Post 14th century swords were cheap enough to be afforded by every soldier and indeed they were the most popular...

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

SAY THAT TO MY FACE MOTHERFUCKER.

Considering Japan's suicidal charges from WWII era I wouldn't say swords faded into obscurity altough axes are popular among serial killers and nutjobs.

no

Depends on the setting

Babe, it can be whichever you want.
youtu.be/BGNa3dSaZCA

Still king.

Still king.

I hope nobody in this thread bullies me for being a flailaboo.

Flails are fucking _ok_

call it a pivoting-mace or g right tfo

Yo dog, I heard you like maces

some of those are not halberds

Flails are fucking metal. You can sperg all you want about how they never actually existed, but they're still cool regardless.

more like still fucking retarded

>You know why? Because axes require more skill to use well and swords are the melee equivalent to fire and forget.

Had nothing to do with anything but ease of use, which the sword has in spades.

Doesnt mean an axe is dog shit, its just not the go to weapon for the common or slightly above common person with little to know combat training.

Objective truth right here.

you're retarded

Halbards only have an advantage in a large formation with highly trained and experienced troops who were well supported.

A spear is a beast of a weapon no matter how you cut it, and the best overall melee weapon design ever made.

Did your sword or axe drag us out of the mud and help to fight the battle that elevated us above the beast?

Cus the spear sure did.

Keep your foppish weapons, because no melee weapon in this thread touches a skilled spear / shield user. hell half the time even an unskilled one, and thats never going to change.

Looking back on human history the spear is melee king and always will be.

You play too much dnd were talking about the 14th century the sword was go too because of ease of use and its multiple threats.

Good thing battles were fought in large formations then.

Yes and axes were so hard to use right? That's why nobles paid good money to learn the way of the axe.

Oh wait they fucking didn't they hired master fencers instead and axes were used by the rabble I wonder why.

Which the spear and shield excelled at, leading to further advances like pole arms and halberds.

I wish I lived in the world of Veeky Forums history, where everyone on a battlefield wore full plate at all times and soldiers had dick measuring contests about whether or not their glaive was more effective than Fred's billhook or Charlie's halberd.

King Arthur had Excalibur, Roland had Durendal, samurai got the MASAMUNE FOLDED MIRRION TIMES SLICE THROUGH GAIJIN WEAPON. Nine times out of ten, if a hero's gonna have a premodern weapon it's gonna be a sword, because swords are the coolest of the bunch.

You can hack someone, stab them, even use the crossguard like a warhammer. The sword can do it all, and you'll look like a fucking badass doing it. Fucking nobles would pay smiths fucktons to make them a cool looking sword, and even these days modern militaries still include sabres and the such as part of their fancy uniforms.

Argue all you want about 'muh practicality, muh realism', but the sword is always going to be better liked and more popular than some shitty pike or axe.

You know it's possible to have a lower skill floor AND a higher skill ceiling, right?
And don't bring prodigal fops into this. Nobles went to war with pole-arms, just like everybody else.

And as sidearms used swords instead of fucking axes.

Face it axes were garbage.

wtf i hate axes now, thx for Correcting The Record

> King Arthur had Excalibur,
Largely symbolic, and he so many better magic weapons that he was constantly loaned Excalibur to his followers.
His main weapon was the spear Rhongomyniad, and his sidearm was the dagger Carnwennan.

>samurai got the MASAMUNE FOLDED MIRRION TIMES SLICE THROUGH GAIJIN WEAPON
Also a sidearm, and not a very good one. Samurai used primarily used o-naginata, which was a type of polearm.

DEJAVU!
I'VE JUST BEEN ON THIS THREAD BEFORE!
(HIGHER ON THE BAIT!)
AND I KNOW ITS THE TIME FOR SHITPOST!

>Largely symbolic
And it became symbolic and inseperable from Arthurian legend by virtue of being the coolest weapon.

Seriously, it can't be argued that swords are the most popular weapon. You can mention 'muh sidearms' all you want, but when someone speaks about a knight or a samurai, the first weapon that'll come to mind will be a sword and not their polearm.

Symbolic as in "proof of regency"

He lent it to people so they could say,
"Look! I've got the kings sword, I work for the king"

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>Look! I've got the kings sword
Exactly, the king's sword. Not the king's spear or king's bec de corbin.

>Not the king's spear or king's bec de corbin.
Because the king was busy using that.

The sword was his symbol of office, his original proof of kingship.
Also, very distinct appearance and impossible to counterfeit.
Shit shined like the fucking sun.

Kind of missing the point, mate. I'm not arguing that polearms weren't used more, since any dirt-poor hick with a long stick could fashion himself a spear, but that swords are cooler.

>since any dirt-poor hick with a long stick could fashion himself a spear, but that swords are cooler.
Nah. The sword intrinsically represented represented the office of the king. Also it glowed.

>he sword intrinsically represented represented the office of the king.
AND WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS M8

Because Viviane the Queen of Avalon gave it to him as proof that he was King of Britain.

hart to really give a good estimate on the value of a sword in any archaeological context.

So here's the plain, simple, no-nonsense 14th C swords I have - some are very well-detailed, which indicates they were probably higher-class than cheap for every soldier:

You're fucking playing with me, aren't you?

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>did your sword or axe drag us out of the mud

Yes, actually. Hand-axes pre-date spears by a decent margin.

That is literally why it was his proof of office.

probably a knightly one this - was found with the remains of the scabbard, which had silver collars engraved with a stag's head.

I give up, just give me a fucking glaive and let me cry in peace.

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reverse.

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We know exactly who's sword this was.
circa. 400 BC

close-up

yes, but its neither 14th C, nor a basic soldier's weapon...

Neither is this one, admittedly, but its still one of the best 14th C falchions in existence.

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but in South Africa until the late 1980's you could use steel axe heads as currency for dealing with some of the local populations.

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>this bait
Axes had a larger swing radius to use properly and were therefore less useful in tighter formations.

They were still used to great effect by looser infantry formations, such as the gallowglass mercenaries and Russian freeshoooters.

I wish Veeky Forums would stop pretending that they're experts on anything besides rpg mechanics

slightly different to the usual. a basilard.

and detail

>Freeshooters
>shooters

I'M SURE THEY USED THOSE AXES A LOT NIGGER

I'M FUCKING SURE TANK CREWS USE THEIR HANDGUNS A LOT TOO

I think the real factor that would make the sword the common choice for the adventurer-type over other weapons of similar size would be the ability to always have it conveniently available in a scabbard. Hafted weapons generally will need to take up at least one hand just carrying them around, from what I understand. So will most two handed swords, though.

>fa/tg/uys
>experts on rpg mechanics

>would make the sword the common choice for the adventurer-type
is that they do a significant amount of their fighting in tight spaces.

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Yeah, that's also a good point.

one or two of us are weapons experts though.

... which is why I'm ignoring OP's comment and solely contributing pictures of murdercutlery.

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>Post 14th century
Wow man you're talking about a blitzing 300 years of human history
nevermind the 10000 years of warfare before then, no sir

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>Hafted weapons generally will need to take up at least one hand just carrying them around,
Even without fighting, it's a pain in the ass to carry a halberd across a tight corner with a low ceiling.
Let alone carrying it while spelunking. There's a reason hirelings carry the trap probing 10-foot poles.

you didn't read past the first part of ops post did you?

>Post 14th century swords were cheap enough to be afforded by every soldier

i was also confused at first because i thought he wanted us to post swords

But that's wrong.

Consider the Horseman's Axe, a sidearm meant for the mounted Man-at-Arms to spoil the day of another rich mounted warrior.

Post-14thC, used almost exclusively by the wealthy and perfect for mounted anti-armour use.

I'm just ignoring everything after the word "swords".

"post 14th C swords" is a good enough reason for me.

I say, posting one that's between 1390 and 1410.

>you didn't read past the first part of ops post did you?

Oh, I did.

and decided it was so fucking stupid I wouldn't deign to get into the argument.

I I just decided to post 14th C swords.

Think of it as a gobshite filter. They type gobshite, I filter it out.

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Sure, but that didn't mean axes went completely away.

I actually know a related curiosity that's kind of interesting.
In 1604 the Danish King (Christian IV) passed a law requiring all men to arm themselves for the purposes of establishing a militia. Norway in a union under Denmark at the time, and these laws applied in both kingdoms.
This is a bit uncertain, but I've seen it speculated that another reason for the law was to make money for the state, as the state also offered relatively cheap swords for sale (dusacks, apparently).
What's certain however, is that relatively few dusacks would be bought in the poor, agrarian Kingdom of Norway. Just like swords never became very common, pikes were never introduced for the purpose of the militia. The suggested reason is that Norway was very decentralised and sparely populated, and the terrain was often ill fitting for pike and shot warfare, at least for the militia.

Instead, we got the "Bondeoks" (Peasant's Axe), which became very common in Norway from the early 17th century until sometime into the 19th century. The Norwegian militia would rarely be mustered, and rarely have a real role in war, but in a period of little more than two centuries the production of this kind of axe was very high, and they're today fairly common in museum collections. The axe appears by far to have been the most common weapon.
It's based off earlier 16th century designs, but production skyrocketed around 1604-1650, and stayed rather high.

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Shouldnt these threads be banned already
They've been posted every day for months now

Dodging the question doesn't make you right. It's not "why did he have a symbol of office" it's "why was the symbol of office a sword?". Specifically why isn't it some other weapon?

no different to all the "4th ed is shit" or just general "x, y or z is shit because [opinion no# 158683] threads.

no point in banning them. Just twist them around into something useful, and laugh at OP for being a sad, unoriginal hack.

Interesting weapon my dude. I'd never looked at this before I only remember it from the metroidvania games.

A fun sign of how widespread this particular kind of axe was can actually be seen by comparing it to walking sticks and staves around the period.
Compare the appearance of the "Tingstav" on the left (dated 1784) to the peasant's axe in the middle (dated 1630) and the axe on the right (exact date unknown, believed to be somewhat older than the middle axe).
In mining communities this appears to have been particularly widespread, with "Bergmannsstaver" (Miner's Sticks) from areas like Kongsberg (silver mines) and Roros (copper mines) essentially looking like wooden versions of earlier centuries' axes. Although the "axehead" of this kind of stick was often of a design that was more like that of the German "Bergbarte" axes. Which makes a lot of sense, considering the significant German influence on these communities.

Really interesting, I like how curved it is compared to most other axes I've seen.
Though pic-related will always be my favorite axe. I've always liked really simplistic weapons that don't worry about flair or decoration.

Forgot to post pic related, kill me.

>murdercutlery

Any tridents?

Flails most definitely existed. There are literally 100s of drawings showing them being used from ancient time periods...

>Specifically why isn't it some other weapon?
He'd just broken his sword in a duel, and was in need of a replacement.

No there are not ''literally'' hundreds of them but a handful and no manuals from medieval periods mention them neither the armory catalogues.

They're pretty consistently curved that way, which gives them a fairly special profile.
Though there's some real outliers, kind of like this one. This particular axe is estimated to be from around 1590, making it "pre-boom" so to speak.