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I know nothing about fencing, and interpreting the jargon in this thread involves some guesswork for me, but I was kind of thinking I might like epee, as you say. I don't even know what the idea of "right of way" is, but it just sounds like something restrictive that I wouldn't like. I'd rather take right of way from someone else by force than give it to them, when it comes to what that term sounds like it might mean, in my head anyway. What it really means, I don't know.

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someone mentioned above that foils weren't carried into war. well foils weren't real weapons. they were specifically practice versions of an epee. (note the insufficiency of the hand guard on a foil.) (I don't mean that in any kind of derogatary way.) right of way comes from foil (practice) fencing. the theory is that if you were coming at me with a real point, I would defend myself from possible death before I would consider trying to hit you. so in foil if you start an attack, and I see that I can hit you first but in such a way that I still let you hit me (second), I would not get credit for my hit. because in theory, if it were real, I should never make a suicide attack that ends up with both of us dead. (remember, this is supposed to be training for dueling.)

the problem with this rule is that it can be abused. no surprise there. with you knowing what I just told you, now when you attack you, will move forward with your body but withhold your weapon, keep it back. you know you can't be coutnerattacked. so you can wait and force me to commit myself on defense first. this is also unrealistic. you would never attack with your weapon held back in real life, inviting a counterattack that you intend to ignore.

so in foil and sabre you get unrealistic attacks with the weapon held back. in epee you get unrealistic attacks where the guy with the lead in the bout is willing to play for a double (simultaneous) touch. both are unrealistic. kind of not surprising since they don't use real weapons. one way to pick your weapon is if one version of unrealism offends you more than the other.

I'd say sabre abuses the right of way rule (or lack thereof) the least--with regard to what I just explained--because the real effect of a counterattack in the bout tended to most closely match what the rules called it. what I mean is that counterattacks that were clearly crappy tended to be the ones that lost points on right of way. and awesome counterattacks would tend to stop the opponent in his tracks, even though they didn't have right of way. so you could start second but be so much faster that it was clear that the point was yours--and either the other guy just stopped, or hit you so much later that you know in real life he would have fallen over already and the judge gives you point for counterattack in time. (we had a national level sabre guy on our D3 team. he did awesome counterattacks.) but then as I said in an above post, sabre later started to abuse the right of way rule more than foil, kind of just because they wanted to fence with priority. which is another wrinkle I won't get into.

but having accused sabre of abuse twice, I shouldn't underplay foil right of way abuse. in the mid 90s at least, it got to the point that in foil they'd "attack" with their blade virtually pointing backwards over their left shoulder. eventually the guy retreating would flinch under the pressure and put a parry out there, and then the "attacker" would literally whip his blade--like a fishing rod, super-flexible fishing rod--so it flexed, around the parry (or around the, losing, counterattack) and his point flicked on target. and this was at the Olympic level. not just in screwing-around collegiate fencing.

side note. sabre only went electric (in the US) during my senior year. that changed a lot.