quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: Anyone see the Mythbusters where they tried to cut off the barrel of a machine gun with a samurai sword? As I recall, the sword came out much worse, even when the gun barrel was heated to make it softer.
Your recollection is correct, on all points.
And his assessment of your recollection is correct on all points.
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quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: Anyone see the Mythbusters where they tried to cut off the barrel of a machine gun with a samurai sword? As I recall, the sword came out much worse, even when the gun barrel was heated to make it softer.
I wanna see the mythbusters where they find out if any of those famous 5 body blades in the museums can really cut through 5 bodies.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: Anyone see the Mythbusters where they tried to cut off the barrel of a machine gun with a samurai sword? As I recall, the sword came out much worse, even when the gun barrel was heated to make it softer.
Your recollection is correct, on all points.
And his assessment of your recollection is correct on all points.
We can't just say "Hey, I saw that episode too! It was cool!"
We have to pretend we're adding something valuable to the conversation. Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:We have to pretend we're adding something valuable to the conversation.
Why would we participate in any online discussion if we weren't under the dilution we had something valuable to add to the conversation?
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: I saw a show, recently, where they compared the effects, both on the sword and on the target, between a modern forged sword of high grade carbon steel and a katana.
It was great.
What happened?
Edited to include the quote, since this tops a new page.
The katana won, although there were a few things the modern sword did as well as it. The modern one wasn't as sharp, but it held up far better than they thought it would.
They measured how well it cut though dummies, and armor, and then they fired a bullet at the modern one.
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posted
I'd like to see this contest as part of an inclusion into my incredibly over-studied judgment of swarrrds
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posted
I suppose that's possible, but it would be hard to test, given that there is only one Rivka particle (which if divided would cease to have the properties of the whole). We would need a larger quantity of Rivka particles in order to see if they would dissolve.
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quote:Anyone see the Mythbusters where they tried to cut off the barrel of a machine gun with a samurai sword? As I recall, the sword came out much worse, even when the gun barrel was heated to make it softer.
OMG this is so untrue! Samurai swords totally cut thru anything! Japan ROXXORS!
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posted
Okay, I'll admit I'm just messing with you guys with this particular bump-up to the front page. Sigh... I can resist everything except temptation.
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posted
This thread isn't about romney. It's about knights, samurai, and steven's magic eastern fighting.
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posted
I forget what was decided, but is it safe to assume that the general conclusion was that knights > samurai, real swords > katanas, and Steven's eastern fighting wasn't as magical as he thought?
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Hey, that was way less excruciatingly awkward than I expected!
Just a little lilt to his voice. I'm actually rather impressed. I see way more over-the-top flamboyant caricatures on TV all the time.
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To average out the "Knight" — in a category which was wildly diverse and could have run the gamut from a Hospitalier in 1090 to the Baths in the 1700's — you probably end up with a spanish or hungarian knight which has all the advantages and would win the great majority of fights if you modeled a thousand 1 on 1 fights.
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posted
meh Any decent bowman or halbeard/pikeman could take knights out with ease. For that matter, in mano-a-mano, so could any decent fencer or knife fighter (using a lengthened&stengthened ice-pick equivalent).
posted
I'm... not sure what you're basing that latter assertion on.
The erroneous assumption that knights lacked any significant mobility and could be toppled and then incapacitated with ease?
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posted
Anglophilia ain't got nothing to do with it. If I'd had any opportunity to be partial towards one or the other, I'd have chosen the samurai, because his crap just looks better.
UNFORTUNATELY.
One: Average Knight would be larger and more physically robust versus Average Samurai. Taller, too. Sorry, this is unambiguously a benefit in terms of martial combat. The supposed magical benefits of eastern martial combatants have, so far, been unable to match the benefit of just being physically larger and having larger reach. This becomes particularly important when we factor in how readily a melee scrap between two people will frequently end up resolved by grappling, usually on the ground. And anyone who romanticizes the fighting form of either knight or samurai to the extent that they believe that grappling and knockdowns won't end up being a significant occurring event in these modeled fights has an image of fights which has long ago become informed primarily by what choreographed cinema interpretations of fights are, as opposed to what we actually know about martial combat. Anyone who thinks the Average Samurai is going to compensate or surpass the physical difference using ~mystic eastern fighting arts~ that the clumsy overconfident oaf knight cannot match ... is steven.
Two: Average Knight will be wearing unambiguously better armor. Japanese armor is ingenious. It's very well crafted. It has an artistic flair. It's very pretty. I like it. We have two full and real sets of the stuff. It was outclassed by western armors thousands of years before it even existed. Japanese lamellar is a very creative way to compensate for the region's extremely lacking materials and limited variety of construction methods, but you could go back as far as Mycenaean linothorax and find better armor. Average Knight is probably wearing something around 45 pounds of armor (ten pounds lighter than Average Samurai's armor, by the way) which is going to provide superior protective coverage, mainly through the benefit of good metalworking methods and un-terrible steel. Average Knight's armor is most likely not going to be one of those gothic style hunks of full plate, by the by. It's most likely to be a varied type of composite mail construction.
Three: Average Knight will be using an unambiguously better weapon. Katanas are ingenious. They're very well crafted. They have an artistic flair. They're very pretty. We own at least 12 of them, and an impressive library of exceptionally artistic tsubas. They're shitty weapons. The curve is a liability. The weight is a liability. Folded steel blades are strictly inferior to the frankish blades that Average Knight is using. Folding steel does not magically make it better than unfolded steel. Japanese folding is a method to compensate for the terrible steel and ugly coke that Japan had. The whole japanese swordsmithing process is one I have plenty of respect for, because it was their way of making lemons out of lemonade, and managing to eke a pretty good strip of sturdy-enough steel out of disastrously irregular, wonkily carbonated, utterly crap metal. But the end product is not better because of majick metalsmithing. It is a compensation. Katanas are ungainly, blade-heavy, and curved in a way which draws the user towards reliance on ridiculous, equally compensatory forms and moves like draw cuts. Average Knight is using a sword which is more efficiently balanced, more efficiently crafted (if even simply because it's made out of non-terrible steel to begin with), and straight. A straight sword is a better sword. Sadly, but truthfully. It is not a matter of differing aesthetic or style. It's just better.
Four: Average Knight's swordfighting and combat practices are, as far as we can guess, better than samurai fighting styles. This at least grants ambiguity, but it's still not looking good for the Japanese. Certainly, Knight sword arts (or what of them has survived) were modeled in a crucible of much more competition versus a much wider variety of fighting styles, and grew (or got skewered, usually by turks hurrr) in this environment. Samurai swordfighting styles languished in a much more insular environment and ended up largely just designed around the one thing it was most often tested against: fighting other japanese combatants. It's too bad that so many of their fighting manuals and training methods have been lost to time, but there was no two ways around it — they'd stopped being really relevant as combatants, generations before steamships pried into Japanese harbors and discovered a culture that had dutifully preserved an archaic swordfighting style.
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posted
Except your silly insistence that Japanese arms and armor look better. Bah! The devil you say! The gritty practicality of Western arms and armor has an aesthetic appeal all its own!
Hm, trouble in paradise already.
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posted
"I'm... not sure what you're basing that latter assertion on. The erroneous assumption that knights lacked any significant mobility and could be toppled and then incapacitated with ease?
Nope, speed&maneuverabiliy combined with the fact that thin non-edged weapons with points could puncture armor quite readily. ie The Three Musketeers could defeat any three armored knights without resorting to their muskets.
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posted
Sorry, I think Japanese lamellar strips and the organization of thigh guards on samurai armor tend to have a much better aesthetic appeal than the weird, bulbous apportionments of frankish plate.
this just looks better than this and all the other stuff on plate and composite armor which I think is painfully ugly (shoulder nipples!) but which is there for a well-tested reason.
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posted
Second link isn't working. Edit: Now it is.
I'll grant you shoulder nipples, I suppose. I never really thought of rondels as shoulder nipples before, but now I can't unsee it. Thanks for that, by the way.
Still, I'm not terribly crazy about the boxy look of Japanese lamellar either. Makes 'em look like a person in Minecraft.
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posted
"One: Average Knight would be larger and more physically robust versus Average Samurai. Taller, too.
You're making the mistake of thinking that a Samuri was physically equivalent to a malnourished peasant. Compare the peasant with the peasant, and the Privileged with the Privileged. The differences aren't much in regards to size and strength.
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Nope, speed&maneuverabiliy combined with the fact that thin non-edged weapons with points could puncture armor quite readily. ie The Three Musketeers could defeat any three armored knights without resorting to their muskets.
You are thinking of this in way too much of a rock-paper-scissors mentality. A categorical statement like "Any decent bowman or halbeard/pikeman could take knights out with ease." requires a LOT of qualifying analysis (halberdiers are not particularly conceptually adept at duels and a 'decent' one is not going to hard-counter a knight). Not that I doubt that the heroic and fictional musketeers would win an even fight against three unnamed knights; fictional characters tend to be written to do so.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: You're making the mistake of thinking that a Samuri was physically equivalent to a malnourished peasant.
I'm not making that mistake at all. Average Knight would just be taller still than Average Japanese Peasant. Knights were just bigger.
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posted
Halbeards and pikes were used to stop armored mass charges. Once off the horse, the knight was vulnerable to warhammers(maces/etc) and non-edged pointed long knives. And totally helpless against a non-edged pointed sword.
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Re: polearms, you're taking mass combat tactics and applying them to a "duel" scenario, which is fundamentally erroneous. There's no compelling reason to believe any individual pikeman had particularly impressive accuracy against a mounted charge. He didn't need to.
But one on one, that would translate to a strong possibility of completely missing an individual charging knight, at which point his sole advantage completely evaporates.
Oh man this is fun! I haven't bickered about knights in years!Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
None of what you are saying is very credible at all and comes off as an overly simplistic analysis. Halbeards (sp) and pikes are close-order formation weapons; they're not designed for individual combat. I guarantee that they're not a good duel weapon. Likewise, I guarantee you that I'm not going to render Average Knight completely helpless before me just by waving a dirk around. Your analysis is .. disregardable.
But I'm glad that we can keep this as silly as a knights vs samurai vs ninja vs pirate vs caveman vs astronaut battle analysis should be.
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posted
To say nothing of the problems a sole pikeman would face if a knight simply opted to approach him on foot with sword & shield.
In mass combat, polearms were magnaflorious. Far better than, say, swords.
But in a fictional duel scenario they have a pretty fundamental problem, which is that they have a very, very small margin for error in a one-on-one fight.
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posted
Aw I was too slow on the draw. As suits the thread, Sam ninjas my point out from under me.
Aaaah, ninjas. An entire iconic warrior invented out of whole cloth. Should we talk about them next? And how there's, generously, a single instance of a ninja-like agent actually accomplishing anything, ever, in all of history?
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