Form II: Makashi

"It is obvious this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force, but by our skills with a lightsaber."

- Count Dooku to Yoda



Form II: Makashi, the Way of the Ysalamiri, or the Contention Form, was the second of the seven classic forms of lightsaber combat. Makashi users were elegant, precise, calm, confident, even arrogant. Form II users were supremely confident in their chances for victory, and often looked relaxed when they were fighting, or even appeared to be dancing.

After Form I's proliferation as a lightsaber combat technique, Form II came about as a means of lightsaber-to-lightsaber combat. It was described as being very elegant, powerful, and requiring extreme precision, allowing the user to attack and defend with minimal effort, often wielding the blade one-handed for greater range of movement and fluidity. The form relied on parries, thrusts, and small, precise cuts - as opposed to the blocking and slashing of the other forms. It required very fluid movements of both the blade and the body. Form II countered Sun Djem, the goal of early Shii-Cho masters, by being well trained in prevention of disarming and weapon destruction.

The opening stance for Makashi is a single-handed low guard, with the blade angled downward at the practitioner's side. The formal salute that Dooku offered Yoda on Geonosis was a "Makashi salute", while a Makashi flourish consisted of drawing a rapid X in the air with the blade.

Feints would also be commonly used to confuse or set-up their opponents for a trap. Precise footwork and movements were required for maintaining proper distance from the opponent during defense and/or when moving in for an attack. The blade manipulation required for this form was very refined and required intense focus. Timing, accuracy, and skill, rather than strength, were relied on to defeat one's opponent, and with a skilled practitioner, the results were extremely potent.

The footwork of Makashi practitioners followed a single line, front and back, shifting the feet to keep in perfect balance as the practitioner attack and retreat. Makashi was a style which based on balance, on the back-and-forth charges, thrusts and sudden retreats. Elegance, gallantry, enchantment, finesse, artfulness, and economy were the core of Makashi. Makashi duelists trained themselves to avoid enslavement to form, as such enslavement opened the practitioner to be defeated by unpredictability and the unforeseen.

When ranged weapons such as blasters came into play or more than one opponent was present, however, the advantages of this form became somewhat obsolete. During the time of the Clone Wars and many centuries preceding it, the Jedi Order seldom practiced this technique. There was, if at all, so little lightsaber-to-lightsaber and melee combat involved in a Jedi's life that many in the Order did not bother to teach and/or learn it as it was thought impractical. During this era, Soresu was developed to answer the threat of blasters, while Niman and Ataru became the more popular fighting forms being taught and learned. Makashi, however, was very common during the younger years of the Order, before the advent of blasters, when melee weapons were abundant. To most modern Jedi, Makashi did not seem to have much use; however, to a Sith or a Dark Jedi, learning and mastering Makashi would have been a goal.

The drawback of Makashi was a relatively lower level of defense against blaster bolts. When fighting a physically strong opponent, a Makashi user also needed be careful not to try and match them power for power. As mentioned before, Makashi users relied on timing and precision in both movement and blade manipulation, often wielding the blade one-handed, waiting for the momentum of the opponent to play out for an easy victory. Thus, they were not able to generate as much kinetic power as the two-handed slashes as in Djem So.

As a result, an Ataru master would attempt to disrupt the balance of a Makashi duelist by the Force-assisted acrobatics of Form IV, striking from every direction to disturb the balance and footwork of a Form II practitioner; while a Djem So practitioner would attempt to overwhelm the Makashi defense with pure strength and frontal, direct attacks. To answer such threats, Makashi duelists would call on the Force to assist their body movements when facing Form IV masters, or use the Force to strengthen their defense against Form V users.

When facing multiple enemies, a single Makashi duelist would isolate the enemy from each other, so that the Makashi duelist would fight each of them in turn rather than all of them at the same time. Makashi masters would even attempt to force the enemies to get in each other's way.

The lightsaber handle of many Makashi users was curved, allowing for better manipulation of the blade during parries and thrusts. This was common during the early years of the Republic, when many of the Jedi used the Makashi form. In the years before the Great Jedi Purge, the curved lightsaber handle fell out of use as interest in Makashi waned.

Masters

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Canon information courtesy of Wookieepedia. Please visit the provided link for the canonical Makashi.