And more Pennsic...

So, Pennsic fighting. I must say, we're horridly spoiled out here. Regular brigade paractices, lots of quality time on the spear lines, a general acceptance of the uses of working together as an actual military unit. East coast and Central US are mostly a bunch of cowboys. Sure, there are exceptions to this, but generally, cowboys. They run around and pummel what they can find, barely hold a line and prefer to think of how many kills they get as opposed to actually winning the scenario.

The Town Battle (aka. How to get killed by Seige over and over and over again):
Well, I'm sure they thought it looked like a town. Unfortunately the scattering of haybales with colored tape strung between them was soon trashed into oblivion. The tape was supposed to be walls and water, but within a few minutes of start, it just didn't work anymore. Tape is kinda hard to see when you're busy trying to kill. And I did try to kill. But the general meat grinder that was our objective (ie. Hold the dock area) was more about lumping the dead bodies higher and higher and fighting over them until the marshalls called to clear them than anything else. It was a res battle, I think an hour long.

I did a lot of trudging back and forth until Asa pointed out that Easties don't lunge when they throw spear shots.. Hmm, hard to when you can barely see over the line, but good point. Sure enough, next time I stepped up to the line, they stood and threw like they had their spear up their butts. Good to know... But unfortunately the constant barrage of seige weapons, especially Shadow Clan's ballistas (we had 4 of them 10 feet from our position for the entire scenario, howdy neighbors!) finally just got annoying. We held that area, but I basically got killed by getting shot in the ass by a ballista. Ow. Triple Ow. My hamstrings were not amused...

But yeah, that was it. One battle. Heck, I was just getting warmed up!

Woods Battle (aka. Res points should not be uphill both ways):
Now this was a fun set of battles. Not only were there two, hour long res battles, but they're in real, honest to god woods. Trees, underbrush, sticks, mud - the whole shebang. And no chance of getting shot in the butt by seige. It's chaos in my opinion. I don't know the layout of the woods very well, but the objectives incoude 5 flags - two on each side and a mobile flag. Objective is capture more flags than your opponent. We marched in and started establishing our lines. Basically the whole battle was pushing back and forth through a mass of trees as if we all needed a good scrubbing. I hit my stride and just gacked the hell out of people all day. I was terribly amused when I was told once that I hit too hard. Apparently the standards are much different for face shots back east. So I tapped even more people on the face and they took it all day. Nice!

The res point for the first battle wasn't too bad - back up and over where we came from. But the second battle it involved heading up a ridge then down a somewhat steeper hill. You'd stop, get water, maybe pop your top and have to climb back up hill. If they ploy was to tire us out, it worked. I had to stop again after marching back uphill to catch my breath or I was pretty useless once I hit the line. So there was a lot of standing around waiting for the heart rate. And I wasn't terribly fond of the random guys who would stomp into the res point and yell at everyone to get back into battle if they were able. Sure you can inspire me with a speech, but I get a bit testy when tired and being yelled at. Lizard brain isn't amused...

But I got to finish the day playing with the Spartans and gacking Tuchucks through the trees. Sir Balin complemented my spear work - thanks Balin! I was tired, but satisfied when I was done.

More later....