Sword

A Sword, more specifically a Roman Gladius

A sword is a type of melee weapon that's comprised of a long, sharp blade and a hilt to hold it with. In the real world, the blades of swords normally range in between 50 to 150cm and typically weigh between 1 to 10 kilograms, depending on the size and materials used on the weapon. Numerous variants of swords exist and have been employed since some ancient Mesopotamian metalworker decided to make the blade of a dagger much longer than usual.

Why swords were awesome

Spears are good at poking stuff, but were long and clumsy once you got real close, only had a sharp edge at the very end and easily get tangled in stuff. Axes were good at chopping, but were not good at deflecting other blows and took a bit of time and a fair bit of space to build up momentum. Swords were good at both chopping and poking. If you got close up in a fight back then, a sword was your friend. Some swords are more pokey, some more choppy, some were balanced, but they could all do the job in a pinch. If you have a sword, you have more options available to you.

Shortcomings which should be acknowledged

Swords however requires much, much more skill than any other close combat weapon and while untrained militiamen with spears, halberds or axes still could be a threatening foes, untrained men with a swords possess a danger mainly to themselves. On top of that, they were more expensive than either one of those two weapons. Swords are also not the best weapons when it comes to cutting through metallic armor.

Types of Swords

- Arming Sword: Or side-sword, is a one handed weapon pretty much carried by every decently equipped man-at-arms/archer/spearman/knight ever. Often carried with a shield of some sort it can also be used if your main weapon breaks or happens to be too long to use in corridors.

- Longsword: A knightly sword, befit of any self respecting knightly individual, it's your two-handed or hand and a half go-to knight killer with multiple functions such as sword(duh), crowbar, spear, and hammer. Though there are dozens of techniques to use the longsword two of the most common and useful styles are the Italian and German styles. The Italian longsword technique allows you to strike and parry quickly, greatly emphasizing on using the general physics of a longsword combined with well planned footwork. The German style of Half-Sword-ing (that's gripping your sword with right hand on the handle and the left on the percussion point of the sword(or half point)) this technique allows you to use the sword like a crowbar and fight armored opponents more efficiently when in CQC, the objective being to use the sword to catch and topple your opponent so you can shove the pointy end into his visor or other less armored spot. It is also good to note that the longsword strikes faster and harder than the arming sword, due to the fact you're using two hands to operate it.

- Greatsword: Or Zweihander, is a mighty 5-6ft 7-10lb blade (not 40lbs you dolt) that appeared somewhere around the 15th century which was mainly carried by fuckhuge men with fuckhuge biceps and fuckhuge balls whose jobs were to run forth as the vanguard and hack enemy pikes, pikemen, swordsmen and occasionally cavalry to meaty chunks. Greatswords bear many of the same abilities as the longsword though it was much slower and struck harder due to the weight.

Sword Related stupidity

There are two types of sword related retards.

• Sword Wankers: Overly romantic morons who believe that the sword is the be all end all weapon until people got good with guns and tragically ended that. Buying into all that chivalry/Bushido nonsense.
• Anti-Sword Wankers: People who respond to the sword wankers by going too far the other way. Seeing swords as worthless weapons that were only carried by overly romantic morons. Sword blades would always shatter on impact with plate armor and ten swordsmen would easily die to one guy with a spear.

Both are stupid. Swords were not the be-all end all of medieval warfare. Other weapons did have their advantages. Maces did concussive damage even if someone was wearing heavy armor and could break bones. Spears had a longer reach and were better against cavalry. Halberds could deliver a devastating chop. This did not mean that swords were worthless. They were versatile, short swords were excellent as a fallback weapon. Double handed Zweihanders could be devastating. Never the less, morons who think in bare basic binary believe that they are either the weapon of the gods or worthless rubbish. Ignoring that any civilization that developed metalworking came up with swords.

This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it