What if there was a stable upgrade where you could pick up two "training glads" for lack of a better word? They could compete against each other but not in any of the brackets or games. You could train up all skills (points and xp but no gold from tavern runs) but only have 100 training points sunk into them at any time. They could use any strategy, equip any weapons or armour you have, and reassigning training points is free. This way you could try different builds against each other to experiment. It would still take the 6 months to bring up a competitive glad, but at least this way you'd have a better idea of what you were doing beforehand.