We had 20 fighters come out to House Gilchrest's regular monthly practice. Once again, attendees got to take advantage of Viscount Richard's massive workshop, stash of loaner gear, and armor for sale at cost.

We had several new fighters attend this practice, so we taught them basic rules of melee engagement. But they were happy to be in the thick of things! Scenarios:

1. Single death open field bouts run 5x.

• This was good to help the new fighters get acclimated to melee fighting and learn to stick with a buddy.

2. Break-through Bridge battles. I re-used the Battle on the Bay bridge battle scenario that Sir Helmut Kreuger and Sir Bumi Fong came up with where the victory condition was the team that could get a fighter to the end of the other side's bridge won the bout. None of the bouts lasted more than 2 minutes, so we ran this 5x. Strategies:

• Pushes through the bridge needed to be quick.

• Archers were included and gave us some good pointers ("If you're in the light, you're in their lane").

3. Progressive Woods battle. I did a variant of Sir Jonathas "only murders in the building" progressive battle that he did at Revenge of the Stitch and that we also ran at Victory on the Vine, except this time it was in the woods. I planted 3 flags in the woods. The attacking team had unlimited resurrections and could not advance to the next flag until all defenders were dead at the current flag AND they ran the flag back to their home resurrection point. Defenders only got one life. Once they died, they moved back to the next flag, and so on. Since we had archers, we put all archers on the defending team. This scenario lasted under 10 minutes each for each team attacking and was very fun to do in the woods. Strategies:

• Attacking team did best when they attacked solidly as a cohesive unit together.

• Defending team did best when they were strung out, drawing attackers apart and making them delay engagement.

4. Animal Farm battle. This is a variant of a scenario that Sir Arunedoor created years ago for Norse Wars. It's an unlimited resurrection battle. A dozen animals (my 7 y.o. old's stuffed animals) escaped their pens! Each team had a pen and fighters had to get animals into their pen before time was called. Fighters needed a guantleted hand and could only carry one animal at a time, but you could steal from the opposing team's pen. We ran this for 8 minutes and all animals made it back to a pen, except for a few stragglers. Why this was good:

• Fighters had to focus on not only getting animals, but protecting the pen from getting animals stolen.

• A good wind-down battle that lets fighters go at their own pace.

5. Pick-ups, then potluck in the Gilchrest tavern.