What would happen if

It rusts because nobody knows how to take care of it.

>It doesn't fit contemporary warfare
Just because the sharpened metal beatstick is made from a material he's not familiar with doesn't make it unfit for warfare.

It's a sharpened metal beatstick.

Pretty sure you'd need more than 10.

He'd get shot to death by arrows anyway.
"Target the guy with the nice gear".

>its a sword
>that is really fucking amazing
>nearly impossible to break with the items at the time
>the warlord is gonna ignore the fact this weapon is fucking amazing comparatively and just put it on the wall, never to be used.
>implying its not gonna be revered as some super powerful divine sword except its an actual sword, not some brand of mythological retardation.
yeah sure user, nice delusion you live in.

>Broadswords
Come on user.

Spearfags in the present day insist that it was inferior to polearms.

Inferior or not, swords were always backup weapons.

Why not?

Look at that hand protection!

It looks even more gay than rapier.

Well, in group or formation combat, the spear is better. And even in single combat, the reach advantage is pretty big, but that's not even the biggest advantage. The biggest advantage is the speed. A spear is very quick to redirect the point to attack different openings. Feints become crazy with a spear and a sword can't keep up. Only hope for a sword is to bind against the spear and then try to close distance and get inside the point of the spear. Problem is that the spear can easily shorten his grip and still get the point on line

You're retarded. Complex hilts are not "gay". You're a child.

And he specified "15th century broadswords"

Fuck when is deendee gonna update their shit and use proper names for their weapons

1. You're retarded.
2. That's what a broadsword is.

>Fuck when is deendee gonna update their shit and use proper names for their weapons
Probably never, unfortunately.

But still. Platemail and broadswords! Redundant levels of protection!

Unless he decides to 1on1 all his rival warlords in official duels, he's going to do jackshit. One sword doesn't an army make.

You'd be surprised how fuckresilient a bunch of guys in plate can be.

Those fuckers were essentially walking tanks.

Now consider the fact that the majority of cutting weapons and speartips consist of a much softer metal that doesn't bear the force as well, all the while your walking tanks have swords with overpowered reach and superior cutting power. Ten guys tearing into an unorganised mob of tribal militiamen are enough to make them all rout, which is basically you winning the battle.

Now, considering it's the bronze age and metalcrafting is actually rare enough in some parts of the world that it is considered a mythical act of sorcery, you'll have lots of people with clubs and slingshots running around.

Concussive force circumvents your armour protection and attacks the guy coated in plates, directly (more or less). So if your enemies are smart enough, they'll quickly switch tactics and spam rocks and all sorts of heavy shit at their faces, and once they're down they'll pile on them with treebranches and shit.

>nearly impossible to break with the items at the time

Modern steel is nice, but it's nowhere near indestructible. It would certainly be more durable than its bronze companions, but "nearly impossible to break" is quite an exaggeration.

For example, which do you think would withstand more punishment, a bronze mace, or a steel sword?

What if he got ten ak-47s, a wagonful of ammo and the instruction manual instead?

Lots of necklaces as nobody can read the fucking manual.

what is Rome?

Money and the shield are the main weapons of Rome, user.

And the pilum.

It's a legitimate argument, though. The Romans reorganized the military to face the Samnites, but they never bothered changing it back because it worked pretty well against everyone. The swords swords swords tactic may not have been popular in the medieval period, but it definitely worked in the Romans' times.

They also didn't always rely on wave after wave of their own men, they only lost to Phyrrus that one time because of elephants, which they had never seen before, and that was a four-hour frontal push between these same swordsmen and PIKES.

Prestige item.

Ammunition, while extensive, is limited.
Skip forward a hundred years and there's a local legend of the Old King who was blessed with spears of lightning and fire who conquered the local area.
His son was a shit and killed and the land fractured a generation later, but still.
Future archaeologists are freaked when the excavate a barrow and find guns.

Now, some kind of discovery of good quality gunpowder, rifling and metalworking would be far more impactful.
Exactly when and where you'd need to insert that knowledge for maximum impact I'm not sure. You'll need decent metallurgyand, mining and trade links to get the components for your early day rifles.

What if a superior steel weapon falls into the warlord's lap?

Pretty much nothing. There were small steel forges in east Africa 2000 years ago. Like other forms of technology, metallurgy advanced at different speeds in different places, and more importantly, without a societal infrastructure to support it, and methods of safely storing and passing on information long-term, even small pockets of more advanced technology won't stick around forever or have meaningful impact until they can spread on a wide scale.

So one single sword that's somewhat better than everyone else's would have very little impact.

The warlord comes into possession a stack of fully colored, uncensored, loli hentai doujins, a plastic pussy and 1 gallon of lube.

It seems few in the bronze age would know much about rust and the prevention thereof.

So our warlord will soon be an exception to the first part at least.

Not for long it's not. The bronze age didn't have sharpening, because you can't sharpen bronze.

Also I'm pretty sure the issue user was talking about was the shape of the sword.

>The bronze age didn't have sharpening, because you can't sharpen bronze.

I nominate this one for today's dumbest post on Veeky Forums.

Go look it up :^)

It worked for Romans because after few early wars they never met real challenge.

When they tried invading Persia few times it was always a disaster unless they had many times more men.

So it becomes a high-quality blunt metal beatstick in a sea of lower-quality blunt metal beatsticks.
Big whoop.

Wanna fight about it?

Why are you even trying to argue about a subject you know shit about?

Real life is not D&D.

His thighs get cut.

It stays sort-of higher quality, but not enough for anyone to really notice, for a few weeks. After that it's blunt and/or rusted, and thrown away because nobody knows how to deal with either of those things.

It rusts, chips and falls to dust because nobody knows to oil it, not touch the blade or anything like that.

>its a sword
>that is really fucking amazing

Except it isn't? Fighting techniques for a sword with large guard don't even exist yet, and a sword of this type is ill suited for fighting with single grip shields of the period.

Is there a modern, lower-maintenance steel alloy that's still better for swords than bronze was?

Manganese steel, or something?

Are we sure bronze swords weren't oiled?

Very likely, it's just that if you ask for a stainless steel sword actually capable of performing as a sword and not just a decoration, you'll probably get funny looks.

That still doesn't change the fact that nobody in the bronze age would know how to take care of such a sword.

A city-state that used literally THREE lines of spearmen with a skirmishers' frontline?

Yeah, they used swords too, but come on now.

Yes. Because it's pointless.

>Chief We'eboo last of his line retreats to his parents root cellar where he lives out the rest of his days.
>He teaches others of what he has discovered.
>A priestly order is founded, the Order of Neets.
>They preserve the knowledge held sacred to them for centuries.
>The small island country of Japan opens its borders for the first time. The order of Neets infiltrated the Dutch East India company to expose this land of barbarians to their teachings.

No idea about theirs but mine takes a good oil bath before sleep every night.

>>They preserve the knowledge held sacred to them for centuries.
>neets
>reproducing
faaaake

It cuts their legs.

This. Bronze weapons have completely different maintenance requirements to steel ones. They don't really rust and work-harden themselves.

youtube.com/watch?v=t5COC7PjiJw

I recognize that they need to be work hardened first, but after that you can just hone them the regular way.

Modern steel is shit for bladed weapons and actually lower quality for that purpose than medieval ones.

Naw, they'd reforge their swords to put a sharp edge back on them.

>All this bragging and boasting
Fuck you guys. Flint and bone are everything my father and grandfather ever needed.

...

But they fought against other naked fur clad primitives and outnumbered animals, user.

And that's their fault, is it? Man, fuck you guys... You're spoilt is what you are. Put a band of you out in the wild without access to metal tools and weapons, and what do you have? A tribe of little babies.
You don't know shit.

You know nothing

it would rust, as he wouldn't know how to maintina it properly.

You clearly got some source for that statement.

Clearly.

You're the one with the outrageous and outnumbered claim. You need to give a source.

Claim was that you can't sharpen bronze swords like steel/iron ones.

I posted a vid in which the dude currently making functional bronze swords asked some other dudes to demonstrate how to sharpen them. Which he did with a stone, same way you'd sharpen a steel sword.

So that claim turned out to be demonstrably wrong and was refuted.

Same thing as a gold plated AK lands in the lap of an African warlord.

>I posted a vid
A credible source, user. I didn't think I'd need to point that out to you.

nice bait

Warlord is skewered by a line of peasant spearmen.

I dunno how somebody demonstrating something on camera is supposed to be less credible than the trollish namescalling of the other side...

Different user here. I think he's saying while you CAN sharpen bronze with a rock just like you can steal we know for a fact they didn't do this, or rather we have zero evidence of this. We do however have this nice mountain of evidence saying they reforged that shit all the time or reshaped the edge as necessary, they even stopped midfight to bend their sword straight occasionally.

Steel*. Fucking autocorrect.

>we know for a fact they didn't do this, or rather we have zero evidence of this.
Also different user here. Congratulations, you're an idiot for posting the above unironically.
>We do however have this nice mountain of evidence saying they reforged that shit all the time or reshaped the edge as necessary, they even stopped midfight to bend their sword straight occasionally.
Reforging is a different thing. Reshaping the blade is just sharpening. Straightening the blade is another different thing, and some kinds of steel swords need it in the course of regular fencing too.

Yeah, this.
Think Conan's Atlantean sword.

It doesn't really do anything special. As everyone else has said in the thread nobody knew how to take care of steel back then.

Even then, people only shifted to iron because tin and copper were comparatively rare, not because iron was a better material. Being able to make steel just meant people were finally able to make something less shitty than plain iron without rare materials

>they even stopped midfight to bend their sword straight occasionally.

You got some sources I haven't seen. The one popular source for bent swords of that is a roman one talking about "celtic" Spathas, which were iron swords already.

Though it was rather interesting to see Skallagrim demonstrate that bronze swords can bend back into shape if you simply turn them around and hit shit with the other side. Could explain why the Celts thought that was acceptable while the Romans, who apparently didn't participate in the bronze age found it wierd.

The problem with spear formations is that they're stiff and easy to flank.

Just make it a circle then :^)

>The problem with spear formations is that they're stiff and easy to flank.

There's two ways to solve this, one of them is being Swiss and the other one is finding some piece of terrain on your flanks that will slow the other dudes down enough for you to still turn in time.

How about forming a square so you don't have flanks?

Or we dig trenches so they can't attack us from the sides

if you form a square you can't move

That's why you form a circle, silly :^)

A dozen modern sledgehammers would change history harder than a hundred modern swords.

>modern technology changes things more than modern replicas of ancient "technology"
Who'da thunk it

Digging trenches in the front seems to have been the prefered solution in period. Slow them down within easy reach of your poke-stick and all that.

Sledgehammers are at least as old as the 2nd century.

You can't decide you'll outflank an enemy in the middle of a medieval battle. Infantry isn't that fast, so you need to have the unit in place already (and a advantageous terrain so it's not noticed). And your means of communication is shouting.

You need to have it planned before the battle even start, and ideally have a highly trained and disciplined force (so Romans, not a bunch of tribesman)

You have a great understanding of how things work in video games and Hollywood movies. In real life, the Roman legions hired whatever locals they could find to shoot arrows and throw/sling rocks at the enemy. The armored infantry make up the core of the army, but the core won't get you anywhere without auxiliaries. Thermopylae wasn't really fought by just 300 Spartans either.

And? Romans using auxiliaries doesn't change the fact they weren't ordering them to commit complicated maneuvers in the middle of battle without having it planned in advance. Roman soldiers used standarts to discern units and to signal orders, but I have my doubts that auxilias were ordered anything more complex than "enemy looks weaker on the left flank, push there", especially with language barriers.

You're right it's not like video games, you couldn't sent your soldiers with one click and expect them to obey perfectly.

Modern steel would withstand tens of thousands of more foot pounds of force beyond the bronze mace.

Do you have any other questions?

While that's an entertaining notion, we're not talking I-beams here.

A heavy bronze mace could rather easily damage an iron sword, because it's not trying to scratch it, it's trying to smash it.

It's the whole "Katana vs Longsword" shit again: Of course the Katana loses when you swing at it held in a vice, just like the longsword gets a nasty chip out of it.

Modern steel isn't invincible, and that mace will function long after that sword is bent and dulled.

> you can't sharpen bronze
You can't be this stupid.

Look it up :^)

I think you are comparing shitty steel to modern steel. Why can't a modern sword be made out of a suitable alloy just as the i-beam is?

There is steel that even incredibly thin could not even be scratched by said mace.