Epee vs. Foil Fencing

Video Transcript

"I want to talk about some of the major differences between epee and foil. And the first difference and the most obvious one probably, is the target area. If you remember, in foil your target area is really pretty limited. It's just your torso and your back. Well, in epee, there's no holds barred. Your target area is anything. Anything goes. That means I can hit you in the head, I can hit you in the little toe, and that's a touch, and the finger. That obviously makes for a very different kind of game. So, epee dueling, or epee fencing, is modeled after first blood duel kind of scenario, in which the first one to make any kind of hit would be valid. So you can see how that sort of descended through the ages, and made this sport what it is. If you hit your opponent in the duel in the foot, that's first blood, you win. You don't have to harm them, to impale them, to make it impossible for them to retaliate, as you might have to in a more serious-minded duel or rapier fight, which is, of course, what the foil is a little more modeled after. The second big difference in epee, is the absence of right of way, so all those complicated rules about remembering to parry before attacking, about needing to establish your right of way, of even having your point on line, go away. Epee is about hitting your opponent before your opponent hits you, which in some ways is very simple, but when you put it in action, there's still strategy, so you have to remember that it's a different game. In some ways it has fewer rules, but it's not a simpler game. You do tend to see epees sizing each other up, not wanting too close to their opponent because they don't want their own risk in target area, and then darting it. Also, epee fighters, once they do make an attack--because they don't have to parry again before they make a second attack or reestablish right of way--they might make a second, which is what's called a remise, and continue fighting, even get really close, which is referred to as infighting. They might end up coming corps-a-corps, which means body-to-body. So, the bout ends up working very differently just because of those two differences in rules. The difference in target area, which means I can hit my opponent anywhere, possibly from much further away than I could with foil, and also the difference in rules. The absence of right of way makes epee fencing very different from foil fencing."