Woody Cavenaugh

Now that we have a passing understanding of the concept of right-of-way, lets put it in the context of foil. Foil was modeled after the court sword of ages past. It is practice for killing duels. The method of attack is point only, the valid target area is the torso of the body, crotch to neck, and shoulder to shoulder, front and back. Fencers dressed for foil will wear all of the usual protective equipment plus a metallic vest. The vest is wired into the circuit by the body cord.

One of the body cord's wires has an alligator clip which you will see often clipped at the bottom of the metallic vest (called a lamé), either in the back, or in the front under the weapon arm. One would think that you would want something like that in the back out of the way, however, fencers are historically really good cheaters. When there was no ruling on where the clip would be, most fencers put it the back out of the way. Clever fencers would during the lunge, use their off weapon hand (the one not in a glove) to unclip themselves, for the attack, then reclip themselves on the recovery. The reason was, that any hit the opponent made would appear off target.

Rule makers always trying to keep up with cheaters created the rule that the clip should be in the front, under the weapon arm. They will allow it in the back also so long as it is forward of the center line of the lame. I'll talk more about cheating in another chapter.

Foil, like epee is a point weapon. Foil, like Saber is a right-of-way weapon. Because of this, traditional schools start all students in foil first. Historically, everyone started with foil. Boys and men were split between the three weapons based on their size, and speed. Women stayed with foil because the other weapons were too heavy, or brutal for their frail feminine frames. (Ha!) Today male or female can fence anything they want. If a coach steers them in one direction or the other it will be for two reason. First because the coach specializes in one weapon (when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail). Second the coach has figured out how the student thinks and steers them toward the weapon that is more fitting to their personality.

A foil fencer is balanced and tactically minded. They are chess players, even if they don't play chess. A good foil fencer is thinking three steps ahead of their opponent as well as their own actions. When they open with the attack, they are (or should be) thinking about their own counter-riposte.

As foil is a point weapon, attacks lead with the point, typically strait in. Even when they are disengaging, cutting over, or coming back on target, the point leads. One of the arguable exceptions to this is the flick attack. The flick attack changes things but only to a degree. In a normal attack the point leads the weapon in a relatively strait and forward line. In the flick, the point travels in an arch more like a whip than an arrow. However, at the point of impact, the point is still strait on target, even if its path was arcing to get there. Of course, if it is done wrong, the person getting hit by it doesn't get a point against them, they get a bruise. The flick is a more advanced attack that fails more often than it succeeds, and the rule makers are striving find ways to limit its use for the sake of the game. If you want to attack with an arc, you would have fenced saber to begin with.

Foil requires 500 grams of pressure to score a touch on valid target. Valid target is the shiny part. A hit anywhere else scores an off target hit, which is signified by a white light on the scoring box. A white light stops the action, but doesn't give the fencer a touch. Only foil offers the "off target hit". The referee calls right-of-way just like they always did, if fencer"A" has right-of-way and hits off target, the action stops there, no touch is awarded and the fencers begin again from wherever they were halted. The referee will signify "center is here", the fencers line up extension distance from that line wherever it might be.