Juggling is Pointless by Luke Burrage

Why I Learnt to Juggle by Luke Burrage

Just Say No! by Luke Burrage

Popular Forms of Juggling by Luke Burrage

Gladiators can be played with any prop at all. Clubs, balls, devilstick, contact juggling balls, bounce balls, unicycles, club balanced on head, etc. It can also be played with any number of props too. The most interesting and popular varieties are:

• 3 ball gladiators. Simple enough so anyone can join in and more tactical than using clubs.
• 3 club gladiators. A longer reach coupled with bigger targets makes this the most skillful form of gladiators.
• Unicycle gladiators. Everyone’s hands are free to grab, pull, push or throttle anyone else they can chase down. The last person on one wheel wins.

How to play (sticking with the 3 club game):

• Everyone stands in a circle and waits for the last game to finish.
• Everyone bashes their own clubs together in time, getting louder and louder until there is a climax of frenzied plastic-on-plastic activity.
• Spontaneously someone starts juggling.
• Everyone else starts juggling too.
• As soon as the last person stops banging their clubs together, the game REALLY begins.
• If you drop, or are left with less than 3 clubs under your immediate control, you make your way back to the edge of the circle.
• The last person juggling wins.

That is about all there is to it. During the game you run around, hitting other peoples clubs with your own clubs, with your feet, with your hands, back or head. You can knock them out of the air or out of their hands. If you want you can even steal other people’s clubs and start juggling 4 yourself.

Once the game ends, you start again, traditionally ganging up on the person who just won.

Things that make Gladiators less fun to play:

- When the number of players increases and the playing area is too crowded, the game is almost completely random. If you don’t have enough room to start juggling, you might as well not bother…

- Suicide attacks. Don’t just throw all your clubs away and run into someone. It’s not hard and it’s not clever.

- Violence. All the best players use pure juggling skill to win. You are only trying to make other jugglers drop, not injure them so they can no longer juggle. Attack people’s clubs, not their body. Or not their body too hard.

The best games of Gladiators I play are normally at 2am in the morning at a juggling convention somewhere in Europe. There are normally about a dozen players, all pretty good at juggling, and all not too bothered about winning. Well, they are bothered, but are more concerned about having a quality game. The games normally continue for over 2 hours, leaving me very tired and very sweaty.

That is all for this article. More on tactics some other time.