Throughout the day we participated in various tournaments, starting off with a curveball of armored single combatant. This was a curveball because traditionally we start with limited tournaments, going through the various weapon styles.
We went into that right after, so we had to strip off our armor. The fighting throughout the day was largely clean. Everyone misses shots sometimes, and from my perspective the marshals did their best to keep people honest.
The tournaments went as they usually do, where the winners stuck to the top, and the other competitors were at the bottom of the rankings. This can be frustrating for people at the bottom, because they can get caught fighting the same person over and over again that they have trouble with. This should not be taken too much to heart, though, as it’s sort of the nature of the tournament. If you win, you get benefits. You should want to win at order of the list. It’s kind of the point.
There were a few new tournaments, one called “V-Power’s Vendetta” which was actually pretty interesting. Each competitor got to choose what their opponent would use for a weapon, between the styles of mixed florentine, sword and board, and hand a half. This created an interesting dynamic because you needed to be aware of the advantages the style had with or without armor, and you had to be aware of your opponents’ skill level with each style. Over the course of the day we did this with armor, and without, and at the invitational I personally chose the type of weapon my opponent got based more on whether we had armor or not, and not their skill level. It was a fun tournament.
Round two of the tournaments consisted of us doing less common tournaments, like 5 points to victory, 3 lives, and ones and twos.
So something I should mention is how things were scored. Once we got to the Invitational our points were erased, and the seeding was used to determine our opponents. We got a point for every round within a tournament we won. If that match was best of three, and you lost but got 1 round of it, you got 1 point. If you won, you got 2 points. If it was something else, you could get more points, like for example, in 3 lives, you had 3 lives per opponent, so you might get 2 kills before losing, and you get 3 for winning. Make sense? After each cut, we maintained our seeding, but reset the scores to 0.
Seeding mattered though, because if you were tied in points you got the benefit of the higher position if you came in at the higher position at the beginning of the day. Trust me, this was a bane for me throughout the day.
The second cut lead us into the wild card. There was a change to the wild card this year in that, winning the wild card just got you the opportunity to fight the person in 4th position for the 4th position spot. The person in 4th at that time got the opportunity to fight in the wild card, and potentially earn the right to fight himself for his position. It was Daekara, and he did step into the wildcard and fight, but he sat out a little over halfway through, for reasons I don’t really know.
Rillan won the wild card, he and Daekara fought, and Rillan overcame Daekara, thus taking the 4th position going into the final 4.
The final 4 was all armored fights. It was, in my opinion, a weird mix of tournaments. We did mixed florentine, and then went into armored sword and dagger, V-Power’s Vendetta, and Single Combatant. Now we’d already done single combatant at the beginning of the day, mixed florentine is somewhat different from either of them being separated, but I don’t think any of us went without the marn. V-Powers Vendetta lead to me making different choices while wearing armor, but I still stuck with them throughout. These were fun fights, so don’t think that I didn’t enjoy them, but it was still an odd mix of things we’d more or less already done.
The final cut lead to Drike and V-Power being the two competitors vying for victory. Now, on paper this may not seem like it was a hard day, but these two fighters had been pushing themselves hard all day. As has happened in previous years, the fighters locked up, cramped up, and were just broken. At times watching them fight was like watching a couple of drunks fight as they pushed their muscles beyond their normal tolerances, needing to be carried off the field or tended to in the brief down times that they got.
It was a close match too. V- Power had started with a strong lead, but over the course of the grand slam, Drike began to overtake him.
Not enough though, because in the end the V was the victor.
If my rendtion of what you missed didn’t catch enough of the action, I have some good news for you. Alyssa “Sayeh” Weisblatt, did several live broadcasts throughout the day. She along with Michael “Swoop” Zajac, and Josh “Enlon” Whelan, having watched and witnessed some of the video, I can say it is well worth a gander.
That’s all for now though!
I’ll see you on the field!
Keith “Saegan” Cronyn