OT a few comments on (Viking) fighting

[Watchman]

The tachi is longer and slightly more curved than the katana (or at least, differently curved). In short, a more dedicated cavalry weapon compared to the later katana all-purpose sword.

With the caveat that AFAIK quite a few subtypes of the katana were quite the opposite of "all-purpose" (AFAIK there was even a rare form which was about as optimised for thrusts as a sabre can get...), that sounds about right.

[Madoushi]

Deadliest Warrior is pretty ridiculous anyway. The way they categorize and compare weapons oftentimes seem completely arbitrary.
The U.S./Russian Special Forces one was pretty ridiculous, where they tested a US grenade in open air, then threw a Russian grenade in a dryer and concluded the US one was better since the explosion covered a wider area since it wasn't in a dryer.

I always though Samurai Armor was Banded Mail, thin strips of armor bound together by leather cords. Also, samurai were an elite class of nobility, like Medieval Knights. When the Tokugawa Shogunate took control in the early 17th century, firearms had replaced archers and peasants were not allowed to own weapons. In Japan, defense never really caught up to offense, and the scarcity of raw metals only exacerbated that.

As far as I know, anyway.

[Watchman]

"Banded mail" gah. No such thing. The closest you could semi-legitimately call that is laminate (sometimes spelled "laminar") - overlapping horizontal strips - à la lorica segmentata and its ilk, or the Sengoku period (or thereabouts) Japanese hishinui-dô and the like. Strictly speaking "mail" refers to this stuff, period.

Also, the rubric "samurai" actually covered the whole nine yards of the warrior class, from poorly armed and trained crap infantry to mounted elites. The other social classes did tend to pitch in as needed, with the ashigaru peasant infantry becoming increasingly important in the armies as the centuries went on and eventually turning into a sort of "junior" hereditary warrior class by the beginning of the Tokugawa rule, if memory serves. (Incidentally, the disarming of the Japanese peasantry was mainly effected by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi and more or less a fait accompli when Tokugawa took over.)

As for the defense-offense thingy, no. Lamellar is good strong armour (if now a bit on the heavy and expensive side) and the later laminate models only more so; already back in the o-yoroi days (when the senior samurai were armoured horse-archers first and foremost) duels more often than not had to be finished with the dagger on the ground, for the fairly simple reason it's relatively difficult to get stuff through overlapping iron plate with enough force left to do meaningful damage to the wearer. Heck, one of the major reasons big spears and polearms were the principal military hand-to-hand weapons was specifically the need to generate enough force to get through the other guy's armour, and even low-end infantry tended to have at least basic body armour (haramaki or hara-ate) already in the early days.

[antisocialmunky]

Imported? If you mean the second wave of settlers from the continent bringing large scale rice agriculture, walled cities, iron weapons, and better technology, and pushing the Jomon culture out of the big island over the course of several centuries. Yes.

[Watchman]

...wot ?

[athanaric]

Imported? If you mean the second wave of settlers from the continent bringing large scale rice agriculture, walled cities, iron weapons, and better technology, and pushing the Jomon culture out of the big island over the course of several centuries. Yes.

Last time I checked that was some centuries before cavalry and tachi were employed.

[Watchman]

The last I checked munky is cheerfully conflating quite a few different periods and throwing some dodgy-sounding stuff about population displacements on top. I mean I can't even figure out *who* he means by "second wave of settlers", as the imported stuff he lists off was AFAIK brought in by comparatively small numbers of immigrants from the continent settling among the Yamato during, more or less, the Kofun period...

[antisocialmunky]

I thought you were refering to an earlier period. Bleh, my bad for somehow skipping over the date.

[mountaingoat]

Deadliest Warrior is pretty ridiculous anyway. The way they categorize and compare weapons oftentimes seem completely arbitrary.

lol oh yeah , how about the pirate vs knight .. the knight did not even activate his special spinning attack!

[Zradha Pahlavan]

Have they done a "ninja vs. hashashin" episode?