Fencer▶Play

A fencing duel of nerve. Every beat you and your rival choose in secret — lunge, parry, feint or footwork — and the piste decides who is touched.

How to play

Pick one of five actions before the beat gauge empties. Hesitate and you count as standing still, which is exactly what a lunge is waiting for.

A lunge only reaches when the gap is 2 or less, so advance and retreat set up the distance. Lunge beats footwork. Parry beats a lunge and answers with a riposte. Feint beats a parry. Footwork beats a feint. A real attack always beats a fake one.

Lunging or feinting out of distance whiffs, and the gap closes by one step. Retreat off the end of the piste and your rival is awarded the touch. Take five touches and the bout is over; your score is how many you landed.

Tips & strategy

Your rival is not rolling dice. It counts your last six actions and plays the counter to whichever you have used most, so the fastest way to lose is to find something that works and keep doing it. The moment you land two lunges in a row, expect a parry on the third.

Distance is the quieter half of the game. At a gap of 3 or more neither of you can be touched, which makes footwork a free beat — a safe place to break a pattern the rival has already learned. Advancing into range is a commitment: from a gap of 2 the very next beat can end in a touch either way, so step in when you have a read, not out of impatience.

Whiffing is worse than it looks. A lunge out of distance costs you the beat and closes the gap by one, handing your rival the range on their terms. Feints have the same reach, so a feint at long distance is not a free bluff — it is a step you did not choose. Use feints when you are already in measure and you expect a parry.

The beat gauge tightens as your score climbs, and past ten touches you have barely a second to read the piste and commit. Late in a bout, pre-decide two candidate actions while the previous result is still on screen, then pick between them from the distance shown. Deciding from a blank mind after the gauge starts is how good bouts end on a timeout — and a timeout counts as standing still, which loses to a lunge outright.