of the sca (and stab people) to a collection of active, helpful, titled sca-ers (who also like to stab people).

It's all a little strange.

Our existence spurred Master Donovan to do a ton of research on English gangs, which eventually allowed us to register The Handsome Boys as a real household. It was based on such stylish 16th century gangs as Damned Crew, Roaring Boys, and Gallant Crew. It is my hope that the SCA has more gangs in its future thanks to his research.

(It is also my hope that he finishes the research paper he's going to write on this so I can link to it here.)

While we might pretend to be fine upstanding citizens, we haven't completely lost our roots. From the beginning we have had the tradition of "beating in" new members - they must win 5x for each present Handsome Boy. This has been maxed out at 25 once we realized that there were so many of us that we would never get to do anything else. 

The most ridiculous thing we do is our house tournament, though. Every year at Pennsic we get together with our non-fencing friends and have them judge us on..whatever they want, really. We fight for their amusement and they vote on us for ours. This tournament has involved wizards, puppets, and occasional tackling.