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J has got it right.

Swords types are going to differ for a variety of reasons, including the general technology level of the societies involved, and the ready (or lack of) availability of high quality steel. What kind of armor do they favor - a slicing katana isn't going to do much good against a man in steel plate.

The naming conventions used in the history of swords are not 100% consistant.

A broadsword in some definitions is any sword where part of the blade is flat as opposed to all parts of the blade beveled towards the edges and can have one or two edges. In other definitions its any single edged sword.

Just make sure that the words you use have a meaning to you and that you stay consistant with those meanings. And don't make up new definitions for old terms.

If you are writing sword and sorcery fantasy, I'm going to recommend just keeping it simple and use the term "sword" rather than distinguish "longsword" "falcion" "cutlass" "rapier" "shortsword".

A "long sword" is generally something more than four feet in overall length, generally demanding both hands to weild effectively (thus the hilt has to be a bit more than a foot of its length). In individual combat, where the contestants are otherwise evenly matched, it can be virtually stated that the one with a longer sword is going to win, just as a warrior using a real sword will generally not have much to fear from an opponent armed only with a stick. It takes a substantial difference in ability to overcome the difference in length. The disadvantage of a long sword is that it becomes the primary weapon and excludes use of a shield or off-hand weapon (like a parrying dagger, aka main gauche). It also requires substantial training to use effectively, a novice attempting moves at full force is in danger of cutting off his legs or hitting allies. Only a true expert in top form could use such a weapon effectively in very close quarters, though it is by no means impossible to do so.

Most swords are about three feet in overall length. Some a bit longer, some a bit shorter. A rapier or foil doesn't have to be very heavy to facilitate the thrusting blows to which they are more suited, so they can be quite long yet easily weilded in one hand. Unfortunately they are all but worthless against even light armor, so unless there is a significant reason that nobody can wear armor (such as it being against the rules), you probably shouldn't rely on them much. Even a heavier sword can be used one handed, but it will generally be possible to use both hands on the weapon, though this will not be preferred.

It's not the length of the swords that matters but the discipline to maintain a formation and fight as a unit.

But even the roman's never conquered Scotland. And the people there at the time were still using mostly iron longswords and spears and fighting in skirmish formations at best. But even this is a simplistic truth and there were many other factors as to why Rome never conquered what is moderd day Scotland.

The Norse (Vikings), generally fought as individual warriors. They fought one man at a time. The Romans fought as soldiers. They protected those to their side. A barbarian raised their sword to strike, the Roman to the side would strike under the arm.

The early romans were harden. I read about one incident where a roman army was beaten, and they ordered one out of every ten to be put to the sword to show the rest that defeat would not be tolerated. After that incident, the soldiers fought differently. Consider that kind of treatment as a possibility for one's opponant and how hard they would fight compared to a normal soldier.

JV, you still haven't touched on the specific needs of the character. Every kind of sword is useful in a particular situation and less useful in others.

In man to man combat in open terrain against an opponent armed with a long sword, a short sword is basically only good for desperate attempts to parry, for which it is the least suitable type of sword. Or you can sacrifice your own life for a chance at cutting the other guy's leg...not a good trade but better than nothing.

In formation combat a long sword is basically good for one crushing blow against the enemy formation, after which it is better to drop that sword and go to a short sword or even a dagger. If you look at a lot of historical battles and tactics employed by ancient armies, you'll see that this was common knowledge.

In a tavern fight a short sword has a definite advantage, even though it's possible to use a long sword in those circumstances, it takes a lot of skill. Then you introduce factors like shields and cultural influences and wealth into the equation, all of which radically affect which choices are realistically possible.

Cultural expectations which control the nature and rules of combat matter far more. Europe developed the foil, a stabbing weapon which is nearly useless in earnest combat because even a leather coat can prevent penetration and it only has a point, so an opponent can simply deflect your thrusts by striking the length of with a hand or forearm. But the code duello and demands of fashion made it a practical weapon within the tightly defined limits of its use, inflicting pain and injury on blue-bloods (almost all first-world citizens are blue-bloods these days, and tend to forget that pain is endurable, death is not).

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Almost all first-world citizens are blue-bloods these days, and tend to forget that pain is endurable, death is not

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???? I have no idea what that is supposed to be saying and why it's in this discussion.

Also in formation fighting the bigest killers on the field are the spears, pikes, and bills, which stand behind the shield wall. Tghe wall only keeps the in-fighters at bay while the pole weapons thrust, cleave, and smash the opposing fighters.

As for your question: I think the biggest question you need to answer is: where is he fighting? In a bar, in the street? Or on a battlefield? The rapier was only a streetfighting weapon, much like a derringer pistol today. It was good for a man to defend himself with from thugs, or a duel, but not much else. Bigger swords were generally used for battlefield combat.

Also, like some of the other replies, I would also advocate thinking about the technology of the society your character will be in. For example, the Romans could (and did at some times) have used longer, larger swords, but found that a wall of soldiers with large shields and quicker, smaller swords were more effective. They also had the technology to build full suits of fully articulated armor, but they didn't in order to keep soldiers unburdered, unemcumbered.

It is not a weapon with which one wins battles, conquers empires, or defeats impossible odds.

Odds are, ironically enough, if you're reduced to drawing your sword, you probably lost already.

Take two regular people you know, give one a sword, and the other a spear. Set up a gambling arena. You would make a lot of money very quickly, because even though most people would bet against the one with the spear, the odds are heavily stacked against the guy with the sword. Achilles throttled Hector because Achilles still had his spear.

In tactical, professional armies, the sword was a device favoured for its difficulty to break, a fallback weapon for when the more useful weapons had been exhausted.

During the late Dark Ages, when knights were at their relative peak, a Pope (I believe it was a Gregory) actually banned the crossbow from all of Christendom, claiming that it was inhumane. A knight could train all of his life, (six hours or more a day, seven days a week, for about fifteen to twenty two years or so) ride off to his first battle, and get picked off by a peasent who was given a half hour introduction on how to use a crossbow. No disciplined, sensible army ever dependended on swordsmanship to win battles. Spears, horses, polearms and projectiles were battle winning equipment. Cavalry could either crush armies or outmanuver them, spears could stop a charge in its tracks, and projectiles killed people without getting close.

The sword in historical warfare was pivotal when it was a ceremonial weapon, for personal combat.

If you take two regular people, give one a sword and the other a spear, and let them have at it, the one with the sword will usually win because it takes more training to use a spear effectively in single combat. I'd rather be armed with a good spear (actually I favor mid-weight polearms), but an untrained person would lose to an opponent armed only with a knife. It is relatively easy to deflect both thrusts and slashes delivered by a spear because of the fundamental mechanics involved, you can do it bare-handed with only minor injury, even without much special training. Also, one of the primary uses of swords (particularly two handed swords) in formation combat is to cut or break the heads off of enemy polearms.

And I said pivotal, Survivor. Something that isn't pivotal isn't necessarily useless. But it's not a weapon that won battles or gave a great advantage to professional armies. If it comes down to swords the end result is usually weighed in by numbers, luck and morale.

Take a close look at the examples you've used.

As a weapon to quickly make a farmer or fisherman a useful member of an army, the spear was far superior to either the sword, knife, polearm or bow and arrow. The primary motions used to make a spear lethal is a thrust, which is not only difficult to dodge or block properly without considerable training, but difficult to stop without good armour. It is also a motion that most people who do manual labour are quite familiar with. It is the quickest, most effecient way to make a peasent into a useful addition to an army.

The claim you mentioned concerning the outcome between two untrained individuals, sword vs spear, is beyond inaccurate. It takes time, training, and familiarity with a sword to make it a practical weapon, and lacking that, the sword in the hands of a rookie is just a cumbersome metal rod. Granted, if both individuals were trained this would be a different story, but the strength of spears is always more in formations and reach.

The 18th century Infantry sword was never a "primary" weapon. In fact, for infantry, let alone for infantry in the 18th century, the sword was rarely a primary weapon. The Romans relied on them after the pilum, and they were notorious for distaining the tactical advantages of both archery and cavalry. Macedonian Cavalry used spears. Medieval knights only relied heavily on large swords because most medieval warfare involved a few well armed knights beating a crowd of poorly armed and armoured rabble into submission. Warfare in the dark ages could hardly be considered professional.

Cavalry in the 18th and 19th centuries were primarily used to run down routed armies. Men with bayonetted muskets in formation butcher cavalry, which is why Cavalry was never moved without infantry support, and why Cavalry was never deployed against solid infantry positions. The most versatile cavalry units in those time periods, ones that had a prayer of being used to do something other than chase someone fleeing on foot, were usually armed with spears or lances.

Tactics is about using the best available option for a situation. The best option was never a sword.

The sword was never a wise tactical choice. It had noteworthy uses as a secondary option, but it was not a good tactical choice.

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The sword was never a wise tactical choice. It had noteworthy uses as a secondary option, but it was not a good tactical choice.

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The Roman pilum was not a spear, at least in the sense you are describing. It was a ballistic weapon which was thrown at the enemy, it was also single use, you got one throw, and hit or miss, your pilum was damaged beyond having any further tactical value. Its chief aim was to strip the enemy of their shields, since a hit on a shield had an excellent chance of rendering the shield too cumbersome for further use. Of course it could be lethal, but was too slow and inaccurate for that to be likely. Like many formation weapons, they were employed en mass, because a single one could easily be dodged.

Weapons that must be employed en mass are easily defeated, given the right tactics. Pilums were all but useless against cavalry. They required massive numerical advantage against skirmishing units. They lost completely to archers, who would never have reason to come in range of a pilum. Their main reason for existing was to increase the effectiveness of the gladius, since an enemy stripped of shields but committed to engage would easily fall to the formation tactics of the Legions.

Spears are more useful, but they have distinct disadvantages. Combined cavalry and archers can destroy a spear unit outright, the cavalry manuevers around the flanks and rear, forcing the spears into a defensive formation (which takes more than a little training to pull off correctly), then the archers range and fire for effect on the immobile, closely packed unit which cannot employ shields effectively. Spears are also nearly useless once the formation breaks down and melee occurs, which happens soon after direct contact with any enemy unit. During that pause, if the troops have no melee weapons, they can be destroyed by a much smaller unit of swordsmen even if their initial attack was highly favorable.

Even if we talk about strategy rather than tactics (and I understand that this is somewhat closer to the meaning you intended), the sword is hardly useless, since close combat between formations does break down into melee unless one of the formations engaged is vastly inferior in raw numbers. If you add to this the fact that melee skirmishers and pursuit troops must rely on melee weapons, we can see that swords are vital to implementing any strategy that uses either unit type (almost all ancient battles aimed for the complete destruction of the enemy force once it was broken, so they did rely on swords in their end-game strategy). Even leaving these factors aside, never is quite a stretch. There are too many types of swords that were specifically designed for formation tactics and mass production to say that they were never a wise strategic choice, even were it not the case they they were usually important in the strategy of battle.

And as another perhaps controversial statement, any general who lead an army in the manner depicted in the Lord of the Rings would be court-marshalled for gross incompetence. If a battle manages to degenerate into a brawl as large as the ones depicted, numbers become the only thing that matters. At that point, since the orcs always outnumbered everyone else, the battle is already decided.

It's quite true that learning how to use a sword well enough to kill or injure a resisting opponent isn't very difficult, but the competency required to defeat an armed opponent, especially one with a spear, polearm, or armoured, requires a substantial investment of time.

What you describe, when formations break down and melee occurs, was and remains something that competent militaries developed their tactics to avoid doing. Allowing battles to degenerate into a melee does favour the versatility of a sword, but the whole point of formations and training troops as a unit is specifically to prevent that from happening. Thermopalye would have been a cake walk if it had degenerated into a melee before the last day. The Battle of Cannae would not have been so drastically one sided if it had degenerated into a melee at any point before the Roman army was encircled.

Actually, the dominating facility of the spear wasn't encroached upon by the sword, but by horse archers. During the heights of professionalism in ancient armies, such as the Macedonian Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans and others, only the Romans weren't prolific with spear formations, and for the Romans, this was often because there was no shortage of manpower and Roman armies rarely found themselves badly outnumbered or squared off against heavy cavalry.

The distinction between when swords were more prominent has to do with the degree of professionalism in the army. Armies comprised mainly of career soldiers did not often use swords as a primary weapon. The Romans are the noteworthy exception, but the Macedonians, the Byzantines, the Persians, the Sassanids, the armies in most Chinese kingdoms and others relied bows, spears, polearms and/or cavalry.

There are a number of weapons that, when developed initially, won dramtic battles with highly one-sided outcomes. Such inventions often aided drastically in creating empires, defeating overwhelming odds, or created much stronger armies. These inventions include the chariot, stirrups, the crossbow, the longbow, the compound bow, the gun, and the cannon. The sword is most definitely not on this list.

Post roman western Europe can hardly be considered a time of professional armies, and knights were more commonly employed against rabble than soldiers. It was very rare for the cultivated heavy cavalry of chivalric times to encounter stiff resistance from a competent formation of spears.

Tactial decisions, rather than strategic ones. Strategy is situation dependent, while the availablity of tactical choices stems from the training and materials an army is provided with. If you're talking weapon choices in strategy, you speak of something rarely in military units outside of the Ottoman Janissaries, where units were trained and expected to function as both artillery and front line troops.

Take any situation in which swords were primarily employed, and a historical example can readily be found to demonstrate that a different primary weapon would have been more effective.

Strategy: 1a. The science and art of using all the forces of a nation to execute approved plans as effectively as possible during peace or war. b. The science and art of military command as applied to the overall planning and conduct of large-scale combat operations

American Heritage Dictionary

Arv, the disagreement with your position isn't that you are categorically wrong, it's that you are overstating your argument. I think if you said the role of the sword was overrated, or exaggerated, or any number of other things, most people would agree with you. But when you start saying that swords were "never" a wise tactical choices, you (a) overstate the case; and (b) set yourself up to be proven wrong by one example of a tactically wise use of swords by massed troops. You yourself seem to acknowledge that the Romans were such an example.

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And I'm sure Kashima Shrine would have fared quite well against the Mongolian Hordes.

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Don't just rip things out of their context and makes such statements.

Point is, your point is stupid and irrelevant. Swords have been used throughout history and it is blatently ignorant to say they were never a good chocie as a tactical weapon, ever. That's completely ignorant.

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[A]ny general who lead[sic] an army in the manner depicted in the Lord of the Rings would be court-marshalled for gross incompetence.

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This is manifestly untrue, since the general of such an army wouldn't be subject to court-marshal. Besides, which army are you talking about? And which battle, and leader, for that matter. It fails as a contraversial statement because it's merely vague and silly.

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If a battle manages to degenerate into a brawl as large as the ones depicted, numbers become the only thing that matters.

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This is manifestly untrue. When the lines break (and any line not based on a shield-wall and swords is guaranteed to break upon serious contact with the enemy), the battle always degenerates into a brawl. But the objective is to get the brawl on your terms. The most important factor is which side broke first, this has a huge impact on the morale and posture of the troops in the melee that ensues. The second most important factor is which side has more effective weapons and training oriented towards melee combat. The "native" discipline of the troops on either side can usually be determined by factors related to the other two, but it comes into play as an independent factor sometimes.

Almost all battles anciently were fought with the aim of destroying the enemy formation and engaging in melee. If it were simply a matter of numbers, then there would never be any point in fighting at all. Okay, I'm not going to say that just because humans have done something throughout recorded history, there was necessarily any point to it, but insofar as anything humans do has a point, attempting to break the enemy so that you could fight the melee on favorable terms qualifies as meaningful.

If you don't break ranks to fight the melee once the enemy has broken, then many of them will escape and you will not have won in any meaningful sense. You must break ranks to pursue a broken enemy effectively. I was about to say that you've obviously never been on either side of a historic battle, but that kinda seems like a silly thing to say now that I think about it. Anyway, you haven't made a close study of what happens during the decisive end-phase of a battle fought with primitive weapons.

I could fall back on the "you haven't explained the Roman legions" argument...and it's a good argument, except that it tends to concede a lot more ground than you can reasonably claim. Swords were essential, if there are no records of the decisive difference it made to have swords versus not having them, that is because everyone had swords, even if only for the officers. The battles in which one side had no swords (or melee weapons serving the same tactical role) generally were so one-sided that only massive numerical superiority (or Divine intervention) could grant them victory. Every ancient military culture had and valued the sword (or a rough equivalent where technology didn't allow true swords), and that's not because it was some kind of symbol. Well, okay, it's also a symbol, but it became a symbol for a good reason.

Counterpoints, first off I don't think that you can consider an argument in the first place until you understand what concepts are plausibly addressed by it. That means that you need to understand the terminology being used, and whether it is used correctly. I did notice that certain terms were apparently being used in senses different from the accepted meanings, and thus hopefully was able to get closer to understanding the "spirit" of an argument that others were seeing as simply improbable. But not everyone can do this easily, and it's unfair to expect the rest of the members to adapt to the idiosyncratic usages of a single poster. Pointing out what the text actually says rather than what the writer might mean is an important part of criticism generally, and it would help a lot of people become better writers if they were willing to accept that the literal meaning of your text is important.

Bear with my rant only as far as you wish.

The thread topic was about the importance of sword choice while fighting. The point I felt should be stressed is that if and when a character has to fight, it's a poor tactical choice to have to use a sword. Drawing a sword to fight is an admittance that circumstances and events have spun out of one's control. It's almost an act of faith, in a way, to trust in fate and the value of the reasons you're fighting. It is not a tactical choice, if you catch the premise.

Historically, the sword is preeminent among archaic weaponry because of its symbolic value, in the sense I've mentioned above, as a symbol to rally around. A general who draws his sword to join the battle only does so when his usefulness as a strategist has ended, usually at a point where communicating troop deployments or countering enemy movements is impossible. This is fatalistic necessity, not a move to gain any tactical advantage.

I will mention a few noteworthy examples of effective militaries, and make mention of what they relied upon. I do depend on your familiarity with what I'm referring to, as I have no great interest in explaining the minute details.

Now, strategies are situationally dependent, and are a commander's use of his armies's talents to produce the most effective engagement against a particular enemy. Tactics are the formations, drilling, training, methods of communication and equipment that an army recieves, the strengths of an army by which a commander plans a strategy around. These are largely unchanging, as it's far more difficult to change the composition of an army for a single battle.

The particular note about the Roman Legions, is despite the heavy investment and discipline that went into creating a Legion, it was poorly suited to handling enemies of either comparable discipline or numerical superiority. You will remember of course that Hannibal routinely decimated the legions, that pre Marius legions lacked the professionalism that made them an effective fighting force, and that the Roman Legions had a bad habit of suffering serious defeats against disciplined enemy forces. The Roman military machine benefited from the ability to produce a large pool of manpower to make a professional army, and the resources to make it well-equipped and constantly drilled. Against similar machines, the Roman legion often fared poorly, winning by simply overwhelming odds rather than good tactics.

The romans, peculiarly, also benefitted from good strategians.

They are also one of the few professional armies to have ever existed that relied primarily on the sword.

The most consistent development of Military Tradition was in China, which remained a militarily advanced region from 1500 BC to 1700 AD. There, the primary weapons were more projectile and cavalry based, and the dominant tactical weapon choices were the chariot, the crossbow, cavalry, and compound bows as technology allowed.

As tactical decisions could be introduced into warfare in Europe, there is a quick and dramatic shift away from sword and armour dominated fields to ones dominated by Cavalry and the crossbow. Feudal society meant that the best drilled component of a military would always be the cavalry, but the proliferation of the crossbow allowed armies constructed on more professional lines to dominate battles.

Historically, it is actually very rare to see the sword used to gain a tactical advantage.

Oh, and Zero's post regarding the Mongolian Hordes and f-22 Raptors........

Keep in mind that my example was at least well within the historical context, and that there were a few instances of the mongolian hordes clashing with levied troops from Japan, which I must presume Kashima Shrine is in reference to (google has been a little unhelpful in clarifying what specifically you're referring to).

Japan also didn't properly possess a professional standing army, the failing of being a feudal society. Their ability to mimic that professionalism is in the size of the Samurai class, which actually numbered about a tenth of the entire population, three to five times larger than the European counterparts.

Zero, I would encourage you to read a post before commenting on it.

The simple fact of being forced to resort to any form of violence is "an admittance[sic] that circumstances and events have spun out of one's control." That point aside, a sword is a very good choice for melee personal combat. We weren't discussing equipping an army in the first place, after all, just a single character.

Thus your entire argument is completely off-topic. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you need to realize that your input is fundamentally not going to be treated as helpful when it in no way addresses the specific concerns of the topic starter. It's a digression, you're diverting attention from the core topic, which is slightly impolite (not actually offensive, just not something that requires a polite response).

Secondarily (and I mean that, it really is of secondary importance in this context), you are making assertions that are not very well supported by the evidence. So, not only are we not compelled by notions of forum propriety to take your posts seriously, we find little in the posts themselves that convince us that your argument is persuasive.

Generals used flags for signaling their troops, which made the importance of the standard bearer and honor guard as warriors capable of resisting attack and keeping the colors flying enormously important. Generals did not use their swords to signal, not in real battles (as opposed to movies). If someone is close enough to even see that you've got your sword out, then they're close enough that you don't need to rally them.

You are also totally discounting the combat power of the command group in ancient battles. In a melee combat, the difference in combat power of a man who has devoted his life to mastering melee combat compared to a farmer who has recently been issued a spear or whatever is something like a hundred to one. You are also wildly overestimating the amount of fine tactical control a general could exert on the battle once many of his units had made contact with the enemy. Each formation had their flags, if you got knocked loose from your unit you tried to find it or another friendly unit by looking for their flags. The leaders of a unit would have to guess what they should do by looking around and seeing how the other units had fared and where they were. All the strategy planning had to be done the night before, all the tactical decisions had to be made by the men in the field. They didn't have radios, you know.

Once the battle was joined, the commander's unit wouldn't have anything to do with directing the course of the battle unless they could fight their way to the critical juncture and rally their own forces there. Whether that unit was armed with swords or whatever else doesn't matter to your argument, the general would have to lead from the front or he would be irrelevant to the battle.

You cite cavalry, chariots, crossbows, and compound bows as factors "displacing" the sword. They did not. Only one of them can be used effectively for melee combat, the only kind of combat in which you use a sword. And when cavalry units were going to engage in melee, they used swords. Lance cavalry and chariots were useful for breaking formations, they were wasted in melee against the individual soldiers thus broken. All forms of archery were employed like artillery, if there was any risk of them being engaged in melee they would be armed with swords because bows are nearly worthless in melee combat.

It was written in 1643, by Miyamoto Musashi, an undefeated dueler--of over sixty duels--and masterless Samurai. He killed a man, for the first time when he was thirteen years old, and for the last time when he was twenty-nine. He was so good that he ceased to use a blade to inflict mortal wounds on his enemies.

In your world you can have your characters use any type of sword you like just give them a reason.

The topic starter was more about particular swords, and the advantages between them. However, what I'm suggesting is that as a tactical preference, it's a better choice to avoid using a sword. The obvious examples I bring to defend that, are historical examples of effective armies or battle forces, and their tactical choices. The historical perspective leans more towards large armies, battles and empires rather than individual armament preferences precisely because recorded history leans towards it.

For personal combat not formalized by ritual, which I believe the topic at least partially addressed, the sword is not a good first choice. If a character is trained, then in any period in which the sword would be considered, the bow is better. If not, then the character's background, and by consequence motion familiarity, would likely lend themselves better to a spear or a mace. One man against six won't win if he's armed with sword. He has a substantially better chance if he's armed with a bow and some arrows. It's the transformation from certain death to possible victory. The sword doesn't offer that.

For more formalized occasions, the weaponry the contestants have are similar, if not standardized, and this topic is hardly related to it.

The historical examples are meant specifically to present a concept, rather than to defend an argument.

What you are failing to do is to take the argument into the obvious context it would require to make any sense. When reading someone else's point, you should either contemplate its point or avoid wasting your time. Your commentary is geared towards making yourself right, rather than to validate or dismiss the worth of what I've been presenting. As I've mentioned before, using a sword in a battle means that the battle hinges on numerical superiority, training, morale, strategy, and luck. Engaging someone with a sword puts you well within danger of being attacked by someone, meaning that the outcome of a contest between two individuals is roughly equal. Compared to that, the other weapons I mentioned are superior tactical choices. This fact alone makes engaging an enemy with swords a poor tactical choice. It actually, in many cases, removes the element of tactics from the battle. I did not go so far as to suggest that the sword has no place in battle, it's durability makes it one of the best secondary weapons a trooper can be equipped with. It is the fallback option.

Now the field power of the commanding group is obviously noticeable, but this contrast had more to do with the quality of the army, rather than that of the commanding unit. The commanding unit was almost always of a fairly high quality, but the quality difference between a conscripted mob of peasents, the semi-professional fiefdom levy, and a professional army is immense. The Greek-Persian wars are the most profound example of the difference between a professional army and a semi-professional levy. Battles you seem insistent on describing sound like ones between semi-professional levies, or even between mobs, where the most basic of tactical options are present for a general to use. The crippling impact of using the tools I've described, especially from a professional army, have often broken and decimated armies extremely quickly. You don't win battles when outnumbered 3-1 without exquisite tactical options to take advantage of.

Do I need to go into historical details to outline things, or do you think playing Total War makes you a battle expert and you don't need any familiarity with either the historical groups or events I use to illustrate my points?

Now, I have to regard your flag explination as outright rude, as I made no suggestion that a general used his sword to signal. it appears to be an attempt to produce a counteragrument for an argument that simply hadn't been made. Symbolc importance has nothing to do with tactical communication. The symbolic importance of a sword is a construct from literature, culture and how we choose to remember history. It places the sword in that peculiar pedestal that encourages us today to remember it a little more importantly than it should be remembered.

"For instance when is it best to use a short sword? When is it best to use a long sword? When should you wield two swords and when should you choose a sword and shield? Are these choices tactically important or is it down to preference?"

You clearly beleive they are best as a secondary weapon. A valid point but the original posters questions were geared towards swords, not ranged combat. If someone asked me if I prefer mexican food or italian I wouldnt answer chinese (unless I was trying to be difficult ).

You seem to be well versed on swords and their uses, so, if swords were all you had to choose from, which sword would you choose for which battle scenarios?

scott

Good tactical choices are meant to avoid needing to engage in a melee, or drastically alter an impending melee to heavily favour your side. A thousand longbowmen with twenty arrows apiece will decimate an infantry army five times their number without any great difficulty. Countering well trained bowmen with intelligently designed arrows requires extremely good light cavalry that hopefully isn't spotted too far away, or a very close ambush. (both of which are extremely hard to achieve, and one cannot possibly rely on gaining such an advantage) This is an advantage impossilbe to produce with even the most effecient training or melee weapon advantages. It also goes a long way to explaining how the Mongol Hordes could not only win against such odds, but did so consistently.

Sword choices are mostly situation dependent. Most historical examples of using large, two handed swords to break pike formations are controversial and often outright discredited, so unless your character does a lot of horse riding or happens to be in a more knightly profession, it's a bad idea to use a large sword. Anything larger than a claymore, and you're better off with a spear or a polearm.

Larger swords are better from horseback, since you're standing on a horse and a short sword will hardly reach a foot soldier's head. Even then, a flail is a worthwhile option, and a cavalry spear is much better when your horse is still moving.

Japanese weaponry really should be taken with a grain of salt. They had exquisite swords, and the heaviest versions of the katana were as strong as Damascus steel, but the weapon choices were made taking certain realities into consideration. Firstly, was an abandonment of modern military technology when the Tokugawa shogunate took over. Around the fifteenth century, before outside influences were thrown out, Japan was producing some of the world's most advanced rifles, and they had actually sprinted ahead in using the gun effectively on the field. Military choices after that were an enforcement of traditionalism, cultural isolation, and so their tactical superiority to other weapons is suspect, and lacks genuine historical examples. The second point is that Japan was constantly suffering from poor Iron. Iron was of poor quality and was scarce on the Island, which encouraged the construction of strong swords. Third, Japan was a ritualistic feudal society, and their fielded troops were rarely of the quality of professional armies (though again, this is unverifiable since Japan is an island, and determined wars against other nations were not nearly as common as they were with other countries), so their swords did not necessarily reflect sensible tactical choices. In fact, swords were often made in standardized forms precisely so that ritualistic combat was settled on the swordsman's talents rather than the quality of the sword.

If it's adventuring into the unknown, I'd recommend a spatha (or the chinese equivelant) or a sabre. Curved swords are better against flesh, as you can cut without geting the blade stuck when you hit bone, but a straight edged sword works better against light armour. Against heavy armour, well, as they say, you don't duel with knights. You drop big rocks on their heads from castle walls. Again though, venturing into the unknown is usually better with a compound bow and a quiver full of arrows. Arrows for a compound bow are shorter than for a longbow, and are easier to make.

A single archer cannot use mass fire tactics. He has to rely on high precision shots against passive targets. Any competent fighter can easily dodge ordinary archery from a single archer down to a range of 25 meters. At that point, a swordsman can rush the archer in a few seconds, and kill him with a single blow, unless the archer drops his bow and draws a sword. If you don't have some kind of insuperable terrain advantage or total surprise, one to one battle against a swordsman using a bow is simply suicide.

A crossbow can fire bolts at sufficient velocity and precision to cause disabling injury even to alert targets out to a much greater range (depending on the crossbow), but it also takes far longer to prepare each shot. In the end, the main advantage in a one to one contest would be that you could achieve total surprise far more easily.

A bullet from a firearm, on the other hand, cannot realistically be dodged at all. It doesn't need to rely on massed fire techniques for killing power (though the psychological impact of a first volley remains important to this day).

Against multiple opponents, you could only realistically hope to kill one with a bow or crossbow before having to fight the others in melee combat. Meaning you'd better have a sword or you're going to die.

It is a mistake to claim that "good tactical choices are meant to avoid needing to engage in a melee". If melee already favors you, then the best tactical choice is to get into melee as fast as possible. A thousand longbowmen with twenty arrows apiece will "decimate" an infantry army of five thousand only if they can get off twenty properly ranged and coordinated volleys before the enemy unit engages them...which would require a pinning unit or some kind of insuperable terrain advantage. Longbows, even using massed indirect fire, are only effective out to 300-400 meters, and their effectiveness is dramatically reduced if they have to deal with changes in range while firing. Even if you were able to get a thousand men to release a coordinated volley every ten seconds, and they were superbly trained so that each volley was properly ranged, after perhaps five volleys the enemy would be cutting you down. Those five volleys might have inflicted two thousand casualties (not fatalities, you'd only get several hundred of those) if you're lucky and the enemy doesn't have any kind of armor or shields and was very tightly packed. That leaves you out-numbered three to one in melee combat against swords. Every man in your archer unit will be dead.

The katana is a very interesting weapon. It seems much better suited to horseback combat than to conventional swordsmanship, even many of the particular forms prescribed for it seem better suited to straight bladed weapons. Japanese sword duels often ended up being decided by a joust-like maneuver where the combatants would run at each other and attempt a single, fatal slash. Then again, we're talking about people that you could tell them to slit their own bellies and they'd really do it as often as not.

A spatha, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a one-handed sword about a yard long. I class it as "most swords" in my short discussion of the topic.