The attack
The attack is the heart of fencing. Without the ever-present threat of a stab to the belly, defense is impossible. A good defense is made up of a combination of parries, displacements and counter-attacks intended not only to score a touch, but to keep your opponent off guard and wary of carelessness with their own defense.
The attack, in its simplest form, is the thrust. Straighten your arm and try to poke the other guy in the guts (or head, toe, ETC. depending on the weapon.) This is more than just glib statement of the obvious. As with all other things in fencing, the rules of right of way have demanded a strict definition of an attack. Although individual directors are entitled to interpret the rules with some flexibility, the definition of an attack requires the fencer's arm to be straight, the point directed towards the opponent in a threatening manner and forward motion being pursued toward the target area.
This definition is vital to the determination of right of way, as a poorly executed attack can be defended with a counter (attack) -in-time, and thus cost the attacker the point. A counter-in-time, as we recall, is a countering thrust by the defender which lands before the attacking thrust (by a significant amount of time as determined by the director) or is begun during a time period when the attacking fencer has failed to "maintain" the attack according to the rules of right of way by bending the arm, coming too far off line or a myriad of other mistakes.
Just as this definition is relatively simple, so is the attack. The simple thrust is inevitably the final motion (in NEARLY all cases) which gets the point to land. The difficulty comes from the myriad of attack variations, which allow this thrust to make it past the defending sword and to the target before the target moves, or the defender attacks through. The primary and simplest factor here is speed.
Speed is an absolute necessity in fencing. Although, as many fencers age, they are able to replace lost speed advantage with knowledge and skill (thus the saying "Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill every time", a slow fencer struggles at best. Fortunately, or unfortunately, you will find that in competition matches, the intricate and ornate maneuvers we see in film are almost non-existent. They are instead replaced with minute, extremely fast and effective thrusts and parries. Fencing has lost some of its popularity in the sports due to this fact as viewers, inexperienced with fencing, have difficulty following the action and don't know what has just happened.
