Jul 15 2019

Northern Lights Summer Mid-reign 2019

As the title suggests I didn’t go to my local park last weekend. Instead I went to Northern Light’s Summer Mid-reign. It was a camping event but I only went for Saturday. I originally had no intention of going but Uriel said he needed a ride and would pay my gate fee, so I said yes. However it turns out that Gustav wanted to go too so I didn’t end up driving at all.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t engage with Amtgard much at all at this event. The closest I came to Amtgard was me dressing up in garb. This might make for a less than stellar blog and I apologize.

Gustav picked us up from Uriel’s place around 10:30 and we headed out. We stopped at exit 42 in Washington to buy a pizza pocket as is tradition. Sadly it wasn’t as good as usual, which as disappointing. We made it to site around 12:30, paid our gate fees and made our way down to the field.

We immediately spotted Shayden and asked if we could use his camp as our base for the day. He was delighted and said yes. We made our way over to the Legacy Camp and set our stuff down. Gustav brought his gear and Uriel and I brought our beer. Jugging was just starting and Uriel and I cracked open a beer and started our day drinking. We walked over and said hi to a few friends and watched jugging for a while.

I saw Aurora and started talking with her. I then followed over to the Golden Lion’s encampment. I pretty much stayed there till feast. Most of the people I wanted to talked to were there or ended up walking through the camp.

I spent a good amount of time talking to Aurora and Terarin about Amtgard politics but in a positive light. There was some good conversation about the corpora and some recent change suggestions put forth by Aurora. It was a very productive talk. I even got some one on one talk with Terarin which I’ve hardly had. I think it was the most we’ve talked and it was good to get to know his thought process in relation to Amtgard.

I also made a point to get a selfie with all the people from House Gravy. There were only three of us but I try to get a picture of us at all major events. I didn’t get that chance till the evening in the feast hall. It was Gustav, Gallienus and myself.

For the feast I spent all the time on the deck out back. The food was alright. The chicken was cooked through and wasn’t overly dry and the root vegetables were soft. The slices, which I was told were pear, were not good and I couldn’t eat them. Ratatouille was also on the menu but there wasn’t any on my plate. All I can do is assume they ran out, which was a shame.

After feast I left, I didn’t end up staying for court. I said my goodbyes to the Golden Lions crew as they were packing up to head home. Gustav, Uriel and I ended up in the Legacy camp visiting with Shayden, Matty and Savy for several hours before heading home ourselves.

That pretty much sums up my Saturday at Amtgard. I didn’t get home till 3:30 am. As I said I didn’t do much actual Amtgarding. The most you could say I did was do some work on the business side of Amtgard but it was just through conversation. Next week should be more about the game, I plan to play wizard for the first time since version 7 of the rules. It should be interesting.

Jul 08 2019

The Time I Almost Played a Wizard

On Saturday I went to Amtgard in Mystic Seas (Portland, OR). It was a hard choice between going to Mystic Seas and going to Silvermoon (Salem, OR). Mystic Seas was having a BBQ and Chili Cook Off and Silvermoon was hosting the Phoenix League match between Black Company and Arcana (Arcana won by the way, huzzah!). What pushed me towards Mystic Seas was that my squire, Indra, said he would join.

I arrived at the park shortly before 1pm and I was greeted by an old friend who I had no idea who would be there, Falcon. Not only does she live an hour away from Portland she doesn’t really come out to Amtgard anymore. I hadn’t seen her since last year. It was great getting to catch up.

I also arrived just in time for the chili cook off although I wasn’t entering anything myself which I came to regret. It would have been fun and also a good chance to show off my skills, even if they are a bit rusty. I don’t enjoy cooking as much as I used to. One of the reasons for my regret is due to a pet peeve I have about chili. Chili in its pure form does not have beans. If you look at cans of chill it says chili WITH beans. Beans are an additive. It’s fine if people like it but it’s just not pure chili. As you might have guessed my chili doesn’t contain beans.

I don’t recall how many entries there were but I did get to taste each one. My favorite was probably BamBam’s. I liked the flavor and especially liked the pulled pork he put in it. It was a nice alternative texture and carried a pleasant meaty flavor that ground beef often doesn’t have. In the end Aurura won the competition.

I actually went to the park intending to play in a battle game for once. I had a dream the night before about playing a wizard in Amtgard and I woke up with the urge to play it. I haven’t played wizard at all in Version 8. I brought out all my spell balls and sashes, made a spell list and I thought I was ready to go. Then when it was time for the battle game I realized I had no idea how to cast any of the spell balls. So rather than try to figure it out in the middle a game I decided I would wait till next week and take the time to try and memorize the spells by then.

In the mean time, since I wasn’t playing in the battle game I spent the time sparing with with Gustav. We weren’t fighting long before Indra showed up to the park and joined us. I got some good kills in but mostly I died.

We decided to take a break around the time the battle game ended. I took the time to introduce Indra to a few people. I hadn’t seen him out in several months, although he did go to Dusk Hallow (Dallas, OR) the previous Sunday. I would have joined him if he’d just sent me a message. It was really nice to see him catch up. He wasn’t able to stay too long, just for an hour or two. He had his daughter and girl friend with him.

A ditch started up right after Indra left and Gustav and I joined in. It lasted for quite a long time and it was nice to get some more fighting in. I fought this day more than I had in a very long time. I hope I’ll be able to continue that trend in the coming weeks at my local park.

After the ditch ended up chatting with people for quite some time. Derek Roth had also shown up and it was great to get to chat with him, it had been a while. In the end I didn’t leave the park till about 7pm, it was a pretty long Amtgard day which I greatly enjoyed.

Originally I had some pretty solid anxiety going into to the events of the day. Everyone at the park is pretty much a new player, which means I knew no one there, which is something that is worrying to me when it comes to social events. That’s one reason I tried to get Indra and Gustav to go Then on top of the people I knew were going to be there I was surprised by Falcon and even Aurora, Terarin and Derek Roth were there. Not only did I know more people than I thought I would, the people at Mystic Seas are very welcoming, as is often the case I had nothing to worry about.

Next week I’ll be playing Amtgard at my local park, Silvermoon, and if everything goes as planned I’ll be playing in at least one game as a wizard. I also hope there are some decent fights to be had too. I hear we might even have a meat grinder going.

Jul 05 2019

Website is Now Live!

Loyal followers will probably already have noticed that this isn’t actually the first post on my blog’s website. This was mainly due to my excitement. The web page was basically done when I wrote my weekly blog and I didn’t want to wait to use the site. However this is the official welcome to my website post. So welcome to my site!

Moving to a website will help me reach a larger audience by allowing the content to be easily scanned by search engines. I will have more organic visitors. It also allows me access to site analytics so I can tell how many people are coming to my website, which content they are reading and how long they are being engaged.

The second thing that a site will allow me to do is to offer better content. The most obvious new content you’ll find on my website is the resource page. I have a good start on it but I hope to expand it. I might be a bit picky but you would be surprised how hard it is to find quality and current content for Amtgard, Arts and Sciences and Foam Fighting. Take a look at what I have so far HERE. I’m looking for web pages and YouTube videos and channels. If you have any suggestions let me know, I’d be happy to evaluate them.

The other sections are not really new content. I have uploaded my articles from Facebook. They are now easier to find than they were on the Facebook page, which is a plus. I also have added a galley to my web page but I will continue to upload to my Facebook page as well so I can tag people.

I also want to be upfront about ads, I will be introducing non-intrusive ads to the web page once my Google Adsense account is approved for the site. I don’t want them to get in the way of the content. There will be no inline adds or adds between paragraphs. They will be at the end of the posts. I hope I don’t lose viewers over this decision but I wanted to give people the option of monetarily supporting my content without having to give up their own money.

So that’s my introduction! Take a look at the site and let me know what you think. The one thing that will change is a header image, but that will come later. As a side note I’m also looking for new article suggestions. Leave me a suggestion if you have one.