What's the relationship between a flanged mace and a morning star?

What's the relationship between a flanged mace and a morning star?

They both have points that concentrate the impact, have them all around so its easy to use, no worrying about aligning the swing properly and stuff.

Same function, different names and different looks, basically.

A morningstar does look a bit more intimidating, though.

on again, off again. one winds up calling the other on a low point and the other remembers the bad times but feels guilty/nostalgic enough to call back and set something up anyway

The flanged mace thinks they're meant to be together, but the morning star prefers being friends with benefits. It's kinda awkward.

one is not like the others...

the axe swinging barbarian was a too great temptation

I'd allow a woman who wields a flanged mace to gently tease me, but a woman who can wield a morningstar is allowed to tenderly dominate me.

I mean, is one design an evolution of the other? Do they serve the same purpose?

your too clever to be on Veeky Forums

Morning star has points

Flanged mace has flanges

Morning star is easier to make, flanged mace is more effective at the same weight

>Morning star is easier to make

Depends. If you look at fine, expensive versions of either one the morning stars often have more individual parts that need brazing than a flanged mace.

> flanged mace is more effective at the same weight
Effective against what? You can't make statements in a vacuum like that.

The weapons developed independently, and it's important to note that what many people think of when they hear morningstar is not at all representative of the most common shape it took historically.

MOST morningstars were mainly made out of wood, with reinforcing metal bands and spikes, fairly simple to make and many had very long hafts, an example you might have found in a town arsenal could have a haft 6 or 7 feet long.

The shorter, all steel version with a studded ball shaped head was something a knight might have, and they appeared much later than the simpler version, and later than the flanged mace (makes sense since the fancy morning star is fairly finicky to construct, lots of brazing and individual parts, even compared to a mace)

The flanged mace came into use specifically as a weapon to combat the dominant type of armor at the time; mail. The flanges concentrates the force of the blow in a way that lets you break bones and fracture skulls through mail coifs and hauberks, when causing lethal wounds through armor started to become difficult to accomplish with swords.

Once mail started to be replaced with plate or intermediate armour types, the warhammer was adopted. Unlike the flanged mace it was not meant to damage by exploiting the flexibility of mail, but a cavalry weapon meant to ring a guys bell until he fell off his horse, stunning through percussive force rather than destroying the armour. For foot combat, poleaxes and similar with hammer and axe heads performed the same duty as anti plate weapons, but their main strength was hooking and thrusting and generally trying to control and knock over the opponent.

Contrary to what videogames would have you believe "blunt" weapons were not can openers, men in plate armour got killed when they were knocked over. Once on the ground, armour becomes less effective since he can't move with the blow and absorbs the full force of it, and because usually, he got his helmet pulled off and killed.

Morning stars look like goofy cartoon weapons

Flanged maces look intimidating to people who don't know what they are

People conflate flanged maces with rounded maces, and thus either think that flanged maces are less-lethal like a nightstick, or think that rounded maces are anti-armor weapons for some reason

Thus, media depictions of all of them tend to be retarded

>Goofy looking cartoon weapon

Morning stars are clubs with points. Flanged maces are clubs with flanges. They are both fairly simple to use crushing and bashing weapons, with techniques to put the most force in the smallest area using weight and flanges/spikes.

Both are equally inferior to pic related.

Wouldn't that be fucking expensive to make?

It's simpler to make than a morning star or flanged mace. Takes a little more metal though.

Shouldn't be any more expensive.

Since it's so chunky and doesn't need to hold an edge, it's probably relatively cheap. And hey, it doesn't break!

It's not really seen anywhere except 14th century Italy though, so presumably it didn't have enough going for it to catch on or replace the flanged mace.

The only real selling point that I can think of is that there's no wooden haft to break.

You heard me. I remember dumbass teenagers trying to make these in shop class in junior fucking high. Spikes make everything look less intimidating.

And GURPS has amazing rules for all these weapons, and more!

Check out Martial arts, and Low tech!

The real downside is that the center of gravity is more towards the center than a mace or mace derivative, somewhat impeding its power as a bludgeoning weapon.

>Spikes make everything look less intimidating.

I feel like a teenage girl right now because I CAN'T EVEN!

Well it's still tapered overall, so it's still front heavy. And keep in mind that even dedicated bludgeoning weapons were never really super heavy overall, so as long as there's a lot of mass behind the striking surface, you're good.

your pic doesn't show a morning star but a goodendag (a belgian custom two handed club)

I'm not familiar with the weapon and was going by your picture. What was actually taper I thought was image foreshortening.

This picture suggests it would be more effective than I thought

>And keep in mind that even dedicated bludgeoning weapons were never really super heavy overall, so as long as there's a lot of mass behind the striking surface, you're good.

Honestly, for an individual, it's not going to be a lot of difference. But statistically, the best bet for a bludgeoning weapon is one that is as heavy and front loaded as possible while still being relatively easy to wield and structurally sturdy. Though naturally this isn't to say even maces and the like weren't usually at most a few pounds, they were, and should be.

>Single piece of extruded steel with wound cloth or leather grip
50 bucks, tops. 5 bucks if you weld two pieces of angle together.

The goedendag was shorter and did not always have the side spikes, so no, it does not.

But on the other hand it's not inaccurate to call a goedendag with spikes a type of morninstar.

Weapon classifications were never as clean cut and standardized as we fa/tg/uys want them to be.

See
The morning star or morgenstern name was mainly used for weapons that look very different from the spiked steel ball we usually think of.

How fast you can swing it is important though, and a more well balanced weapon is easier to wield, which is why polearms were all the rage when people wore the most armour.

At the height of plate armour construction, the weapon of choice for knights and men at arms were things like the poleaxe, and those usually clock in between 5 and 7 pounds including the haft despite being wielded with both hands.

we're talking about when it was used, not right now

Polearms were all the rage because it was the most reliable way for an unspecialized soldier to hit someone from far away until guns were invented. Well, crossbows too I guess, but those were expensive and slow, and those that could penetrate armor were quite heavy.

The reason melee weapons, including pole weapons, were lighter than most assume is simply because they are less tiring to use. Not to maximize strike velocity. Momentum, not kinetic energy, is what matters on these scales, especially when dealing with armored foes

Fuck off 40k

>Unspecialized soldier

You don't know what you're talking about, polearms were the shit for men at arms and knights as well, simply because the improvements in armor meant that people chose more hitting power and more versatility rather than using a shield and one-handed weapon.

Morningstar is for evil, barbaric or poor people.

Flanged Mace is for knights, priests and other high-status people.

Sadly, GURPS decided to keep the weapon names from early editions, so it uses 'morning-star' to mean a spiked ball on a chain rather than a spiky mace.

By "unspecialized" I was mostly referring to "not an archer".

Also because the most popular pole weapon of every preindustrial army, the spear, can be reasonably well wielded by anyone with working arms and legs

If she doesn't flange some mace at me
I'll be seeing stars in the morning.

There are a few reason most weapons are a lot lighter than people realize.

1.) Soldiers don't like heavy equipment. The logistics of heavy shit is a huge deal, especially when you consider that the vast majority of the time, a soldier must both be carrying their weapon/s and NOT using them.

2.) Weapons need to move fast to actually fight with them. Sure, you could fuck somebody up with a sledgehammer real good if you actually hit them, but the movement involved in doing so is very telegraphed and hard to recover from. Ditching your excess momentum is a big deal in a fight with a weapon unless you want to leave yourself open for an exorbitant amount of time and/or attack more than once every ten seconds.

3.) It's really not that hard to hurt people with most weapons. Seriously, it takes maybe a pound of pressure with a sharp point to pierce skin, and while armor DRASTICALLY improves one's ability to not die, whenever somebody actually gets hit by a sword or spear or wherever anywhere that truely counts, they're probably down for the count or disabled pretty fast. Human warfare has largely invested in the "glass canon" meta.

It's pretty disingenuous to compare a pollaxe to a halberd or most other polearms. They're nearly half as long in most cases, and intended for use in relatively close range as single-use weapons, whereas halberds and spears and pikes and whatnot are intended largely for formations attacking at the edge of their weapon's reach.

A pollaxe is more comparable to a longsword with balls. They've got more reach and leverage and momentum than a one-handed weapon, sure, but they're still meaningful in even a full on brawling melee.

>Momentum, not kinetic energy, is what matters on these scales, especially when dealing with armored foes

Surely that depends on where you hit? Momentum is good for moving body parts around, which will dislocate joints, shake up your brain and knock you down. But kinetic energy determines how deep a weapon goes and whether it cracks rigid structures like bone.

If you hit a guy in a decent helmet across the side of the head, you want momentum to throw his skull sideways as hard as possible and maybe break his neck and at least jumble things around as badly as possible. On the other hand, when you are smashing something sharp into a weak point then you want kinetic energy to deform the armour and hopefully drive your weapon into the flesh below or at least crumple a joint to reduce mobility.

That said, I think your general point is right; weapons were light because it's more convenient to carry and use a light weapon and you could have relatively better control of them.

Flanged mace is marginally better for anal.

This question may be better suited to /k/

/thread

Explain

This image is so sad

Armor, the thing flanget maces were made to fight.

This is a blue board and he cannot post his dick.

If you mean plate this isn't even remotely true

She's just having a nap.

They're both weapons.