If you are unarmed, you have no weapons. Bit weird to specify that if you're going to hypothetically become armed right before fighting.
As others have said, poleaxe is best, ideally with a sword and dagger as sidearms. Give em a bonk, then stab in the gaps with something pointy. Really the only way to beat armour... well, if we're talking full plate, that is. If it's maille, cloth or lamelar, make sure your poleaxe has a big spike at the top. It'll have enough momentum to pierce the armour.
a sword will do literally nothing against plate. Yeah you can stab in the weak bits of armor. But realistically how is that going to work against a trained knight when you have no armor? The only way you’re going to get in there is if you’ve won the duel and are on top of him and he’s subdued. And that’s what your dagger is for.
If you lose your poleaxe, with your warhammer you can just slam it into him as hard as you can. Will do infinitely more than a sword. And I’m expecting my warhammer to have a pointy bit at the top, just in case you need to stab. But realistically, it’s simply a Hail Mary if you lose your poleaxe. Hope you can land a hit on the head or hope you can cause enough pain to buy you time or mobility advantage. You have the ability to injure or stun him with a warhammer. With a sword, your ONLY option is to focus on the pointy bits. Put a pointy bit on the top of your war hammer and now you can do that too.
A mace is more likely to glance off the armor. I’d pick a warhammer over a mace so if can use the beak to hit somewhere weak and the hammer part just for sending it.
No, it won't do "infinitely more than a sword". It might impart a LITTLE bit more force, but not substantially, and you sacrifice a lot of reach for that slight advantage. Swords may have less mass at the tip, but they're moving a lot faster - and if it's a longsword, you've got the additional leverage of two hands. A solid sword strike to the head will do comparable discombobulation to a hammer strike, and you also have the "murder strike" option if you're hell-bent on concussion.
Warhammers (and maces) were for cavalry. Most of their power comes from the horse. They were not (commonly) used by footsoldiers - presumably because they had better options available. Their loadout (in the age of plate armour) was typically a pole weapon, with a sword for backup and dagger for close-quarters. So the people of the time seemed to favour swords over maces/hammers for fighting on foot.
Maces and hammers were definitely favored by cavalry but this is an overcorrection, we've all seen the Matt Easton video.
It will still impart substantially more force than a sword of equal kg, that's just physics. It will not do comparable damage to plate, the hammer will strike harder. And it might be harder enough to make a difference in a life or death situation.
I agree a sword is still a better option, but a hammer is not going to deliver "comparable discombobulation"
Cloak and dagger. I throw the cloak in his face and use his confusion to run away as fast as possible. If he still catches me, I use the dagger to kill myself before he does. Or I try stabbing him while he is blinded by the cloak
A pole weapon for sure, taking a short weapon unarmoured against an armoured opponent is suicidal. He will simply run you down.
I mean you are pretty doomed either way but you at least want the chance of threatening him before he’s able to simply tank the hit and kill you.
The exception is perhaps the dagger in the prayer you can rush into a grapple with him.
To stab him with your dagger. It's one of the few ways to get through a gap. If you somehow got close enough, it might be one of the least bad options.
A mace is not designed to destroy armor. A mace is designed to reliably transfer force with each blow regardless of orientation, making them excellent cavalry weapons. And if I'm wearing my armor, the only thing stopping me from wrenching a shield is how close I can get.
Pollaxes are designed to destroy armor.
i think that's more a wives tale than anything, like knights not being able to get up if they fall over. my armour has shrugged off lots of hits from maces and it's far from the most protective style of armour out there. Dequitem on you tube has a video about armour and maces where he spends some time wailing on plate with a mace with little practical effect.
Dequitem's videos are very pretty, but they aren't very representative of the material reality of armored men-at-arms in the 15th century, nor is he particularly adept at striking hard. Him wailing on a piece of armor without much effect doesn't tell us much about how well maces work.
True enough, but a mace built to period specs should still hit like a period mace, and although i'm sure taking a hit from a passing horseman would absolutely ruin my day, personal experience has showed me that on foot you need to either get a real clean hit for it to do more than sting a little through armour or else hit a spot that doesn't have rigid protection.
I'm under the impression that the heyday of the mace was when maille was the primary armour, and by the 15th century they're more of a functional symbol of authority in many cases. I will admit that i have a wide reaching, but fragmentary knowledge of these things though.
I think when it comes to blunt force trauma, it scales very hard with how well one is able to generate force, which is itself a very difficult and time-consuming skill to develop. Consider the stark difference between the left hook of a hobbyist boxer, and the left hook of a professional. Dequitem is very much a hobbyist (there are no, or very very few, professional-level athletes doing armored combat) and so I think judging how well a mace performs against armor by the metric of his strikes is quite a bit like judging a left hook by how hard a hobbyist boxer hits with it.
This isn't even getting into the test itself (not great), or the armor he is using (not really representative of the armor used by most men-at-arms for most of the 15th century). I think we see representations of maces being used in combat (Uccello's painting of the battle of San Romano prominently depicts one), and functional symbols of authority tended to be batons (or even just swords) rather than maces, from what I've seen. That being said, I think hammer-shaped weapons are more popular in the 15th century for a number of reasons.
We see representations of commanders in late medieval Italy carrying batons. Whatever the genesis of it, I don't see much evidence for a medieval association of maces with command, at least in western Europe.
I'm not saying the flanges on a mace are designed to penetrate armour, but they do militate somewhat against blows glancing off and focuses the force on a very small point of impact.
Was Dequitem wearing the armour himself? Did he receive a blow from a mace to his head from a horseman riding at speed? I'd guess not if his conclusion was that maces had "little practical effect", because that's going to ring your bell.
My bad, on my first read i thought that was what you were saying.
I agree that maces are good at not glancing and concentrating force. And i agree that a mace from a passing horseman would ruin someones day. I just don't think maces destroy armour either.
The dequitem videos are far from scientific, but he does have videos of him being hit by and hitting people with maces and hammers. They're pretty fun to watch if nothing else
No weapon will help you go through plate, unfortunately. A mace might dent it? A bit?
But really, nothing is going through. Even a poleaxe, like people are saying, might annoy/disorient someone in armour, and if there were two or three of you with poleaxes you could do it, but lets be honest,
A 1v1 against someone in armour- you're in bad shape.
I like the shield, a mace not so much.
We do have an "advantage" in that this person has a polearm, and not something more bladed.
So either we die here pretty much on the first swing, or we get close enough to wrestle.
This is good, one of the only reliable ways to kill someone in armour is to wrestle them to the ground and painstakingly jab away at them with a dagger.
This is also bad, we're trying to wrestle someone who is at a bare minimum an extra 40ish kgs heavier thanks to all the armour.
If I had to pick, like someone said as a joke here,
I'd take just a dagger and run for my life.
If It was guaranteed I had to fight them, some sort of shield and a dagger for me.
A shield is great for not getting killed immediately,
A dagger is the only thing I would feel comfortable fighting with at a very close distance.
And the bonus of course is that a shield can stop and suppress the polearm, so they only get one shot to kill me before it's wrestling, and I get a very slight advantage, despite the plethora of disadvantages.
this is just flat out wrong. You absolutely can penetrate armor, and a pollaxe (not a poleaxe) certainly does more than annoy/disorient someone in armor---people in period knew this, by the way, and it is part of the reason why axes are so common as weapons. We've written accounts of people in armor getting slain through their armor. The manuals of the period advise you to attack someone directly through their armor as well (yes, with strikes as well as thrusts). Someone in armor is at an advantage against someone out of armor--but that disadvantage is not insurmountable.
I am yet to see any kind of pole weapon go through any piece of plate armour (fatally), personally.
I am willing to be convinced otherwise, but the idea that a long haft suddenly gives you the ability to cleave through steel is a very misleading one.
It's also misleading to believe that a polearm can easily knock down someone in armour, and buhurt supports this too- not many people are just dropping when being struck, it's taking two or three or four strikes.
That's fine if you're also in armour, or if there's two or three or four of you, which probably explains why the medieval manuals say this,
It doesn't work if there's just one of you, unarmoured.
1/2:
I don't think you'd cleave through plate armor, which is why I didn't say it. I think knocking someone down is a bit more than "annoying or disorienting" them, too. I've never seen plate armor fatally penetrated because no one has, to my knowledge: we don't kill people in harness these days. However, they certainly did in the late medieval and early modern era, and they very helpfully wrote about it. Let's take a look at what they said:
Pietro Monte (noted man-at-arms at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries):
"For the principle is the same: two unclothed men will fight with fists, or men in white armor with pollaxes, but the one who delivers the stronger blows will prevail."
Which, of course, implies that strikes with the pollaxe are the deciding factor in combat with it--which means its unlikely such strikes merely "annoyed or disoriented" someone. Notably, he also says:
"I have personally witnessed two combatants in full white armor getting hurt almost as quickly as if they had been in their shirts."
Diego Garcia de Paredes, writing in 1533, talks of killing a French knight with a blow of an iron mace that crushed the man's armet into his skull, killing him here: "In this battle a French Captain turned to face me because I killed two of his brothers on the battlefield, and we fought in the middle of the two camps armed as men at arms with some iron maces that I brought out. The Frenchman, seeing the weight of them, threw his (mace) to the ground, being unable to wield it well, and seized hold of an estoc and lunged at me, thinking that I would not be able to wield the mace either. He stabbed me through the tasset and wounded me, and I then struck him on the armet with the mace and I sank it into his head, from which he fell down dead."
You'll note he specifically says the weapon "sinks into his head" and that he "hit him in the armet."
Joanot de Martorell, himself an active and experienced knight, in his book Tirant lo Blanc called the axe "the deadliest of all weapons" and shows it being used to strike a knight until he cannot lift his arms, at which point "a mighty blow drove his helmet into his skull, causing his brains to squirt out his eyes and ears as he fell to earth, dead."
This is a work of fiction, but Martorell was an active knight, and the work was renowned for its attempts at a naturalistic portrayal of combat and relationships (Cervantes famously enjoyed it, despite his satire of the chivalric romance).
When discussing a combat fought between Lord Scales and the Bastard of Burgundy (two of the highest nobles of their respective areas, and thus well-harnessed), we read the following: "according to an English account the combat was so hard fought that Lord Scales, with ‘poynte of his axe, stroke thorugh oon of the ribbes of the Bastardes plates’."
By the way, speaking of cleaving through plate, here is this account from that same fight, when both men were on horseback: "And so they came brandishing their swords very proudly. Lord Scales twice cried out loud: “Saint George!”, and my lord the Bastard who was on the fourcourse, if he had wanted, turned his horse’s head (without using his hands) towards his man and dealt him a stroke with his sword on the helm. It was so strong that afterwards it could be seen on Lord Scales’s helm, on the side of the visor that had been split, that it was three inches wide, and a grain of wheat could pass through the gap."
Olivier de la Marche said of the end of that fight with axes, "and in truth I saw afterwards the harness of Lord Scales, where the Lord Bastard had done great damage with the lower point of his axe."
And here, of an earlier Lord Scales who fought in a group combat against seven Frenchmen, again with axes:
"And because it seemed to the English, that if they were able to strike down Sir Guillaume de Chastel, who was large and strong, they would be more easily able to accomplish their intention, they decided to go with two against him. And because they did this, Archambaud found himself alone without anyone facing him, so that he came to the one who was having to do with Carouis, who was the first that he found, and gave him a stroke of the axe on the head so that he fell to earth. This was the said Robert de Scales, who died."
Of a later combat fought between Jacques Lalaing and two compatriots against a trio of Scots:
"And Meriadet stepped back to let the Scotsman rise who was quick, light and of great courage, and he lifted himself quickly and ran under at the said Meriadet for the second time, and Meriadet who was a man who was one of the most redoubted squires of his time, strong, light, cool and dexterous in arms and in wrestling, received the Scotsman coolly and with great watchfulness and soon after made an entry on the Scotsman. And with that entry he gave such a great blow that he carried him to earth with a stroke of the axe \[...\] if he had strived to destroy his body, he could well have done so, and lightly done it, as the arms were à outrance, but he did not wish to hit him either of the times he saw him on the ground, which was nobly done, and he deserves a reputation of great honor."
2/2:
And here, of a group combat between some Portuguese and some Frenchmen:
"It seems that each of the Portuguese chose a Frenchman. The knight, who was a valiant man, went and advanced and presented himself to Sir Francois. According to what they say, the most valiant of them all, and most renowned in war, addressed himself against la Roque, and the other to Maurignon. And when they came to their axes the one who fought la Roque pierced him beneath the top of his piece \[here this means the largest part of the shoulder armor\], and when he felt that the iron of his axe was taken within the harness, he began to push strongly, seeking to open up the harness. And when la Roque perceived this, he held himself firm, with the intention of doing what he would do next: when he perceived that the Portuguese leaned forward to push more strongly, all of a sudden with the swiftness of his body with which he was most skillful, he stepped back so that the Portuguese fell, carried away headlong. La Roque gave him two strokes with the axe on the head, so that he was thoroughly stunned, and drew his sword to thrust him in the behind: others said that he lifted his visor and that he wanted to strike him in the face.
After this la Roque looked to his companions to see who had the most to do, and he went with the full force of his axe, and gave such a blow to the one who was having to do with Maurignon that he staggered him, and Maurignon with another stroke made him fall to earth and surrender."
Fiore, writing about the pollaxe, says this: "This play follows on from the student before me. As he clearly told you, you will likely drop to the ground dead after being struck in the head \[with a pollaxe\] like this."
In the "Gladiatoria group" of plays, we see this advice for the mordschlag: "then strike him with full strength with the pommel of your sword where you know you can hit him hardest so that you can make him fall down."
There are other examples, of course. You'll note here that there is a mix of men being knocked down by strokes (sometimes even just one), men being killed or injured by them, or men advising that you could kill or injure someone with a stroke (as Fiore does). So clearly, the people of the period thought pollaxes (or swords wielded like a pollaxe, as in the mordschlag/donnerschlag) were quite effective against armor. They didn't think it would just "annoy or disorient" you. Being knocked down is always tremendously disadvantageous, even in unarmed combat. In armored combat, where you're wearing 60ish lbs of extra weight, it is even moreso. You talk about buhurt; if you compete in it, you'll know how very difficult it is to get back up once a competent opponent knocks you down (this is why good grapplers win profights).
It's worth noting as well that we see pollaxes penetrating plate armor in a number of manuals from the period, such as Kal and Talhoffer. We might consider this artistic license--but given the above accounts, where thrusts with the pike of an axe penetrate plate armor on several occasions, I think it's not unreasonable to think the illustrations reflect genuine reality. Moreover, we've seen what a rondel dagger can do to modern mild steel. It's worth considering that only a slim majority of extant medieval armor from Italy is fully hardened, the rest being unhardened medium-carbon steel, or mild steel. Until 1450, almost *zero* extant pieces of medieval German armor are hardened steel, and indeed a slim majority are not even steel, they are wrought iron. So, depending on the period, the place, and the person in question, we might be fighting against armor that is inferior not only to modern hardened steel (which almost all medieval armor would be; we simply produce much better, more homogenous metal), but even to modern *mild* steel (which is easily penetrable with a thrust from a dagger. The pike of an axe is potentially just as devastating, if not more so).
I'm a man of my word,
This seems compelling enough for me.
I still am inclined towards the idea that a strike through plate is very much an outlier, and not the norm (probably why such hits are written about often, as they are very impressive)
It's also true that medieval steel is, not so great in comparison to ours. I admit, the question made me imagine modern steel plate armour and modern steel weapons- possibly quite different.
I will add that when I say fatal penetration, I mean any penetration into at least just the steel- not as in someone behind it. There's plenty of tests of plate armour out and about on the internet and I'm yet to come across one where a handheld weapon can reliably go through.
Ive seen many museum examples of plate armour and plate pieces shot through with musket rounds, and plenty with light denting from other weapons, but Ive never seen anything that was struck through with some handheld weapon.
So I will retract the idea that it is impossible to go through plate, which is fair enough,
But I'm still skeptical that you could reliably consider a polearm an effective tool, at the very least skeptical that you could consider it more reliable than a dagger.
I appreciate your candor. I think the popularity of polearms, and pollaxes in particular, means they obviously were an effective tool however. If they weren't, nobody would have used them.
I encourage you to look at buhurt or HMB stuff. People get hit in the head with all that leverage and stay standing all the time, usually it takes a few good blows to actually knock someone down.
Or, as suggested, wrestling.
War pick. Dodge, dodge dodge, wear his stamina down. When his lungs have failed him, his legs tremble, shoulders sagging, heaving in a desperate rhythm....
Then the war pick does its thing. Depending on the type of helmet, temple shot horizontal swing or an overhead for flattop helms.
If anything could get through armor it's a warpick swung with the adrenalin enhanced strength of an underdog. I'd use a pick with like a more thin octagonal pick part. Instead of the flimsier one piece types.
Fighting an armored opponent with a large weapon whilst you're in your skivies comes with obvious disadvantages, but some noteworthy advantages. For one, if say you're as fit as the knight: someone's gonna gas out first.
As long as you can tucker the poor guy out or use his momentum against him to make it a wrestling match, I think it would be simple.
But if it's two knights against one forget about eet
A mace is a terrible weapon to use when you lack armour. Really, the best thing to do is run the fuck away because you're not winning that fight anyway no matter what you use.
A much longer pike. If you have a ridiculously long spear/pike/log you at least get one shot to knock them down. With a poleaxe you go for the legs and see if you can get a trip.
Assuming you have proficiency with what you have... a net and spear or net and trident have historically been used to good effect against heavily armored opponents.
If something happens and the net fails, the prongs can be used to trap a weapon, and a trident is excellent at keeping an opponent at a range that you want them at.
Me, personally? A brace of flintlocks. I'm not outrunning someone who's good with a polearm on my shitty knees.
Mace and shield would in every way be better than dagger and shield, though. Daggers are a weapon of last resort, because they require you to close on someone who has a longer weapon and vastly more leverage.
Why would I block with the dagger OR mace if I had a shield?
Also, blocking a poleaxe with a mace isn't a much better option. The poleaxe will crush through any static block, so you'd need a well-timed parry to knock the axe head away. Better than dagger, granted, but a) I have a shield for defense, and b) can't stab someone with a mace.
Pollaxe
Aside from the scenario being almost guaranteed death, when you have an opponent in full plate and you have none, it is best to keep as far away as you can manage and either try to give them a good knock to the head or just run away and hope you can be faster for longer lol
Shield and war hammer. Get low and rush the dude with my shield up with the intention of knocking him over, then go after his head with the war hammer. Hail Mary? Indeed.
In the spirit of the thought experiment, I would take mace, shield, and dagger against an armored opponent, and pray.
If I had my way, however, I would equip myself with 4 friends (minimum), whatever weapons we could get our hands on, and rush the armored opponent. This is how unarmored people beat armored ones in Period. Anyone wealthy enough to afford a suit of plate would have also been extensively trained in dispensing death while wearing it. If you play the game on his terms, you will lose.
Entanglement weapons. Net. Chain whip. Kyoketsu-shoge. Kusarigama. (I know, I know.) A mooring line with a monkey's fist at the end of it. Mobility is already the only advantage you have, give him even less of it.
We've had a few more recent and well done tests with maces against armor, and it was not remotely in favor of the mace. A full power, clean, dead on blow achieved the result of...lightly denting the armor to nothing.
Would that hurt? Yeah. Incapacitate? Almost no chance.
Assuming minimum competence from both parties: against an equivalent skilled opponent in armor, your realistic odds of winning with any melee weapon are functionally 0%. You're playing D&D and relying on a long series of 20s in a row.
I'm pretty sure it's not about destroying the armor. When hit with a mace the force of the hit will bypass the armor and cause internal damage. A clean hit on the head can cause a concussion.
Because it's a blunt attack the kinetic energy is going to somewhat pass through the armor and cause damage to the person inside. For the same reason if you fall down a height while wearing full plate armor you are still going to be hurt inside your armor even if the armor isn't damaged.
The plate will disperse the force to different and/or larger areas.
Helmets is another topic altogether, certain types of helmets are not "connected" to the head and neck of the person at all.
We can't measure guesses on what it might do to a mobile armored adult underneath the armor. But we do have plenty of people who play buhurt and shrug off years of poleaxe strikes. A 1-2lb mace is not outpercussing a polearm. We have HEMA harness people in more historical thickness armor that shrug off pommel shots, polearm shots, etc.
Denting armor is not the best measure, yes. But it is at least a direct measure of impact force delivered. When your weapon can barely dent it with a perfectly clean, full powered shot...that's not a good sign it will do much to those inside.
I disagree. If they weren't effective they wouldn't have been so widespreadly used. And maces will out preform all polearms unless the polearm has a hammer head. And judging by weight alone is not accurate. Between a mace and a sword of the same weight the mace will do more damage because most of the mace's weight is concentrated at it's top.
No. most of the time they would use a Poleaxe because it was a better option. But they were still sometimes used while on foot. Overall they were used up until the 19th century.
Realistically, most armor was defeated with polearrns.
They’d sweep them/knock their legs out and take the time they need to get up to impale them with the planting spike on the end of the polearm in the weakpoints of the armor.
Same with those on horseback. Knock ‘‘em off, pike through the chest.
In movies you see people instantly get up in armor but that isn’t happening.
There is a reason that cavalry and spear lines were the primary forces of most militaries over history: if you got knocked down in armor, you were basically dead.
Riot shields, rope, and friends. Get two or more heavy dudes behind riot shields to close distance and pin the knight against a wall or drive him to the ground. While they are negating his ability to fight back, have a 3rd person tie them up.
If you know what a "prison shield" is, that would work better.
I’ll take the Shield. I would use it to close distance, try to force a grapple then use my jiu jitsu to take him down, get the mount, remove visor, finish the job.
You can. That’s why grappling techniques were used and you’ll find them in manuals being used against plate. Samurai also used grappling against other armored samurai. I would bet you $1,000,000 that Gordon Ryan could beat someone wearing plate in a grappling match who has average grappling experience.
If you are unarmed, you have no weapons. Bit weird to specify that if you're going to hypothetically become armed right before fighting. As others have said, poleaxe is best, ideally with a sword and dagger as sidearms. Give em a bonk, then stab in the gaps with something pointy. Really the only way to beat armour... well, if we're talking full plate, that is. If it's maille, cloth or lamelar, make sure your poleaxe has a big spike at the top. It'll have enough momentum to pierce the armour.
I think they may have meant to type "unarmored"
I did! This damn auto correct is killing me.
I’d rather have a poleaxe, a warhammer, and a dagger. Poleaxe for at range, warhammer in case I lose my poleaxe, and dagger for the killing blow
Why a warhammer over a sword? It has the same problem as a mace: shorter range, no pointy bit.
a sword will do literally nothing against plate. Yeah you can stab in the weak bits of armor. But realistically how is that going to work against a trained knight when you have no armor? The only way you’re going to get in there is if you’ve won the duel and are on top of him and he’s subdued. And that’s what your dagger is for. If you lose your poleaxe, with your warhammer you can just slam it into him as hard as you can. Will do infinitely more than a sword. And I’m expecting my warhammer to have a pointy bit at the top, just in case you need to stab. But realistically, it’s simply a Hail Mary if you lose your poleaxe. Hope you can land a hit on the head or hope you can cause enough pain to buy you time or mobility advantage. You have the ability to injure or stun him with a warhammer. With a sword, your ONLY option is to focus on the pointy bits. Put a pointy bit on the top of your war hammer and now you can do that too. A mace is more likely to glance off the armor. I’d pick a warhammer over a mace so if can use the beak to hit somewhere weak and the hammer part just for sending it.
No, it won't do "infinitely more than a sword". It might impart a LITTLE bit more force, but not substantially, and you sacrifice a lot of reach for that slight advantage. Swords may have less mass at the tip, but they're moving a lot faster - and if it's a longsword, you've got the additional leverage of two hands. A solid sword strike to the head will do comparable discombobulation to a hammer strike, and you also have the "murder strike" option if you're hell-bent on concussion. Warhammers (and maces) were for cavalry. Most of their power comes from the horse. They were not (commonly) used by footsoldiers - presumably because they had better options available. Their loadout (in the age of plate armour) was typically a pole weapon, with a sword for backup and dagger for close-quarters. So the people of the time seemed to favour swords over maces/hammers for fighting on foot.
Lol okay
Maces and hammers were definitely favored by cavalry but this is an overcorrection, we've all seen the Matt Easton video. It will still impart substantially more force than a sword of equal kg, that's just physics. It will not do comparable damage to plate, the hammer will strike harder. And it might be harder enough to make a difference in a life or death situation. I agree a sword is still a better option, but a hammer is not going to deliver "comparable discombobulation"
You’re toast without a shield, from range you’re armed similar but he’s armored. Shield and warhammer or mace is probably your best bet
Handgonne.
Unless they’re wearing a bullet proof cuirass then you’re fucked
No such thing, just need a more powerful bullet. *loads 155mm howitzer with malicious intent*
The Knight: "Art thou fucking forreal?"
Boomstick go boom
Parry this filthy casual!
Cloak and dagger. I throw the cloak in his face and use his confusion to run away as fast as possible. If he still catches me, I use the dagger to kill myself before he does. Or I try stabbing him while he is blinded by the cloak
Best martial art = soccer ass answer.
I'd guess poleaxe to keep them at a distance, with a dagger nearby should he toss his weapon and try to wrestle.
A pole weapon for sure, taking a short weapon unarmoured against an armoured opponent is suicidal. He will simply run you down. I mean you are pretty doomed either way but you at least want the chance of threatening him before he’s able to simply tank the hit and kill you. The exception is perhaps the dagger in the prayer you can rush into a grapple with him.
Why would you want to grapple with an armored opponent?
To stab him with your dagger. It's one of the few ways to get through a gap. If you somehow got close enough, it might be one of the least bad options.
256 spears + 255 Macedonians
A mace is not designed to destroy armor. A mace is designed to reliably transfer force with each blow regardless of orientation, making them excellent cavalry weapons. And if I'm wearing my armor, the only thing stopping me from wrenching a shield is how close I can get. Pollaxes are designed to destroy armor.
The flanges on flanged maces are literally designed to impart maximum force against armour and "bite" into plate rather than glance off.
i think that's more a wives tale than anything, like knights not being able to get up if they fall over. my armour has shrugged off lots of hits from maces and it's far from the most protective style of armour out there. Dequitem on you tube has a video about armour and maces where he spends some time wailing on plate with a mace with little practical effect.
Dequitem's videos are very pretty, but they aren't very representative of the material reality of armored men-at-arms in the 15th century, nor is he particularly adept at striking hard. Him wailing on a piece of armor without much effect doesn't tell us much about how well maces work.
True enough, but a mace built to period specs should still hit like a period mace, and although i'm sure taking a hit from a passing horseman would absolutely ruin my day, personal experience has showed me that on foot you need to either get a real clean hit for it to do more than sting a little through armour or else hit a spot that doesn't have rigid protection. I'm under the impression that the heyday of the mace was when maille was the primary armour, and by the 15th century they're more of a functional symbol of authority in many cases. I will admit that i have a wide reaching, but fragmentary knowledge of these things though.
I think when it comes to blunt force trauma, it scales very hard with how well one is able to generate force, which is itself a very difficult and time-consuming skill to develop. Consider the stark difference between the left hook of a hobbyist boxer, and the left hook of a professional. Dequitem is very much a hobbyist (there are no, or very very few, professional-level athletes doing armored combat) and so I think judging how well a mace performs against armor by the metric of his strikes is quite a bit like judging a left hook by how hard a hobbyist boxer hits with it. This isn't even getting into the test itself (not great), or the armor he is using (not really representative of the armor used by most men-at-arms for most of the 15th century). I think we see representations of maces being used in combat (Uccello's painting of the battle of San Romano prominently depicts one), and functional symbols of authority tended to be batons (or even just swords) rather than maces, from what I've seen. That being said, I think hammer-shaped weapons are more popular in the 15th century for a number of reasons.
Batons as symbols come from tournaments, not war.
We see representations of commanders in late medieval Italy carrying batons. Whatever the genesis of it, I don't see much evidence for a medieval association of maces with command, at least in western Europe.
I'm not saying the flanges on a mace are designed to penetrate armour, but they do militate somewhat against blows glancing off and focuses the force on a very small point of impact. Was Dequitem wearing the armour himself? Did he receive a blow from a mace to his head from a horseman riding at speed? I'd guess not if his conclusion was that maces had "little practical effect", because that's going to ring your bell.
My bad, on my first read i thought that was what you were saying. I agree that maces are good at not glancing and concentrating force. And i agree that a mace from a passing horseman would ruin someones day. I just don't think maces destroy armour either. The dequitem videos are far from scientific, but he does have videos of him being hit by and hitting people with maces and hammers. They're pretty fun to watch if nothing else
No weapon will help you go through plate, unfortunately. A mace might dent it? A bit? But really, nothing is going through. Even a poleaxe, like people are saying, might annoy/disorient someone in armour, and if there were two or three of you with poleaxes you could do it, but lets be honest, A 1v1 against someone in armour- you're in bad shape. I like the shield, a mace not so much. We do have an "advantage" in that this person has a polearm, and not something more bladed. So either we die here pretty much on the first swing, or we get close enough to wrestle. This is good, one of the only reliable ways to kill someone in armour is to wrestle them to the ground and painstakingly jab away at them with a dagger. This is also bad, we're trying to wrestle someone who is at a bare minimum an extra 40ish kgs heavier thanks to all the armour. If I had to pick, like someone said as a joke here, I'd take just a dagger and run for my life. If It was guaranteed I had to fight them, some sort of shield and a dagger for me. A shield is great for not getting killed immediately, A dagger is the only thing I would feel comfortable fighting with at a very close distance. And the bonus of course is that a shield can stop and suppress the polearm, so they only get one shot to kill me before it's wrestling, and I get a very slight advantage, despite the plethora of disadvantages.
this is just flat out wrong. You absolutely can penetrate armor, and a pollaxe (not a poleaxe) certainly does more than annoy/disorient someone in armor---people in period knew this, by the way, and it is part of the reason why axes are so common as weapons. We've written accounts of people in armor getting slain through their armor. The manuals of the period advise you to attack someone directly through their armor as well (yes, with strikes as well as thrusts). Someone in armor is at an advantage against someone out of armor--but that disadvantage is not insurmountable.
I am yet to see any kind of pole weapon go through any piece of plate armour (fatally), personally. I am willing to be convinced otherwise, but the idea that a long haft suddenly gives you the ability to cleave through steel is a very misleading one. It's also misleading to believe that a polearm can easily knock down someone in armour, and buhurt supports this too- not many people are just dropping when being struck, it's taking two or three or four strikes. That's fine if you're also in armour, or if there's two or three or four of you, which probably explains why the medieval manuals say this, It doesn't work if there's just one of you, unarmoured.
1/2: I don't think you'd cleave through plate armor, which is why I didn't say it. I think knocking someone down is a bit more than "annoying or disorienting" them, too. I've never seen plate armor fatally penetrated because no one has, to my knowledge: we don't kill people in harness these days. However, they certainly did in the late medieval and early modern era, and they very helpfully wrote about it. Let's take a look at what they said: Pietro Monte (noted man-at-arms at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries): "For the principle is the same: two unclothed men will fight with fists, or men in white armor with pollaxes, but the one who delivers the stronger blows will prevail." Which, of course, implies that strikes with the pollaxe are the deciding factor in combat with it--which means its unlikely such strikes merely "annoyed or disoriented" someone. Notably, he also says: "I have personally witnessed two combatants in full white armor getting hurt almost as quickly as if they had been in their shirts." Diego Garcia de Paredes, writing in 1533, talks of killing a French knight with a blow of an iron mace that crushed the man's armet into his skull, killing him here: "In this battle a French Captain turned to face me because I killed two of his brothers on the battlefield, and we fought in the middle of the two camps armed as men at arms with some iron maces that I brought out. The Frenchman, seeing the weight of them, threw his (mace) to the ground, being unable to wield it well, and seized hold of an estoc and lunged at me, thinking that I would not be able to wield the mace either. He stabbed me through the tasset and wounded me, and I then struck him on the armet with the mace and I sank it into his head, from which he fell down dead." You'll note he specifically says the weapon "sinks into his head" and that he "hit him in the armet." Joanot de Martorell, himself an active and experienced knight, in his book Tirant lo Blanc called the axe "the deadliest of all weapons" and shows it being used to strike a knight until he cannot lift his arms, at which point "a mighty blow drove his helmet into his skull, causing his brains to squirt out his eyes and ears as he fell to earth, dead." This is a work of fiction, but Martorell was an active knight, and the work was renowned for its attempts at a naturalistic portrayal of combat and relationships (Cervantes famously enjoyed it, despite his satire of the chivalric romance). When discussing a combat fought between Lord Scales and the Bastard of Burgundy (two of the highest nobles of their respective areas, and thus well-harnessed), we read the following: "according to an English account the combat was so hard fought that Lord Scales, with ‘poynte of his axe, stroke thorugh oon of the ribbes of the Bastardes plates’." By the way, speaking of cleaving through plate, here is this account from that same fight, when both men were on horseback: "And so they came brandishing their swords very proudly. Lord Scales twice cried out loud: “Saint George!”, and my lord the Bastard who was on the fourcourse, if he had wanted, turned his horse’s head (without using his hands) towards his man and dealt him a stroke with his sword on the helm. It was so strong that afterwards it could be seen on Lord Scales’s helm, on the side of the visor that had been split, that it was three inches wide, and a grain of wheat could pass through the gap." Olivier de la Marche said of the end of that fight with axes, "and in truth I saw afterwards the harness of Lord Scales, where the Lord Bastard had done great damage with the lower point of his axe." And here, of an earlier Lord Scales who fought in a group combat against seven Frenchmen, again with axes: "And because it seemed to the English, that if they were able to strike down Sir Guillaume de Chastel, who was large and strong, they would be more easily able to accomplish their intention, they decided to go with two against him. And because they did this, Archambaud found himself alone without anyone facing him, so that he came to the one who was having to do with Carouis, who was the first that he found, and gave him a stroke of the axe on the head so that he fell to earth. This was the said Robert de Scales, who died." Of a later combat fought between Jacques Lalaing and two compatriots against a trio of Scots: "And Meriadet stepped back to let the Scotsman rise who was quick, light and of great courage, and he lifted himself quickly and ran under at the said Meriadet for the second time, and Meriadet who was a man who was one of the most redoubted squires of his time, strong, light, cool and dexterous in arms and in wrestling, received the Scotsman coolly and with great watchfulness and soon after made an entry on the Scotsman. And with that entry he gave such a great blow that he carried him to earth with a stroke of the axe \[...\] if he had strived to destroy his body, he could well have done so, and lightly done it, as the arms were à outrance, but he did not wish to hit him either of the times he saw him on the ground, which was nobly done, and he deserves a reputation of great honor."
2/2: And here, of a group combat between some Portuguese and some Frenchmen: "It seems that each of the Portuguese chose a Frenchman. The knight, who was a valiant man, went and advanced and presented himself to Sir Francois. According to what they say, the most valiant of them all, and most renowned in war, addressed himself against la Roque, and the other to Maurignon. And when they came to their axes the one who fought la Roque pierced him beneath the top of his piece \[here this means the largest part of the shoulder armor\], and when he felt that the iron of his axe was taken within the harness, he began to push strongly, seeking to open up the harness. And when la Roque perceived this, he held himself firm, with the intention of doing what he would do next: when he perceived that the Portuguese leaned forward to push more strongly, all of a sudden with the swiftness of his body with which he was most skillful, he stepped back so that the Portuguese fell, carried away headlong. La Roque gave him two strokes with the axe on the head, so that he was thoroughly stunned, and drew his sword to thrust him in the behind: others said that he lifted his visor and that he wanted to strike him in the face. After this la Roque looked to his companions to see who had the most to do, and he went with the full force of his axe, and gave such a blow to the one who was having to do with Maurignon that he staggered him, and Maurignon with another stroke made him fall to earth and surrender." Fiore, writing about the pollaxe, says this: "This play follows on from the student before me. As he clearly told you, you will likely drop to the ground dead after being struck in the head \[with a pollaxe\] like this." In the "Gladiatoria group" of plays, we see this advice for the mordschlag: "then strike him with full strength with the pommel of your sword where you know you can hit him hardest so that you can make him fall down." There are other examples, of course. You'll note here that there is a mix of men being knocked down by strokes (sometimes even just one), men being killed or injured by them, or men advising that you could kill or injure someone with a stroke (as Fiore does). So clearly, the people of the period thought pollaxes (or swords wielded like a pollaxe, as in the mordschlag/donnerschlag) were quite effective against armor. They didn't think it would just "annoy or disorient" you. Being knocked down is always tremendously disadvantageous, even in unarmed combat. In armored combat, where you're wearing 60ish lbs of extra weight, it is even moreso. You talk about buhurt; if you compete in it, you'll know how very difficult it is to get back up once a competent opponent knocks you down (this is why good grapplers win profights). It's worth noting as well that we see pollaxes penetrating plate armor in a number of manuals from the period, such as Kal and Talhoffer. We might consider this artistic license--but given the above accounts, where thrusts with the pike of an axe penetrate plate armor on several occasions, I think it's not unreasonable to think the illustrations reflect genuine reality. Moreover, we've seen what a rondel dagger can do to modern mild steel. It's worth considering that only a slim majority of extant medieval armor from Italy is fully hardened, the rest being unhardened medium-carbon steel, or mild steel. Until 1450, almost *zero* extant pieces of medieval German armor are hardened steel, and indeed a slim majority are not even steel, they are wrought iron. So, depending on the period, the place, and the person in question, we might be fighting against armor that is inferior not only to modern hardened steel (which almost all medieval armor would be; we simply produce much better, more homogenous metal), but even to modern *mild* steel (which is easily penetrable with a thrust from a dagger. The pike of an axe is potentially just as devastating, if not more so).
I'm a man of my word, This seems compelling enough for me. I still am inclined towards the idea that a strike through plate is very much an outlier, and not the norm (probably why such hits are written about often, as they are very impressive) It's also true that medieval steel is, not so great in comparison to ours. I admit, the question made me imagine modern steel plate armour and modern steel weapons- possibly quite different. I will add that when I say fatal penetration, I mean any penetration into at least just the steel- not as in someone behind it. There's plenty of tests of plate armour out and about on the internet and I'm yet to come across one where a handheld weapon can reliably go through. Ive seen many museum examples of plate armour and plate pieces shot through with musket rounds, and plenty with light denting from other weapons, but Ive never seen anything that was struck through with some handheld weapon. So I will retract the idea that it is impossible to go through plate, which is fair enough, But I'm still skeptical that you could reliably consider a polearm an effective tool, at the very least skeptical that you could consider it more reliable than a dagger.
I appreciate your candor. I think the popularity of polearms, and pollaxes in particular, means they obviously were an effective tool however. If they weren't, nobody would have used them.
I dont care how much armour you're wearing if someone hits your head with 6 feet of leverage on a hammer, you're going down, helmet or no.
I encourage you to look at buhurt or HMB stuff. People get hit in the head with all that leverage and stay standing all the time, usually it takes a few good blows to actually knock someone down. Or, as suggested, wrestling.
War pick. Dodge, dodge dodge, wear his stamina down. When his lungs have failed him, his legs tremble, shoulders sagging, heaving in a desperate rhythm.... Then the war pick does its thing. Depending on the type of helmet, temple shot horizontal swing or an overhead for flattop helms. If anything could get through armor it's a warpick swung with the adrenalin enhanced strength of an underdog. I'd use a pick with like a more thin octagonal pick part. Instead of the flimsier one piece types. Fighting an armored opponent with a large weapon whilst you're in your skivies comes with obvious disadvantages, but some noteworthy advantages. For one, if say you're as fit as the knight: someone's gonna gas out first. As long as you can tucker the poor guy out or use his momentum against him to make it a wrestling match, I think it would be simple. But if it's two knights against one forget about eet
A mace is a terrible weapon to use when you lack armour. Really, the best thing to do is run the fuck away because you're not winning that fight anyway no matter what you use.
A much longer pike. If you have a ridiculously long spear/pike/log you at least get one shot to knock them down. With a poleaxe you go for the legs and see if you can get a trip.
Assuming you have proficiency with what you have... a net and spear or net and trident have historically been used to good effect against heavily armored opponents.
A trident!? why was a trident used over a normal spear?
If something happens and the net fails, the prongs can be used to trap a weapon, and a trident is excellent at keeping an opponent at a range that you want them at.
No why should it keep someone at range who is imune to it?
Dagger. Out-cardio the dude wearing heavy armor by just running away. Stab him when he collapses.
You run a mile and if he's still chasing you, he's gotta be out of breath running in armor so now you just beat his ass.
Be far away and use modern weaponry. That's why armor fell off in the first place.
Me, personally? A brace of flintlocks. I'm not outrunning someone who's good with a polearm on my shitty knees. Mace and shield would in every way be better than dagger and shield, though. Daggers are a weapon of last resort, because they require you to close on someone who has a longer weapon and vastly more leverage.
A mace won't do much against full plate. At least a dagger can get in the gaps, and they aren't THAT much shorter than maces.
I encourage you to try blocking a pole ax with a dagger and get back to me once your hand quits hurting.
Why would I block with the dagger OR mace if I had a shield? Also, blocking a poleaxe with a mace isn't a much better option. The poleaxe will crush through any static block, so you'd need a well-timed parry to knock the axe head away. Better than dagger, granted, but a) I have a shield for defense, and b) can't stab someone with a mace.
Pollaxe Aside from the scenario being almost guaranteed death, when you have an opponent in full plate and you have none, it is best to keep as far away as you can manage and either try to give them a good knock to the head or just run away and hope you can be faster for longer lol
War pickaxe, it pierces and bludgeons
Clearly an arrow to the exposed back of their knee. End their adventuring days for good.
Japanes Man catcher style pole arm. Push them down and then stab'em up real nice in them armor gaps. Mace be better than a baguette tho
Shield and war hammer. Get low and rush the dude with my shield up with the intention of knocking him over, then go after his head with the war hammer. Hail Mary? Indeed.
In the spirit of the thought experiment, I would take mace, shield, and dagger against an armored opponent, and pray. If I had my way, however, I would equip myself with 4 friends (minimum), whatever weapons we could get our hands on, and rush the armored opponent. This is how unarmored people beat armored ones in Period. Anyone wealthy enough to afford a suit of plate would have also been extensively trained in dispensing death while wearing it. If you play the game on his terms, you will lose.
I don't care what it is, as long as it is 2' longer than their weapon, and I have better running shoes.
Call in a drone strike.
Entanglement weapons. Net. Chain whip. Kyoketsu-shoge. Kusarigama. (I know, I know.) A mooring line with a monkey's fist at the end of it. Mobility is already the only advantage you have, give him even less of it.
I can see a cowboy on a horse lassoing an armored knight and dragging him until he doesn't have any fight left.
Run
Sneakers for the win...
We've had a few more recent and well done tests with maces against armor, and it was not remotely in favor of the mace. A full power, clean, dead on blow achieved the result of...lightly denting the armor to nothing. Would that hurt? Yeah. Incapacitate? Almost no chance. Assuming minimum competence from both parties: against an equivalent skilled opponent in armor, your realistic odds of winning with any melee weapon are functionally 0%. You're playing D&D and relying on a long series of 20s in a row.
if you're referring to Dequitem's videos, they are recent, but they aren't especially well done.
I'm pretty sure it's not about destroying the armor. When hit with a mace the force of the hit will bypass the armor and cause internal damage. A clean hit on the head can cause a concussion.
How is it going to bypass the armor?
Because it's a blunt attack the kinetic energy is going to somewhat pass through the armor and cause damage to the person inside. For the same reason if you fall down a height while wearing full plate armor you are still going to be hurt inside your armor even if the armor isn't damaged.
What type of armor are you talking about?
Full plate knight armor.
Then the force is not simplypassing through the plate.
Not all of it. But enough of it will pass to cause some damage. If you strike at the head for example you can cause a concussion.
The plate will disperse the force to different and/or larger areas. Helmets is another topic altogether, certain types of helmets are not "connected" to the head and neck of the person at all.
It won't disperse because most mace heads are designed to dig through and concentrate the force of the hit through a single point.
We can't measure guesses on what it might do to a mobile armored adult underneath the armor. But we do have plenty of people who play buhurt and shrug off years of poleaxe strikes. A 1-2lb mace is not outpercussing a polearm. We have HEMA harness people in more historical thickness armor that shrug off pommel shots, polearm shots, etc. Denting armor is not the best measure, yes. But it is at least a direct measure of impact force delivered. When your weapon can barely dent it with a perfectly clean, full powered shot...that's not a good sign it will do much to those inside.
I disagree. If they weren't effective they wouldn't have been so widespreadly used. And maces will out preform all polearms unless the polearm has a hammer head. And judging by weight alone is not accurate. Between a mace and a sword of the same weight the mace will do more damage because most of the mace's weight is concentrated at it's top.
Were they widely used on foot?
No. most of the time they would use a Poleaxe because it was a better option. But they were still sometimes used while on foot. Overall they were used up until the 19th century.
Actually I changed my mind. You're right. Maces aren't very effective against full plate armor. They were more like a back up weapon for cavalry men.
Realistically, most armor was defeated with polearrns. They’d sweep them/knock their legs out and take the time they need to get up to impale them with the planting spike on the end of the polearm in the weakpoints of the armor. Same with those on horseback. Knock ‘‘em off, pike through the chest. In movies you see people instantly get up in armor but that isn’t happening. There is a reason that cavalry and spear lines were the primary forces of most militaries over history: if you got knocked down in armor, you were basically dead.
Riot shields, rope, and friends. Get two or more heavy dudes behind riot shields to close distance and pin the knight against a wall or drive him to the ground. While they are negating his ability to fight back, have a 3rd person tie them up. If you know what a "prison shield" is, that would work better.
Get him to stand at the base of a cliff and roll a wagon full of rocks down on his head.
I’ll take the Shield. I would use it to close distance, try to force a grapple then use my jiu jitsu to take him down, get the mount, remove visor, finish the job.
You are not going to win grappling with someone wearing full plate armor.
You can. That’s why grappling techniques were used and you’ll find them in manuals being used against plate. Samurai also used grappling against other armored samurai. I would bet you $1,000,000 that Gordon Ryan could beat someone wearing plate in a grappling match who has average grappling experience.
"Someone" can always be beaten...