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Happy New Year!

Happy new year! Frohes Neues Jahr! ¡feliz año nuevo!

A good time of heavy Jugger to all, many tournaments and many delightful international fights! May the dog skull roll even further around the world this year.

In other news, a new German general Jugger forum has been started today. We worked hard to make it a long-lasting solution for all German Juggers - and of course, I saw to it that an international section has been included, where Juggers all around the world may chat and discuss. Have fun!

Here is the link: forum.jugger.org

Please always link to this adress, not the "real" adress the subdomain forwards you to (since you will have a broken link if the forum is moved).

Jugger training locations world map

As reported in Uhus finest - assorted Weblog Droppings, thanks to Adam from the Australian Redbacks there is a Google Map with the world-wide precise training locations (to be finished). So if you visit a country where Juggers are around, just have a look at the Google Map to see where a team does training.Contact Ein Uhu or Adam to add locations (ideally with the precise location). Green stands for precise locations, blue for cities, yellow for tournament grounds.


View Larger Map



Tech Tags:

1. German Open in Berlin: Green Surprise

The first German Open of "League Jugger" were held in Berlin at the 13th/14th of September. The weather was excellent, about thirty teams came and fought for the dog skull.



The biggest surprise happened in the finals. Rigor Mortis, unchallenged for years except by the old Hamburg team, was beaten in a stunning game against Grünanlagen Guerilla. A Golden Jugg finished the game after a 10:10 skulls draw at 300 stones. Grünanlagen Guerilla never won a tournament game against Rigor before, along with all other Jugger teams except Hamburg ... now, with a new chain from the former team KSJ, they rocked the house.

GAG-Siegesfeier / LLL
Photo: Liquid Eye / Susanne Serwe
More pictures


Along with the Irish, the Australians seemed to have a really great time - also they were quite intrigued by some national traditions:
"The captain of the Irish team displayed a great rapidity of verbal output as well as great pride in his undergarments which he insisted on displaying down the field (a display which was returned with pride by one of the German qwiks later in the day)."
Also great was the game Australia vs. Ireland, played by a combination of Oz and Èire rules. The Oz Redbacks played with great enthusiasm and loved to beat up a German national team by playing by their own rules: The skull in the center circle, stakes, doubles and hits to the elbows and knees do not count as hits - a very fast game with long sequences of pomfey fighting, very different to German style Jugger, and very fascinating! As Adam put it:
"the experience of more than 100 Juggers yelling that chant is somthing that will be with all of us for a very long time."

Mark, in Deckung von Simon

FINALLY: The first book on Jugger is available in English!

Jugger

Addendum: The Jugger book is also available in Black & White print, at Lulu Marketplace, for small budgets. But be assured, the color print looks much, much better ...

After days and days of translating, layouting, picture-cmyking, typesetting, typesetting, typesetting and a lot of furious cursing, I managed to get the first book on Jugger translated - with loads of new, stunning action shots, a detailed pomfey making step-by-step guide (now with pictures as well) and news on the international section. Here we go: "Jugger. A post-apocalyptic sport for all occasions"!

Thanks to Adam Horsten of Jugging Brisbane who did a thorrough proofreading and who was a great help with Jugger terminology, the book may now be purchased at Lulu (it will be available via amazon as well soon, but it does not always have to be the big fish who gets the worm, should it?). Of course, it is not cheap - 110 pages in full-color print do cost a bit ... but this is not my fault, to avoid all suspicion: I am earning incredible 31 cent (as in "small change", not as in "percent") share per issue sold; except if you buy it directly at Lulu's, where I get a bit more. Bahamas, here I come!

I hope that the book may help a bit in spreading the fascination for this unique sport. It would be a pleasure to play versus
British (especially for the Irish, I assume ...), Canadian and US teams as well, and maybe even all the many others who might not be that proficient with German but with English.

Any publisher who is interested in printing this title may contact the German publisher, Verlag an der Ruhr (rights at verlagruhr dot de) for licensing. As soon as that happens, the title will no longer be available via the current printer, of course.

Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser: Jugger. A post-apocalyptic sport for all occasions, Morrisville 2008, 29,95€, ISBN 13: 978-1-40922920-9 (soon to be applied) - details and ordering. Website support will be online soon.




 
 



  

Tech Tags:

Jugger sightings: Spain and Italia

From time to time, rumos pop up that Jugger would be played in Italia as well. Up to now, this is unconfirmed, at least concering regular games or training; but there are some dubious sightings of The Game, mostly at youtube. Here is an Italian example, kind of a backstreet-variant:



Also, a clip has been sighted which seems to originate from Spain. Watch it here:



Both appear to be quite spontaneous events, but nevertheless we may hope that they are the piloting pebbles of a landslide ...

Thanks to Fred from Trollfaust for the link to the last clip!

Erstes deutschlandweites (Mehrbenutzer-) Jugger-Blog ist online!

Die Lüneburger möchten alle aktiven Jugger herzlich zur aktiven Teilnahme am neuen Jugger-Blog einladen, das kürzlich online gegangen ist. Dank einer redakteurbasierten Nutzerverwaltung (wie auch hier im internationalen Blog) können einmal angemeldete dort eigenständig Neuigkeiten schreiben.
Es findet sich dort schon ein Einblick in die geplante Trainingswoche im August.

Damit sind es nun drei in der Runde: Neben dem Jugger-Blog dieses hier für internationale Themen und mit der Jugger-Kategorie von Uhus finest-assorted Weblog Droppings das "älteste" seiner Art, das aufgrund der verwendeten lokalrechnerbasierten Software (Thingamablog) ein Einbenutzerblog ist.

Juggers coming! .... in the US

With New Years Eve around the corner the whispers usually begin in the darkened corners of parties, after imbibing mass quantities and yearning for spring’s eternal rejuvenating properties. In the dead of winter, most plans are laid and alliances drawn for the coming event, held every year on the exact same weekend.

The third weekend in June is the traditional date set for national American Jugging tournament. The event is simply know as, Arakis. To understand the US version of Jugging, one needs the back story of the unique sport and the people who keep it alive.

American Jugging and Amtgard walk hand in hand. What the hell is Amtgard? It is a little know L.A.R.P. game that had its golden age in the American Southwest in the early to mid-nineteen nineties. This is a live action role playing game where participants engage in melee combat with padded weapons. It is not the only organization of this type, those idiots at IFGS come to mind, but there was a large collection of individuals who were interested in mass combat, not playing dress up. Not an official affiliation, just individuals who were like minded. In a game filled with wizards and blanket bunnies, this specific group of individuals were dedicated to force on force, tactical combat with melee weapons. Those people are the Stick Jocks.

The two largest cities involved were El Paso, Texas and Denver, Colorado. While El Paso is where Amtgard was created, Denver was established as the first sister city and a major rivalry was born. The stick jocks help fuel this rivalry like cross town football teams. El Paso became renowned for their sword and shield fighters, while Denver boasted the most dangerous Florentine style fighters in all of the kingdoms.

The Blood of Heroes was released by HBO direct to video in the days where direct to video marketing was being developed and explored. This is the only movie that David Webb Peoples has ever directed. David is also the screenwriter for Blade Runner, The Unforgiven, and Twelve Monkeys to name a few. Both Amtgard groups being aficionados of science fiction had viewed this movie independently from one another.

By the fall of nineteen-ninety many of the ardent stick jocks had gotten together to review the movie, ad nauseum, and devise not only a complete rules system but how to construct weapons safe enough to permit full force sparring with safety in mind. Or at least the perceived illusion of safety. Pick up games developed into regimented practices and team creation. By the time the annual Amtgard gathering arrived in July, both cities had developed fairly similar rules for jugging and nearly identical weapons construction.

In the fall of ninety-one, there had been several meetings between the two largest chapter members and a league wide all-thing was called. The rules for Jugging were official ratified by the start of nine-two. The annual Amtgard gathering was usually hosted by El Paso and was held the third weekend in July in New Mexico. El Paso felt that Jugging was a novelty and decided a small, informal, tournament was all the investment required for the festivities and announced so at the winter all-thing that year.

Enraged, the citizens of Denver contacted the population of Amtgard announcing their own plans for an event specifically dedicated to the sport of Jugging and nothing else. And to stick it to El Paso, it was going to be held the third weekend in June. This created even more bad blood between the sister cities and was met with adulation by the general duchies and baronies whose populaces began to train immediately for what would be, quite literally, the Super Bowl of Nerds. Many arguments have arisen over the years squabbling about whom created the rules for Jugging, but it was Denver that fostered and incubated the idea into the annual national event that it has become.

The original site for this event was the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. This Park is best described as if giants put a chunk of the Sahara Desert in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. The pictures on the website will give you a greater understanding of the terrain but the short story is that the backdrop for the event was unbelievable. The field was always placed along the creek riverbank with the sand dunes in the background and the Rockies looming behind them. Truly spectacular. The event drew its name from the sand dunes themselves, Arakis.

Over the years Arakis has evolved and even changed locations several times no longer being held at the national park. None has ever matched the beauty and majesty of those early years at the Great Sand Dunes, you can tell when you ask the old guard and they get that far off look, growing weepy and silent.