Fencer▶Play

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 — but a lunge from a gap of 3 that falls short because your rival retreated or stood parrying is countered, and the touch goes to your rival. 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 only partly rolling dice. In range it counts your recent in-range actions — the last six at first, a longer memory as your score climbs — and part of the time plays the counter to whichever you have used most; a tie is read as footwork, which it answers with a lunge. So the fastest way to lose is to find something that works and keep doing it: land a few lunges in a row and parries start arriving. The rest of the time it plays a balanced mix that no fixed choice beats, and that share grows with every touch you land.

Distance is the quieter half of the game. At a gap of 4 or more nobody can be touched, which makes footwork a free beat — a safe place to break a pattern the rival has already learned. A gap of 3 is not safe: whoever steps in can be caught by a lunge, a feint into an advancing opponent is punished, and a lunge that falls short against a retreat or a parry is countered. The rival also remembers what you do at that distance, so lunging every time the gap reaches 3 soon meets a parry or a step back. 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. From a gap of 4 or more, a lunge costs you the beat and closes the gap by one, handing your rival the range on their terms; from a gap of 3, a short lunge can cost you a touch outright. 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: 2.6 seconds at the start, 70 milliseconds less per touch down to 1.41 seconds at 17 touches, then 3 percent less per touch with no floor — under a second from 29 touches and about 0.7 seconds at 40. 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.