By Dani "Elizah" Lacasse
What'd you miss at Tournaments of Artemis? You missed passion. You missed companionship and encouragement. You missed out on good ole hardcore competition. And most importantly you missed out on 7 marvelous huntresses kicking ass on the field and leading their teams throughout the days in different challenges.
This was my first ever ToA and I have to say, I'm already looking forward to next year's! We started off the day with Shader asking those who wish to participate as a huntress to step forward, seven candidates presented themselves, were explained what their roles entailed and were then split onto two teams; team "a" being led by Margaret, Fern, Voutiá & Rowan and team "b" led by Umbra, Irri & Seraphim. Right off the bat, I was pleasantly surprised to see the lot of huntresses that stepped forward to lead our teams. I knew from that moment that we were going to be in for a fantastic day.
After being sorted onto teams "kick ball" style, the first challenge of the day: collectively deciding our team names. Now I don't know the process of deciding for team a, but I do know that for team b it started out as joke and quickly turned into a full team commitment and before I knew it we were deemed Team Slay and the opposing team Team Artemis' Awesome Possum Posse Party and with that we jumped into our first of many combative tournaments of the day.
All of the tournaments were extremely close in competition during the day, but some of my personal favorites had to be the point control battles. There were various versions sprinkled in throughout the day but my top one, thematically deemed "Stay in your lane," was a three laned battle that each team funneled down to meet at the point in the middle. Everyone except the Huntresses had to stay in their lane and the goal was to flip the box in the middle with two hands to your team's color and then try to defend the box until the time ran up. Funneled fights like this, could usually be intimidating but the execution of this tournament was excellent and overall was extremely fun to participate in.
Now I could give you a run down of every single combat tournament that took place, but quite frankly that would make this article more lengthy to read and if I'm being honest I certainly couldn't even attempt to remember each one, but a few more honorable mentions include the Castle Battle, where we got to build a castle out of wooden blocks we won throughout the day and it was the opposing team's goal to fight the wave of monsters to cross the red line to earn a bean bag to try to knock down the castle. The Seven limb battle, where the proven strategy was definitely sending in almost the entirety of your team as "nuggets' ' and chanting "NUG NUG NUG" at the opposing team as a distraction. (Spoiler alert, Team Artemis' Awesome Possum Posse Party strategy did in fact work!) And lastly I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Dice rolling tournament (that I'm sure had a way better name then what I can recall.) Admittedly, I did miss the first few rounds of this tournament as I was working on the Shrine building noncom but when I did sub in and got to partake, I really enjoyed the idea of rolling for points and then spending those points to build your team out.
Aside from all the combat tournaments, there were also a few non-com tournaments that took place including; shrine building that I mentioned above, small challenges given out by each marshal and archery! I really only worked on the shrine out of these three which I had a blast doing, but I will say Aeston's challenge of having Huntresses name someone they looked up too was super wholesome and the archery range always seemed to have someone giving it a shot so I'd say all the non-coms were well received!
With all of the energy participants were expending, Sir Gwen and Captain Daekara did a lovely job of keeping the tasty treats coming out of the kitchen. I only got to try the cucumber and BLT sandwiches which were delicious and the tea that was refreshing but I didn't hear a single complaint in the room about any of the other snacks or the chicken salad and pulled pork sandwiches! Thank you for keeping us well fed and hydrated!
Before wrapping up, I must take a brief moment to give praise to Shader, newest Knight to the Order of the Lunar Aegis, for continuing to run an integral tournament event that allows Huntresses to showcase their badass abilities not only in combat tournaments but also in being a leader for their teams. Without the opportunity that ToA provides, I don't know that we'd have a place where for them to display their abilities and I for one am grateful a tournament like this exists. If you've made it this far, thank you. I'll finish up by saying that overall, the day was marvelous and I don't think any amount of words I put on paper can truly amount to the remarkable event you missed out on. My advice, make an appearance next year to experience it all for yourself.