A hypothetical fourth weapon (2)

[antonsilver]

Hello maybe this sounds familiar but, I got inspired by a tread with the same name!

This is about a rule change (in epee)

After looking through several treads, it seems like there is a lot of fuzz about realism versus sport. There is also a lot of talk about making fencing a more viewer friendly sport... My personal problem is that, when I tab someone on the fringe of their shoulder, and a fraction of a second later (virtually at the same time) they plant their epee full force in my breastbone (right above my hart), I am rewarded with the point - It somehow doesn't feel right. If it had been a sharp weapon it definitely wouldn't feel right!

I have the same problem with double touches. The rules seems to empathies attacking rather than defending. If I lead by one, I can run it home by light double touches and a sore breast! (winning by dying 14 times!)

ROW doesn't seem to solve the problem.
Guess prolonging the time for double touché would create the need to parry after landing a touché (not a bad thing) but it would also be too much an advantage for the leading fencer.


My suggestion is to prolong the time for double touché to something like 0.25 sec, and in case of a double touché the point goes to the one with the fewest points! (very gentleman like)! In case of equal points no one scores.

What i want to achieve is...
More swordplay, parrying, and fun, less rhino fencing!

More realism, like if i am good I try to win and survive at the same time, if I suck, then at least I can take the other guy with me when i go (small victory for me!)

More exiting matches, I guess giving the least experienced fencer the advantages would make more matches end 14-15.


I guess it is not realistic to change the rules, that’s why I would imagine it introduced like a fourth weapon!

What are your comments... would it work in real life?

[DangerMouse]

Why not build a VSM and play with the software settings and give it a try. I don't think anything will change.

[noodle]

Originally Posted by antonsilver

Hello maybe this sounds familiar but, I got inspired by a tread with the same name!

This is about a rule change (in epee)

After looking through several treads, it seems like there is a lot of fuzz about realism versus sport. There is also a lot of talk about making fencing a more viewer friendly sport... My personal problem is that, when I tab someone on the fringe of their shoulder, and a fraction of a second later (virtually at the same time) they plant their epee full force in my breastbone (right above my hart), I am rewarded with the point - It somehow doesn't feel right. If it had been a sharp weapon it definitely wouldn't feel right!

I have the same problem with double touches. The rules seems to empathies attacking rather than defending. If I lead by one, I can run it home by light double touches and a sore breast! (winning by dying 14 times!)

ROW doesn't seem to solve the problem.
Guess prolonging the time for double touché would create the need to parry after landing a touché (not a bad thing) but it would also be too much an advantage for the leading fencer.


My suggestion is to prolong the time for double touché to something like 0.25 sec, and in case of a double touché the point goes to the one with the fewest points! (very gentleman like)! In case of equal points no one scores.

What i want to achieve is...
More swordplay, parrying, and fun, less rhino fencing!

More realism, like if i am good I try to win and survive at the same time, if I suck, then at least I can take the other guy with me when i go (small victory for me!)

More exiting matches, I guess giving the least experienced fencer the advantages would make more matches end 14-15.


I guess it is not realistic to change the rules, that’s why I would imagine it introduced like a fourth weapon!

What are your comments... would it work in real life?

it would make epee even more boring to watch.

[CMiner]

You'd probably like the "Man With the Golden Epee" tournament.

As for the "4th weapon" hypothesis, I don't think your changes will achieve your goal. In fact, the opposite will happen.

Fencer A is down 3-4. His opponent attacks and hits. He makes no attempt to parry, lets himself be hit, and hits back. By the proposed rules only Fencer A gets the point, and the score is now 4-4.

It would make parrying necessary only for the person in the lead. If you have fewer points, why bother with a parry when you can just hit back and not only get a point but negate the opponent's valid hit on you.

[Guided by Wire]

Here's a fourth weapon for you:

Foil target area
Slashing weapons
Double touches allowed
Round piste

[migopod]

One-touch epee bouts in a round-robin format are also a way to go. In the modern pentathlon, a double touch or the one minute time expiring is considered a double loss.

IIRC the current epee lockout time is artificially maintained but based on what was once due to the limitations of the physical relays used in the old relay boxen. Presumably the initial goal was to allow only one light touches, but the machines weren't capable of locking out simultaneous or near-simultaneous touches. I suspect that lengthening the lockout time would do exactly what has been mentioned here (with or without the rule reguarding the assignment of touches to the loser), reward counter attacking (even after the attack arrives) and make parries and takes less useful for the defender. In a five or fifteen touch bout, it's better to get the double than for your opponent to get a single. In a single touch bout, it's better for both of you to lose than for your opponent to win. With current lockout times it's difficult to deliberately plan and execute double touches after you realize that being touchd is inevitable. Foil lockout times, on the other hand, would make it pretty easy to strategically execute doubles, hence RoW. The attack first initiated is given priority, while in epee the attack first to arrive gets defacto priority.

Of course sport fencing isn't supposed to be a realistic duel simulator, but at least in epee it might help to convince yourself that if you stick your imaginary sharp blade into the wrist of your opponent as they begin an attack aimed at your center of mass, you'll do minimal actual damage to them, but you may well have interrupted their attack by forcing them to impale their arm in oder to continue their attack.

*disclaimer, there are other threads discussing the reality of what would happen (or has happened in historical duels) in this scenario, both in support of the hypothesis that taking a blade through your wrist would make you stop your attack and in support of the hypothesis that adrenaline and determination would allow you to continue your attack. I don't personally have a favorite theory, nor would I be especially interested in finding out.

** also, epee was not intended to even simulate lethal duels, but first-blood sorts of affairs. In videos of actual epee duels (posted on youtube by Schlager7 (thanks!)) you don't see many attacks at deep target, but rather wrist picking and attempts to draw blood on advance target, much like the majority of touches in modern electric epee. Also, except for the historical interest, actuall sharp epee duels make div3 WE look like a movie made entirely of chase scenes and explosions.

[Ron West]

One touch epee is what is used in the American Fencing League. Double touch equals a double defeat. This can be boring or eciting depending on the level of the fencing involved. But what it does is change the mindset of the fencer emphasizing "Touch without being touched"

Not neccessarily a better/worse game, just a different one.

[Dev]

What I don't get is this persistent need to "change the rules" of actual fencing to make it look like a Zorro movie. Boxing doesn't change its rules to look more like Rocky, MMA doesn't try to enforce the Bruce Lee aesthetic, and when football tried to look like Any Given Sunday, they got the XFL (and a hell of a lot of incomplete passes).

If your objective is to put point on target, Zorro movies are hardly the most efficient way to go about it.

[wbowman]

Originally Posted by migopod

... there are other threads discussing the reality of what would happen (or has happened in historical duels) in this scenario, both in support of the hypothesis that taking a blade through your wrist would make you stop your attack and in support of the hypothesis that adrenaline and determination would allow you to continue your attack.

An appropriate point to re-cycle an idea I've floated before on one of these threads:

Put tasers in the tips... Then, when you hit someone, he gets a point too if he can ignore the pain long enough to hit you back.

(How you would to that technically, I haven't a clue. But I bet we've got enough adventurous tech-savvy folks out there that someone could figure it out).

[Greybeard]

All I know is before I started fencing wheelchair I wanted to try that team epee thing. You know, where you have 4 fencers fencing each other?

[edew]

Originally Posted by Dev

[...]
If your objective is to put point on target, Zorro movies are hardly the most efficient way to go about it.

Yeah, 20 minutes of hack and slash and no one gets even a scratch. Great fighting, Don Diego.

[migopod]

Originally Posted by Greybeard

All I know is before I started fencing wheelchair I wanted to try that team epee thing. You know, where you have 4 fencers fencing each other?

Madness! Is there viedo of this somewhere? It sounds amazing.

[schlager7]

Originally Posted by wbowman

An appropriate point to re-cycle an idea I've floated before on one of these threads:

Put tasers in the tips... Then, when you hit someone, he gets a point too if he can ignore the pain long enough to hit you back.

(How you would to that technically, I haven't a clue. But I bet we've got enough adventurous tech-savvy folks out there that someone could figure it out).

Just fence with cattle prods.

[SJCFU#2]

Originally Posted by migopod

Madness! Is there viedo of this somewhere? It sounds amazing.

I don't know about video but there was an article about this in the Spring 2003 edition of American Fencer (unfortunately it appears that my OCR software went haywire when I tried scanning the article to save it electronically so I don't have a copy readily available).

IIRC the basic idea was four fencers pair off into two teams. Each fencer is connected to their own reel and each team's pair of reels is connected to one side of the scoring machine using a special "Y" floor cord. Either of the two fencer on one side could score a touch by hitting either of their two opponents (the scoring machine doesn't distinguish between teammates).

It was originally developed for epee, which probably simplified things considerably. The scoring machine simply registered the first touch to land (or a double if the someone on the other side also landed a touch in time), with no distinction as to who's touch landed on whom. The only potential problem might be if one fencer landed a touch on an opponent's bell guard that lasted long enough to prevent their teammate valid touch from registering. I suspect the odds of that happening are pretty low.

The same setup would probably work for saber - the machine wouldn't care who's saber touched which opponent's target area and there's even less risk of one fencer's blades contacting an opponent's in time to make the machine think that their teammate's touch was a whipover. However ROW could get rather interesting.

Foil would be a bit trickier - it would probably be necessary to connect both fencers on a side in series rather than parallel or else the machine probably wouldn't register any touches at all (at least not unless both fencers landed some form of touch at the same time). And there would still be that question about what to do with ROW.

[theLuz]

Originally Posted by noodle

it would make epee even more boring to watch.

not possible

[chase]

if you want to be realistic you better use a saber blade because points can drag and tear yet the point weapons must depress the point.

how about manning up and fencing saber then?

[migopod]

Originally Posted by SJCFU#2

I don't know about video but there was an article about this in the Spring 2003 edition of American Fencer (unfortunately it appears that my OCR software went haywire when I tried scanning the article to save it electronically so I don't have a copy readily available).

IIRC the basic idea was four fencers pair off into two teams. Each fencer is connected to their own reel and each team's pair of reels is connected to one side of the scoring machine using a special "Y" floor cord. Either of the two fencer on one side could score a touch by hitting either of their two opponents (the scoring machine doesn't distinguish between teammates).

It was originally developed for epee, which probably simplified things considerably. The scoring machine simply registered the first touch to land (or a double if the someone on the other side also landed a touch in time), with no distinction as to who's touch landed on whom. The only potential problem might be if one fencer landed a touch on an opponent's bell guard that lasted long enough to prevent their teammate valid touch from registering. I suspect the odds of that happening are pretty low.

The same setup would probably work for saber - the machine wouldn't care who's saber touched which opponent's target area and there's even less risk of one fencer's blades contacting an opponent's in time to make the machine think that their teammate's touch was a whipover. However ROW could get rather interesting.

Foil would be a bit trickier - it would probably be necessary to connect both fencers on a side in series rather than parallel or else the machine probably wouldn't register any touches at all (at least not unless both fencers landed some form of touch at the same time). And there would still be that question about what to do with ROW.

I do believe that I would actually pay to see this. I've always been impressed by the speed and skill of the wheelchair fencers I've seen, and I can only imagine that 2 on 2 wheelchair epee would be amazing.

[antonsilver]

Originally Posted by CMiner

You'd probably like the "Man With the Golden Epee" tournament.

As for the "4th weapon" hypothesis, I don't think your changes will achieve your goal. In fact, the opposite will happen.

Fencer A is down 3-4. His opponent attacks and hits. He makes no attempt to parry, lets himself be hit, and hits back. By the proposed rules only Fencer A gets the point, and the score is now 4-4.

It would make parrying necessary only for the person in the lead. If you have fewer points, why bother with a parry when you can just hit back and not only get a point but negate the opponent's valid hit on you.

But fencer B is the better fencer (leading by 1), and would not initiate an attack where he can't avoid being hit, and parries fencer A. now fencer B leads by 2-4.

As it is now fencer B attacks not worrying to be hit, and makes no attempt to parry, Fencer A also hits, but fencer B wins 4 - 5... Is that better?

[antonsilver]

Originally Posted by chase

if you want to be realistic you better use a saber blade because points can drag and tear yet the point weapons must depress the point.

how about manning up and fencing saber then?

Tried it, I somehow didn't like that the saber feels so flimsy. Seemed to me that people tends to hit with the side of the blade instead of the edge, in that way it whips around parries and scores at the arm, making it quite difficult to parry.

Liked the grip though, made me change to an epee with French grip.

I think that in my imagination the fourth weapon would be a stiffer (slightly heavier) saber, but shorter maybe 65 cm/29" (to make the velocity of the point lower/less hurtful). The blade should be insulated so only hits with the point/edge scores.

Matches should be fought in a ring without ropes, like taekwondo or other similar Olympic disciplines.
Colors of the lights/combatants should be changed to red/blue (less confusing for the spectator)

I know the stiffer blade would be more hurtful, but training could be done more like sparing, where you don’t put full force in the blows.
Of cause it would be a more daring thing to compete, but I think the same thing implies for boxing?

Maybe it would be necessary to make chest protectors obligatory...

The fourth weapon could be called cutlass.

[touchefriend]

The person that can invent and market a durable sabre blade that uses the cutting edges and point to score but not the "non-lethal" remainder will likely become rich