Asian Swordsmanship Fencing Theory Part 2 - Doubles and Fencing Decisions

[@russmitchellmovement]

Agreed. And I think that's fundamentally where the (OT) right-of-way concept comes from: rewarding the decision to stay alive. It has the downside of not addressing "was it safe to attack" as well, but "once that threat is there, did you choose to address or to ignore it?" is evergreen east and west.

[@NathanaelTheAussie]

First! Loving the series mate, keep it up and get the word out there 🙌

[@thescholar-general5975]

Great vid! I absolutely agree that we should try to avoid getting into the weeds as to whether or not a particular strike is damaging. That just opens the door to lots of interpretation based on subjectivity. However, I do wonder about your thoughts on edge alignment and draw cuts. Sometimes it can be hard to tell if a quick flicking attack was done with proper structure, and other times the sword may brush against someone’s body after a blow has been landed, but this is usually ignored in many rulesets.

[@JustaBug]

Yeah, thats a great point. I think in those cases I like to still judge based on fencer's decisions. Did those weird flicking actions look like they were intended as proper well structured attacks or did their sword happen to flop and touch the opponent? If its the latter, whatever people want to theorise might have happened if the swords were sharp, I kind of don't want to reward the fencer for something they didn't really have any intention to do. For ones where the other person's sword brushes against someone's body as an afterblow, I don;t really know what to say. It depends on the priorities of the people making the ruleset. In my club we just judge on structure and afterblow or not is ignored. This is to help simplify things as well as to reward fencing decisions on all sides. It has worked out ok in my club, but honestly any ruleset played by fencers of good intentions can work well. So I suppose time will tell as to if ignoring afterblows and judging purely on winning structure is a problem.

[@jackarrows1436]

😉👍

[@BernasLL]

(following from another video) I agree with imediate following tempo afterblows, for already moving attacks. You would come across senseless people in the wild, Dunning-Kruger was a thing back then, and masters often talked about dealing with "charging bulls" and such careless foes. Rules can make them more common, but they were a thing, and one should learn how to deal with them. Of course, no rule set is ideal. There's one particular top rated fencer who practically doesn't parry, doubles his way into close wins if need be. In real life, you wouldn't find such skilled senseless people. They'd be dead before reaching that level of expertise, or just too injured. So, maybe a tournament should limit this somehow, but not forbid it. Because such tactics often arose in stressful situations, maybe this should be limited in such a way where the player had to use suicidal tactics sparringly. You get a fixed number of doubles you can "use", deducted from both oponents. After using up yours, anyone doubling you gets the point, losing one "double token" regardless, and not you. If neither have doubles to spare, then points start getting deducted from their tournament score, to the point where in a final, both fencers can end up losing enough points that they have to fight the 3rd and 4th not rank down. And a new finals match be between whoever has most "points" begins, potentitally ad infinitum xD I don't know, crazy thoughts. Need to think further on this. I haven't found it an issue in my limited number of tournament participations.

[@JustaBug]

@@BernasLL it's an interesting idea for a fixed number of doubles. But I suppose the issue comes of people expect to be finalists and get dropped down by that ruleset, they might be fairly unhappy. The way I run my club tournaments is a round robin tournament where you don't get points if you're at fault in a double. Points go to whoever wins structure first. In a simultaneous double no one gets points. But also there are only 10 passes per fight and so the max number of points you can get per round is fixed and any doubles or losses cap the maximum points you can get. It seems to encourage more careful fencing but I've only tried it on small scale so far