> >Mike Dawson:
> >[snip] Skirmishing, open-line spear & shield will get picked apart by
> >long-weapon users, or charged by sword and shield wielders. The spear
> >is used purely for stabbing. Used 1H, there's no way you can get the
> >leverage and power to parry with it. (Well unless you're� Heroically
> >strong and skillful, but I assume you wanted to know the > norm, not
> >the exceptions).
Greywolf:
> A parry doesn't have to be strength based.� In most martial arts, a parry
> is a re-direction of the force of the attack.� Doesn't take much stength,
> just a fair amount of skill and damn well trained reflexes, and
> application of a principle called unbendable arm.� A block, however, is
> direct opposition and not something I'd want to be doing with the typical
> medieval type sword - too easy to break or bend - you'd be surprised how
> fragile those swords really were...
Well I concider myself a decent (and well rounded) martial artist, and while I can fight with staffs of different length, I still concider parrying with a 1h-spear a desperate attempt. After the spear has been chopped in two, the remaining bit could infact make a decent parrying tool :)
> A few reasons:
> 1) most weapon forms are either two handed, or 2 weapon.� Most peasants
> who had any training would typically get trained in the spear or staff.
> Most samurai were trained in the traditions that empasized two handed
> katana strikes, until Miamoto Mushashi (sp?) started to popularize the
> two weapon techinique by NEVER losing a duel over the course of something
> like 50 years� (however, it is rumored that he ended a combat with the
> man who developed the Jo and jo combat techniques before he got
> beaten...)
Wasn't Musashi supposed to have died as a fairly young man?
> 2) Most japanese sword techniques focus on speed, agility, and movement.
> A shield is a weight dragging you down, obstructing your vision, and
> generally getting in your way.� Great for passive defense, which is
> something that is not really part of the japanese mind set.
A target shield is the tool of an aggressive fighter. A weaponthanes shield is fairly small, I would say, if they intend to fight in the heroic challenges. The fyrdmen have larger shields that are better in a shieldwall. IMO, of course.
> Personally, from my training once upon a time in the SCA, I'd much rather
> just rely on my Aikido training to not be in the way of the attack and
> strike when he was overextended...� Granted I'm biased, since in a fight
> with weapons, I'd more likely drop any of my weapons, disarm him and
> watch him cry like a baby as I pin him to the ground...
*starts to say something, then thinks better of it*. You must be an incarnation of the O-sensei then. Taking a sword from an able opponent is a feat indeed. Even disarming somebody with a knife almost always get's you cut, if the opponent knows how to use the knife at all.
> Damn you guys play rough!� Which brings up the last point about shields -
> to get the most use out of them, you have to form a sheild wall and
> become sitting ducks for the Viking berserkers.� Passive defense just
> never was a big idea for the Japanese...� Even their armor is designed
> for the greatest mobility possible - they never used anything equivalent
> to European field plate armor because it would simply have been to great
> a liability...
Why do I seem to remember that the samurai of the later eras had a rather sturdy plate&chain&lamellar armor? Plate-armor, as always, is cavalrymans gear, but then again, didn't the samurai fight primarily from horseback?
-Adept
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