If you want to simulate the fear of getting hit, there's an easy solution. Every time a longsword user gets hit, they have to give the greatsword user 5$. Not only do you get everyone more hesitant to attack, but the greatsword user has motivation in the form of money to make sure he takes down as many people as possible.
It could potentially cause the greatsword guy to do more high risk actions just to try to get money. Maybe everyone needs to lose money when they get hit and the money goes to buying club equipment.
In 2 weeks from now there will be an international Montante Symposium in my Hometown Halle(Saale) in Germany. I Think there will also be Video footage that will be uploaded.
The only bad thing about sparring with montantes is that you can't have the perfect feeling of it. A real (feder-like) montante is definitely not safe to spar with a lot of intensity, and a foam montante is too different from the real thing. Maybe synthetic ones would perform better? You can put more force behind it, even though it is not as safe as a foam one. I recently got a synthetic hoping I can answer that question. Now to get synthetic swords and lobster gloves for the rest of the club...
Isn't the issue of feeling vs. safety mostly weight? The closer the weight is to the real weight, the less safe it is. At some point, the only way to make the feeling more real is to make it less safe...
@@Say_Tin yeah, that's not the only issue but it's one of the main ones. What I meant is that it's hard to find a balance between "realistic" and safe. As they said in the video, montantes are all about momentum/inertia
I also have a synthetic montante and I have tried sparring my friend with it a couple of times but I couldn't really use it like a montante because putting any kind of momentum behind it was so dangerous, I just ended up using it like a longsword and because of that I was pretty easy to take down because it's suddenly so much slower if you can't make those wide sweeping cuts.
The fact that the weapon can get stuck seems like less of a big deal to me - "but who will bell the cat?" Sure, after the montante-wielder hits someone, they might be in trouble, but that requires someone to get hit first, and no one wants to be the guy who gets cut.
Your comment about waiting until one of your friends gets killer and then going in is a solid SCA melee tactic against a great sword, pole arm or skilled fighter. We would drill in trios, usually two shield and sword fighters with a spear or pole arm fighter.
I’d suggest the follow two rules to help with the ‘suicide charge’ tactic: 1. The montante ignores double hits and exchanges with an afterblow (ie non-montante users can only win by clean hit) And/or 2. All non-montante users must survive to win the round Not realistic, but you can’t psychologically represent the effect of a real sharp weapon swinging at you so you make the rules aim toward the behaviour you want to see
How much have you played with the different Iberian patterns? I remember Godhino's patterns against shieldmen, where the cuts were at knee level, and there was a nice process for switching between tajos and revezes while keeping the montante in front of you. I thought those might work well in your experiment. That said, really good work, and I really enjoyed it.
Witchers in books are using short swords because Witchers are all about the speed and they basically imitate animals with swords instead of talons. Also, bigger swords would not fit in the caves, severs, cellars and tombs - typical Witcher workplaces 😂
The spinning and dancing is prbl mostly, bc they're used to fighting monsters and alwys have to keep the entire battlefield in mind and watch for ambushes and the likes. Fighting monsters is very different from fighting humans
there are montante "feders" ranging from 1.6~2 kg. it's completely possible to ddo sparring with them we do them weekly in my club. ofc we can't go full force but it's still really nice to do
@@SellswordArts I mean seeing your video, the amount of force used for the sparring is close to what we use. we mostly go full force only on tournaments. or against more experienced fighters never had problems with them (besides one girl who broke her finger once when she insisted in using a red dragon for sparring instead of a proper glove for 2h)
Excellent video as usual! A couple thoughts. The Doppelsoldner means double soldier and soldier comes from the Latin root meaning salt or pay, so double salt or pay because Roman legionnaires were paid in salt. The Landsknechts who used these weapons would often have a sidearm called the katzbarger which was basically a short sword similar to a messer or gladius. And everyone always had a knife or dagger all the time back then. So if the greatsword became tangled the wielder could pull his other weapons as demonstrated here.
Very cool video , only grip personally is the thumbnail maybe I’m not used to it but it didn’t catch my eye like your usually video thumbnails do. For example the “spin to win” video has a great thumbnail Imo with you mid jump attack. Even the duel bladed sword video had a great thumbnail. This one didnt strike me only until I read the title was I excited to watch the video.
all the essence of great swords, swordstaves and giant polearms (also used by palace guards as well, during times of peace) enclosed in this one sentence at 6:39 - IT IS SCARY that is what it was meant to be, area denial is byproduct of being scary :)
i gotta say, that's one thing i learned super fast playing around on blade and sorcery, cuz i got no hema people to practice with, so yeah, but yeah i LOVE how untouchable you become in the game the minute you equip a great sword or a pole weapon, your basically this whirling dirvish or death and destruction, calamity is become you on BAS or on Hell Split arena, the easiest way to deal with the knights is either pole axe, or great sword, or ya know a shotgun
Nice video, from someone who spars with a steel one (although not at full force) sword and bukler guard will break with little effort from the two hander. 2 more experiment if you want to have fun: - attackers cannot flank, narrow street or bridge or doorway - two hander has some level of armour
I think two people with montantes would be more effective in a larger area but for sure in the area y'all had it makes sense that two was generally worse
When you guys were doing the two montantes I noticed you guys died when you grouped together, maybe try splitting apart so you have your two zones of control
Great video!! I think you guys had the right idea, with real weapons the attackers would probably be WAY less willing to close. Even though one kill would (theoretically) paralyze the Montante, nobody's going to volunteer to be that guy. A fight between a Montante wielder vs a group would almost be a miniature siege - no one has a decisive edge at the beginning so the attackers are waiting for the Montante to get tired and slow down. Those guys who fought with Montante would've needed to be in crazy good shape 😮
Nice video. Definitely got it right at the end, the fear of someone pulling that weapon out, I think any person would back off. Knowing it's a death sentence for the wielder and attacker id bet most people scurried away
I somewhat differ on the safety. At the moment, I am trying to establish a set of safe parameters to actually spar with steel Greatswords, and looking for makers who are pushing the envelopes on recreating sparring safe but accurate Greatswords for this use. I won't lie though, I am a firm advocate that these amazing weapons should only be used by people who have trained long and hard with longswords, and sparring only be done after months of drilling and pell work with them.
If you were to add a pikeman to the montantes it would have been a very good formation, with montantes keeping the enemies busy and pikeman sniping them from afar
Even though greatsword probably one of the better choices for a 1v3 this does show that it may be better but besides skill you gonna need some good luck to get out of that situation unscathed. Although maybe a different situation if fully armored,that may save you from some hits.
Love the video fam . There's no perrying with it wow it's insane I gang up and hope to sneak a poke or do the good old throw the pomel at them then rush historical fact😅
They don’t even need to take the pikes down, but just get past the tips. By virtue of just having a shorter weapon and armor, you can close the gap on pikemen and not have to worry about choking up, where as it isn’t really possible to choke up on a pike in formation enough to actually be effective again once someone gets past the point.
I bought a synthetic montante about two months back and it is a fun sword to use. I can invision a two man (even three) montante team to be quite dangerous, especially if they trained together and focused on common scenarios.
Few things i want to mention: Cutting off the pikeheads is a very widespread myth at least i cannot find any sources describing it with great swords. rather contemporary reports and authors all agree on the great swords having one job. Protecting the banners and sometimes protecting the pikemen in the press. Cutting off pikeheads is an bad idea for several reasons. If we take formations for example frundsbergs it would be 300-600 men alone in the frontrank. Normally the first 3-5 ranks consist of pikemen sometimes a rank of arkebuses mixed in. Then after this the short armas aka greatswords, halberds, partisans etc are depicted. The woodcut of Erhard Schön describes their job as protecting the banner when the enemy broke in. They were like any other well armed soldiers paid twices as much. Doppelsöldner more often refers to the heavily armoured pikemen. Some advice on using big swords, is to use the right regla for the right situation. Imo circling would have been much better. Then throwing blows to the hands the heads and the legs. Some sources do indicate that heads and heads were most often hit which made the weapon so good. Another thing is to not use the montante in a continuous manner all the time. Some sources seem to indicate they rather mean using the correct " tempo" and not wasting energy. Some sources say that you can rest in between and arm the sword. Continous motion is only needed when pressing the opponent and even then in a controlled manner. Even its not clear what they mean. Also no thrusts that is something almost all sources agree upon. Some of the things i saw in the video would not be possible with proper greatswords especially combined with armour. False edge as far as i remember is more rarely used, only in some sources with the rising blows. The biggest problem we all have is that the sources for the most part leave out much and sometimes even contradict each other. Furthermore the context is often not given. Ideally simply cutting zornhaus and Wehrstreiche is the best to go. Also somewhat disagree on killing one guy leaves you vunerable. Military sources seem to indicate that this was not the case. Just my thoughts on it and i mean no hate by it. Its interesting to see the different interpretations of it.
Im curious to know whether having the two “hilts” is absolutely necessary. Why not have just one hilt placed higher up for more handle so you can still halfsword?
Doubling is a common term when both opponents hit each other, and would be mutual wounding/death. Usually doubling is cause by successfully landing an attack but failing to defend yourself at the same time, i.e. a mistake. I think by suicidal doubling he means doubling on purpose, basically sacrificing yourself.
@@chrisdonnell7200 exactly. I’m familiar with the term doubling, but the “suicidal” part was intriguing because it’s so perfect to describe the action of just rushing in and not acting as if your opponent has an actual sword.
Armor changes all this, if everyone involves I’d reasonable armored, even if it’s just mail, a slash from a great sword isn’t going to take them out of the fight, they can simply take the hit, close distance and kill the great swordsman
Depends on to many factors but since it is a weapon with a strong inpcat it might be very effective against some forms of armor if it does not get stuck.
About "I died but I got you!" sentence that we heard a lot: Watching this is so fun and interesting. It makes me think about those who were bold and brave enough to fight with/against such weapons. In this video however even one scratch counts them dead, which is not totally true. The wound will hurt, the wound will weaken the fighter, but these types of wounds will never count a fighting man out. I have had some experience in such situations and I have seen some wonderous images of people fighting in real life with real weapons. None of those that I have seen were bothered with little scratches however, they were hurt and bleeding. but they wouldn't run away from the fight (and they didn't die and they fought for almost 5 minutes. after 5 minutes they were all sent to hospital of course.) My point is! those people who were named soldiers, mercenaries, and bandits would have enough fortitude and resilience to withstand such blows in a fight. so the term these martial artists say: I died, But I got you! is just for the sake of practice. No soldier or warrior would consider himself dead for a scratch on leg or hand. It would for sure hurt and sting, for it may also intensify the warrior to be even more vicious and bloodlust.
All of the hits that we counted were debilitating. Bit scratches, but missing fingers, gaping wounds, possibly lost limbs. Anything we counted would maybe but KILL someone outright, but they would not be able to continue the fight
A basket hilt broadsword could probably catch a montante with the horns on the front of the hilt. They existed as a reinforced part of the hilt for catching strikes so I doubt even a montante could break through. The only thing to fail would be the user for receiving so much shock on one arm and probably wouldn’t be able to capitalize on it.
If you're claiming you parried a full force Montante with a high guard longsword , i've got bad news for the guy that purchased the Montante. There isn't a dimension where the Montante isn't going to simply blow through your parry.
In case anyone is interested here's a link to a small full contact steel greatsword tournament we had recently: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Yzt1l0Gl6iE.html Still it's a bit too dangerous for everyone, so only experienced longsword fighters were invited to participate.
Seriously, wouldn’t you just wait until the person with the larger sword got tired? Because even in this short exchange, I notice the heavy breathing with the guy using the large sword.
Why would he keep spinning? Though it's a valid critique. They're spinning it around but I want to see it used like the skyrim nameless knight. Calculated precision in every move, but then again expecting that level of experience is absurd
You start swinging it faster when an opponent comes nearer or is about to attack. You also swing it faster to attack yourself. When nothing much is going on, you could even let the Greatsword "rest" a bit with minor, slower figures or in a stance to preserve energy.
@@A_Medieval_Shadow Seriously, if you were using this great sword, and I was your opponent, I would allow you to swing it as much as possible while remaining out of range, and intentionally move in, while remaining at distance to get you tired, to the point that you wouldn’t be even able to lift your great sword and then make my move. Now remember, you need to keep swinging that sword to keep me a bay, but that’s the entire idea. Furthermore, having a lighter weapon as a long sword, I’m going to out time you also, and when you're tied there isn’t much left. Realistically, how long could anyone swing such a large weapon before burning out. Also, there is no rule’s saying that I need to engage you at the beginning. Please remember I’m referring to a one on one duel.
@@pantheraleoromanus6241 If it's a one on one duel, there's no reason the greatsword guy needs to keep swinging. They're also designed to be wielded like a short spear/halberd by choking up on the blade to that second crossguard, so he can still keep you at range once he realizes what you're doing. Even wielding it like that, the length of the blade above that crossguard is still longer than a longsword, and it still has the extra weight to it that can be leveraged to push smaller blades away. Doesn't mean that he's guaranteed to win by any means, but the sword definitely has an advantage in controlling the field, which I think is what it was designed for, and if your opponent catches on to what you're doing, he could use that area control to force you to give ground until you have no choice but to engage him.