Last night at fencing practice I was introduced to an interesting game. It’s called “3-5-9”. The rules are that two fencers do a regular 15-touche bout. The only catch is that the first person that reaches one of the score thresholds identified in the name of the game (“3” points, “5” points, or “9” points) that person has to give up one element of their game as selected by their opponent. For example, if I make a touché to bring the score to 3-1 in my favor, my opponent could say, “Ok, now you are not allowed to fleche for the rest of the bout.” Any reasonably discrete fencing action can be chosen, like toe-touches, beat-attacks, fleches, etc.
On the surface, the rules of the game act as an equalizer. The better fencer gives up one or more parts of their game with the expectation that the playing field will be a bit more level. Looking beyond that, however, one can find hidden benefits for both fencers. For the fencer that loses an action, it forces them to think outside their normal comfort zone and exercise some actions that they might not use regularly. For the fencer that decides what action will be given up, it forces them to pay attention to and remember what happened during the bout so they can choose an action that is being used effectively against them. This is something that many fencers struggle with.

One of the interesting strategy games that could be played with this would be to deliberately trail your opponent by 1 touche so that you give up nothing over the course of the bout, then bring the win home with a strong finish against a handicapped opponent. I considered trying this but decided I would rather make as many points up front as possible and deal with the handicap with a broad game that incorporates a lot of variety. This worked well for me.

The game was so enjoyable that we just did that most of the evening. In the course of this I learned a couple of things. First - the fleche is now such an integral part of my game that I will do it even when I am trying not to. Not that that's bad, necessarily. It is useful information for when I am fencing someone who has a good defense against it. Second - I seem to have a fairly broad bag of tricks to draw upon. Even though I frequently lost all three actions in a bout, I was able to compensate successfully with others.

I am looking forward to playing this game again.