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[Aqizzar]

This is why the Mordhau was a common technique in medieval armored combat. The knight would grab the blade of his sword and bash his opponent with the pommel.

I have to say that if you're a knight, and you're developing techniques like holding your sword by the blade to bash a guy with the handle because you know it will be more effective enough to bother, you're way too fucking stubborn.  Any knight who wasn't a blockhead would be using a mace.  That's what they're for.

If this was actually a common thing, my appreciation of warriors of old has dropped immensely.

[Kay12]

The official tiles mode for Crawl has hammers (implied to be warhammers) that look pretty much like actual warhammers. None of that block of metal with a handle-stuff...

Another misconception that's carried on by many games is that iron is superior to bronze. Since they didn't have efficient means to produce steel back then, iron was actually less resilient. Bronze also resists corrosion way better (although most games don't model it).

Ninja fake edit: Totally agree on Assassin's Creed and hammers...


EDIT: I just learned that about 2000 years ago, people from East Africa invented a blast furnace whose temperature wasn't matched in Europe until the Industrial Revolution. Guess what I'm telling the next person who dares to claim that Africans are stupid and never invented anything?

[olemars]

This is why the Mordhau was a common technique in medieval armored combat. The knight would grab the blade of his sword and bash his opponent with the pommel.

I have to say that if you're a knight, and you're developing techniques like holding your sword by the blade to bash a guy with the handle because you know it will be more effective enough to bother, you're way too fucking stubborn.  Any knight who wasn't a blockhead would be using a mace.  That's what they're for.

If this was actually a common thing, my appreciation of warriors of old has dropped immensely.

I wasn't around at the time, but I suspect the good sir knights preferred slaughtering unarmoured peasant levies from horseback and only engaged other armoured knights in melee when no other option was available. A longsword is then a good choice. A quality sword was mandatory bling for a proper knight in any case, a mace is so uncivilized.

[Max White]

Swords would have been popular for the same reason silly long boots were, because they were expensive to manufacture. Nobles enjoyed showing off how much wealth they could waste.
Did you know that the number of man hours it took to fully kit out a knight in armour and weapon was about the same as the amount it takes for us to build a jumbo jet today? It was a man's life work to make something worthy of a knight, so showing off by having something like a sword rather than a lump of metal and call it a mace would have been attractive.

[Lysabild]

Swords would have been popular for the same reason silly long boots were, because they were expensive to manufacture. Nobles enjoyed showing off how much wealth they could waste.
Did you know that the number of man hours it took to fully kit out a knight in armour and weapon was about the same as the amount it takes for us to build a jumbo jet today? It was a man's life work to make something worthy of a knight, so showing off by having something like a sword rather than a lump of metal and call it a mace would have been attractive.

Pretty much.

EDIT: I just learned that about 2000 years ago, people from East Africa invented a blast furnace whose temperature wasn't matched in Europe until the Industrial Revolution. Guess what I'm telling the next person who dares to claim that Africans are stupid and never invented anything?

On this note I remember watching something about the South Americans having used a metal we couldn't melt yet a thousand/hundreds of years before to connect big stones into walls. Forgot the metal though :/ My memory says nickel, but I really have no idea. It was a documentary about trying to find a historical Atlantis instead of chasing a myth under the water. They concluded that a lot of South America matched the criteria. Good show, saw it on Discovery, wish I could link it but I can't find it.

[Muz]

I know that as in Dwarf Fortress, in reality blunt weapons were more efficient against armored targets. However, shouldn't a smaller contact area still give better penetration, so why are maces and warhammers ever better than an edged weapon of same weight?

Real swords are actually quite light, nothing like the heavy replica ones. I don't think a mace that light would ever be any good

But yeah, it depends. Swords are incredible weapons vs unarmored/poorly armored people. And making armor isn't easy; it's much cheaper equipping 1000000 people with swords than full plate.

Yet, against fully armored people, maces and other blunt weapons do better. Well, a regular lightly armored person with a hammer would still lose quickly against a heavily armored guy with a sword, but I read somewhere that Agincourt was won by longbowmen with hammers fighting the heavily armored French troops who were ankle deep in mud.

I don't think any of us really know or have experience with either, and I shudder to think how many of us are getting their info from some kind of game

[ChairmanPoo]

It was platinum, reportedly. I mistrust the references, though.

Re: maces: not only they are easier to use, they're likely easier to make too.


Worth noting also that not all steel is the same. Even during the industrial revolution bessemer convertors only worked with high quality iron ore

[counting]

So you guys heard Chinese paper armor? (It's actually not fully paper, but combined with clothes, silk, etc.) It's said to be as effective but much cheaper than steel armor.

[Phmcw]

How I picture it.

But it seems it mostly worked against arrow. I don't see how it could fare well against spear and heavy swords, or any slashing weapon. It may have been efficient against blunt weapon,  though.

[ChairmanPoo]

I know Aztecs used cotton armor, which was quite effective against aztec weaponry in general (stone arrows, obsidian swords, maces...), and quite light. It was wholly uneffective against steel blades, though.

[counting]

How I picture it.

But it seems it mostly worked against arrow. I don't see how it could fare well against spear and heavy swords, or any slashing weapon. It may have been efficient against blunt weapon,  though.

As ancient books say it's as good as real armor. And it's much more lighter as well. Some said it has the same effect since it's a elementary composition armors with multiple layers, and as Mongolian worriers proved that multiple silk clothing are good against arrows. With extra outer shells means it can be used against other type of sharp weapons. And a think layers also absorbs shock waves.

[ChairmanPoo]

I googled it and what they say around is pretty much what pchw said, that it was mostly against arrows.

[Vattic]

ChairmanPoo: I couldn't find the video but I found people talking about an episode of myth busters where they proved paper armour could stand up against swords and muskets also.

as Mongolian worriers proved that multiple silk clothing are good against arrows.

Silk also makes it a lot easier to remove the arrows.

Genghis Khan was once said to have issued all his horsemen with silk vests, as an arrow hitting silk does not break it but ends up embedded in the flesh wrapped in silk, allowing the arrow to be removed by gently teasing the silk open, as opposed to the usual method of removing barbed arrows, cutting them out or pushing them right through an injured limb and out of the other side. These silk vests functioned much like the padded armour used by European and Byzantine soldiers of the era, such as the gambeson.

From Wikipedia: Mongolian_armour.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one bothered by how warhammers are generally depicted.

[Simmura McCrea]

I know that as in Dwarf Fortress, in reality blunt weapons were more efficient against armored targets. However, shouldn't a smaller contact area still give better penetration, so why are maces and warhammers ever better than an edged weapon of same weight?

Real swords are actually quite light, nothing like the heavy replica ones. I don't think a mace that light would ever be any good

But yeah, it depends. Swords are incredible weapons vs unarmored/poorly armored people. And making armor isn't easy; it's much cheaper equipping 1000000 people with swords than full plate.

Yet, against fully armored people, maces and other blunt weapons do better. Well, a regular lightly armored person with a hammer would still lose quickly against a heavily armored guy with a sword, but I read somewhere that Agincourt was won by longbowmen with hammers fighting the heavily armored French troops who were ankle deep in mud.

I don't think any of us really know or have experience with either, and I shudder to think how many of us are getting their info from some kind of game

Agincourt was won by the longbows themselves as much as the hammers. Because charging across a few hundred metres of muddy field towards lots of guys with really freaking huge bows is a great idea.

[Vector]

*shrug*

Sorry, man, I'm trying to recall the collective information from all the books on knights I read back in elementary school, along with running some really crappy mental physics simulators (let's just say that it was not a good subject for me at all).  So some of that may be a bit inaccurate or using the wrong words, but... well, doing the best I can.


Could someone grab me a picture of what the "real war hammers" are supposed to look like?  I don't know that I've ever seen one... thanks in advance =)