PC 04, I agree with Christian :-)

[Mathieu Harlaut]

Hello,

I agree with most of what Christian said in his report on Pentecost.

The event was really fun, Thank you Dietrich and the other organisers!!!

The camp was great. Lutz made a wonderful job. It was really awesome, 
the previous camp were quite good but this year it  was really 
convincing, and believable. The camp was no only good looking but it 
was also well organised. The gate was cool!!!

Since the first event the overall look impression improved a lot, I 
haven't seen so much people with unfitting garment. During mass for 
example, everyone was well dressed.

As Christian pointed out there still too much modern things around the 
camp. And everyone is responsible of this. There are still too much 
camera (even in our ranks) and I agree with Christian there should be 
only one official photographer. We cannot avoid that, otherwise we 
cannot expect to convince everyone not to hang around with a camera. It 
will be hard to improve on this point, it is possible but there must be 
an agreement of all the participating groups to reach a even better 
level of authenticity.

If the camp improved a lot in quality and organisation, I think that 
the military aspect didn't improved so much.
The dizaine system worked a lot better.  It was quicker to muster and 
more efficient during the manoeuvres. The manoeuvres of the halberd 
block was very beautiful to look at, but still a bit slow.  The musters 
of the all camp were still much to slow to be convincing, I think we 
waited about 10 to 15 minutes before everyone was there. And I am not 
talking about the muster of men with arms and armour.

It is also true that the second day was a lot better than the day 
before. But we have been doing this for 3 years and it didn't worked 
much better than the first time even if the manoeuvres are a bit more 
sophisticated. There should be more training and different scenarios 
(open field, patrol in the forest and nearby area, defence of the guns 
in the field, attack, skirmish, defence of the camp, training of the 
women, manoeuvres in reduced space ...) , different way to deploy the 
troop (2 ranks, 5, 10, small units with each gun, splitting the unit in 
order to attack one target from different directions or to attack 
multiple targets...)

The skirmish on Sunday was fun and the small rubber caltrops were a 
very good idea, however it was totally unrealistic. The whole Imperial 
unit should have been slaughtered and meat  for the crow before 
reaching the top of the hill: too slow, too clumsy, and a tactic a bit 
straightforward... It is not a very good example of successful assault 
on 1 gun and  20 men with 2 gun and 150 men and somehow there is some 
kind of ridiculous aspect to it. I think we can keep the fun of the 
skirmish by making it  a training, it will more believable and be less 
ridiculous.

As Christian says, there is still much we can explore in the concept.

In conclusion I would say that it was great fun and the original goal 
of the event has been reach more or less: a good number of people and 
groups, a fair level of authenticity, (we have to look for details 
before finding unhistorical items , excepting glasses and camera), most 
of the participants know the drill, a believable camp with a good 
organisation. Now it is time for the event to evolve, the military side 
must change to be each time as exciting as the first.

Cheers,

Mathieu