Swords and Era Options

[CanRay]

Cougar FineBlade looks nice to me, and has decent stats. Lacking that, a Kukri of a tolerable size is also a nice option. Both also work as Machetes.

[FuelDrop]

Yeah but nothing gives that satisfying wet melon "pop" like a katar sliding through corpsec body armor.

See above about two-handed swords. those guys got double pay for a reason.

[Slide]

See above about two-handed swords. those guys got double pay for a reason.

They were also double paid because their job was to charge spear walls and break them down.

As far as the side arming swords go they were practical for unarmored gentalmen against unarmored ruffians. I'm a fan of Sir George Silver's line of thought... don't listen to the italians and use the right sized weapon for your body. He also had an intresting line of thought about what weapons had avantages on others. He said single sword< Sword & Dagger < Bow Staff < Sword and shield < two handed sword < battle axe < Black Bill. The Black bill apparently had an advantage over every other weapon. I don't know much about Bills myself though.

[Dolanar]

a quick search shows that Bills are rather nasty. also come in a variety of lengths, many come in the size of a Halberd, some come shorter with a wider blade.

[Angelone]

I likes me some forward curving blades like a kukri or falcata.

[Voran]

Yeah I'm partial to a falcata too.

[Sengir]

Interestingly, in the same documentary they showed, all those cool shots of a katana and its super edge cutting through rolled up tatami mats and stuff? Seems a well made european sword without a serious edge (you can run your hand over it), can do the same thing just as well.

"Katanas a better" (no tvtropes link here) is a bad cliche, who would have thought? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Louis Ferrouskha...]

I have a personal fondness for Naginata IRL. I find it has a great deal of versatility with right training.

[Falconer]

I know lots of these things, but that also has to do with me being a sword freak.... Well actually i know a good bit more about European swords but hey... As I recall the early Katanas were cavalry swords, and the armor piercing tip was implemented when they fought the Mongles in Korea. They needed something to pierce through several layers of hardened leather.

And this is why the internet is generally a lousy place to look up this information. Sword nut or not... you don't know what you're talking about here.

Katanas do not use a piercing tip. Thrusting with the blade is to be avoided if at all possible, especially against armor! Against an unarmored foe it can work, but pray it doesn't catch and flex against a bone. This is a great way to break the tip and see the blade cut down, repolished, and reworked into a shorter sword.

Thrusting is the single fastest way to snap a katana blade or ruin the cutting edge. The blade has a good deal of flex if made correctly and lacks the straight 'spine' to deliver the force along (like you'd find on gladius, or late period cut & thrust sword). The blade ends up flexing and cracking (if not breaking) the hardened cutting edge. Not just thrusting, but hitting anything hard with the end area of the katana while slashing can damage it.


Umidori:
Search only goes so far on the internet... you also need a good knowledgebase to know the 'hype' 'enthusiast' and the 'actual'.

See above.

Other posters:
The katanas strength is it's ability to 'fence' while slashing. Most other slashing weapons are designed to deal with heavier armor and suffer from a lack of agility in comparison but have more momentum when they hit. The curved blade is common to a lot of different slashing swords. (scimitars, cavalry sabres, etc.). It's because they're designed to slice... you swing the blade and draw it back at the same time making a nice clean cut just as if you were slicing a loaf of bread. (you don't chop bread you slice it). Hence the name draw cut. It's weakness is dealing with heavy armor (like say corp sec in milspec armor).

[Dolanar]

the confusion comes from people seeing many Samurai moves where they push forward into the enemy, These moves are not to pierce per se, they are more to push the opponent away while keeping yourself defended.

[binarywraith]

Other posters:
The katanas strength is it's ability to 'fence' while slashing. Most other slashing weapons are designed to deal with heavier armor and suffer from a lack of agility in comparison but have more momentum when they hit. The curved blade is common to a lot of different slashing swords. (scimitars, cavalry sabres, etc.). It's because they're designed to slice... you swing the blade and draw it back at the same time making a nice clean cut just as if you were slicing a loaf of bread. (you don't chop bread you slice it). Hence the name draw cut. It's weakness is dealing with heavy armor (like say corp sec in milspec armor).

Really, any of the slashing blades are pretty much pointless against hard armor. It was the whole reason that the slashing sword fell out of use in the West (outside of light cavalry skirmishers designed to hit-and-run against lightly armored opponents) until the crossbow and black powder musket took plate armor off the battlefield and brought the cavalry sabre back into play.

[Slide]

And this is why the internet is generally a lousy place to look up this information. Sword nut or not... you don't know what you're talking about here.

Please explain to me why there are kenjutsu schools and styles that specialize in thrusting? Seriously man, I've noticed you tend to get on a high horse if you think you sense one thing wrong with a statement. I usually attribute that to personal weakness.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Please explain to me why there are kenjutsu schools and styles that specialize in thrusting? Seriously man, I've noticed you tend to get on a high horse if you think you sense one thing wrong with a statement. I usually attribute that to personal weakness.

Perhaps because kenjutsu and kendo are not, in fact, real killing arts schools, but are primarily exercise and sport schools? Also, they tend to use bokken, not actual katana. Not only will a wooden bokken stand up to thrusting better than an actual katana, especially if you thrust it into something hard, but if it does fail to stand up, replacing it is vastly cheaper and the loss of it in the middle of a style demonstration or, at worst, a competition fight, is not likely to be lethal.

But hey, I'll just let you get back to slinging stones in glass houses.

[Sendaz]

That said, one can do a fair amount of harm with a bokken if properly applied, but yeah you have to remember this is an art to reflect the training in much the same way as fencing.

Strikes are only supposed to go on the armored parts and the perfect thrust is one that can tap you on the guarded neck (or over the heart in fencing). The skill comes in being able to show that you can make such controlled strikes, which is difficult.

I once hooked my foil on the teacher's mask as I had lunged, meanwhile he had lunged at the same time so I ended up going past him, and spun him like a fish on a line. Yeah, he wasn't right pleased... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Which is probably why I prefer blunt tools. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

That said, one can do a fair amount of harm with a bokken if properly applied, but yeah you have to remember this is an art to reflect the training in much the same way as fencing.

Well, sure. Miyamoto Mushashi made a habit of wrecking and killing people with boken, primarily because he was dirt-poor and couldn't afford to replace his actual sword if it got broken.

[Sengir]

Please explain to me why there are kenjutsu schools

Why are there signs saying "ye olde", if that phrase was never used historically? Not saying it's the case here, but a lot of stuff that gets sold as historical arts in fact just historicizing, so that argument is shaky at best (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Falconer]

Slide... since you didn't back up your schools with any links but blind assertions. The only things I could find online were 'Kendo' schools online teaching the thrusting technique and calling themselves 'kenjutsu'. As others above have pointed out a thrust to the neck is a score in kendo. But kendo has about as much to do with actual fighting as does sport fencing.

All the jutsu's are different than the 'do's. This is a relic of the post-war period. All jutsus were banned. (kenjutsu, killing art of the sword; kyujutsu, killing art of the bow; jujutsu, of the fist... etc. What was left intact was the far more ritualized religious/sport/competition forms of kendo, kyudo, and judo.


Furthermore, you completely missed the point. :)

You asserted that the katana had, I quote, "an armor piercing tip" to stab through mongol leather armor. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Mongol leather armor doesn't mean bomber or bikers jackets. It means boiled leather which is extremely stiff and hard. It's not an easy material to stab through.

It's one thing to stab at something soft and unprotected like an unarmored throat. Quite another to attack armor head on with the intent of punching through it.