Quote Originally Posted by Mike_G View Post
That's not actually true, except with epee. Foil and sabre points are not awarded to the guy who hits first, but the guy who has established prioty, or right of way.

If I attack you, and you just counter- attack into my attack and we both get hit, I get a point and you don't regardless of who landed first.

(snip)
You'll have to forgive me, I'm pretty opinionated on this matter - to me, Right of Way is just another way in Sport fencing where you can win a match without any regard for your actual safety- you get the point on a double-hit

In HEMA tournaments, in most cases, if you get a double-hit it counts as a loss for both fighters regardless of who struck first or had 'right of way'. I have been at tournaments where nobody won in a given weapon category because both guys 'doubled out'. There is in some places an 'afterblow' rule which says if you get hit right after you hit the other guy you get no kill (because you failed to protect yourself). I'm kind of on the fence about it because it does have some similarity to 'right of way' rules.

But either way the emphasis in HEMA rules-sets, at least to date, is on NOT getting cut or stabbed, which I think personally is what is needed to really consider yourself a fencer. If you can't prevent yourself from getting cut, or stabbed, regardless of what your opponent is doing or whether he or she is playing by the rules, then what do you really know about fencing which is the art of self defense?


Personally I think Olympic competition and (especially) electronic scoring pretty much ruined sport "fencing". Classical fencing is another matter entirely, and there is no doubt that some of the skills you learn in sport 'fencing' help a great deal for something a little more hard core, whether it's HEMA or Kendo or Jianshu or Eskrima or whatever. It may just be a matter of taste, but regardless, I'm just stating what I've seen with my own eyes, the premise that a 'modern' "fencer" can defeat anyone with more antique weapons is ludicrous, and is not born out by evidence. Otherwise the increasingly substantial prizes at HEMA tournaments would be carried home by all those A rated epeeists as an afterthought. They can use our same equipment, just have to bleach it white ;)

The smallsword is a good weapon against say, a walking stick or a cudgel, but I'd hate to be in a fight with a smallsword against a guy with a rapier and dagger, or against a longsword, let alone something like a spear. If you look at judicial evidence, remittance letters and so on, (of which some very interesting stuff has been published recently) smallswords don't do all that great; two guys dueling with them often stab each other and both die, the blades frequently break, and in unevenly matched fights (one type of weapon against another) they often lose out to other weapons like staves or daggers, for whatever reason.

I was a rated sabre fencer and fenced all three weapons back in college. It's not a martial art, but it's not as pointless as a lot of other fighters think. A good sport fencer can pick up SCA rapier style quickly and beat the snot out of the generally slower and sloppier SCA rapier guys, because all he needs to do is learn to incorporate lateral movement and stronger parries. He already can put his point on target and is used to a much faster sport, so that extra speed and control helps
SCA, I'll take your word for, but I haven't yet heard of a sabreur, ranked or otherwise, walking into a significant HEMA saber tournament and winning or even placing, without doing some historically based training first. They are just not used to an 'open' fight, moving around other than back and forth in a strait line, or the striking power of a realistically weighted saber, unlimited target areas, grappling, and so on.

G