But in all seriousness, this guy does a better write up on the knight vs samurai argument than I think anyone here (including myself) possibly could. It's a long read but takes almost every factor I can think of into account before dropping it down to a few key areas that would affect the outcome. If you've got twenty minutes and care enough, give it a read. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.thearma.org/essays/knightvs.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.thearma.org/essays/knightvs.htm</a> But to keep this going, pirate or ninja? We'll say the ship is docked and it's 7:00pm on a summer night. Weather is mostly sunny and 85F with a 30% chance of rain. Pirates are well fed and beginning their nightly course of grog and wenches on board the boat while the ninjas are doing whatever ninjas do during the day. There are twelve bystanders and pirates are armed with black powder pistols, swords and daggers. Pirate Perk: It's Blackbeard's boat so even if you were to cut his head off, he's still good for 30 seconds. Ninja Perk: Whatever ninjas need for perks. No Harriers or Pavelows.
I was asked to find a link to the "katana through the WWII helmet" I stated above. To be honest, I can't find anything and it was a long time ago that I saw it. That being said, I did come across this: http://www.thearma.org/essays/knightvs.htm Long read, very nerdy. His facts and hypotheses seem sound, without fact checking or going into it in too much detail. Long story short: too hard to compare, let alone get a final answer. The real question is: Omega Supreme versus Voltron. I'd give it to Voltron if it was the lion version. I wanted them sooooo bad.
Percussion weapons, as I mentioned earlier i.e. Battle Hammer or Mace would do a pretty good job, or you could bash him to the ground and jam a Rondell Dagger through the vision slit in his visor. And good point on the gunpowder mate, as soon as a technology was invented that could defeat plate armour, everyone dropped it. If swords and arrows regularly defeated the stuff no one would have invested in it. This was not the case. Yeah your probably right, Knights trained from a young age to ignore incoming blows that could cripple or kill them, human nature works just like that. Do modern soldiers wearing body armour, ignore incoming fire? It would be much the same thing. The Medieval knight was for the most part a highly skilled, fit and professional warrior. They were the elite, trained by a system that had developed over hundreds of years to be efficient and deadly.
The samurai was for the most part a highly skilled, fit and professional warrior. They were the elite, trained by a system that had developed over hundreds of years to be efficient and deadly. Wow. Looks similar. Pirate vs Ninja. Depends on too much. Ninjas were assassins, not face to face fighters. Taking all things into consideration? Ninja wait until pirates are pissed and pass out; poisons and garottes. Either that or they wait until they succumb to scurvy.
If my grandfather's drunken ramblings are to be taken at face value, the Katana that stayed in his attic from 1948 (it was on the mantle, but he tossed my pregnant grandmother out the window and killed a bunch of japanese people and/or items of furniture with it - after that my grandmother moved it to the Attic) to 2008 when he went into a retirement home was pried out of the cranium of his friend, after the old man shot the NCO who owned it. Given that Pop has never seen anyone about his PTSD except for a GP who prescribed him anti-depressants that he didn't take, and self medicates with over proof alcohol, I can't make any assertions to the validity of the story. Especially since in another drunken recounting of the story, he used the Katana to kill the NCO - which messes with the timeline of events a bit. And for fuck sake - heavy cavalry was only ever (successfully) deployed in significant numbers when they had a bunch of peasents with pointy sticks to back them up - or when the opponent had so little military training that they went all brown trousers at the sound of the charge. Uppity middle class types wearing a bunch of armour and waving a pointy stick were no match for disciplined light infantry with a shield wall and long spears. Very heavy bow fire would disrupt even a heavy cavalry charge (either saturation fire to kill the horses, or crossbows/longbows at close range). Gun fire just made the process more efficient. Pirate vs Ninja is a mildly more interesting argument - but fundamentally sneaky and patient always wins. If you don't believe me - who do you think would win - you while asleep, or your ex armed with Superglue?
Indeed, now give one of those guys vastly superior armour and a longer double edged sword and he would have the advantage wouldn't he? And fuck me, just googled Samurai Armour weight, 65 Pounds! So his inferior armour was 30 pounds heavier. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.japanese-armor.com/japanese-armor.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.japanese-armor.com/japanese-armor.shtml</a> It also looks gayer than a bloke in a Twilight T-shirt. This will be my last post, was fun.
Screw it all, I'd much rather just watch this on repeat endlessly. And in case anyone wants to start shit up - because this is what the thread is for - I train in, and teach, the spear and sword (gim) that Jet Li uses in this. I can verify that they're very capable of being used in this way (minus the wire work).
If you start a fucking Team Edward vs Team Jacob bullshit discussion, you can grab a longsword and I'll grab a katana and we can have "words". Team Woody and Buzz anyway....
No doubt about its appearance i agree... the weight listed on that site includes the display box though mate and it doesnt tell you what that weighs:
Seriously guys; go to some local museums, and look at the horrendous armor the Japanese samurai wore versus the ones that the Western knight wore. The samurai's armor was made of WOOD, very heavy, and gave the user extremely limited mobility. Even the weaker Japanese arrows would easily go through it. The knight's armor was made of METAL (iron alloy/steel), just as heavy, but gave the user slightly better mobility. It could withstand bullets, let alone arrows. So let's see...the knight had armor that not only gave him slightly better mobility, but made him practically invulnerable to the Samurai's attacks, katanas included. The samurai's armor sucked and protected against very little. (Again, there was very little iron in Japan) The Western knight crushes the samurai like a bug. And as for ninjas versus pirates, like I posted earlier, outside of the ninjas being on a boat, they win easily. A professional, highly-trained assassin versus a below average sailor? No contest.
But they have wenches and grog. Ever seen a bar fight over a girl in a Navy town? Fucking sailors get mean.
So wood is heavier than metal? Good to know. Also: Japanese armour was made of many small steel or leather plates on a cloth backing. It was designed to be as lightweight as possible as the samurai had many tasks including riding a horse and archery in addition to swordsmanship. Thats from wikipedia... i see no mention of wood there? can you point me to where you found out they were made of wood?
I will have words as well, because the winner of that argument is only TEAM ALICE ALL THE WAY GOGOGOGO And as for all the people in the arguments of Knight vs. Samurai saying, "Well if the Knight isn't wearing his armor then...!!!!", you're fucking retarded. What the hell is the point of the argument if you say that? Of course if it was naked fighting it'd come down to the best man, this isn't that discussion. Next time somebody posts a link showing how much a suit of Japanese samurai armor weighs (~60 pounds), you should probably click it before your mouth goes running.
Certain productions of samurai armour included lacquered wood panels. There's tons of different types, as well as European variants. It's hard to pick a generic type.
Fair enough, wood was hardly the primary component of the armour though and it was designed for better mobility rather than impaired mobility as was suggested.
No. In fact, I never wrote anything about comparative weight. It's just that Japanese armor was arranged in an especially cumbersome manner, making a lot of movement very difficult. And the wood was also very thick, to protect against the arrows, so it weighed a considerable amount. This is flat-out wrong. Only Japanese nobles (daimyos or their relatives) could afford any type of metal. A middle rank samurai (they had ranks which determined everything from their property, prestige, to their daily rations and number of servants) had to make do with wood. Well, the difference is that I have fucking SEEN the armor in question, and read about it in specific books, instead of briefly glancing at Wikipedia. I don't even have a clue what you are talking about, since you didn't bother linking to the Wikipedia article you looked at. However, if you were referring to the O-yoroi style of armor, try paying closer attention to what is written there; At most, they had pieces of iron in there. At no point is there any mention of steel, and certainly not the elaborate armor suits they were making in Europe during this time. Oh, and speaking of weight... Not so light after all, was it?