Is this fantasy armor or a legit knight armor from the Middle Ages?

Even the knights of old only covered their faces to stop arrows. Most people prefer visibility in close combat over protection.

it has a bunch of elements from various styles that wouldn't be worn together, and visored barbutes aren't real

it's good enough for character art, but it's not histoical

What about this armor? It's a replica armor and it looks odd. What are those huge things on the elbows and knees?

i forget the names for them but they are there to make it more difficult to strike at the gaps in hte armor.

dear god, that is hideous

The huge things are the couter and poleyn respectively. That armor is shit, and should be melted down for scrap however. Looks like the kind of shit pumped out in India for idiots that think Game of Thrones has realistic armor.

It's the best replica I've found. The other replicas are much, much worse.

why must you hurt me this way user?

Anyone looking to buy armor, please post a picture to an Arms&Armor thread first. It would save so many people's wallets and might lead to good smiths getting work

I'm actually planning on buying one, but actual armor is incredibly expensive and cost thousands. This is the cheapest replica armor I've found at $450.

save your money so you don't get laughed at by anyone who knows what armor looks like

save up and get some real armor that you can wear when the zombies cause a civil war and the Rapture begins

Depends on what part of the middle-ages we're talking about.

Middle-ages is 5th to 15th century and armor like that isn't around in the early middle-ages.

What we're looking at is possibly a suit of armor that probably came around somewhere between 1450 to 1350, or is possibly an assortment of older plate armor pieces at a later period of time, but as tends to be with these things, the old armor would still be around in much larger quantities, meaning that most knights wouldn't be wearing the new stuff, unless it was paid for by their liege.

Warfare started to turn to in favour of much larger conflicts, rather than in favour of extremely well equipped elite units as guns could very much negate the advantage of the horse and heavy armor when still being much cheaper.

This started to reflect the armor design as budget went down for individual troops, but cavalry was still needed, so the definition of heavy cavalry changed to just mean armored cavalry.

So it's renaissance era armor?

I would guess so, yes.
Guns would most certainly exist at the same timeframe as this form of armor would.

The existence of guns at the same time as what we would call plate armor shouldn't stop you from using plate armor in your low fantasy settings though.

Armor was really, really good. Even Gambeson is capable of stopping arrows and sword strikes.
People affording full plate would have to be fabulously rich as there really isn't any handheld weapon that could go through 2-3mm steel save for guns.

You would have to aim for areas not covered by the plate, which in the pinnacle of plate armor design would be all but impossible to do with a ranged weapon, meaning that you can have champion characters that require siege weapons to bring down.

I don't really see anything they didn't wear, looks about first half of the 15th century. The helmets a little odd. A bevor would have been more common and most great bascinets had shaped instead of flat visors. They left off the rondels to look cooler.

Not legit knight armour.

Legit man-at-arms armour. Probably a mercenary that got lucky and managed to loot some gothic plate on the battlefield. Probably from some poor sod who got his head warhammered in, so the sallet that came with the suit was unusable. So the mercenary kept on using his old barbute.

While (rich) knights used the newest-of-the-newest in military technology, mercenaries, men-at-arms and poor knights used outdated military technology, sometimes a mix of various armours because that was all they could pay for.
For example, the bucket helmet, the crusader helmet, the great helm was used up into the 1500s. By that time, the modern helmets were the sallet and barbute. But there were still hundreds of dirt-cheap antique second-hand/third-hand/fourth-hand great helms being sold and refitted by blacksmiths across Europe.
I will say that given the importance of protecting your head, most soldiers would have preferred a modern helmet and outdated body armour. But if you're a soldier with little income and you need some good protection and you can either pick between a brandnew skullcap or an old refitted great helm, you'll probably go for the great helm.

Is this fantasy armor or a legit knight armor from the Middle Ages?

Looks more victorian to me.

>not having insanely detailed parade armour made for royalty
Ridiculous

I did a bit of research and found that it's actually based on something real, the Earl of Warwick effigy that has him wearing a similar armor. The pauldrons are wrong but the rest of the armor is similar.

...

There were plate armor until 1700?

> but actual armor is incredibly expensive and cost thousands.

and that's because its made by skilled artisans, hammering steel thousands of times to create complex compound curves that serve to actually fit the human body, instead of being made overnight by bending sheet metal into something a straw scarecrow couldnt fit in.

those cheapy crappy armours are virtually unwearable.

save your money, either get nothing, or save till you can afford a decent harness.

>I did a bit of research and found that it's actually based on something real, the Earl of Warwick effigy that has him wearing a similar armor. The pauldrons are wrong but the rest of the armor is similar.

"similar"

yes, and this is a Ferrari:

By 1700 it was only something fancy that kings and generals weared but useless against modern muskets. It could only stop bullets from midern muskets at a distance but could block a sabre or a bayonet. Still, cuirassers existed for a longer time .

i'm fine with a bunch of mixed styles accounting for the mix of equipment that could happen after a bunch of wars and looting. same with minor age differences and style differences

it looks functional which is honestly the important part.

What is the name of her neck thing? The bevor like ring that doesn't follow the neck's shape

Where do y'all buy these replicas that are decent and aren't sold by Walmart tier shitheads?

They seem wearable enough. I think this is the most accurate looking of the cheap Indian armor replicas, a Maximilian gothic armor from the 1500s, and the indian dude wearing it seems to fit in it just fine.

>save your money so you don't get laughed at by anyone who knows what armor looks like

so no one.

Yes. It was worn by cavalrymen, reiters, lancers, etc.

I don't wanna start a flamewar, but why most late plate armors are either milanesse or german? Did other makers didn't exist?

The best replicas I've found so far is here, at over $1000. I don't know if the site is legit though, never seen these specific armor sold anywhere else.

kultofathena.com/armor-full.asp

No one important at least.

Other people will still laugh at you for wearing armor at all though. But really, who fucking cares?

Yes, the english also made very elaborate plate armor, especially for Henry VIII. There's a really great documentary about it here.

youtube.com/watch?v=FG8X1sF9kas

...

There was plate armor until WW2.
It was just the chest piece and sometimes greaves and a few other assorted bits, instead of full harnesses, but there were guys wearing solid plates of armor up through WW1 and a little beyond.

Even now, there is one modern thing that is directly derived from plate armor. Space suits.

It's also making a comeback with the development of new materials. Russians are working on a high tech armor right now.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4653886/Russia-unveils-generation-Star-Wars-combat-uniform.html

Technically up to the Korean war. In the Korean war, the Allied forces used "brigandine" made out of aluminium and plastic plates.

Ruskies are about 20 years behind though.

That's not really a big deal. Russians fucking suck at military applications of material sciences. If you want to look at some serious new ideas on armour, look up the projects that the US military and the French military run.

That's pretty fucking atrocious

Not because the Russians really suck at it. More that 99,9999999% of the Russian tax money gets rerouted to one of Putin's private bank accounts on the Cayman islands or some shit.

Careful, he's going to start droning on about how kalashnikovs made of folded titanium are superior in every way to [insert Western weapon here].

Franco-Flemish, English and Iberian armor don't survive as much and don't have definitive striking features that show a contrast like Gothic or Milanese.

If you can't afford a nice full suit then just buy gear for the poor fucking infantry.

>a Maximilian gothic armor from the 1500s
The Maximilian (pic) and the Gothic are two different styles. Now there is a famous high gothic harness around that was made for Maximilian, but the harness you posted there is clearly not an attempt to replicate that one.

There were other manufacturing centres, the most well known being the Greewhich workshops, but by and large the European armour market was somewhat dominated by workshops in Milan, Augsburg, Innsbruck, Landshut and Nürnberg.

On top of this through much of the 15th century some regions had their own armour styles, and dominant amongst those were of course the Italian (ie Milanese) and German styles (only one in fashion at a time, but they switched what that was every now and then), meaning that they have some extra impact on how we talk about armour, and get mentioned more thanks to it.

To run off on a tangent a bit, the other armour styles are IIRC to have been the English (focused more on dismounted combat than anyone else) and Flemish ones. The Italians at least happily made armour of any style for export, the specifically Italian style simply being what they used themselves.

Before and after the 15th century armour styles tend to be somewhat pan-European.

That gun disgusts me on a logistical and autistic level.

That helm is nonsense and the pauldron is fucked.

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What about this one?

ebay.com/itm/SCA-Combat-Medieval-Knight-Gothic-Armor-Full-Suit-17th-Cth-6-Feet-W-Stand-ARM050-/263116456373?hash=item3d42f681b5:g:mmIAAOSwn8VZfvFT

ebay.com/itm/Medieval-Knight-Suit-of-Gothic-Armor-W-Sword-Combat-Full-Body-Armour-Stand-/262971818030?hash=item3d3a57802e:g:Mg4AAOSwT-FZDupX

That looks like a copy of Maximilian's high gothic harness, yes. Here's the original.

It is.

Looks very unconformable, they didn't get the shaping right at all.

You know in fantasy how they sometimes speak of mutants, beastmen, or such that has been created by the Evil buggerer as cruel, twisted parodies of life or similar? Or how in Tolkien's works the orcs may have been created by Melkor torturing elves into broken, shattered creatures?

Yeah.

The darker one also look like it's made out of plastic. Presumably just an artefact of the photography and maybe some coating, but adding insult to injury nevertheless.

Brigandine is love, brigandine is life

That's the dumbest shit

a mail collar or standard

it does follow the neck, it's just not tight to allow for movement

Yeah I know, but it's cheap so you can't expect too much. Last one, what do you think of this? Is this supposed to be late 16th century armor for infantry or something else?

ebay.com/itm/MEDIEVAL-KNIGHT-BREASTPLATE-ARMOR-WITH-BERGONET-HELMET-HALLOWEEN-COSTUME-/122528024826?hash=item1c873d48fa:g:2v4AAOxyIj5SBzRL&autorefresh=true

That's a cuirass for cavalry. It would be worn over a buff coat of thick leather, and is from the 17th century

looks a lot better than some of the other stuff you've posted

Helmet's probably meant to match some late 16th century stuff. Cuirass, uhm, God knows (and he's probably drinking heavily to forget). Napoleonic cuirassier maybe?

Gee Ivan, how come your president lets you have TWO barrels

>great helm on full plate

Delet this

'cause he's drunk

I don't think it looks too bad. There's an example here in a documentary, he's wearing a great helm with chainmail to protect his neck.

youtube.com/watch?v=RmDER4qovS8&t=2m40s

This is why Americans should stop making history documentaries.

Frankly the level of knowledge of history youtubers is typically higher than what History Channel managed to pass for knowledge.

Oh dear. At least those harnesses are a step up from the ebay links here (by necessity I guess, as people had to wear them), or I'd probably start chugging Tamiya X-20A. As it is, sherry ought to suffice.

Anyone else found some of the mail to hang very oddly? Not quite like the woollen stuff, but in that direction. Plastic rings maybe?

It was fun watching Metatron debunk those TV documentary

Matt Easton, Ian LaSpina and Todd are the triumvirate.

Metatron, Lindybeige are entertaining and mostly correct.

Skallagrim is okay

The rest is shit.

>No shad

He is the only who talks a bit about architecture, also I think you're being too harsh on the rest.

yes to both
It's functional, and made up of peices athat existed at one point or another
doesn't look very well fitted though

I dislike shad

He comes over as quite arrogant and some things he says directly contract scholarly work on the subject.

If you're interested in the subject I highly recommend A History of the Early Medieval Siege, c.450-1200 and A History of the Late Medieval Siege, 1200-1500 by Peter Purton. It's almost 1200 pages on the subject with excellent footnotes and usage of primary sources and archaeology.

I wish Lindy would just dedicate his channel to autistic nitpicking of movies and tv shows.

Oh shit, Shaddy is wrong, thats akward, at least I got corrected.

Well generally he says some good things but the details are off significantly at times.

Its just a visored bascinet, its not even that weird.

>No Schola Gladitoria

>armour thread on Veeky Forums

Who do you think Matt Easton is?

Didnt know german workshops were so dominant, all the memeing about the HRE being irrelevant seems to be bullshit.

>only I know what realism is

still way better than /k/

oh right

There's a bit to go between having a few manufacturing centres and the whole thing being geopolitically dominant.

But the Holy Roman Empire was certainly one of the big power factors in Europe at the time, despite the utter mess it was politically. It wasn't for nothing that the creation of Germany would make for an instant superpower, only add some IKEA Oxpanna-organisation.

I am german and all the memeing about the HRE just sucks. It was very important even though it was a politicsl clusterfuck.

I blame french and british mainstream history perspectives being popular.

>Charlemagne.

And about the superpower bit, WW 1 would also not have happened without the established powers feeling threatened by the rapid industrialisation of the middle powers.

It just created to much tension.

According to Goethe, no matter how 'politically fractured' the English (and French) considered it, you could use one passport and cross through lands owned by Knights, mayors, and Prince-Bishops.

>I want to discuss armour with people who read about it on wikipedia and whose only experience with metalwork is a fake katana they ordered through the internet to record themselves cutting through milkjugs.

Honestly, I would be in no way surprised if we eventually find out that the growth of the financial markets was at least 60% drug/crime-money and illegally rerouted taxes.

The Helmet is a bit off but the rest of the armor is quite good, the sword is a bit small for a longsword. I mean maybe he is really tall and he got a longsword for a manlet but it is not an optimal sized longsword at all, way too short.