Bat
A bat is a swung weapon with a cylindrical striking surface. It usually is less tip-heavy, has more striking surface, and has more uniform diameter than most clubs. Like many Belegarth weapons, a bat often has a stabbing tip and normally doesn't feature a guard built into it.
Sword Comparison
Swords, also called flats as to rhyme with bats, have a two-dimensional striking surface. While there are other differences between them and bats, such as swords being built with guards more often than bats are, this is the most inherent and important difference.
- Shots that would hit with the flat, non-striking side of a sword count as legal hits with omni-directional weapons such as bats.
- The stabbing tips of bats have more area and support than those of swords, so they tend to last longer.
- Swords can be thinner than bats, allowing them to more readily enable exploitation of small gaps in the opponent's defense.
- Sword blades can weigh less than bat striking surfaces due to their thinness. With current foamsmithing tech and minimum weight rules, this is more important in larger weapons such as reds.
- Swords can use less foam in their construction than bats, since they don't need to be strike-legal in all directions. To spare materials, build a blade rather than a bat.
- Swords fit the medieval aesthetic better than bats do. The flat of the blade can also be detailed and decorated with embroidery and Plasti Dip.
Speed Bat
A speed bat is a Class 1 Weapon at least two feet in length (typically between 2½ and 3 feet) and weighing slightly over the minimum weight. With ultralight tech introduced these bats push the lower limits of Belegarth and Dagorhir with their precise minimum weight and careful balance. These two features enable extremely fast combat.
Speed bats have been rising in the competitive meta of the US West Coast. While speed bats neither have much sword-blocking power nor keep their momentum well, punch blocks with protective gloves have become more popular than blade blocks and speed bats can feint and change shots very easily. As they cannot as easily brute-force through an opponent's defense, speed bat fighters must rely on skill to circumvent it.