Queen of Hearts XXXI: Knave of Hearts - Tournament Results

 

War Maneuvers

Field Battle - Team Diamond and Team Club

Folkestone Challenge - Team Heart and Team Club

Bridge Battle - Team Spade and Team Club

Castle Battle - Team Spade and Team Heart

Wizard War - Team Spade and Team Diamond

Hadrian's Wall - Team Spade and Team Club

Monster Chess - Team Spade and Team Heart

Rock Assault - Team Spade and Team Diamond

Grand Teamwork - Team Heart and Team Diamond

Bridge Battle Limited - Team Heart and Team Club

Folkestone Challenge Limited - Team Heart and Team Diamond

Castle Battle Limited - Team Spade and Team Heart

Knave's War - Team Heart and Team Club

Weapon Styles Showcase

Single Short Individual - Jasper, representing Team Heart and Club

Single Short Squad - Azimuth, Daekara, and Veit, representing Team Spade and Diamond

Mixed Florentine Individual - Daekara, representing Team Spade and Diamond

Mixed Florentine Squad - Luke John, Jasper, and Torolf, representing Team Heart and Club

Sword and Shield Individual - Torolf, representing Team Heart and Club

Sword and Shield Squad - Jasper, Fern, and Luke John representing Team Heart and Club

Hand and a Half Individual - Luke John representing Team Heart and Club

Hand and a Half Squad - Fern, Corvus, and Jasper representing Team Heart and Club

Oops All Ranged Individual - Bogen representing Team Spade and Diamond

Oops All Ranged Squad - Grazen, Bogen, and Azimuth representing Team Spade and Diamond

Five on Five Tournaments

Five on Five Lines - Team Spade and Team Club

Five on Five Bear Pit - Team Spade and Team Club

Five on Five Jugging - Team Heart and Team Diamond

Arcane Artisan

Armament - Grazen representing Team Spade and Kalashai representing Team Heart

And the winner of Knave of Hearts was: Team Heart led by the Knave of Hearts, Johan!

What You Missed: Blackwood Tournaments XIII [Court Edition]

Transcribed

First matter of business, Laika made Violet his page.

Fern was made a full member of Eagle's Rook after a period of petitioning, and given a personal heraldry belt favor of Adara's.

Captain Sayeh called up the Knights of Blackwood [present: Trent, Nos, Torolf, Matthias, Tao, Saegan, Elizah, Matiya, Bones], and spoke of her work in the East. She spoke of the assistance of Sir Dagger, who helped grow their numbers in East Blackwood. He helped translate german and english documents. And that he wanted to share, though he could not be there in person, how honored he is to be a knight amongst the folks of Blackwood.

The Knights of Blackwood's business continued with these squirings:

• Tao squired Tempest.
• Nos squired Cronin.

Saegan squired Luke John but as a personal squire.

Saegan called up Cheri/ Taya and put a petitioner tabard on her, welcoming her as a potential future member of Blackwood.

As court herald Elizah called up Irri of Blackwood. Irri shared she was handed a scale for "getting shit done", and wished to now hand it off to someone who also embodied that. She called up Bones and handed off the Blackwood North Star.

Tao was called up, and spoke of receiving a similar scale, this one for combat, the Mark of the Harvester. He called up Hedda and Elizah, and gave one to each due to their performances in Pressure Point.

Tao also gave Saegan a scale for running his quest.

Saegan called up Sayeh and explained the scale of "Voice of Night", about the historical relevance of Blackwood. He noted he noticed Sayeh was sharing the history of Blackwood to people the night before, which he appreciates, and her duties in East Blackwood.

Final word goes to Saegan: "Thanks for joining us, enduring the heat. Enjoy the food."

Then we ate.

Editor's note on the scales: "Blackwood has four tokens that are represented by scales, The Blackwood North Star; represents general excellence in leadership, The Mark of the Harvester; represents excellent in combat, The Voice of Night; represents furthering Blackwood's cultural and historical presence, and The Tree of Eroewan; representing cultural furtherment of Backwood. 

They're meant to be passed on from member to member. "

Queen of Hearts XXXI - Aces, Crafting and Performance Rubrics

Hello all,

August seems like a long way off but planning for Queen of Hearts is well underway for our exceptional staff of marshals and contributors. This year Rhiassa has teemed up with the Kingdom of Chimeron, inviting them to put their own unique touches on this historic event series.

One of their suggestions was the importance of publishing all of the crafting and performance rubrics well ahead of the event so that entrants to those tournaments can have a greater understanding of how to best score points. So that's what you'll see below.

First, however, I'd like to announce this year's Ace's Categories.

Ace of Spades - Champion Ace

Ace of Hearts - Mage Ace

Ace of Diamonds - Bard Ace

Ace of Clubs - Ranger Ace

Some reminders of how we structure the Aces Tournament (from last year's Queen of Hearts website)

Aces is a 4-person "Champion" team. The four Aces are each trying to earn their own points while also helping one another earn points through various fights and competitions.

The Aces tournament is in three parts:

War Maneuver Showcases: Most Aces will be able to fight with their teams in most of the war maneuvers most of the time. In some cases, before the war maneuver takes place, all Aces will be called out to the center of the field and compete 4 on 4 (or less if some Aces are called away for something individual). These 4 on 4 fights are meant to be, in a sense, miniature versions of the war maneuver about to be fought. Although all available Aces will be fighting in these fights, there will be a random and rotating system that determines which Ace suit(s) the points will be applied towards.

Ace Individual Challenges: These competitions involve the two aces of the same suit competing against each other in combat and in other challenges that specifically relate to the theme of their Ace suit as listed above.

Ace Group Challenges: Some Ace competitions will involve multiple Aces from your team working together against the Aces from the other team in things such as multi-person combat or other challenges.

Now moving on to the non-com rubrics. The categories for this year were announced several weeks ago, but these rubrics will show you how those categories and overall these fit into the scoring that we will use. First, a review of the categories that we announced at the beginning of March:

Performance Competition:

A partner dance

Crafting Categories:

The theme for this year is “The four seasons”. Each of the four traditional seasons (summer, autumn, winter, spring) must be represented across the four of your team’s crafting entries. How you interpret these themes is up to the crafters on your team.

• Foamsmith Competition: a hand-and-a-half blunt weapon with a special emphasis on being “otherworldly”.

• Armourer Competition: a set of pauldrons with a special emphasis on being made of mixed media (at least three).

• Garb Competition: a doublet with sleeves with a special emphasis on being reversible.

• Artificer Competition: a source of light with a special emphasis on the incorporation of movement.

And now here are each of the rubrics we'll be using at Queen of Hearts XXXI

As always, the crafting and performance tournaments are an important and enduring part of the fabric of Queen of Hearts dating all the way back to the origin of the event. We look forward to the amazing contributions in these categories that our teams make every single year.

In service,

Jason and the Queen of Hearts Staff

Announcing the Queen of Hearts XXXI Crafting Categories

 

The crafting and performance categories for Queen of Hearts XXXI are as follows

Performance Competition:

A partner dance

Crafting Categories:

The theme for this year is “The four seasons”. Each of the four traditional seasons (summer, autumn, winter, spring) must be represented across the four of your team’s crafting entries. How you interpret these themes is up to the crafters on your team.

• Foamsmith Competition: a hand-and-a-half blunt weapon with a special emphasis on being “otherworldly”.

• Armourer Competition: a set of pauldrons with a special emphasis on being made of mixed media (at least three).

• Garb Competition: a doublet with sleeves with a special emphasis on being reversible.

• Artificer Competition: a source of light with a special emphasis on the incorporation of movement.

Additionally within the next month or so we will be releasing the rubrics we will be using to judge the above competitions.

What You Missed: Tournaments of Artemis XII

By Celeste "Shooting Star" Ma

Hello everyone! As you all know, the Huntress Guild of the Realms is an organization dedicated to the furthering of women and gender minorities within the community, and every year, they host the Tournaments of Artemis, a competition where two teams, each led by Huntresses, compete against each other across many different challenges.

This year, the two competing teams were the Wings of Fury, led by the Huntresses Tefarah ((Taylor)) and Princess Cimone ((Megan)), and the Starfellows, led by the Huntresses Rowan Heatherfrost ((Brookelyn)), Traveller ((Matt)), Lupa ((Madison)), and Shooting Star ((Celeste)). Note that while the Starfellows had four Huntresses in total, there were never more than two Huntresses at a time as two had to leave early.

There was a wide variety of challenges this year, from combat-focused like "Stay in Your Lane", "Kill the Queen", and "Fights of Valor", to strategic combat like "Dungeon Danger Dice", "Oops, We Died Again" and "Squad Shush ‘n Shelter", to puzzle combat like "Hadrianna’s Bomb Shelter", as well as non-combat challenges like "The Price Is Right" trivia, "Jills of All Trades", "Team Try Not to Laugh", and sonnet writing.

It was an extremely close tournament, with the Starfellows winning by a margin of 10 points, but in the end, what really mattered was that everyone had fun, felt safe, and that women and gender minorities were given visibility within the community. And thank you, Shader ((Nataliya)) and the rest of the Huntress Guild for running this amazing tournament.

– Shooting Star

Order of the Spoon Bakesale coming to Artemis Tournament

With award winning desserts from across the Realms, the Order of the Spoon will once again be having a bake sale, this time at Tournaments of Artemis. Hungry Huntresses rejoice.

Having members with allergens to be mindful of itself, the Order of the Spoon bake sales have tended to include gluten and dairy free desserts to account for those common ones, and treats come with ingredient lists to keep the hungry adventurer aware of what they're consuming on a busy tournament day.

These bake sales have been part of an ongoing project to fund feastocrat stock gear, for the average feast and feastocrat. This will hopefully make it easier for this vital part of the Realms to run smoothly. A well oiled kitchen means delicious fuel for Realmsies.

Put in the comments the type of food that you look forward to seeing at these bake sales, and what type of food you wish would be available! Maybe an Order of the Spoon member will find it in themselves an ability to whip up a tasty dish based on requests.

What You Missed - Tournaments of the Blue Rose 1024

Written by: Arthur "Aiden" Granger

After a short but familiar trip, I found myself back in the Shadowlands. Missing the activities of Friday, my arrival on Saturday was with the intention of making up for lost time. After setting up at the tourney field, I began poking around for what I could find. 

Word had traveled that in the surrounding wilds, various animal bones had been discovered and I had wished to see for myself. Any excuse for a morning walk, really.  Reports of mushrooms had been made as well but I chose to avoid those as several adventurers had been showing interest in those already. 

Meanwhile, announcements had begun for the Blademaster tournament. Myself, alongside many in Invictus, had been working hard to hone their skills for this, so no one was taking things lightly in the slightest. I personally took part in several tournament activities while also performing my normal activities and hearing words from everyone present about the activities that took place the night prior. After what seemed like a normal day of tournaments had begun, things picked up with activity pretty quickly. 

Tours had been announced to the Church of Shadow. Several relics I had remembered from my earlier days in the realm were curated for the viewing of the newer generations to learn about.  I did not manage the tour myself but had heard of the contents due to an earlier visit while looking around for bone pieces. Queen Kharma understood my earlier error but in this situation it seems another party had other ideas. Some form of guardian attacked everyone at the tourney field looking for stolen goods, particularly keys. As this attracted more attention, other parties took up the search. In the meantime, a questionable gentleman starts moving about offering information about the location of a lockbox nearby for a price. One loan from Anton and I was on my way to this box with the accompaniment of Kiddo and Omri. After a surprise attack, I had to run back for weapons and aid as the others held off attacks to allow the escape to happen. 

At this point, things had settled into a more relaxed point in the day. Those not interested in tournaments were dispatched on a mining expedition. Meanwhile, I stayed close to the tournament field. When not fighting in tournaments, several of us worked on picking the lockbox, and I had amassed ample “rose gold" from participating in the pickpocketing tournament. With a lot of guidance and assistance from Liselle, we had amassed several mystery boxes that yielded impressive finds. Leather goods, bags of gold -some of which being very rare gold- bones pieces and more. Most of the previously listed items were divided up so as many people as possible shared the spoils. After some time, tournaments would wind down and we would turn to the feasthall for food and court. 

What's to say? It's always a good time sitting down to good food and to hear the announcements of the day. Blackwood won some stuff, Invictus won some stuff, and in a surprise twist I was presented with a magic wishbone. Now this may seem an odd detail to mention but anyone that has spent more than five minutes with me knows I haven't shut up most of the year about making one thing: a magic anvil. At this point I was off to the races again smithing all the things. Fun fact- in my younger years I always saw the other adventures with their crazy weapons of power but I was never that guy, so having the means to make my own swords of Light for the night quest was fairly exciting. 

Don't ask me what happened in the night quest. There was a candle, people did some stuff, and I was occupied with several others contending with a damn cat. It paid off in the end but if you're looking for detailed accounts of facts… well, the cat dropped a ton of gold. Returning back and dividing the bag from the cat between us, there were copious amounts of gold, and a key which was returned to the Church of Shadow. In return, Ryu was bestowed a magic dagger and it was finally time to wind down. Tulli and I from here took to the fire pit, telling stories and singing songs for those still left awake until late hours. 

Now we are going into Sunday and it was about as abnormal as you could ask for. Usually everyone is headed for the caravans to head out by morning but this time was much different. Another round of unarmored tournaments took place but I was far too distracted to participate as much as the day before. It was time to see what work I could really do and with some aid calling to Shadow, Vesper and I discovered I could utilize the anvil to turn normal gold into the special rose gold we needed. I am going to own the fact that this got about as out of hand as you would expect. In our defense… I have no defense. We wanted to help Hedda complete a collection of mini figurines which were stuck in mystery boxes and were pretty set on opening boxes till we found them all. Anyone that knows Vesper and myself should expect no less, given the situation. Overall I would call this excursion to the Shadowlands a success for many. Until we meet again!

Editor's note: Casey Lemay has been working towards throwing this event for literal years. As a crafting friend, I have cheered her on as she made so freaking much stuff for this weekend. I cannot understate the time and planning that went into this event. At times I had to end phone calls and conversations in order to avoid hearing anything to do with the event details, wanting to experience it from the player's end of things. Thank you again to the entire staff.