Hello!
Thanks for asking, I was about to write something here in the english forums anyway. First of all thanks to organizers and co-patricipant from giving this opportunity. Special thanks to Bernard, who mostly guided us there, and to Sentius for some nice chatting in the late hours
As for me, overall impression from the trip was very good! Now I'm trying to gather the mayor feelings from visiting there. Though as well as many enjoyable things, there were also something that I really would have done diffrently, don't get me wrong - I'm just trying to list the pluses and minuses from the event, and also because the feedback is asked
The bad weather made me thinking why this kind of event was organized this time a year, but if I understood correctly, it was put on spring because you got more and bigger sponsors (compared to if it would have been for example in summer where the weather would have been greatly better) because the annual day (?) of the uprising was historically this time a year. But the weather-thing is a point beyond organizers reach, but just to mention it.
About the "joint larp and boffer event", as we finlanders see it. In my point of view that didn't work very well. Just to sit and wait for hours and hours in the rain for the battles was something I didn't get very much kicks. As mainly as a larper I'd still say that if I want to feel great and deep emotions, I really go to a larp with a little or no fighting at all. Most people didn't play any role anyway in the game spoke mainly off-game things, so I felt that the mixture of larping and bofferfighting was slightly awkward.I thought that demanded too many compromises to be made.
But don't get me wrong. There were also really(!) good and moody elements, which made the atmosphere - as long the uprising had began - really good at some points. Like marching from the village to the fort with torches, night-time, the fort(!), the hectic sieging... I'd only have cut the 4-5 hours from the beginning of the game all away, with only a pretty short, like an hour-lasting, phase to get things moody and going before sieging would have began. Therefore people would have had more energy for sieging all the night. At least whe finnish people - who aren't really very used to this kind of concept - went sleeping rather early because of the long-lasting downtime before the battles. In Sotahuuto's concepts, there has been talk about bringing more atmospheric elements to it, and I agree with it even more after being to Kassinurme.
Safety of your weapons. I think all the five of us were actually pretty surprised about how safe your weapons really felt. I agree with Sentius saying that they really hurt drastically less than the 1genboffers, as you call them. Weight-limits seems to work, when the realisticy of the fighting isn't valued too much. Though, personally I'd still prefer 1gen for the much realistic feeling and historically more accurate tehcnique, but I think for example Keisari_P and Juhana were quite satisfied with your weapons. Or did I get you wrong?
Though I think the weapons broke rather easily, or was is just from the hard use and conditions?
To say on overall, the weapons-consepts were really a nice surprise to me, but I think the heads of the pipes of the weapons (hey I really couldn't recall the right word for the thing, but I meant the bamboostics, etc.) weren't covered well enough. For example, during the siege the spear we used was broken, and from there peeped totally uncovered head of a bamboo stick. Because of the dark it wasn't noticed really early enough, and would have caused some really ugly result if it would have stuck to someones eye.
One thing I noticed was the diffence between our countries: the amount of hierarchy. It seemed like that, at least amongs the Black Hundred, there are kind of strict hierarchy and the chain of command. Yep, that's the way it works. But I think here in Finland people feel that more anarchistic kind of line for the chain of command is just more fun, and don't bother too much training strict formations etc. So I got the impression that at least there in Tallinn, training is more "professional"/purposeful/goal-oriented compared to our scene.
---
So on overall the fighting was very enjoyable as long as it lasted and the people were really nice. For example, many (like mr. Odin) tried to speak to us even when they didn't understand finnish/english at all - they just spoke estonian and we answered in finnish. Works quite well actually, after all the languages are quite similar, even with all the diffrences. And too bad that I never got it to Valhalla, when looking Pekka's picture from where he is drinking some very good mead (or whatever it was
) and eating a whole leg of a wild-boar Odin gave us, I felt kind of jealous.
Darn.
I felt that finnish and estonian boffer-culture (pardon me using the term) have much to give each other. Btw. how you Estonians feel about the things I mentioned?
And the last (but not really the least, as the saying goes!) of all, I'd like to apologize all the patricipants who were really nice and patient during the night about me giving tens and tens of headshots. Old habits die hard
Thanks again for the nice experience, and my sincerely welcome-wishes to Sotahuuto in the forthcoming Summer!
Juhani