Wooden sword play is a lot of fun. If you have never done it before, you can't possibly imagine. It combines aggression, strategy, technique, and all-out brutality into one seamless whole. In addition, it requires restraint, as it is never a good idea to whack your opponent too hard. If you do, he is likely to whack back, and then everyone is going to go home bruised and banged up.

Most of the martial arts swords use in training nowadays are wooden swords. Although their assembly is much more refined than the wooden toy swords of my youth, they are surprisingly similar. Even the most sophisticated martial arts masters usually start with a wooden sword when they are kids.