Is Foil "Broken"?

[erooMynohtnA]

It's so hard to hit now, RoW matters a lot less. Foil has moved away from the dance-for-the-referee of saber towards the hit-first-stalemate of epee. I think most pre-change foilists don't like that, but I don't think that's the real problem, as most people don't seem to hate it too much, and the people who never fenced 2004 foil don't seem to care at all. I think the real problems are the unintended consequences of both the flick, and the new timings at the lower levels.

The old timings allowed the faster, taller, more aggressive fencers to dominate at the lower level, causing a lot of criticism of foil being about "who can flick faster." 2004 foil might not have encouraged a deep game at the lower level, but that's why it's not high level. At least it rewarded things we generally view as athleticism: size, strength, and aggression.

The new timings allow the smaller, squirmier, more defensive fencers to thrive at the lower level, and people claim foil is now a game of "squirm, remise, remise, remise." Say what you want, but I think there is a problem with any sport that rewards small stature, technically incorrect actions, and refusal to initiate actions. I think that's really turned foil into a joke, and it's the way foil is fundamentally broken that it wasn't before, regardless of how you feel about actions like marching and flicking.

I just hope that sort of thing doesn't eventually seep up to the top of men's foil. It doesn't seem to be, but the current state of women's foil doesn't leave me optimistic.

[garyhayenga]

It's so hard to hit now, RoW matters a lot less. Foil has moved away from the dance-for-the-referee of saber towards the hit-first-stalemate of epee. I think most pre-change foilists don't like that, but I don't think that's the real problem, as most people don't seem to hate it too much, and the people who never fenced 2004 foil don't seem to care at all. I think the real problems are the unintended consequences of both the flick, and the new timings at the lower levels.

The old timings allowed the faster, taller, more aggressive fencers to dominate at the lower level, causing a lot of criticism of foil being about "who can flick faster." 2004 foil might not have encouraged a deep game at the lower level, but that's why it's not high level. At least it rewarded things we generally view as athleticism: size, strength, and aggression.

The new timings allow the smaller, squirmier, more defensive fencers to thrive at the lower level, and people claim foil is now a game of "squirm, remise, remise, remise." Say what you want, but I think there is a problem with any sport that rewards small stature, technically incorrect actions, and refusal to initiate actions. I think that's really turned foil into a joke, and it's the way foil is fundamentally broken that it wasn't before, regardless of how you feel about actions like marching and flicking.

I just hope that sort of thing doesn't eventually seep up to the top of men's foil. It doesn't seem to be, but the current state of women's foil doesn't leave me optimistic.

That was very well put.

[FrSpike]

I must say, as a newbie low-level foil fencer, the number and length of these discussions which I've read since I began lurking on this forum almost a year ago is rather discouraging. One begins to wonder if one would be wise to just change weapons now and get it over with in a "Get out of Dodge City while the getting is good" kind of way.

[catwood1]

I must say, as a newbie low-level foil fencer, the number and length of these discussions which I've read since I began lurking on this forum almost a year ago is rather discouraging. One begins to wonder if one would be wise to just change weapons now and get it over with in a "Get out of Dodge City while the getting is good" kind of way.

Don't be discouraged. If foil fencing is what you enjoy most, then you will continue to enjoy it. Foil fencing, like anything else in sports, is constantly evolving. The timing changes are just the occasional rule that is implemented to assist in that change.

Foil is still the best weapon.

[dharmaqueen]

Don't be discouraged. If foil fencing is what you enjoy most, then you will continue to enjoy it. Foil fencing, like anything else in sports, is constantly evolving. The timing changes are just the occasional rule that is implemented to assist in that change.

Foil is still the best weapon.

Here here!!

[OROD]

Foil is still the best weapon.

This is true.

.

[sloper]

Not every action was a flick to the back with them, but almost every action ended in a small flick or flicking thrust.

Saying that the flick wasn't in vogue is silly, and the flick wasn't even the problem. The problem was the "mad rush for ROW, followed by reckless abandon" or march. Instead of changing the refereeing (which I think would have been monumentally difficult to the point of impossibility), they changed another component of the march, which was the ease of hitting.

Granted, it has been a long time....

At the beginning of my post, I wrote about "crazy marching flicking attacks." When I used "flicking" in the rest of my post, I was referring to those attacks - not flicking itself. (Sorry for the extremely poor editing.) Those attacks are what you used to see in both Div I and Div IA. And I thought they were what the timing changes were meant to prevent.

I thought of all the actions that ended with little flicks as straight actions because the fencers' hands stayed in - as opposed to the actions where a fencer would keep his hand out confident he could bring his tip around at any point to finish. The latter is what I saw becoming less used and less useful that day. The former is what I remember being so great.

It was definitely different fencing from years prior when Cliff Bayer was the top fencer. I assumed this was because foil was changing internationally. Or was it because these fencers had different strengths or weren't as tall?

Internationally, was men's foil showing any signs of moving away from "crazy marching flicking attacks" by 2004? I'm really curious about this - even if it's all just history now.

[Hauptman]

Foil is still the best weapon.

Ok, you had me up until this part. Not to mention the big red target you just put on your back here.

[telkanuru]

Ok, you had me up until this part. Not to mention the big red target you just put on your back here.

Too bad no one will be able to hit it, since you can't backflick anymore

[catwood1]

Ok, you had me up until this part. Not to mention the big red target you just put on your back here.

I can't make an entire post that is entirely logical!!!!

[tchwojko]

I can't make an entire post that is entirely logical!!!!

Yes, that would ruin any foilist's tactics.

[eac]

Fencing, especially foil, should be left alone to evolve naturally.

By this argument, Dan puts himself into the same position that the men with antiquated visions who originally made the rule changes. There is a logic to training under the new timings, and there is a large amount of technique that goes vastly beyond duck-and-squirm. Most people in this thread seem not to have watched enough high-level MF to notice that counterattacks and remises are just another action in fencers' repertoires, which make up the majority of actions in a bout probably less often than do ripostes or attacks. Also, remises and counterattacks by good fencers are not most of the time about squirming. If you watched Benjamin Kleibrink win the Olympics, you noticed that while many of his touches came on remises, they weren't really squirming remises. They were intelligent, well-timed, close-out remises that were set up based on a good sense of where the riposte was most likely to come.

It is certainly true that counterattacks are more common than they were before the new timings, but it's not at all true, as mrbiggs said, that foil strategy consists entirely of counterattacks. See, for instance, the video provided on the previous page, or the 2006 MF worlds final, or really most videos of good fencing. It just isn't true, at that level, anyway; even less true than the claim that on the old timings, it was all about march-and-flick all day all the time (as the video already in the thread also shows). Ripostes, marching attacks, short AIPs, as well as counterattacks and remises are all in there. I would also point out that I think MF has improved significantly in spectator value and dynamicism since 2005; in 2005, people were still figuring out how to hit reliably with the new system, where by 2008 they had figured out how to hit correctly 99% of the time, and were thus less afraid to initiate actions.

So based on just the original quote and the state of the game (which I do not think was really conclusively established as broken), it follows that we should leave foil alone.

However, I don't really agree with the original quote. It seems obvious to me that some sets of rules produce better games than others; all of us on this forum picked fencing over many sports more popular, less expensive, and easier to find and practice for, presumably because we think that fencing is a better game than all those other ones. And, almost by definition, it's a better game because of its rules, because it certainly isn't better because of the size of its community, the corporate sponsorships, or the media attention.

So while obviously rule changes do bear a short-term cost, in the amount of training time they erase in competitors and the cost of new equipment, if necessary, rule changes can, sometimes, in theory, produce sufficiently better games that they justify the short-term loss of training time and equipment cost.

So the question is, what set of rules would provide the most interesting game in foil? What kind of game would make the most interesting game in foil? I don't completely know, but I think at least one parameter to optimize is a balance between offense and defense. It seemed to me that in the old game, offense was fairly overpowered, and there was a large advantage for the fencer who established his march first. This, I think, made things less interesting than they could have been. On the other hand, today, while I think things are closer to that balance than they were before (attacks still do work, a lot, contrary to popular opinion on this thread), they are probably somewhat biased towards defense, which Dan's suggestion might somewhat fix.

The point here is that this is the conversation we should be having, not random tired tangents about ROW or how ROW used to be, nor bizarre baseless claims about foil being all counterattacking all the time. Let's talk about *what* would make foil better, and *why* it would make it better. It is unfortunate that more fencing video is not freely available on the internet, as it would be useful for debate.

[telkanuru]

See, for instance, the video provided on the previous page, or the 2006 MF worlds final, or really most videos of good fencing.

Let's look at this.

It's not good fencing. The actions are good, the timing is good, and it's a little slower than it used to be. However, the sheer number of touches that DIDN'T REGISTER blows everything else out of the water.

Imagine the uproar from epeeists if approximately 1 in every 10 touches were refused by the box.

That's broken.

[eac]

Well, two things. One, in that whole video, giving the benefit of the doubt to the idea that there were a lot of non-hits that clearly were hits but rejected by the box, I found two such non-hits out of a possible 11. There were a lot of plain misses, which is a separate thing.
Two, as I said in the part I added in editing, foilists have gotten way, way better at deterministically hitting since the video. In 2005, I would argue that people were still figuring out how to hit reliably in the new system, whereas now I think they know how, and there are significantly fewer such non-hits. Hits not registering is most of the time not a random occurrence. The way you hit, combined with the condition of your foil, has an enormous impact. People who complain about frequently having it not go off are probably fencing with some combination of bad tape, sticky tip, chest protector on the other guy, and hitting in the wrong way.

I don't think the rate today is 1 in 10; I think it's more like at most 1 in 50 for a bona fide non-hit with good tape, non-sticky tip, no chest protector, and good technique.

That said, even that amount of randomness is not a particularly good thing, and I wouldn't argue against a machine that ignored microbreaks (a known source of egregious non-hits, particularly on chest protectors), or a 10ms rather than a 15ms debounce time.

[telkanuru]

That said, even that amount of randomness is not a particularly good thing, and I wouldn't argue against a machine that ignored microbreaks (a known source of egregious non-hits, particularly on chest protectors), or a 10ms rather than a 15ms debounce time.

Which is really all that people are asking for, so why the paragraphs?

[eac]

Which is really all that people are asking for, so why the paragraphs?

Because I want people to actually have a substantive discussion about it; I was trying to shift the thread to have more logic and less yelling.

[keith]

Because I want people to actually have a substantive discussion about it; I was trying to shift the thread to have more logic and less yelling.

When the arguement is that everyone would be happy if they just called prep like they do in Sabre?


Good luck with that.

[eac]

No, I actually wanted them to just stop with the ROW debate, because that's been done to death and has no new or interesting content. I think the timing debate has some unsaid things in it, because people seem more eager to yell than to think.

[keith]

I think the timing debate has some unsaid things in it, because people seem more eager to yell than to think.

The whole yelling vs thinking thing is normally a good sign that there is nothing useful to add. Except maybe a cage and some blunt, heavy objects.

[eac]

No, not really. Counterexample: People were yelling and not thinking a lot during the whole Obama-Reverend Wright fiasco, but then Obama gave an extremely insightful, helpful speech on race (he called it "a teachable moment"), which got people to think instead of yell, and mostly defused the whole thing.

Unfortunately, I don't have either the charisma or the insight of Obama.