In an open field. is there a more OP melee weapon?

>how many unarmed people could one man hold off with this?
Come at me faggot

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Swords are near useless against armor, that's what maces, warhammers, and poleaxes were for. However, swords are god tier against unarmored opponents

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Battle fields have always been dominated by shields and spears. Either shield walls, shield walls with spears, or phalanxes of spears. By the time mainland Europe starts talking about zweihanders, it's probably just someone writing about their relative that owned one after they immigrated to a celtic place where a couple people owned them and they wrote it down because you'd maybe run into a guy doing that somewhere. If you were training someone to fight you just mention the kind of thing they could encounter. Maybe some of them emigrated back to a mainland and got something made up like it, but it's kinda suspect anyone would bother with one unless it was a parade/ceremony kind of thing. It makes more sense where scot/celts used it because most of them were unarmed and were successful re-inventing the wheel and making pike phalanxes under the command of someone ceremoniously carrying around a big ass sword like that. They were up against armored knights and nobles, and over came the odds. They didn't do it with those kinds of swords. They did it with schiltroms/phalanxes. Those zweihanders just look like parade armor/weapon kind of things.

Did they really run and fight on their tippy toes? Almost every fighting manual has lightly armored bois with their heels on the ground.

*rarely have their heels on the ground

Halberd and zweihander are best individual weapons.

Halberd and zweihander were used to supplement pikemen, you absolute retard.

Learn to 16th century warfare.

If they have no fear, few.

Sord n bord beats pretty much everything one on uno, but battles are never isolated like that.

Been playing mordhau noob? Getting rekt I see.

Number 1 rule is git gud fggt.
Number 2 rule is have gun.

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two, three if you're good. Thing with a two-hander is that you loose most of your momentum.

I'm thinking the first guy rushes you and you kill him while his buddies try to take you while your blade is stuck. That leaves you going unarmed against the second man and assuming other factors equal, that's a stalemate.

If you're good you can go from the first kill into a pommel strike on enemy #2 then turn to fend off #3 but you only have two eyes so even with a sword you're at a stalemate at beast.

The renaissance masters left us specific routines to use the montante/spadone to defend from multiple attackers in urban settings.

Keep in mind that they're intended to deter an angry mob, not a trained attacker.

>how many unarmed people could one man hold off with this?
Depends very much on how angry they are. Trying to overpower someone wielding a greatsword will end with at least one attacker dead. If noone wants to be that guy...

yeah search youtube for Alfieri's Spadone, that dude who demonstrates the moves makes it looks so fucking cool.

2-3 Guys with spears at different angles MAX.

How about daggers?

Kek, nigga the Zweihander is a guard weapon used by wealthy mercenaries specifically because you don't need a formation of then to be effective.

Dopplesoldners, right?

Yeah, think they were one of the few groups that could even afford those fucking long as swords.

Pro-tip: doppelsoldners were simply all mercs who were paid more than standard wages. As a concept it existed since the dawn of times in most armies, just think of the roman duplicarius.
All zweihander wielders were doppelsoldners because it was a specialty skill, but most dopplesoldners didn't use zweihanders.

I figured, but didn't want to assume.

>If you where rushed by 1 guy with plate in a open field you would have trouble with a zweihander to fell him.
But then you could say the same about pretty much every other melee weapon too, even those specifically made to fuck up people in full plate.
Plate was just that op.

I'm guessing they were trying to represent you being on the balls of your feet, like any boxer or wrestler does today

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Got to close the distance, wrestle him to the ground, pull out your dagger and jam it between his eye slits. A tall order because your opponent would know how to wrestle as well. Knights were basically unstoppable killing machines

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No, except maybe the rear foot when striking. It's just artistic conventions.
Also:
>Almost every fighting manual
medieval ones maybe but those of the 16th century onwards tended to be more anatomically correct, to a degree.

Well, not unstoppable since rushing them while they're surrounded would have been as easy as with everybody else, but they were sure hard to kill.
Which is likely half the reason why ransoming them was so common: hard to justify killing them when it basically only happened when they were good as captured already.

>Alfieri's Spadone
youtube.com/watch?v=OtT3sjO0ocU

Also, main problem when fighting a large two-handed sword is that nobody wants to be the guy who go in first.
youtube.com/watch?v=ht6h0rYJlLI
If the guy with the montante is going on the offensive it's an even more complicated matter. Realistically, you can probably handle three people at the same time, which is already pretty impressive. It also depends on the weapons of the assaillants, if they're all armed with short sword or daggers, it's much easier for the montanteiro.

>Knights were basically unstoppable killing machines
Well rushing them 5vs1 with mauls and bills worked in a certain battle...

Not on their tippy toes, but they did walk and run stepping on the ball of their feet rather than their heels. Kind of a necessity when you're walking on soft leather instead of a hard sole, unless you want to wreck your foot by stepping with all your weight onto a pointy rock or a hidden nail.

The real danger of a knight was the years of training and experience. The armor was secondary since it was really to keep you from getting a lucky hit.

Boys became squires at 14 so by the time they're 20 you're looking at NCO levels of experience.

True

Someone who has been training 6 months in BJJ or Boxing can basically whoop any untrained person pretty easily. Now Imagine someone who has been training since they were 10, so the moves are instinctual to them, and now they are 25. Also, they are in better shape than you.

Yeah, they weren't literally unstoppable - but they were practically unstoppable for any normal person

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Note, always check the height of the ceiling before practicing Spadone.

The Zweihander was considered more polearm than sword, was mostly used with and against pike formations

>Also, they are in better shape than you.

They also probably have more experience in life or death fighting, and know how to think better under extremely adrenaline situations, which is a huge force multiplier

>The armor was secondary since it was really to keep you from getting a lucky hit.
Fuck no. Sure, they were generally well above average combatants, but the armor was literally key to their fighting style. The full body protection provided by plate is what allowed them to fight aggressively with big two handed weapons rather than carrying around a shield like the knights of yore.
Take the armor away, and a knight would fare about as well as a very experienced nco does nowadays: more deadly than most, still every bit as likely to be killed as everybody else.
Proof of concept here is the roman army: there the NCOs were the baddest legionaries on the block, generally in their early thirties after enlisting at sixteen, but they had similar levels of protection as their soldiers, and they dropped off like fucking flies.

Halbreds are pikes, and that concept was just re-inventing the wheel using a formation of pikemen. Most everyone else was successful because they at least used the pikes to protect their artillery and slingers/archers/muskets. You're an ignorant cunt quite honestly if you think mercenary troops in the 16th century didn't throw a fucking parade and grand stand/sabre rattle to look like they're doing anything. It's a mock battle they show off to look like they earned their pay, a couple of people get offed making a show about it, nobody fought to the last doing that kind of shit. Unless you had some medieval life insurance nobodies gonna go try to berzerk on that kind of shit.
Tried an true methods are shields, spears, shield and spear, and ranged/cavalry units because a shield and spear is useless if you can't run down and kill someone if they can run away better. I swear every euro nerd glorifies swords despite them trying to boast some kind of spear or shield formation.

Swords are just cool. But I think we all know that shield and spear (or some variation thereof) was the absolute king of pre-industrial warfare

speak fucking english. it's a two hander, not a zweihander.

Deutsch, Arschloch, sprichst du das?

youtube.com/watch?v=lrDKaCcXeVA
This guy claimed he busted more lamps with his single-handed sword though. Probably because you can and do raise your arm higher with it.

Guns were the most important weapons fielded centuries before the industrial warfare.

It's all sticks and stones no matter what as long as there is anyone alive to pick one up. The sticks and stones just get more fancy in construction that it gets to be incorrect to call them that at all anymore unless you wanna play with them over it. Yeah the halbred was so great, so they became vassals. They folded and became vassals were halbreds and post modern industrial places are. The area would have been useless to anyone else if they wiped them out. Russia already proved that with their claims of importing other people to learn how to re-invent the wheel and managed to make everything worse for every culture they ever interacted with trying it.

>speak fucking english
>it's a two hander
If anything you should use greatsword. Two hander doesn't mean shit in this context, and two-handed is wayy generic.

I can feel my IQ being sapped away just trying to make sense of this drivel.
I just hope noone takes you serious in any way.

Shields were mostly gone by the end of the middle ages. Spears were not a thing once more developed polearms came along (that includes pikes, even if they are basically very long spears.)

That's what I meant by variation. Long pointy thing + defense of some sort. Shields went away when the armor got better, but that effectively acted as a shield. And even then, we are talking about the last couple hundred years of a 900 year period

>That's what I meant by variation.
So basically it's so wide of a statement you might have said nothing.

Less than with a proper pole arm. Its a meme weapon for breaking up formations

not really, but if you choose to see it that way, then ok

>HEMAfaggots think this is impressive
This man is at the same level as most weebs reach just by swinging a $20 wallhanger katana around in their backyard for a few weeks/months. He even has to make little wooshing sounds when he swings. Most of his swings have no power and his edge alignment is nonexistent Never fails to surprise me how awful the average HEMAtard "sword expert" is.

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Problem with hemafaggots is that they need some good former wrestlers or boxers to teach them footwork. They are all flat footed, slow, and poor judges of distance. They also strike "on the line" straight forward, which is a death sentence in any striking discipline. Also, they are poor at generating power with their hips, and swing with all arms. It seems to be mostly unathletic people and people who never played sports as kids getting into it and it shows

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keep crying HEMAtard. One day your worthless techniques might do something

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I was literally posting against hema, can you read?

No, he is literally blinded by butthurt

HEMA nerds are all gay and I will crush their bones into dust

>t. Bohurt homunculus

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Nigger wot, halberds are not pike and do not serve the same role as pike.

Stupid fuck detected.

Nigger wot?

You specifcally said" shield and spear before the industrial age" but then oh no it was "any sort of defense and any spikey thingy", forgetting that for about 400 years, the gun was the most important weapon of the battlefield and that 150 years before the industrial age, armor and defensive weapons had disappeared for the vast majority of soldiers.

You said literally nothing of truth or value. 1500 isn't the beginning of the industrial age in case you hadn't realized.

Alright, cool bro. I was wrong about the last 250-300 years of pre-industrial society, I'll give you that.. and you misquoted me, I said: "shield and spear (or some variation thereof)" I'm still right about that - even if you want to get persnickity about armor being really good from ~1350 onwards so shields are wrong, too. I'll take everything before 1350. Happy? It's not a big deal

>Happy? It's not a big deal
>550+ years of military development is no big deal
>can't into history and can't into weapons as well
Also no I'm not happy, why should I be? Are you looking at what's happening out there?

Woah man, peace. It's just a one-off post on an anonymous image board. We'll both forget about it in a couple days at most. How about this: Spears (or a variation of a polearm similar to a spear) and shield were very dominant forces on the battlefield for most of civilized human history.

Sucks that you're all wound up right now, wanna talk?

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>Also no I'm not happy
Not him, but that is clear. You are just a very unhappy person.

>Sucks that you're all wound up right now, wanna talk?
>Not him, but that is clear. You are just a very unhappy person.
Lack of sleep and a bad week of work followed by what will be another do this to you. Don't worry anons, at this point I'm being an ass for no purpose. So, excuse the rough answers and have a nice day. You especially Apple_Pie user, that's a fine pic you have there.

yet_but_still_my_point_stands_because_blahblahblah...!

yes, polearms. a well made one with an axe/hammer side and hook/spike on the back while your trying to braveheart i'm ankle pick your dumbass

bro i KNOW i so wanted to join just cause i know i would fucking WRECK OH MY GOD. is that one where if a knee touches your out? and they don't even practice sumo or judo it's fucking sad. they are also cringey fucking gatekeepers

Summary of the information herein
Spears/polearms :
> have always been the primary arm of all armies from the Ancient Sumerians, to the 1600s
> weight from 1.5 - 3 kilos
> were only replaced by guns, which along with cannons, were the primary arms until now. Now it's planes, subs, and drones.
> the length was what keeps you alive. You don't want the enemy to get close to you.

Zweihanders
> most weighed about 7 kilos, which is fucking silly considering most swords weigh about 1 - 1.5 kilos
> the period manuscripts show the sword used alone, by a singular person, with no opponent
> these swords were probably used in parades, by royal guards, or trained specialists who had to secure a small spot, like a doorway.
> these were probably not battlefield weapons

Thanks man, no hard feelings at all. Hopefully you get some bright spots, soon

I think if you could figure out how to close the distance on them and pull out your hemadagger, you would win everytime. They'd be powerless against you, the khabib of your local hema scene

Seems like distance has been the primary motivator for weapon advancement. Spears/Polearms - then guns which can hit you from further and further away, now drones in which the operator can hit you from basically the other side of the globe. I guess there is not really any more distance to get if we can hit you in Syria from a trailer in Arizona. Maybe hitting from satellites to mitigate the risk of drones being shot down

>7kg
retard confirmed

The top HEMA competitors know how to wrestle, but overall the level of grappling is a joke. Armored HEMA guys tend to be better since grapplng happens a lot more there.

My HEMA club is decent but far from the best fencing at competitions, but nobody fucks with us in wrestling because most of the guys in my club comes from grappling/MMA backgrounds. I sparred a guy who'd only ever done fencing. He styled on me nearly the entire time and I only got handful of solid hits in, but the one moment he got into a clinch, I nearly hip tossed him even though I've only got a few months of grappling experience.

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t. didn't watch the video

>Shields were mostly gone by the end of the middle ages
I never understood that as a steel-reinforced shield with thick enough wood could probably stop a bullet from an early firearm, while still being manageable to carry

Pavises existed, but they were used mostly with crossbows (and in sieges more than on the battlefield). Similar things were tried for gunpowder combat, but abandoned quickly. My best guess as to why is such a shield would be too heavy to use in melee, even if you could carry it. If a musketeer tried to use it, he'd be overloaded, immobile, can't use countermarch. So you'd have a soldier in the field who can't be shot (easily), but also isn't of much use.

The Doppelsöldner thing was part of an initiative to encourage people to keep up their martial skills in case of conscription.

People who were members of a swordschool or practiced with an instructor got a double wage during wartime, since they bring more to the table, obviously.

The word "Söldner" means mercenary today, but back in the day it just meant Soldier, a man that fights for 'Sold' (money). So the term "Doppelsöldner" really mostly means "skilled conscript", and not "Super Merc" lmao.

Now that I think about it, you propably can't apply it to merc in the first place, since a merc wouldn't get conscripted, being a volunteer.
And if that was not the case, since he is a trained fighter by default the double pay status would apply to him automatically, making the term redundant.

NIGGA READ

What I meant to say with this post is, the Doppelsöldner status has zero correlation with Zweihanders or any other kind of weapon, except maybe longswords, which to my knowledge were the most popular among the middle class citizens in europe at the time.

Zweis were used by Doppels, but by others as well.

I talked to an intermediate HEMA guy who had a training session at his club with a montante expert. To demonstrate the pattern he was teaching he invited the whole club to come at him and break his guard. They couldn't do it.

The upshot is, if you're very good, you can hold off any number of people, even if they're armed.

This might give you some idea of how fluidly this sword can be wielded, and how you can move in a way that allows no one to get close.

youtube.com/watch?v=vhNnwby--yQ

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Japanese were some who did this a lot, using lots pavises and even anti-pistol steel bucklers here and there to supplement their guns.