I must have been wrong about the weight but i have read from many sources that there would be people in full plate dying of heatstroke or suffocating in their armor. One battle i could name off the top of my head where that happened was Agincourt and i remember reading about some battle in the war of the roses where that happened
Yeah i can assure you im not a Weeaboo in the slightest the only anime show i think ive ever watched is the last air bender and im not ever sure if that’s anime. I like western things much better than eastern. Im obsessed with longbows and my favorite sword is the Messer. When ever somone says the east is better than the west i just like to bring this up…
Since I’m here I suppose It is only right that I say something related to the original topic.
I would love such a spinoff! There is no medieval region I adore more than the good ole HRE, but Japan is also very historically interesting and with neat aesthetics to boot.
And I think many of you would be surprised by how similar historical kenjustu is to longsword, many of its guard positions are strikingly similar, if not identical, to the western stuff. It makes sense, the weapons are similar (two handed swords that are light enough to be one handed and be worn on the hip) and the human body is almost the same no matter where you go, so of course in such conditions the martial arts will be similar. Remember, Kendo is like Olympic foil fencing, it is a modern invention and should never be used as examples of how the real weapons were used during their time.
I find the whole Knight vs Samurai debate to be a pretty pointless venture anyways, because both were expert and oftentimes veteran warriors who could not only spear their foes with a polearm or hack their opponents to bits with their swords (Supposing that their enemies were lightly armoured of course, otherwise they would try to pierce the armour or target a weakpoint or a place not defended by armour et cetera), but they would also be quite happy to wrestle or grapple their opponents into the ground and beat their foes to death… supposing that they lost their backup weapons of course and had only their hands left.
Therefor, i find all the Samurai>Knight or Knight>Samurai bullshit on this thread to be fairly nonsensical. Even without venturing into what selected time-periods or nationalities/clans of the Knights or Samurai are selected when considering the outcome of a fight, you have to also consider many other factors that frankly could have such an impact on a fight that you would actually have to pull out a time-machine and a teleporter and have real Knights and Samurai fight in order to have any basis on figuring out who would win.
Alternatively, people also have to think about weapon versatility, and frankly a given Knight, say from the 1400’s such as in Kingdom Come ought to have a more versatile arsenal than a contemporary Samurai from the 1400’s as well. While you can do many things with the Samurai sword for example, and i have even seen techniques similar to half-swording with a Katana, the lack of a sufficient crossguard means that the Knight will be able to pull off mordhau techniques and use his longsword like a hammer, as well as using the crossguard to hook his opponents sword or get his opponent’s weapon trapped or ‘caught in the cross’. The possibility of pommel strikes will also exist for both sides though it would probably be far less effective or efficient from the Katanas pommel then it would with the pronounced, and possibly spiked pommels that existed in the Late-medieval and early renaissance period for longswords.)
While the Samurai can draw upon a varied list of weapons for different jobs as well, such as the Ono axe or the Kanabo for delivering bludgeoning impact’s through armour or to hack through flesh, or the Yari to keep an opponent at distance and to also pierce through armour, the same also exists for Knights. A Knight can for example draw upon a polearm such as a billhook or a poleaxe and these can perform multiple roles in combat, from being able to hook an opponent or his weapons, to having an axe/chopping blade or hammer head as well as a spearhead or pointed spike for piercing through armour.
Versatility is important, because while a given Samurai might have to rely on using a Kanabo or a Yari to defeat his opponents armour, the Knight has a singular weapon that can perform in multiple roles, if perhaps not as efficiently in certain roles as a truly dedicated weapon. Why carry three individual weapons if you are capable of wielding a singular weapon that can perform the actions of all three, whilst having nowhere near the weight of all three individual weapons combined.
The creation of versatile weapon types was something that many European, Arabic and East Asian nations were developing on mainland Eurasia whilst Japan remained fairly Isolated within its own borders and confined within its own system and code of warfare meant that Japan lacked some of the key innovative features that European, Arabic and Asian weapons featured, from backspikes to spear-and-axe type weapons.
You then have physique, training, experience and armour to talk about as well, and i shall not speak on those if only to keep my post short.
To sum it up, i think that any assertions of Knights kicking Samurai asses or Samurai kicking Knightly asses should be left out of this thread, even though this thread has been around for longer then a year and is probably largely abandoned. I have seen Knight Vs Samurai thread wars break out before, and there is a lot of shit-posting and misconceptions that get propagated and thrown around from all sides that really shouldn’t be.
And finally, now that i am here… i would not mind seeing a mod such as this for Kingdom Come.
The Samurai would tear a Knight a new ass hole. The Samurai has better training, better armour, better weapons, ect. Lets not forget all he would have to do is push the Knight over and watch as he can’t get up. The Katana is probably the best sword the world has ever seen, nothing matches it in cutting power, or speed and I’m willing to bet it could cut through plate armour.
Also Japan was way ahead of Europe in terms of Technology, their steel still is the finest in the world. It took guns to finally bring the Samurai down, meanwhile the Knight was defeated by peasants with bows. Samurais are extremely quick and could land a killing stroke before a knight even knew what was going on.
This video show cases how shitty a longsword really was.
I think we just found a butthurt European fan boy. The video is proof enough that the Katana is far superior to the longsword in most ways, hell the Japanese even used the Katana in WW2!
My first thing… i will provide a counter video to your ‘Gunny’ video.
Now, better training you say?
Nope, pretty much on par for both sides, of course. You don’t become a Knight without becoming a page and then a squire, and both were as vigorous and they went through as much if not more training then a comparable Samurai would have. Samurai also started off as page boys, sometimes getting molested by the Samurai they served, if various sources are to be believed
Better Armour you say?
Wrong. Blatantly false.
Of course, whilst a Samurai would not have been wearing the oft-cited ‘bamboo’ armours as is commonly believed, they did use Iron and steel lamellar armours held together with lacing… not too disimilar from Arabic lamellar armour of the High-Late medieval period.
However, the Plate armour of the 1400’s timeperiod was becoming exceedingly strong and durable, perhaps not as strong as the blued spring-steel of the 1500’s, but exceedingly hard none-the-less. There is little that is capable of penetrating through the contemporary plate armour of the 1400’s except for very strong thrusts with polearm weapons, crossbow quarrels fired from a steel arbalest from a good angle or perhaps a handgonne projectile from a relatively close distance… Outside of those weapons, there is little chance of anything getting through except for bludgeoning strikes. You then have to think about the padded doublet or aketon worn underneath, consisting of perhaps 12 or less layers of Linen or a few layers of batting material such as sheeps wool which would also provide additional protection from strikes that are able to get through the armour. That may not sound like much, but as far as i know from what was worn in Japan, the Samurai would be wearing far less-well padded garments under his own suit of armour, and that means that a sufficient strike would be far more damaging for a Samurai then it would for a Knight wearing Plate armour and a padded doublet from the 1400’s.
Unless your Samurai wants to lug around his Kanabo, which as various sources say, they can be pretty heavy even if they can be quite large and hefty,all just to defeat that armour, very good. It takes the Samurai that large, often knobbed Kanabo to perform the same job as a one handed or two handed flanged mace could do, all whilst being lighter then the Kanabo.
Outside of the Kanabo, well good luck killing the Knight . Notice how the Knight gets up pretty quickly at 1:08 of the video? You probably didn’t, or at the very least you wouldn’t admit to doing so, for such is the Cardinal sin of the uninformed person providing a Gunny video as a source of information and expecting to win in a debate .
The Katana is the best sword you say?
Now, i admire the craftsmanship of the Samurai sword, it is amazing what blacksmith’s can do when they lack high quality iron and steel and thus have to rely on what is essentially pattern-forging methods to geta decent sword. Of course the Vikings were doing the exact same thing in 800-900AD.
But, the best sword of it’s class… you mean a two-handed single-edged curved sword… i would much rather use a Indian or Arabic Schimitar such as the Shamshir, which being better shaped and curved, would deliver far more cutting ability then the Katana would, and potentially all within a single hand.
You can keep to your fantasies of a Katana slicing through armour, but i will tell you the reality if you wish to know of it. Do you want to know what happens if anyone swung their sword really hard at a suit of plate armour? Dissapointment and presumably a broken sword. A katana striking against a suit of Plate will most likely glance off and do little actual damage to the man in the suit, and would more likely result in the Katana needing to be maintained and fixed by an experienced blacksmith. Simply put, you never strike with the edge of your sword against armour unless you don’t mind paying for a new sword.
Knights never used their swords against plate armour in this way, with a very large swing, they either tried to get into the gaps of the armour or they grappled their opponents to the ground and aimed to get through the weakpoints in their armour, namely the visors. This is very similar to what the Samurai would have done in combat, which is why styles such as Yoroi-gumi that emphasized on grapples and take downs over striking became popular with the Samurai during the Senkoku Jedai era, this is because striking is useless against an armoured opponent because you would do little actual damage, whereas because armour inevitably has a weight and it heightens your point of balance, it is far easier to perform grapples that lay your opponent down on the ground.
If you look at 3:03 of the above video, you should notice how the unarmed man is utilizing grappling techniques against a man armed with a dagger. Even though this is unarmoured fighting, Fiore says that these most of those techniques are as good against armourered opponents as they are against unarmoured opponents.
Japan has always been way ahead in terms of technology and having the finest, best steel?
That is also wrong.
Do you know what the largest Japanese import was besides Chinese silks? Portuguese steel. I wonder what that apparently inferior steel was turned into? Pehaps Katanas produced on demand for the Ashigaru and Samurai classes?
Spanish and German steel were in high demand by many nations, and so was Indian and Damascus crucible steel in demand from Arabic and Asian countries, however there was never any demand for Japanese steel. If Japanese steel is as superior as you say, then would it not be the other way around? I don’t see the Portugese getting all excited about Japanese steel…
Although, on the other hand you do see excited Japanese Samurai walking around in their new Nanban plate armour that were imported at great cost from Portugal, you know, that actual bullet-resistant product, and not the native made Lamellar type armour (Although native suits of Nanban-style armour started being produced in the later parts of the Sengoku Jidai era). Warlords, especially Oda Nobunaga, were famous for their unique foreign armours, and they were highly praised by the Samurai for their protective benefits, especially against ‘Teppo’ or arquebus fire.
Technology, Why totally, the Japanese were always the best at everything, and everyone else has always been inferior!
Say, did the Japanese ever go so far as to make their own trans-atlantic trips via boat that was without the aid of foreign designs… nope, i never heard about them?
China made very good progress with their own great Treasure fleet, and if the current King had a larger incentive towards establishing better relationships, he would not have burned down his own fleet. History could very well have changed in that instance.
Instead, there were incentives towards establishing widespread trade outside of ‘Muslim hands’ which prompted European monarchs to open up new routes to the ‘spice lands’ which would remain independent of the now Muslim led Constantinople trade routes. The successful discovery of America and the circumnavigation of the ocean lead to increased interest in ship building, which then prompted for advances in the fields of cannon manufacturing to make better and lighter naval guns, which lead to advances here and advances there, while continuous national warfare lead to advances in battlefield technologies as well.
I have however heard about the Red seal ships, but those were apparently built under the guidance of an English man called William adams… nope, i guess it was the superior Japanese technology that inspired William adams and not the other way around .
The knight was beaten by peasant archers?
Wasn’t the requirement laid down by Edward the III state that for a Yeoman to be a Yeoman, that he must own land worth 30 shillings per year, and stipulated that they ought to be paid 4 pennies per day when enlisted?
These were not peasants, these were rich men. They could afford armour and were expected to be proficient with Longbows as well as with sword, and to know how to Grapple and how to wrestle, for village wrestling was as much about sport as it was for combat.
Knight’s were almost never defeated by peasants armed with bows. They were however defeated by veteran yeoman and retinue longbowmen who were armed with bows, but those were not peasants. These ‘peasants’ as you call them were well trained and skilled men who were not only proficient and skilled with their Longbows, they were also trained with sword and buckler techniques as would be similar as shown from the I.33 Fechtbuch manual. It was these Longbowmen who often worked in unison with the Man-at-arms and dismounted knights, both as archers and as actual fighters.
The Longbowmen were placed at the flanks or ‘echelons’ of the ranks specifically because the arrows from the longbow would not perform adequately against front-on-armour. It was only arrows from the flanks that had the most chance of getting through plate armour, and only because the gaps within the armour could only be struck when from the flanks. It was not the Archer that defeated the knight, it was the archers who weakened the enemy ranks with heavy fire before switching to melee weapons and joining the Man-at-arms to strike at the now fatigued and possibly bruised and battered knight’s. It could be called the late-medieval equivalent of ‘combined warfare’ today.
If you wish to be better informed on the ‘Hundred years war’ and the matter of armour as would have been worn during the period, i will include these educational videos that provide great insight on the matter.
The Longbowmen were far from peasants, these were early-professional soldiers, and it was these professional Longbowmen-soldiers who would eventually become the hallmark to what would become the professional mercenary-soldiers such as the Swiss and the Landsknect soldiers of the next hundred to two hundred years. Look to John Hawkwood as an example.
And finally, a Samurai was extremely quick and could land a killing stroke before a knight would know what was going on?
Oh really!
A Samurai is human, and thus has no bullshit-super powers and reflexes like you would seem to presume. The reality is that a Samurai would be just as quick as a Knight, both are trained and presumably experienced and veteran warriors and would thus know what to expect and how to react when a sword swing is thrown.
If a sword swing is thrown, step backward, return with a counter stroke, if defense is given to couterstroke, defend with edge of blade and either parry or evade. This is what real combat is like.
There will be no killing stroke in one blow. If a Samurai knows that his opponent is armoured, he will try to get around that armour, and that very same thought will be within the Knight’s head as well.
If that Samurai attempted to get that perfect killing strike within that blow, the blow will have glanced off the armour, and the Knight would now have a very exposed armoured Samurai right were he wants him.
I am done.
Of course, you may continue to deny or debate my post, but it will ring hollow to the truths that i try to convey with my reply. You may continue to post misguided misconceptions about the overly fantasized and mysticised warriors from the Far East, but i think i have spent enough time providing sources and trying to educate you on the subject. It is not going to be as clear cut as “Oh, the Samurai totally jumps in with cat-like reflexes and subdues the ignorant peasant Gaijin with his 1 billion-times folded diamond sharp katana that can warp the space-time-continuum!”
The fact is that none are superior to the other, at least not to any discernible degree. They are products of their times and their places, and given a different scenario, things could very well be different. The facts are not worth hiding, there are so many things in common between Knights and Samurai, they are products of a ‘feudal’ era, their martial arts have much in common and yet all you seek to do is to divide them with your fantasies, to make one or the other superior.
Simply put, provide evidence to your claims. If you cannot provide credible claims that cannot be backed by sourced resources, then i will not debate with you further, and you will have made a mockery of yourself.
Now, this has taken me a long time to write, and i have provided you with sources that i hope will provide you with information that will hopefully give you more rounded understanding on the subject.
Note:
If you feel offense, know that some of what i say is meant to be sarcasm and is not meant to harm or otherwise belittle you. Your post did come off as what could be described as ‘fanboyism’ or even ‘weeaboo-ism’, but it was the misconceptions and blatant ‘untruths’ within your post that served as the point of my contention.
I do hope that the next time you want to contribute to a thread that you consider thinking about what you post first, and try to make what you write factual. If you are going to enter into a debate, it is a good idea to provide ‘legitimate’ sources.
I like to have debates that perhaps while a little bit harsh, try to give factual statements that are backed by examples and evidence in an attempt to show the truth.
I for one would aboslutely love a game like this, set in feudal Japan. As has been said previously, most games set during this period are fantasy, over the top, or stratgey games - and most of them suck tbh. I would defintely back a reimagining of this type of game in Japan or even China.
Sidenote: why the hell are people complaining about Japanese steel. The quality of a nations steel doesn’t impact whether or not a good game could be made from the era and setting. This isn’t a debate over which nation had better equipment, weapons or warriors. It’s simply a post suggesting Japan would be a good setting for a similar game, and I whole heartedly agree.
Dear god you re-awoken the beast you know not what you have done!
Many ancient history fans tend to lean fanboy toward European or Eastern cultures and then like to debate the subtle nuances of each aspect endlessly in places where it was never meant to be discussed.
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