Epee Lines/Parries

[Tsuyoginos]

What are the epee lines and parries, or where can I find a diagram online of them? (Anatomically correct descriptions would confuse me and make we want to try them out with would annoy my roommates). I just joined a small club at my college, and our coach never really taught us. I've looked around and I've only been able to find foil lines and parries.

This is how we learned to parry:

High front attack (weapon arm): Counterclockwise circle
Low front attack (front leg): Clockwise circle
High deep attack (back arm): Block with bell guard, tip facing opponent (Then riposte by sliding down the line of the blade.
Low deep attack (back leg): sweep/beat the opponent's blade away.


Thanks!

[Purple Fencer]

What are the epee lines and parries, or where can I find a diagram online of them? (Anatomically correct descriptions would confuse me and make we want to try them out with would annoy my roommates). I just joined a small club at my college, and our coach never really taught us. I've looked around and I've only been able to find foil lines and parries.

This is how we learned to parry:

High front attack (weapon arm): Counterclockwise circle
Low front attack (front leg): Clockwise circle
High deep attack (back arm): Block with bell guard, tip facing opponent (Then riposte by sliding down the line of the blade.
Low deep attack (back leg): sweep/beat the opponent's blade away.


Thanks!

The lines are the same for foil and epee....it's in sabre where you have some differances;.

[Tsuyoginos]

Oh really? Thanks a lot, I'll get to studying! I was thinking they'd be different because Epee target area included the legs.

Thanks again!

[jjefferies]

High front attack (weapon arm): Counterclockwise circle
Low front attack (front leg): Clockwise circle
Thanks!

Your description is rather crude but I think you have the two above reversed with regard to the motion (based on what I deduce of your description). I believe what you are trying to describe is 6, covers outside high line, hand supinated with clockwise motion, and 8, covers outside low line hand supinated with counter clockwise motion.

I have been taught and believe that the parry's/binds of most use to an epeeist are
6, 4, & 8. And for the OP's original question 4 covers the inside high line with the tip above the hand and the hand is toward supination. The motion is counter clockwise. I would suggest that for a basic background study you obtain one of the better books on classical epee or foil for that matter as the terminology is the same I believe. Perhaps Imre Vass's book "Epee Fencing: A Complete System". But don't try to learn from such a tome. There has been a significant change from Vass's day to the present in actual practices. Get a coach or knowledgeable partners. But the basics especially terminolgy are the basics and his book remains a classic.

It's interesting that f.net's own glossary's description is rather poor on all these points.
http://www.fencing.net/glossary.php

Could it be that posters are afraid to put put up a decent description of the basics for fear of criticism?

[Mergs]

Parries, are parries, are parries. It's where the ripostes go that are the difference!

[Peter de Blanc]

Your description is rather crude but I think you have the two above reversed with regard to the motion (based on what I deduce of your description). I believe what you are trying to describe is 6, covers outside high line, hand supinated with clockwise motion, and 8, covers outside low line hand supinated with counter clockwise motion.

Perhaps Tsuyoginos is left-handed.

[telkanuru]

I am confused, as the word "epee" is being associated with the word "parry".

[Fencergrl]

Must be some fancy French word for having a conversation.

[migopod]

Must be some fancy French word for having a conversation.

I think it's French for that weird thing people do with sabres and foils instead of counterattacking, but I'm away from my OED at the moment and can't verify the etymology.

[Purple Fencer]

Perhaps Tsuyoginos is left-handed.

Wouldn't matter...the lines are in relation to the weapon arm (more correctly, the intersection of a vertical and horizontal line, crossing at the blade). A 6 line is the high outside relative to that position. If I stand next to a lefty and we both come en garde, we're both in 6.

[Goldgar]

Wouldn't matter...the lines are in relation to the weapon arm (more correctly, the intersection of a vertical and horizontal line, crossing at the blade). A 6 line is the high outside relative to that position. If I stand next to a lefty and we both come en garde, we're both in 6.

Yes, but if a righty does a counter-6, the blade moves (roughly) clockwise, while if a lefty does a counter-6, the blade moves counter-clockwise. Hence Peter de Blanc's conclusion, since Tsuyoginos described what sounded like it was probably a counter-6 parry as moving counter-clockwise.

[Fechter1]

The blade lines/positions for foil and epee: (inside = chest side, outside = back side)

1st - hand above point, palm down, inside line
2nd - hand above point, palm down, outside line
3rd - hand below point, palm down, outside line
4th - hand below point, palm up, inside line
5th - hand below point, palm down, inside line
6th - hand below point, palm up, outdise line
7th - hand above point, palm up, inside line
8th - hand above point, palm up, outside line

At least that's my interpretation of the blade lines.

Parries are then basically a closure of said line, whether lateral (direct movement to line) or circular (self-explanatory).

[Stormbringer]

What are the epee lines and parries, or where can I find a diagram online of them? (Anatomically correct descriptions would confuse me and make we want to try them out with would annoy my roommates). I just joined a small club at my college, and our coach never really taught us. I've looked around and I've only been able to find foil lines and parries.

This is how we learned to parry:

High front attack (weapon arm): Counterclockwise circle
Low front attack (front leg): Clockwise circle
High deep attack (back arm): Block with bell guard, tip facing opponent (Then riposte by sliding down the line of the blade.
Low deep attack (back leg): sweep/beat the opponent's blade away.


Thanks!

As stated previously, both of the foining (thrusting) weapons use an identical parry/line system.

Think of the lines as the quadrants of a Cartesian coordinate plane (the x-axis/y-axis system used to, among other things, create graphs of functions), with the origin (the point at which the two axes intersect) located at the point where the tang of the blade passes through the guard.

You are looking into the plane, as though it is on a sheet of paper in front of you. The X-axis (horizontal line passing through the origin) separates the high lines (above the origin) from the low lines (below the origin), while the Y-axis (vertical line passing through the origin) separates the inside lines (the side to which the front of your torso is pointed while in the on-guard position) from the outside lines (the side to which your back is pointed while in the on-guard position).
This, from the image linked above, for a right-handed fencer:
Quadrant I -> "high-outside line"
Quadrant II -> "high-inside line"
Quadrant III -> "low-inside line"
Quadrant IV -> "low-outside line"
An image labeling the lines can be seen here.
Note that for a left-handed fencer, inside and outside are mirrored. That is:
Quadrant I -> "high-inside line"
Quadrant II -> "high-outside line"
Quadrant III -> "low-outside line"
Quadrant IV -> "low-inside line"

The four primary parries are "quarte"/4 (protects the high-inside line), "sixte"/6 (protects the high-outside line), "septime"/7 (protects the low-inside line), and "octave"/8 (protects the low-outside line).
An image of the primary parries (for a right-handed fencer) can be seen here.
Here is an image showing the transitions (lateral and vertical) between each of the primary parry positions, as well as the two most common circular parries ("circle-6" and "circle-4", named for the position one is in when one finishes the circle)

These primary parries are also sometimes called the "supinated parries", because they were typically done while the hand holding the weapon is in a supinated (palm-upward, thumb pointed toward the side) position, as opposed to a pronated (palm-down, thumb pointed toward the side) position (as was done with the "secondary parries" - "prime"/1, "seconde"/2, "tierce"/3, and "quinte"/5).
Here is a chart showing all eight parry positions, and the lines that they protect; note that each line has two parries, a primary/supinated parry and a secondary/pronated parry.

I hope this helps!

[jjefferies]

Perhaps Tsuyoginos is left-handed.

Could be that he was hanging from the ceiling and wanted to train that way. Most lefties are realistic enough regarding the world's biases to note when they are asking re the left hand. Note the chart someone had a link to shows re the right hand. Actually a friend of mine, a natural lefty, tells me that when he first started training as a youngster he was forced to use the right. When he finally got to a coach who appreciated the tactical advantages of being a leftie it was to late for him to retrain to use the left. So today he fences as a rightie despite being a lefty.

Anyway the natural assumption sometimes with reinforcement is righie.