Adult Swim: What I Learned

I attended the first day of Adult Swim practice yesterday.  If you don't know what it was, essentially Duke Timothy (and others, I assume, but I don't know who all should be thanked) arranged a fighter practice that gathered ~300 fighters, 100+ of them being knights, masters, counts, and/or dukes coming in from ~10 kingdoms.

Everyone came in with their own goals in mind, but in general it was expected that everyone should be open about teaching and learning what they can, and that this was the place to test yourself against the best of the best.


What I did

I'll quickly walk you through my day.  I began with a spear duel against Kieren, a friend of the Bog who resides in NYC.  From there I moved onto seeking some advice on Pole vs Shield fighting from Duke Vladimir of Atlantia, which began as a conversation between the two of us which quickly turned into a clinic to a crowd of people who were drawn to this impromptu informal class on polearm fighting taught by the duke.  Next I dueled a young, quick shieldman while Vlad watched and critiqued.

Then onto testing my skills.  I called on the best spearmen (and maiden) I could find and dueled Atlantian Crown Prince Dietrich, Aethelmearc Princess Ariella, mercenary spearman Guppy of the OLB, and did a 5 man 2 on 2 spear bear pit (5th replaces the dead guy) with Sir Randall of Atlantia, Guppy, and two other guys.

After all of that, Sir Thorson got me hooked up to fight Sir Simon (I believe of the East) pole on pole, and I finished the day spearing with a barefooted master who goes by the moniker "The Oderus."


What I Learned

Pole:

1)  Don't tie up with shields for to long.

2)  Butt spike to the face hard and repeatedly.

3)  My footwork has to completely change.  Work on big strides.

4)  Learn to attack at the shieldman's head and use my body and weapon against him to leverage myself.

5)  Crash and roll in and away from the shield.

6)  Move in and past the shield, not back and around.

7)  Against other pole, work on my transitions from thrust to the inside game.


Spear:  I'm at a much higher level with spear than I am with pole, so everything I learned was based off of experience rather than tutelage.

1)  Extending the front arm out does really offer a solid defense (learned from facing Princess Ariella's defenses).

2)  I'm fast, but I'm not fast enough to kill with a direct attack against top level spearmen.  As soon as I'd flinch, they'd move to defend (Guppy, Princess Ariella, and Prince Dietrich).

3)  There's room to improve my counter attack form.  Prince Dietrich has a much more efficient and better timed approach to the counter attack than I do.  I'm fortunate that I have video!

4)  Guppy has a very sneaky style that I can learn from.  Its very difficult to tell when he's going to attack.

5)  I was best when I would set up the shots with multiple quick feints.  As I said in #2, as soon as I'd flinch, they'd move to defend.  If I came at them with multiple quick feints, I had a better chance at opening them up.


How I Did

Pole vs Shield:

I'm a solid fighter, but this is probably the area I need the most work in.  I do well against older guys with a large field, but fast guys who are at least average or better give me a lot of problems (and don't even get me started on lefties).  I fought Hugo, a young, quick shieldman from Atlantia, and he more or less killed me in every fight (I won one).


Pole vs Pole:

Here I held my own against Sir Simon.  He's the better fighter, and certainly the more knowledgable fighter, but I was able to counter that with my point game.  I can't remember how we did, but I'd say I probably won 40-50% of the fights (my sincere apologies if I'm inflating my results).  I'm happy with the results, but definitely need to improve some aspects of my fighting.


Long Spear:

I tracked down the best I could find, including both the winner and the runner up of the Known World Spear Tourney.  I considered the prince and the princess as well as Guppy to be 3 of the best spear fighters I have ever fought.  Rough order of magnitude, I went about 50/50 with all 3 of them.

Randall and his friend were also very good, but we never matched up 1 on 1.  Having said that, in the 2 on 2s, I also thought they were excellent fighters and would say we also went about 50/50.


All in all it was an excellent experience and I hope to do this again some day!


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