From:	William Monroe Ashe <wma6617@****.TAMU.EDU>
Subject:	Fencing and melee combat
Date:	Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:00:30 -0500

Woo Hoo something that I know a whole lot about;

First in foil and Sabre by definition an attack is a forward moving
action "by the arm" no neccessarily by the feet. I saw some very pretty
foil at the last Nat'l championships I attended where both fencers were
moving down the strip at a dead run and the retreating fencer got an
attack in while moving backwards. For you foilists it was a pickup flick
to the back going backwards (It was Micheal Marx BTW).

In epee there is no right of way and the double touch kind of implies that
both are dead.

Now to start the furious debate;

IMHO epee is more "realistic" than the other two. Neither foil or sabre
allow for double touches. Except for a couple of years ago when the USFA
tried it for a few months (very bad idea). Epee focuses on getting your
hit first and avoiding the other's touch. Now, olympic style epee has a
big realism point against in that many times the attacker after getting
his touch will still get drilled by the defender. I know that was a
favorite move of mine, and very painful if your opponent is a hard
charger also.

Now if dueling were to happen IRL I think that you would see a mix of
styles. It would be very epee like in the blade control and timing,
both opponents would spend much more time defending, going in for the
kill only after the opponent has made a mistake. But, the defensive
moves would be much more foil oriented, much more tempo oriented.


well that's my $0.02.

I suppose we might want to go private if this gets way out of hand.


Regards

-Bill