Coffee & HEMA: Afterblow vs Right of Way

The Coffee & HEMA series examines a range of different topics in Historical European Martial Arts. I try to make a point about an important area in the time it takes for my coffee to brew in the morning.
Continuing the discussion of tournament tournament rules, in this video I talk about Right of Way vs Afterblow as two common competing tournament rules, that both solve similar (but subtly different) problems. I conclude that they're both crap, but we need them.
All opinions are my own, and are based upon my several years of experience in running clubs, teaching classes and organising tournaments.
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[@GaryHoward87]

Thanks Jamie, I'm going to ask Jon if we can score a few fights with right of way at class this week. I've never tried it.

[@petritzky]

Then we meet at Tyrnhaw this year? ;)

[@PhilippoVadi]

Let's hope so! I have to do a tournament 3 weekends in a row to do it so it's not 100% set in stone but I want to make it happen

[@jasonbaldwin2171]

Doubles are such garbage. In actual duels the consequences are massive: death or injury. In HEMA there are functionally no consequences due to a wide spread acceptance that they are "unavoidable". The problem is reinforced by crap rules not wanting to impose significant enough consequences for enough for doubling. Since the consequence of garbage doubly fencing (which I am also guilty of on occasion) are minor compared to the relative benefits (ie higher potential for scoring risky/lucky hits on equal or superior opponents), doubling /after blows are being actively encourage by most rule sets. I don't have a perfect solution, but I think some combo of massive points penalties or possibly including ejection from the tourney is the way to go. With digital scoring, progressively harsh scoring penalties as the number of doubles increases has been used in some local tourneys to some positive effect.