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Farmerbob

Some Good Videos Of Real Armored Longsword Fighting Techniques

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No stage fighting or duelist fighting stuff here. Some really good demonstrations of how people fought with longswords when wearing armor when it was a real life or death fight.

This link is the first in the series.

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I will take fantasy style over this silly looking thing. :rolleyes:

Edited by Elen

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That's 4 minutes and 26 seconds of my life i'll never get back. Ironic i'd take a issue with that since I play Wurm but there you go... >.<

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People seem to think a sword is an iron bar with a crossguard =)

Nice little video, bastard tricks ^^

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These videos remind me that the reality of fighting another man in armour is a game of trying to get to the soft spots, ie. the armpits, back of the leg, and most likelky the crotch area. I can see also that falling over would pretty much be followed by a nice longsword in the back.

I guess your other alternative would be to beat the man to death through the the plate, but in that time he would have punctured you.

I cant imagine going up against a man who trained his whole life in the art of fighting in full plate. I guess I would be a better crossbow man or something.

Thx for sharing the video.

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Videos like these can be interesting. Note how mobile the guy in the plate armor is. The armor suit weighs a ton, but because of how the weight is evenly distributed across his body and the joints give practically full freedom of movement it's almost as if he isn't wearing it at all. There is a grave misconception that plate armor somehow makes you into a walking tin can.

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Hi,

wouldn't this be more about 2hand swords in our game more?

Have fun!

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This might not look as glorious as what we see in games or TV, but it is very interesting to know how people really fought with swords in armour back in the days. Thanks for sharing this link!

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Videos like these can be interesting. Note how mobile the guy in the plate armor is. The armor suit weighs a ton, but because of how the weight is evenly distributed across his body and the joints give practically full freedom of movement it's almost as if he isn't wearing it at all. There is a grave misconception that plate armor somehow makes you into a walking tin can.

Edited by Elen

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Yeah, those "longswords" seem awful thin.

Otherwise they would be to heavy to swing onearmed, if you use a shield:

The 20-30kg couldn't be much a problem for a full trained man, but your stamina and running speed suffers really much I think.

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Some good points on mobility, perhaps a change to plate in the game. More speed, but with more stamina consumption.

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People seem to confuse what mobility means. It means freedom of movement. You move easily in the plate, you're not considerably restricted. Yes you could even do cartwheels wearing plate armour. But you won't be jogging in it. Because it's heavy.

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LOL.... History channel documentary said that medieval longswords weighed around 40 pounds or something. Just googled it and realized how wrong that is.

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Most longswords were designed to be wieldable two handed or one handed, depending on the fighting style being used.

You don't fight two handed with a longsword from the back of a horse after your lance has been shattered or lost, for example.

You would also want a shield around if you had archers shooting at you as well, unless the archers were firing very weak bows and you were in full coverage metal armor.

Longswords (even the ones with only enough room on the pommel for one hand) were used two handed in lots of ways, metal gauntlets allowed armored people to grip the blades themselves. In a real fight, knights would sometimes actually use the pommel end of the sword as a makeshift warhammer, attempting to use the crossguard as a bludgeon against the head/neck region.

The difference between real fighting in armor with a longsword, and the stuff in games and movies is about the same as the difference between life and death martial arts and show/competition martial arts.

Most of us consider the mideival period of Europe to be a time when crude fighters blindly bashed each other with no real schools of martial arts, but they were there, and a well trained longswordsman in armor fighting in a real fight was just as deadly as any melee fighter from any other nation. Any time I see the "Katana vs Longsword" videos on Youtube it makes me laugh, if I even bother to watch them at all :)

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That's 4 minutes and 26 seconds of my life i'll never get back. Ironic i'd take a issue with that since I play Wurm but there you go... >.<

I once hit my knee accidentally on the edge of my table while playing wurm and spent 4 minutes and 26secs crawling in floor in pain which I never get back. Ironic i'd take a issue with that since I play wurm but there you go... >.<

(although the time would be equally not being never get back even though I played Freerealms)

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You would also want a shield around if you had archers shooting at you as well, unless the archers were firing very weak bows and you were in full coverage metal armor.

Say just "weak arrows". I saw documentary years ago where someone trained in "medieval archery" shot arrows both short range and long range (so long a range I couldnt even make a hit with tuned rifle I think) and the arrows just sliced trough thick iron plates like it was nothing. Back then I was in school and asked our physics teacher when we were having classes about collisions and he explained how much potential force an arrow has since its a stick where all of the force of its weight and its trajectory will end in a single point of impact... which is alot of force.

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Say just "weak arrows". I saw documentary years ago where someone trained in "medieval archery" shot arrows both short range and long range (so long a range I couldnt even make a hit with tuned rifle I think) and the arrows just sliced trough thick iron plates like it was nothing. Back then I was in school and asked our physics teacher when we were having classes about collisions and he explained how much potential force an arrow has since its a stick where all of the force of its weight and its trajectory will end in a single point of impact... which is alot of force.

Aye, against iron or copper, bronze, etc you are right. The equation changed against steel though.

There are other videos, and lots of them, about shooting bows into armor, but the basics are that torso and head steel armor would pretty much ignore any bow up to the English Longbow shot from the front. The armor on extremeties would protect against all but a direct impact against a flat face.

From the sides, or against crossbows, or extremely powerful warbows, that equation changed, but full metal armor made of steel was proof against most simple bows from the front.

Edited by Farmerbob

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Keep in mind the weight of gear medieval fighters carried is really no greater than the range of gear modern soldiers carry. Plate armor made from period steel was like 40-50 lbs; by comparison, US Army has soldiers kitted out from 45-150 lbs. In both situations the load would be well-distributed across the body.

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To those who say it's boring and they would take fantasy-fighting over it, I think the opposite.

This looks amazing and it really makes me think, if I were to go back in time and see actual real-life to-the-death swordfights I would really feel how skilled the fighters were, the speed of thought, strength and reflexes of real-life people being put to their true tests.

Also, I wonder if it would help if you booted the other guy hard and fast, or chucked something heavy at him. The time it took him to recover could be more than enough for you to finish him off.

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To those who say it's boring and they would take fantasy-fighting over it, I think the opposite.

This looks amazing and it really makes me think, if I were to go back in time and see actual real-life to-the-death swordfights I would really feel how skilled the fighters were, the speed of thought, strength and reflexes of real-life people being put to their true tests.

Also, I wonder if it would help if you booted the other guy hard and fast, or chucked something heavy at him. The time it took him to recover could be more than enough for you to finish him off.

Some of the training manuscripts very clearly teach how to wrestle/grapple in harness. Kicks, elbows, punches, all of it was taught. Because of how well the armor protected them, fights were quite frequently won by the better grappler who could knock down their opponent and command their surrender or kill them. In fact in the first video of the series he touches on that when he explains why you shouldn't lean. If you lean, a relatively simple grappling move can pull you off balance, potentially opening you up to a strike or being knocked to the ground.

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I didn't see anyone fighting to the death.

I agree that most of what we have in movies/games isn't realistic in the slightest, but this realy isn't that much better. Martial arts posing/sparring really can't emulate a true life or death situation (Just like practicing martial arts doesn't always prepare you for a street fight).

Edited by HellMutt

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