Why choose sword when you can kill your enemy from afar?

Why choose to kill your enemy when you can convert them to your cause?

Why choose to go out on adventures when you can just sit in your hovel and masturbate?

>>54485167
Because if I fight them with a sword then they have a greater chance of releasing me from this hell I call my life.

>>54485214
Why sit in your hovel and masturbate when you could sit in MY hovel and masturbate?

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>>54485167
>Why choose sword when you can kill your enemy from afar?
Why choose bow when a wooden board is all you need to defeat it?

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But how can you kill me from afar when you can't even see me?

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>>54485167
Why choose bow when you can kill your enemy from afurther?

>>54485167
Missile weapons are easier to defend against and thus are poor for dealing decisive amounts of casualties, they can soften a target up before a proper melee clash but any fool who decides that ranged fire alone can win the day before the invention of rifled guns is a fool.

>>54485264
Why sit in anyone's hovel and masturbate when you can just masturbate?

>lol i took what OP typed up and changed a few words around to mean something else
>hur dur so funny and original xd

>>54485371
t. Crassus

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>>54485303

A hidden foe?
I strike at the air you hide in.

>>54485167
Easier to kill with a sword. The appeal of a bow is being able to kill from way over there, but it's very possible that they'll kill you anyways if they close in.
Which is why any decent adventurer carries multiple weapons, dope.

>>54485167
Why choose to kill enemies when you can turn them into friends?

>>54485167
Why choose anything when you can have a sword at your side and a bow in your hand?

>>54485415
Why greentext when you could regular text?

>>54485476
Because then they'll pretend to be your friend until you turn your back on them.

>>54485505
Why choose anything when you can choose nihilism?

>>54485436
But what if you kill the air? You go too far!

>>54485382
Why just masturbate when you can master bait?

>>54485415
>I want to make a thread about archery
>Instead of investing any effort let me start it with a provocative sentence inviting anons to shitpost
>Why no one is having intelligent discussion?

>>54485382
Like, just go outside and have a wank in the cold, dark rain?

Tell me more.

>>54485560
No! Am tactics!

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Why kill your enemy when you can just blow up the planet they're on?

>>54485382
>>54485567
Why masturbate/master-bait when you can bait fish with your dick?

>>54485167
Because you can't always kill your enemy from afar.
This is why archers had bows and swords.

>>54485536
Because nihilism can't be used to parry in St-Georges...

>>54486109
>in St-Georges...
what

>>54485638
Aye lad. One night I ventured out from my hovel to rub one out. Strangest wank I ever had, can't remember my graspers being so otherly. Was then I realized, I had no grippers! Lost em in the war last I remember. It was a witch! A witch I say! Fuck the- eh, burn the witch!

Why fight your enemy when you can join them?

Why join your enemy when you can fight them?

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>>54485879
Somehow, creating a focal point for all the not-Karma in the galaxy to send its retributive vibes towards you doesn't seem like a good idea.

Considering it failed three times so far and all.

>>54485167
Why resort to violence when you can reconcile your argument with love making, bonobo style?

>>54485167
*hides behind tree and ambushes u*
Heh, nothin personal kid

>>54485433
Actually, if you'll recall, Crassus's army was worn down by the horse archers, but also subjected to repeated cavalry charges by cataphracts. It was those two things working in conjunction that won the battle, and Crassus hoped mid-battle that his cavalry could rout the cataphracts and hold out 'till the horse archers ran out of arrows, which could have worked, had the horse archers not turned to harass the Roman cavalry, allowing the cataphracts to wheel back around and attack the infantry again. Which is why they had both in the first place. You know, combined arms.

So, not archers alone.

>>54486337
Not riding to an enemy camp with a small trigger-happy guard to negotiate also helps.

>>54486387
There are a lot of reasons Crassus lost that campaign, I was just addressing the notion that it was only, or even primarily, horse archers that won the battle. It was a combined arms force fighting in a style they'd developed to work based on the combination of both heavy lancers and horse archers, as was the case in almost every army that used horse archers.

>>54486234
>Considering it failed
Tell that to Alderaan, oh wait.

>>54486529
>considering Nazi German failed
>"tell that to Russia, France, and the Jews"
>"oh wait"
Oh wait

>>54486805
*Germany

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>>54486805
>defending the USSR
Reminder that they killed all their own farmers.

>>54485382
Been there done that

>>54489048
Please keep /pol/shit in /pol/!

>>54485184
wolololo

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>>54485167
>Not killing your enemy from afar WITH sword.
Get a load of this guy.

>>54485184
FPBP

>>54485382
Diogenes pls go

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>>54486128
>what
That's what I thought...

>>54489346
Please cry harder like a little bitch.

Ranger danger

>>54485167
Bows don't kill people. Unless you shoot them multiple times in unarmored parts of the body with the right arrowhead, they can survive or even still fight. Even a simple padded arming garment can defeat a warbow firing bodkins instead of broadtips. Meanwhile a sword is what you use to finish somebody off after wounding them with a bow and hampering their fighting ability enough to allow you to overcome their armor.

>>54485167
Because sometimes your archers may need a sword. And a spear. And a shield. And a horse

>But archers of the present go into battle fully armored and fitted out with greaves that extend up to the knee. From the right side hang their arrows, from the other a sword. There are some who have a spear also attached to them and, at the shoulders, a sort of small shield without a grip, so as to cover the face and neck. They are excellent horsemen and are able without difficulty to shoot their bows to either side while riding at full speed, and to shoot an opponent whether in pursuit or in flight. They draw the bowstring along by the forehead all the way to the right ear, thereby charging the arrow with such an impetus as to kill whoever stands in its way: neither shields nor breastplates can withstand its force.

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>>54489397

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>>54485167
Hello.

>>54495851
Where is that text from?

>>54495785
Agincourt, Crécy, and Poitiers beg to differ

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>>54496038
From the first chapter of The Wars of Justinian by Prokopios

>>54496050
You mean the battles where bows barely killed anybody, and the wounded French were either taken prisoner or finished off?

God I wish 4chan would learn the fucking difference between casualty and death.

>>54495995
>fireball

>>54495995
hello
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae

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>>54485167
>He can't shoot swords.
Are you even trying?

>>54496090
You fail to see the point, deliberately I assume, so I will restate it explicitly.

In all three cases a numerically superiour force comprised largely of heavily armoured, melee focused, infantry and cavalry was defeted by a force comprised largely of longbowmen.

Please explain to me exactly how it was a melee focus that won the day?

>>54485167
Because you can't get through plate armor with a bow

>>54496129
The Longbow only served as a role of suppression and shooting horses out from under knights. The defeat of all three battles can be largely blamed on the environment, as had it been a nice dry field at any of them without rain the English would have been royally fucked- but gross French incompetency. Arrows killed few of the French, what killed them was their own stupidity, heavy rain, and a sword in their throat.

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Why kill your enemy from afar when you can kill them just as effectively at point blank?

>>54496561
Except you can... not only are there countless examples of plate being punched through, but my favourite is an example from the war of the roses.
A knight on horseback got ambushed by a group of archers and ended up having an arrow punched through the armour on his left leg, through the leg, through the armour on the inside, through his saddle, through the horse, through the other side of the saddle, through the armour inside his right leg, through his right leg, and only stopping when it got to the outside armour on the right leg. He also got shot in the torso multiple times and unsurprisingly both he and the horse ended up dead. For some reason they found this guy geting pinned to his horse so hilarious that they decided to bury him still nailed to his horse...
The churchyard he is buried in is somewhere near York I think, I will try and find out exactly where because I can’t remember off the top of my head.

You cannot however get through plate armour with a sword. That's why warhammers and war picks became a thing.

>>54496618
Yes the environment helped create the perfect situation for the archers, but it was still the arrchers that did the heavy lifting.

There were vast numbers of foot troops as well as cavalry, so saying they all had their horses cut out from under them makes little diference, other than that it gave the archers longer to shoot at them. Supression does nothing if you don't have some way of taking advantage of it, and as the french had greater numbers and more heavily armoured troops how exactly did that happen?

It makes no sense for you to be saying it was swords (or rather any melee weapon as most of the melee troops were using some variety of polearm) that were the pivotol part of those conflicts when the french had greater numbers and better armour, and the only thing the english had going for them was shitty weather and bows.

>>54485167
Because my DM won't let me find a damn bow. We're fighting elves that use leaf blades/magic so they don't drop any real loot when they die. Nothing's left to sell or use. Help.

>>54496739
No, what the English had going for them is that they were going up against utter retards who had zero training. The English army was comprised of professionally drilled soldiers, and led by nobles who had been at the game of war for years and knew it inside and out. The French leadership was weak and had zero control over their forces in every battle, and significant elements of their armies were made up of individualistic hot-headed men-at-arms desiring personal glory. The French literally trampled their own troops to death at Agincourt, and not with cavalry. Their own foot soldiers ground the earlier waves into the mud and drowned them.

You could replace the Longbowmen at Agincourt with just more men at arms or crossbowman, it wouldn't matter. The outcome would have been the same because in this era of the Hundred Years War England was up against a foe that actually conducted a cavalry charge aboard naval ships because they were so obsessed with the idea of chivalric combat.

>>54496783
>that they were going up against utter retards who had zero training.
how does this square with the notion that Agincourt saw the destruction of the flower of french nobility?

The french were also largely profesional soldiers, and even if they had not been without the archers even the simplistic zerg-rush would have allowed the french to bring their superior numbers and equipment to bear and would have crushed the smaller english forces.

Yes the weather helped, and yes the french tactics compounded the issue, but it was the longbow that actually made this relevant.

As a side note a) crossbows would still have been a ranged weapon, (and they both advantages and disadvantages in other areas, Archers can put more arows in the air than a crossbowman can but it takes considerably more training to actually use a longbow effectively)
and b) the french did have crossbowmen but as crossbows are kept strung, the damp weather made the strings streatch and rendered them useless.

>>54485371

Of course, missile weapons did eventually completely supersede melee entirely.

>>54495785

That's a strange word for mace, friend.

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>>54496987
I see your mace and raise you one with a spiky bit.

>>54496987
Funny way to spell pollaxe, fucktard.

>>54497107
Not everybody used a pollaxe.
If you were poor then a mace was a perfectly acceptable sidearm. They have found shedloads of maces that were little more than lumps of lead set onto a stout wooden handle.
There were warhammers, lucerne hammers, warpicks. In fact any number of diferent weapons. Just because the poleaxe (yes, I am spelling it diferently this time, you see that's the thing about historical sources, they don't always agree on the simple things like spelling, let alone details that actually matter) was a common and effective weapon did not make it the only option.

Also, as the matter in question was what kind of weapon was used to finish someone off after disabling them, a mace (aka priest) or a rondel is considerably more likely than a polaxe.

>>54485371
>Missile weapons are easier to defend against

Bow or crossbow fired at close range will have much more power than a sword swing or spear thrust.

Bowmen firing at long range and raining arrows down was only used against unarmored enemies. In reality archers were used more like musketeers. Waiting until enemy got close and firing straight at them.

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>>54497596
>a mace (aka priest)

No.

Clergy going to war would arm and equip themselves just as anyone of similar standing and wealth amongst the regular nobility. While this include a mace, nothing suggests any special preference for it over spear, axe, sword, lance or any other weapon of the time. We have specific references to them wielding swords, both in period artwork, and in things like the Bishop of Cahor's having the honour of being allowed to place his helmet, shield and sword on the altar when celebrating High Mass.

The idea that anyone would use a mace so as to not spill blood is also obvious rubbish through and through. Clock someone in the face with a mace, especially the spikier, knobbly or flanged ones, and there's going to be blood all over the place. Even fighting with no weapons whatsoever can paint the floor crimson.

(See Oakeshott, European Weapons and Armour)

As for finishing people off, you can use whatever you have at hand. A mace, a dagger, a rock, or a sword. With the skull wounds of the massacred prisoners in the Towton graves sharp blades outnumber blunt trauma 73-28.

(Boylston et.al, Blood Red Roses)

>>54497919
Sorry, you misunderstand me, there are refrences to maces being called priests because they were "used to deliver the last rites" to injured people.
It was a joke name for them because it was used to put people out of their mysery...

There is a huge diference between massacring prisoners and finishing someone off on the battefield.
Prisoners tend not to be wearing armour, and everybody on the battlefield will have had some form of helmet, making a solid mace blow to the head and/or a dagger through the eye slit preferable to trying to carve through the armour with a three foot length of steel.

>>54496670
surely you don't believe this