I was thinking about practices, scenarios, and general things we could use practice time for, and I thought it might be helpful to spend some time practicing motions and techniques that may be useful in battle, such as, but not limited to:

--Shield checking
--Shield bashing
--Wrap shots
--Blocking/avoiding wrap shots
--Shield breaking (striking the shield twice in rapid succession)
--Deflecting shield-breaking attacks
--Over-swing correction (when using heavy weapons with one hand)
--Spear parrying/rushing (defending against an attacking spear/attacking a defending spear)
--Spear grappling
--Dodging arrows (if a bow and arrows are available)
--Dodging/catching/blocking javelins

I propose taking 30-45 minutes at the start of each practice - or devoting an entire practice now and then - to practicing these maneuvers. If we turn them into reflexes, I think it will help us be stronger fighters. I'm not trying to make practices militaristic or anything; they should still be fun. But though I enjoy sparring and small-scale scenario battles, I would also like to practice something at practice, haha. What do you guys think of this idea?

Spear rapeing you say???

will i get kicked off the field again???

Why did you get kicked off the field?

kairi kicked me from the field for raping spears T.T

Thats it, you're kick off Tyr. get out.

Tyr is not allowed to rape at practice. Not anything. And if I see a spear rape one more time... lets just say you won't be raping anything anymore, kthx?

I think these ideas sound awesome, Constantine. I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time. I definitely think it would be well worth it to devote parts of practice to techniques. It would be especially beneficial to newbie fighters and would help them get up to speed quicker.

Yeah, I think it would help turn new fighters into decent warriors pretty quickly. While experience gained through actual combat and large-scale events is invaluable, if you don't have some sort of basic knowledge of proper techniques and maneuvers it will take a long time to develop skills. I've been in Dag for two years and I still don't have any experience with some of the things I mentioned. Mainly because I don't have a shield, haha. I'm also not very confident when it comes to fighting against shieldmen, so I tend to avoid them, but I think doing drills like these would help build some confidence.

IMO, drills are great for the winter, because most of these things can be done inside, and could be scheduled at any time, while practices tend to get cancelled. We should definitely figure out some sort of way to improve techniques, but we still need to get more people equipped, and our new people seem to be having a lot of turn over anyway.

We actually tried out some drills today because nobody showed up, we worked on shieldless people bashing shields(Noisy's ninja moves won) and blue vs spear and archer combo

Constantine, do we wanna talk about taking a trip down to Rolla, maybe just a day trip, or crash there for the night, and practice w/ Haven?

better make it soon before it gets too cold for a good practice.


and also i thnk we should work on spear/shield teams, knowing how to fight with a shield and how to guard a spear is important at war

Here’s what I was thinking for running the drills:

Depending on the number of people at practice and the weapons available, you may be able to split people into groups. If that’s possible, I’d suggest the following setup:

--Start off with reds vs. shieldmen and spears vs. blues to practice shield breaking and spear rushing.
--After a few sets of these drills, switch to deflecting shield breaking attacks and parrying/grappling attacking spears.
--After drills with these pairings, have blues and reds switch to practice wrap shots, blocking/avoiding wrap shots and reds rushing/parrying spears.
--After blues vs. shieldmen and reds vs. spears, do spears vs. shieldmen and reds vs. blues for blues to practice taking advantage of over-swing as well as other methods of closing the distance, and for reds to practice avoiding over-swing and keeping blues at the appropriate distance.
--To incorporate Odin's suggestion of spear/shield teams, which is a good one, we could have pseudo-drills [short sparring sessions, really] in which shields/spears fight reds/blues. This would give fighters a chance to work on teamwork and coordination as well as practice the maneuvers in real combat.

--Have a herald, if available, overseeing either each group or the entire practice to help correct techniques and to set the pace for the drills. If there aren’t enough people for a herald to stand aside, he herald can be a fighter as well.
--During the drills, the herald will shout “One! Two! Three! Four!” with a pause between each number.
--On “one!” the fighters do the practiced motion at a mild speed.
--On “two!” they do the same motion slightly faster, and so on until “four!” at which point they’re doing the motion as rapidly as safely possible.
--If desirable, the herald could reduce the length of the pause between each number until the last set is continuous or nearly continuous.
--Do about four or five sets of four [or as many as you want] and then switch drills
--Each fighter’s abilities will be different, so not everyone will be moving at the same pace.

How does this sound to everyone? Any suggestions for improvement?

Haha. I didn't even think about that. I'm glad you think the ideas are good. I look forward to trying them out next summer. If you try them at Rolla and find some kinks in the system, let me know what they are and how you fix them, if you do fix them. If there are enough people, it should run pretty smoothly though. Especially once we've already done it a few times.

im totally up for trying some drills, maybe one at the start of each practice