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KNIGHT!

42 (49.4%)

SAMURAI!

7 (8.2%)

BOTH SUCK!

15 (17.6%)

NEUTRAL!

4 (4.7%)

I DON'T CARE!

17 (20%)

Total Members Voted: 81

[Parsely]

What if two horses were thrown into the fray?

The horses would leave while the knight stabbed the samurai with his sword.

[Loud Whispers]

What if two horses was thrown into the fray?

Would the Samurai and the Knight team up to defeat the horse overlords, or would they fall in division?

They would both die because the horses were actually Mongolian scouts for Best Khanate

[Ghazkull]

Meh the Huscarl or a proper Vikingr would catch their blades with his shield and bash their heads with his axe in.

So yeah viking would win. And no i won't accept any tedious facts from some weird tv shows which think they figured it out. Plus vikings at least followed a bit of personal hygiene, thus they would die lsat to dysentery and such things. HAH.

[Cthulhu]

Daily reminder

[Zangi]

Daily reminder

So... was the sword made in China?  Or with actual shoddy Japanese ore?

[Ogdibus]

My claim was based on a video demonstration, so it's hardly irrefutable proof, but I did also say that it requires too much force for too little effect to even bother trying.  It's not as if it were a claim of superiority.

If this is that one video of the Murrican' lad shoving a katana through a cuirass whilst a longsword fails to do the same, do note that the katana used is a modern one made in America on a weapons show run by Americans for the purpose of promoting American products. It isn't remotely close to being an accurate analogue.

I have no idea if we're thinking of the same one, but I wouldn't be surprised if we were.  No brand names were mentioned, but I could easily imagine an add running just before or after the segment.

IMO Knights would win; plate armor > arrows, so long ranged combat would be out of the question and they'd have to close. Upon which point Shield > 2handing a katana (seriously, not having a means to parry or block other than with the blade is a bizarre trait for a warrior and only could have evolved in such an insular culture) followed by pretty much any weapon > lacquer armor.

Lacquer was a treatment for armor, which was usually metal lamellar, or plates.  If you think overlapping plates of steel are useless against weapons, then there is no reason for you to think that the knight would have an advantage.

A knight in full plate doesn't usually need to use a shield, and you don't need a shield to deflect an attack, nor do you need to deflect attacks as your sole means of active defense.  Both knight and samurai a much more nuanced than a list of armament.

Daily reminder

A sword of any kind is going to be much more durable when it's secured flush against a large dense object, as shown in that image.  I've also seen video of a katana cutting bullets in half as they are fired from an M2 machine gun, without any reinforcement, and several of people that in a single draw, cleave though hanging animal carcasses with gross messers.  Seriously, if European swords were really as dull as clubs, and Japanese swords brittle as glass, they would have just used and romanticized different weapons.

[Hawkfrost]

First off, a katana is not designed as a thrusting weapon

It doesn't need to be.  It just needs to have a strong and sharp tip, which it does, with the exception of gunto.  The samurai did not use gunto, though.

because no sword can pierce proper plate armor.

Which armor counts as "proper", which knights had it, and how do you know this.

My claim was based on a video demonstration, so it's hardly irrefutable proof, but I did also say that it requires too much force for too little effect to even bother trying.  It's not as if it were a claim of superiority.

Well, I am primarily basing it off the fact that even Genoese crossbows could not reliably and lethally penetrate the Late Medieval tempered plate armor that French and Italian knights wore, and so I somehow doubt that a person can deliver a piercing thrust with a light weapon of thin steel through it instead. Keep in mind a knight would be wearing maille and a gambeson underneath the plate as well, and that the fluting was designed to provide no flat surface to find purchase on.

As stated by HugoLuman, they carried a different set of weapons to combat men in armor such as the warhammer or the pollaxe, which had more mass and could be swung with enough force to crush the metal or hurt the man beneath it regardless. As far as I am aware, the predominant technique of how to kill a man in armor was to attempt to wrestle him to the ground if you could not slay him with your weapon, and drive your rondel either through the eyeslit or in the gaps between plates.


I somehow doubt that even in the Sengoku period that samurai would fight with swords instead of spears, due to how swords do not cleave through any sort of armor in the way you see in movies like Lord of the Rings. Swords became common in the Edo period as a dueling weapon, similar to the usage of rapiers and smallswords in Europe for the same purpose.


For an interesting side point, take a look at a Kriegsmesser and tell me that isn't a German katana.

[Ogdibus]

Honestly I don't think that a katana is a desirable weapon for dealing with plate or western chain mail.  The demonstration that I watched didn't make it look viable in spite of breaching the plate, which it was just barely able to do.

Based on arms manuals, it appears that armored knights used a lot of grappling techniques, with both sword and pole arms, in order to defeat each other.  I'm pretty convinced that if you armed a knight and samurai for battle, and they fought, it would be with pole arms, with the knight possibly using a long sword, and probably end with grappling, (I speculated that in my first post).  I suspect that swords would only be a factor if they weren't armed for combat.

For an interesting side point, take a look at a Kriegsmesser and tell me that isn't a German katana.

It's almost exactly what I thought when I saw what they can do.   When it comes to purpose and results, they seem very similar.

[WillowLuman]

Generally, a Knight fights like this:

Charging enemy infantry with a spear/lance, which probably breaks after the first few charges. They then switch to a sword or an axe, long enough to swipe at ground people from horseback. At some point they may dismount or be forced to dismount.

Both are primarily mounted fighters on the battlefield, though duelist tactics and armaments are different.

[mainiac]

Or a knight fights through charging diagonally across the enemy, throwing a couple spears and then retreating to repeat the process (spanish mid/late medieval).  Or a knight fights by never getting on a horse and forming a shieldwall with other knights (british/german dark ages, frankish mid-late medieval).  Or a knight fights by riding around on a massive horse in full chainmail (horse chainmail too) and shooting arrows at the enemy (greek dark ages to early medieval).  Or a knight fights on a light horse, wearing the enemy down before picking off the straglars (italian/balkan late medieval).  The popular myth of how knights fight was just one of many, many different different ways they would fight.

[Neonivek]

There are a lot of interesting stories about European and Samurai fights that usually didn't go the Samurai's way.

Yet in that situation it was because they were both unarmored and the European was carrying the typical Fencing Rapiers constructed for unarmored battle versus the Katana.

It is always important to remember that every set of armor and weapon is made for a different environment with different tools and situations.

[Ogdibus]

I'm pretty sure knights only charge in an "L" shape, mounted on pianos while singing Can You Feel the Love Tonight.  Beware their garish spectacles!

[Luke_Prowler]

Nah, that's just the knights of spamalot

[Ghazkull]

Daily reminder

well there is one problem with that Cthulhu, thats RTL II a german television channel not known for its...scientific approach. All in all i wouldn't trust anything that comes from that tv channel farther than i can hurl an elephant...which is not very far i'm afraid.

Mind, the same program that is showing this scene, was investigating if Illuminati had something to do with the Cold War, the Kennedy Assassination and of course 9/11.

[Flying Dice]

Came in here expecting refutations of Glorious Nippon Steel, glad to not be disappointed.

Spoiler: Relevant (click to show/hide)

Joking aside, am I incorrect in recalling that samurai actually fought primarily with the naginata and yumi, with the swords mainly being used for duels and as reserve weapons? A glaive-like weapon would be more useful on horseback, and would potentially also give a reach advantage on foot, depending on the area of the fight. I don't have numbers for the force exerted by the yumi, but it's (IIRC) the largest bow in the world, so it might manage similar pull weight to an English longbow.

That said, European plate mail would probably carry the day given that Japan didn't see much use of dedicated anti-armor personal weapons, but in a fight on foot and without full armor a samurai might stand a decent chance. And, as mainiac mentioned, the history of combat in medieval Europe is filled with a vast variety of styles, tactics, and weapons. If you cherrypicked it'd be virtually impossible to not find some sort of knight which could best a samurai in any given scenario.