Longbow

How does the rapier fare against other weapons? It seems like a super specialized weapon.

for its time and place, the rapier was sufficient for its needs

lightweight, good reach, and deadly in the right hands, it was a very good weapon for self defense , either for civilians or as a sidearm for troops

I'm not quite sure about using a rapier in a in the field context, but the estoc is kind of like a big thick stiff heavy ass rapier and that's pretty sick.

Rapiers are far from light

>lightweight

Your average rapier weighs as much as a broadsword and more than most medieval arming swords. Its weight and mass spread out over a greater length, making it less agile on the cut but very nimble for thrusting.

would you rather i called it "unencumbering"?

in any case, it was much lighter than other renaissance swords like the long sword or estoc

Depends of the type of weapons but in an unarmored fight, it's totally capable of fighting longsword, broadsword, sword and buckler, short spear, anything but greatsword and heavy polearms really. Rapier is actually a good all-around weapon for unarmored fighting, and it's even more capable paired with a dagger (which is very often was).
Rapier meant for battle were a bit more meaty and by that time, foot armor was mostly a breatplate and a helmet, so it's not that inefficient in a pinch.

Estoc weren't used anymore when rapier were the thing, they were a late 15th c. thing and quickly went away.

>I'm not quite sure about using a rapier in a in the field context

Pikemen were using it as their sidearm for a hundred years or so.

Not really, Longsword are 1.3-1.5, rapier are 1-1.25 usually.
Also, rapier and longsword weren't exactly used in the same time period, when one went away, the other was rising (late 16th century).

The revolver in general IMO. Wild West and all that. It's either that or the Colt 1911.

The Russians still use a Kalashnikov rifle just chambered in 5.45 instead of 7.62x39. So does Finland (though it's a locally produced one) and most former Warsaw pact countries.

Also, a rapier is a one-handed sword whilst a long sword is two-handed.

I think his point was Russia's excuse for Special Operation Forces might use AR-15s and shit instead. That being said none of those countries you mentioned, including Russia, really have combatants approaching the quality of proper Western countries anyway, so I don't see how it matters.

Women

Лoл

Wouldn't rapiers be hell to use in a dense formation?

Why? It's a stabbing weapon.

It's a relatively long stabbing weapon.

Yeah, but it's also a long weapon. If someone is in your face, you have to draw your arm like three feet behind yourself in order to use the rapier.

Please don't start telling me about how Beslan was a success.

Лoл again
Please tell me how you would handle it better against terrorists who are willing to die and kill everyone within the building. Go on, make up your beautiful story.

Nothing stops you carrying a knife as well.

They might use an AR occasionally but US forces also use AKs occasionally. There is a beneficial clandestine component to this. It's hard to compare special forces as they perform very different roles between the US and Russia.

The reason it does matter is because that user specifically said no actual army including Russia uses them and that is flat wrong. "Quality" of soldiers was irrelevant to the topic.
Belan was an unwinnable situation for any force on the planet. Parts of it could definitely have been handled better but there was no way innocents were not going to die by the dozens.

I probably would have advised against shoving BTR fire and thermobarics up the asses of the civilians I was supposed to save and shredding the majority of the hostages that actually had gotten away. I'll humor you though. It's been a while, but going off of what I remember from the situation, instead of doing a full frontal retard assault when doing a fucking hostage rescue, I would have infiltrated the second floor of the wing facing Comintern street with my assault platform and then go naturally from there. Competent SIGINT would jam the instant after their last check in, giving you a few minutes to CNS shoot the headman, who was the one with the trigger to the suspended explosives in the gym and the ability to remote detonate the other target's vests. Priority then switches to CNS shooting anyone else that can detonate explosives, and then finally to the secondary problem, ie the ones that just have guns and were already known to be having qualms killing the kids.

Would hostages have been lost either way? Sure. But competent Western SOF would have greatly, massively, ludicrously reduced the amount of losses. Regardless, that's all you're going to get. I already broke my policy of discussing these kinds of things with people that obviously aren't combat arms, let alone people that have never served, let alone people that have never served, have some weird obsession with the oh so mysterious "elite" slav "operators" on an anonymous anime imageboard. Bye now.

>But competent Western SOF would have greatly, massively, ludicrously reduced the amount of losses.
Yeah sure whatever

>rapier
>lightweight

My man we're talking about a long sword with the same weight as an actual longsword

Thus proving the gentleman's point.

Thank you elegan/t g/entleman.

Whatever helps you sleep at night

Assassin's dagger

>How does the rapier fare against other weapons? It seems like a super specialized weapon.

To accurately answer your question, I need to flip your sentence a little.

>It seems like a super specialized weapon.
It is a weapon for fighting unarmoured or lightly armoured targets, while being unarmoured or lightly armoured yourself. The height of the rapier and later small sword is during the firearm revolution, (where the cost of a musket is cheaper than armour that won't stop it, and the training is a fraction of the time). Reach, compact defense, point control, the option to cut and exclusionary target distance are it strengths.

>How does the rapier fare against other weapons?

It fares amazingly. We have plenty of documented records on non euros fighting against them. Famously, the Japanese had so many men die in duels against the Portuguese, that they banned gainjin from carrying swords. Then the young samurai started buying rapiers, and were killing each other in duels at an alarming rate, requiring the swords to be banned out right.

There are also specialized manuals for the use of rapiers vs other ethnocentric weapons. Pic related.

>It's a relatively long stabbing weapon.
>Pike formation
Relatively speaking, its a short stabbing weapon to a pikeman.

Look at a rapier hanger sometime You draw up, across your body from hip to shoulder, and its way less than three feet.

Russian SOF might use AR-15s every now and again, but it's way more common for them to use some manner of AK derivative, that's like saying the AR-15 is outdated because a handful of SOF choose to use M14 derivatives or a SCAR-H. SOF guys generally have a lot more choice in what they get to play around with, but anybody else in a former combloc country is 9 times out of 10 going to have an AK derivative as the standard issue rifle.

For america the m2 browning for the military, winchester 1912 shotgun maybe or the desert eagle, used to be S&W model 29.

Yes its a dueling weapon, Landsknechts used a long knife/short sword as a side arm for when two blocks would get inside each others spears.

The English lost the 100 Years War, bonehead. At the Battle of Patay, La Hire and a bunch of naked Frenchmen on horses slaughtered literally the entire veteran corps of Longbowmen.

All of those brave little thieves who had come over to plunder France died screaming and crying for their mothers because the English nobility nope'd out the second they saw the French charging. All of them. Imagine their deaths. Imagine their pleading when, after massacring prisoners and burning down villages for years, they finally came under the power of the husbands and fathers of the people they butchered.

I for one hope they were all tortured to death instead of merely being hanged like the thieves that they were. It's funny enough that Talbot died by getting his leggie-weggies shattered by a cannonball, and then being beaten to death through his armor by a French archer with an axe. I wonder if, in his final moments, the bandit tried to plead for mercy. I hope it hurt, and I hope hell is real so that he can burn in it for eternity.

>tfw in the 12 inch penetration test Yumies performed better than English longbows 10 out of 10

>The English lost the 100 Years War
Lindybeige disagrees

>lose your french holdings
>lose the battle of the french crown
I dunno, man. That doesn't seem like a win to me.

>Katana
>Samurai armor
>Deagle
>1911
>Panzers in general
>Kalishnokovs
>"Dual weilding" in general
>Greatswords
>"Leather" armor
>Beretta

Well not spending most of your money for murder toys does that for you.

B-but they just consolidated their holdings, they didn't need these vulnerable Angevin lands of anything..

>special forces in general

Lindybeige is a fucking moron

t. Englishman

They already had the french crown, henry v just died like a few months before charles vi.

>We have plenty of documented records on non euros fighting against them. Famously, the Japanese had so many men die in duels against the Portuguese, that they banned gainjin from carrying swords. Then the young samurai started buying rapiers, and were killing each other in duels at an alarming rate, requiring the swords to be banned out right.
Do you know the name of these actual records, because it kept being told, but never sourced precisely. Japanese or euros talking about these.

In hindsight no they didn't but they still lost the war.

>That doesn't seem like a win to me.
if you lose france you win

because it means you don't have to deal with french people anymore

You forgot about
>scutum and gladius

>Pike and Musket
>Greek Fire

That's what is called winning a battle and losing the war.

can't argue with that.

It's a single handed sword that ranges from somewhat balanced cut-n-thrust to heavily thrust-optimised designs, often with a good deal of hand protection. You have some that are very light, some that are very heavy, and a great mass that are pretty substantial but not terribly outstanding there. Back when I checked, the rapiers listed with weights on the Wallace collection's homepage (a bit over a hundred of them after I tossed the later replicas, 19th century chop jobs, and the one with a built in pistol) the weights ranged from 620g to 1870g, with an average of 1220g.

The ancestor of the rapier, the espada ropera (~clothes sword), was a sword for daily carry, out of armour and away from the battlefield, thus the name. However, just as the name evolved into rapier, the sword itself changed, generally loosing the civilian/dress association, becoming instead simply a sword for whatever purpose you saw fit to use it for. In many cases, that meant the battlefield, where it appears to have been wielded by basic footsloggers and heavy cavalry aristocracy alike.

Of course, not every rapier would be at home there. Some specialised duelling ones were extremely long, making them too unwieldy for such. Some were extremely light, making them easy to carry in your everyday life, but rather flimsy for battle. These are extreme examples though, and the fat part of the bell curve should do quite well in most situations. Keep in mind that a sword for daily self defence, which they also often were, is one that will have to make do against whatever your opponent shows up with, wherever he shows up, so hard specialisation isn't the best idea.

They lost because of a fluke where the king died suddenly after massively winning everything. Had he not, England won the hundred years war is just common history. Its not some sage tortoise and the hare shit where the french won the long game in the end or something. England had zero ability to carry out a foreign war with an infant king in that time period.

Why did it go like that though? Didn't the infant king have a regent, or competent military "advisors"?
I doubt Henry the V did all military command by himself

>England's Francophobia has gotten so bad, the entire nation has collectively declined into Trudeau-isms
Are you okay? Do you need mental help?

>England should have won but for a fluke!
France had a mad king for 25 years or so, sometimes history is decided by apparent flukes.
In the end, it's not like Charles VII's campaign was just a lucky streak, they weren't handled the victory on a plate.

Let's just get this out there. Fucking Scythes. Granted its mostly an anime and/or weeb fag thing but it goddam fits

>What other weapons have achieved the meme status the above have?

All of them.

Because you can't have an actual discussion on anything weapon or armor related without people spouting off ahistorical opinions, and even when the opinions are sourced, nobody will accept the sources themselves to be accurate and not propaganda or exaggerations or storytelling or something. No matter what you quote or what argument you make, there's always a counterexample, more often than not ALSO sourced, and there's no way to resolve them without being professional warriors ourselves and going and fighting to the death a few thousand times for a representative sample.

Going by Hall's "Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe" we have three rough phases to the Hundred Years War.

1: The English go raiding, which the French fail to do much about, but nothing really comes of this.
2: The English get some proper siege artillery, and start taking castles and towns, making for actual progress.
3: The French get a better artillery train, leave the English with next to nothing.

Perhaps not a view shared by all, but that's the book I've read on the subject, so it's the perspective I can add here.

As an Israeli I really don't understand why is this a meme weapon.

It was designed to be an anti car messure and now it's barley used.

Can someone explain to me this meme ?

it probably has something to do with counter strike

It's a big handgun, that's it. And as we all know, bigger = better.

I think it was popularised in some 80s - 90s action flick aswell.

Counterstrike? Movies? Overcompensation?

...

It's a really big, modern looking handgun. It became popular in films because it looks cool, like an update version of Dirty Harry's magnum. Some people assumed because it's in so many action flicks, it must be a great gun when in reality it's not that useful compared to less fancy weapons.

>weapons

>all these posts
>nobody mentions the motherfucking 1911

You don't know shit about American gun culture.

1911 is just good enough and aesthetic great enough that its fetishisation will last another 50 years at least

It looks very impressive. Huge, big barrel, clean, angular, design And big caliber is very impressive on paper. It's very impressive if you don't actually need to carry and use it, so it sees a lot of use in movies, comics, and games.

Almost all weapon and armour has some retarded meme that people actually believe.

However:
>assault rifle
Full auto fire has very narrow application
>plate armour
People unironically believe that any type of plate can be pierced with arrows and cut by swords
>daggers
Are associated with assasination because they're concealable, not because of the backstab bonus
>Sawed off shotgun
See above
>Sniper rifle
Is not magical. Sniping is about careful concealment and positioning. You'll spend all your investment on a single shot like a virgin with a whore and last all of five seconds.
>leather armour
Bondage gear isn't armour.
>cavalry
Aren't infantry-eating PacMan. They're skirmishers that sometimes get to ride down disorganized infantry
>all kinds of bows and crossbows
Armies all over the world adopted gun powder weapons as fast as they could. A musket could pierce a breastplace and kill a man in one shot while arrows and bolts bounce off and turns his limbs into pincushions.
>Pistols
Are thought to be just as deadly as rifles. If you get shot you die the same. No they fucking aren't and no you fucking don't. A pistol has 4x less muzzle energy than a rifle.

That's just the worst offenders I can think of.

Oh, lest I forget
>close range weapons
It's not they don't have a niche. They ARE A NICHE. You don't go out there with pistols and daggers and hope your enemy is honorabu enough to come and fight you on your terms.
>Swords
See above. You always want more range. You skimp out on range because as much as you would like to, you can't carry pic related.

>No they fucking aren't and no you fucking don't. A pistol has 4x less muzzle energy than a rifle.
Maybe I can elaborate on that: both are roughly equally deadly if you shoot an unarmored person in the face or heart, but armor or other bodyparts and it starts to make a real difference. There's also the myth that you'll be fine if you're shot in the arms or legs. Depending on the type of gun and the caliber of ammunition, you'll bleed out incredibly quickly. A high caliber shot to the thigh is a death sentence for example.

>Aren't infantry-eating PacMan. They're skirmishers that sometimes get to ride down disorganized infantry
Isn't that highly dependent on what time period we're talking about, with high-medieval cavalry actually trumping infantry in most circumstances until infantry ended up better trained and equiped in the late middle ages?

This guy is like the opposite end le autism man, likely some eighteen year old who finally started reading about the military after fetishizing it for a while.

Spears. According to this website all other weapons might as well be fictional because the spear makes up 110% of the weapons used in battle and is more deadlier than all other pseudo fictional weapons, including firearms.

>Unscrewing the pommel

I just got to see the old Edo records on display about this last month on vacation. I should have taken pics.

>Dat pic
I learned something today!

>1911 huh?

I kind of wish all the wank was towards stuff that was actually good.

Who else wants to circle jerk over gambeson and crossbows?

I do! I do!
Gambesons are cool!

youtube.com/watch?v=cBRaT18eQ9M
This should explain everything you need to know.

An assassin's dagger is just a regular dagger that was used to murder someone, in addition to eating

>Aren't infantry-eating PacMan. They're skirmishers that sometimes get to ride down disorganized infantry

What about heavy cav though, the infantrybreakers

Like yeah once pike and shot develop heavy cav ceases to be important, to the point that during the Napoleonic wars the only time heavy cav ever broke an infantry square was complete accident, but still

>pike formation
>something in your face
Also everyone carried a knife and sometimes a misericordia too.

I wouldn't call the colt 1911 a meme gun, its just a cheap "can't get simpler than that" pistol.

It is though. Compared to modern handguns it's too big, it has poorer ammo capacity, its ammo is more expensive than 9mm while being no more effective, and it's not all that cheap itself. There really isn't anything the 1911 excels at anymore, because it's over a century old.

Now, don't get me wrong: I like the 1911. I own one and enjoy shooting it. But that's all it's good for: hitting targets with. It has a delightful history and is a great piece of americana. As far as guns go it's American as they get: invented just in time to be used throughout America's meteoric rise to superpower-dom.

The gun does have a retarded meme following, though. Fudds who think that .45 is superior to 9mm or other similar pistol cartridges, or that a 1911 is superior for self-defense carrying to something like a Glock or Sig handgun are incredibly pervasive. People who fawn over the 1911 are, in my mind, no different than people who do the same over Japanese katanas or English longbows. The weapon's mythical status has more to do with its national and historical identity than its actual practicality or effectiveness.

1.) They were popular and therefore also relatively easy to get your hands on
2.) Their length is relatively long compared to something like an arming sword, but unless you're so tight to an enemy that you could punch them, it's still not so bad
3.) Laying the blade on somebody and drawing cuts.

I don't really know about the current state of the m1911, i just meant that it was used by half the world during a few decades for being cheap and simple, so simple that the brazilians were producing copies of it 4 months after joining the war.

Well, there's an argument for stopping power vs. usability between a .45 and a 9mm. It just depends upon which you'd rather have more of.

Granted, I'll take a Glock over a 1911 just for logistics these days - aftermarket parts, ammo expenses etc. make a difference

>stopping power

Meme. The FBI did extensive ballistic gel testing between .40 S&W, .45 ACP, and 9mm Parabellum. All three pistol rounds had nearly identical wounding profiles in the gel, and delivered nearly identical amounts of energy when hitting the target. That's why almost all police agencies use 9mm: it does the same job as .45 Auto, except you can fit more of it to a magazine courtesy of its smaller profile

>usability

Not sure what you're trying to say here. If that's a comment on recoil, .45 Auto does have noticeably more recoil than 9mm Para, but it's not going to make any difference to any shooter that's even remotely experienced or trained.

I like the 1911 but it, and the cartridge it fires, are simply outdated.

The 1911 is absolutely the America katana. Every gun forum on the net has said it at one point. It's less reliable and has half the ammo of a modern gun, e.g. a striker-fired double-stack polymer frame 9mm. A good one (hand-fitted to be more reliable, polished feed ramps to use modern JHPs, etc) also costs more - as much as 2-3x a XD, Glock, etc.

This user gets it