Rapier Vs Dagger: Hopeless Opponent? 

Guy with a rapier: I’ll win. Guy with a dagger: I’ll take him with me.

My biggest take away was that Matt's sense of distance and tempo is exceptional especially before he got winded. It showed that a very elite fighter would be very dangerous no matter how lopsided the melee weapons. Makes me think of the stories of people who abused the judicial dueling systems because they were so confidant they could win. If I had to fight someone of Matt's caliber in a real life or death situation I'd want something with a scope on it to have a chance.

Oh, now that's _interesting!_ Everybody talks about how OP rapier and dagger are as companions, but rarely as opponents!

Yeah, the situation is kinda scary for the rapier user too. If the other guy is crazy or angry enough to take his chances with getting ran through, you can end up with your throat slit real easy. It would probably be best to let go of the sword as soon as you see that he managed to get through and get both of your hands on that dagger, at that point it's a battle of attrition and he's the one bleeding.

Two things: Dagger wielder moves a lot more to compensate and seemed to make the best moves before tired. A "real" fight to death would seem to be just as likely to end in two deaths because the dagger wielder would likely be able to strike before too tired. Second thing, how much would practice change things? Someone who practiced dagger against longer weapons might find an advantage because their opponent was not practiced against a dagger wielder. As a side thought, practicing with just a dagger would cover that one time when the rapier was lost or broken and could make a difference. There is real difference in the way one has to think when grossly over matched that may be used to an advantage. (has to be used as advantage to survive)

If you are the poor bugger with the dagger, you want to turn this into a wrestlemania ASAP, which you may be able to do if you can bind your opponents blade and move in quickly

I'm recalling that time Matt had his gym try to defend against concerted knife attacks, based on a historical account; they found it was quite difficult to deal with a knife attack when the attacker was really committed. I'd had actually guessed 3:1, which is pretty close to the 10:4. I'm not surprised that the dagger mostly traded blows given how nimble the rapier is and that it's attacks are along the same lines as the dagger.

JOKE: Disney's Peter Pan used a dagger against Captain Hook who had a rapier. Matt you should use happy thoughts & pixie dust to fly & gain the advantage similar to how Obi Wan held the high ground against Aniken. 😂

We don't generally do this with a single dagger, but with 2 daggers. It's actually one of my favorite asymmetrical fights. a person with a really quick and efficient lunge can usually shut down the daggers, but someone really good with binds and using both hands can often dominate the rapier. It's a really fun exercise and makes you think in very different ways than a traditional fight.

Unconvential fencing matchups are by far my fav vids on channel, This is quite interesting one too as this context is actually quite historical I mean imagine accosted by near-do wells or rogue mercenaries this power advantage towards a dagger or even an axe wielder has to influenced the calculation to attempt a robbery or accosting. This shows its actually not as hopeless as I thought, but still a clear power advantage it had to resulted in a lot of those kind of duress situation

You did not exaggerate, that was glorious!

We need more videos like this. It's always theory and history lessons. But it's nice to see various weapons in action.

Matt gets a +2 modifier to finesse weapons thanks to his background, clearly.

Try dagger vs dagger and rapier. Its the likely scenario. (Disarmed) Interesting how much more energy the dagger user has to expend, leading to worse exchanges for him later.

I really didn't expect the dagger to do as well as it did. Obviously as Matt points out, not all the touches would be equal in a real fight, but its really cool to see this played out. I wonder was it important for the dagger user to have that kind of "parrying dagger" style off dagger, would it be significantly worse with say, a Rondel

You could see the strategy change as the contest went on. Interesting.

That was a lot of fun; thank you gentlemen.

There's a reason I carry a work knife, a self-defense knife, and a gun.

I love seeing these kinds of sparring sessions! Awesome video! Keep up the great work!

Very nice! Thanks for demonstrating! 🥰

Super fun to see real HEMA as a 'no clue' observer; you guys are impressive at your craft. This is clearly why a trained swordsman would have been devastating against anything but his equal... great video!

Prediction for a RL situation like that; Dagger guy runs. I see that the rapier fighter was far too nice. Standing still and doing noting give the advantage of timing to the guy with the dagger. just like with a spear vs sword, you got to stab-stab-stab-stab-poke-stab, all the time. And when he started that he crushed you Matt.

pls do more of these!

That was rad! Short and fun. I'd be happy to see more sparring to explore an assumption!

Thank you, Stephen! That was interesting.

Great video. Many of us have played with this scenario in our own studies, and your experience matched what I've seen and done. There is another disadvantage to dagger, and that is in energy. It takes an athletic effort to seize the opening and close measure with a shorter weapon. Initially, you were doing better and soon declined; which, again, is something I've also seen and done. It just wears you out. Same with cloak and dagger or paired daggers. Having a mismatched weapon like this is always a bad day, but if it comes after a few other bouts, I'd say the disadvantage is greater. One thing I have noticed, if mobility is restrained, dagger becomes more practical. When the rapier can retreat, you need to race their back peddling to close; when they're against a wall or something, it's much easier. Perhaps another experiment?

I'm glad you got into this one Matt 🙂 My 1st weapon was a tanto and I always get people asking me how I'd take on someone with a sword and I'm surprised we both came to pretty much the same conclusion. Your only hope really is to bind with their blade and either cross and engage like you were OR grapple to drag them towards you, I noticed your sparring partner held onto his sword even when you'd got him off balance, I've had losts of people let go to get the chance to disengage before I'd hit, thrown or got my blade free and stabbed or cut them 🤔 I'm curious how that would've gone if you weren't following sparring rules, if you'd been allowed to hit, trip or throw eachother that would've given you a lot more of a chance. I've only been learning HEMA for a few years now so I'm not sure how different it is to Jujutsu? We always mix our armed with our unarmed, we seem to have more of a preference for wrestling?

That was amazing and super useful. Well done! I suspect over time the balance would shift more and more in favor of the Rapier as the countering routes for the dagger were mitigated. It does show perhaps the disadvantage of rapier as a military tool since it seems to best benefit from a more open gladiatorial style of encounter. Also it shows rapier vs rapier does not properly prepare one for rapier vs dagger. Again, well done and thanks!

One way to win as dagger man - end fight very, very fast, immeditely. Seems Matt was tired much much faster

Neat! I’d be interested to see this experiment done again, but dagger guy also gets a cloak or hat. Sort of a “quarrel after a few too many at the pub” situation.

I believe there was at least one Fechtbuch that treats this situation.

A sail or ale-house dagger would have completely negated those quick stabs to the hand and given the rapierist another level of problems. Saying that the fight went as I expected it, the dagger is quick enough to chase down the rapier point and will almost always win the bind due to the leverage advantage, but the rapier only needs to get one thrust past while keeping the range open.

Going from the sparring it seems whoever is the most aggressive from the start has the advantage. If the rapier user hesitates to press home the advantage the dagger user has a chance if not an ideal one.

Nice video and interesting conclusion in regard to dagger vs sabre.

Love these types of videos, hopefully more upcoming.

Moral of the story....don't lose your sword.

Before the video starts this seems like a bad situation for either party lol

I do wonder how different this would be if Matt had two daggers, or dagger-and-buckler, rather than just the dagger.

Thanks for the video

At the end there: could we perhaps see a part 2, dagger versus saber?

You've basically recreated a game we play in my guild that we call "thug and fencer" - it's meant to reinforce the importance of striking as soon as your opponent enters wide measure, and the importance of keeping your point free! 😁

I want to see rapier vs. _dual-wield_ daggers...

I reckoned about 2/3 to 1/3 in favour of the rapier, because life is just risky like that. Turns out I was a little off, but I also think some of those hand hits were very generous - which is fair, because we’ve no way of knowing if it’d just ripped a line across the back of the palm and left the hand functional, or totally disabled that hand. I’d stick with my 2/3 to 1/3 for any ‘superior’ weapon in terms of reach, handled by someone(s) with a good eye for measure. Because honestly, if it comes to violence, then you should think ‘is this worth a 1 in 3 chance of a serious trip to the ER, at best’ and that thinking - which we cannot easily replicate - changes so much about how people fight in an era when there was no ER, and some of those light wounds would be a lingering death.

Great video, love to see sparring footage

Thank you for that and the story inspiration! I thought dagger would be off worse, but it's not that bad. So with the right personality and skill a character could favour a version of this without being plain old unrealistic :D

Expectation: Rapier outdistances dagger and is able to score hits against the chest, neck/head, and thighs before the dagger can threaten. Reality: Stab the hand. No dagger now.

it also depends loads on how much hand protection does your dagger/ large knife has

Awesome video - Pls do more sparring content like this!

ok so what we learned is that Matt is god tier, going nearly even with a rapier until he got tired. Got it.

Nice. I'm glad you did this. The reach disadvantage may seem so obvious that some would think this wouldn't be worth doing, but the insight of how aggression can somewhat make up for it is valuable. Also, what would have happened if you had a second dagger?

I think the doubles are absolutely aceptable. In actual combat wounds wouldn't incapacitante instantaneously. Also you did prove that a "sail" dagger is much better, as It protects the hand.

I can see how, if you had say a cloak wound around your left hand, you could push the rapier blade aside and move in with the dagger.

biggest thing i noticed was how much more even, and how more likely doubles were at the start before Matt tired. as soon as you started hearing the heavy breathing from matt, it was rapier point after rapier point. The reality is most fights would start from a point where both fighters werent tired, and so the first few attempts are probably more representative

Matt, Thanks for this, and likely a dumb question. Did you consider having your forward hand empty, able to deflect or grab the rapier, and holding the dagger in your rear hand to then attack? That way the dagger and the hand holding it isn't doing both defense and offense. You've got one hand for defense, and one for offense. I know nothing of fencing, so I'm guessing this would be against the rules, or scored in a way that it wouldn't work. Is a rapier strike to a hand not holding the dagger still scored as a point, and the fight stopped?

Switch to reverse grip with the dagger and use your off hand preferably wrapped with a cloak or jacket to ward off strikes whilst entering.

I haven't tried this match-up yet, but, with some frequency, I manage to dodge my sparring partners' lunges, then enter on the outside to control their arm with my free hand. About half the time my dodge is free with no blade-on-blade contact. Anyway, there's something of a trick to controlling their arm efficiently, but it takes a fair amount of training to be consistent with it (that part is "borrowed" from my long-running Aikido training). Once the opponent's arm is thoroughly controlled, you can end it numerous ways. One danger would be if the opponent has enough awareness to draw his own knife or dagger, if available. I acknowledge that the biggest danger in the rapier vs. dagger match up, is just surviving long enough to dodge a lunge, in the first place (per what this video shows). That said, I'm still fairly new to rapier, so I haven't worked my way up to trying in on our coaches, yet. I suspect our coaches recover from their lunges much faster than most of us students, which would make this significantly more difficult.

Now I want to see single dagger vs cut & thrust sword ;)

Back in the early 2000s when I had a lot of sparring partners from a lot of different disciplines I used to like using dagger versus sword as a test of skill. Granted my sparring partners for the most part were horrible but I found that if one can close quickly and start cutting from the extremities in (wrist then bicep then stab chest for example) what would stand a better chance of winning a fight realistically. It's always best if you can somehow back your opponent into a position where they can't retreat!

I personally love doing dagger v longsword. The daggers biggest advantage is that the longsworder thinks they have a much greater advantage than they really do and if dagger covers and closes fast it’s easy to turn it into a grapple

Next challenge to try out: pair of daggers against rapier or against rapier and dagger combined....

I appreciate your enthusiasm especially at the beginning to rush the rapierist down. So much is dependent on the determination of the person using the dagger. Maybe a main gauche with additional sail guard could protect your hand better? But the curved quillons on your main gauche is handy for trapping his blade. I wonder had you grabbed the chair behind you with your other hand as a blocking device, how much easier it would be to rush him down.

now this but in a more indoor corridor type location instead of a wide open gym hall

Dagger did so well early on based on an aggressive mentality. They did not have the luxury of playing defensively and so took initiative whenever possible. Couple that with a skilled fighter and it closes what seems insurmountable odds to a degree

It'd be a great idea for a choreographed movie fight. It's always good when the hero's at some kind of disadvantage that can be easily represented visually. You could have the villain poke them a few times to show the reach advantage the rapier gives, then the hero could try and fail to close the gap a couple of times, heightening the tension, before finally pulling it off.

So, hard but it’s doable. Having a big skill advantage is useful, obviously. Explosive footwork is more important than I had realised. And wrestling would also make a big difference. Awesome video, Cheers

My thoughts before watching the exercise (will edit after I've finished): - I can see the rapier having a 70/30 victory rate over the dagger. However, I imagine that the rapier user probably needs to be aggressive in that they probably need to be consistently poking and prodding at the dagger user, keeping them on the back foot and preventing them from gaining any forward momentum or using time to come up with a counterattack, because the second that the dagger user closes with the rapier user and passes the tip of their sword, it's probably the dagger user's engagement to lose. Thoughts after: - It seems I wasn't too far off. I did notice that a lot of the reps that Matt lost, his opponent was consistently poking at him, trying to keep him on the back foot and allowing him to take a shot at his hand. This was a neat exercise! Would love to see more like it in the future.

Very nice! Now how would it go if the daggerist also had a cape in the off hand..?

Losing your wind seemed to effect it more...

Would be interested to know what system the rapierist* uses? His stance was very collapsed with the rapier held close to the body, not using the distance that can be created with the length of the blade, arm and tilted body leveraged. *gotta be careful with that one.

Thought you’d grab the rapier more

Simular to a sword vs pole arm. Shorter weapon must close the distance.

Now, in honor of your video from yesterday. I want to see winged spear against rapier. 👍😄

I like the enthusiastic spirit ;-)

that was fun, would be fun also to see the analysis of that and, probably, second try if you develop some strategy

Rapier vs (single) dagger, I would say, based on limited experience, 70:30. The hardest part is actually defending forward instead backwards. And left hand is really important, not just for grabbing but for moving rapier blade to side. Disarming with crossed dagger while closing distance is excellent defense against thrusts. At stabbing range rapier still has left hand to punch. Please try rapier vs two daggers. In my experience, all such fights looks like: rapier tries to go through defense and if not successful immediately withdraws to avoid being caught. Daggers on the other hand wait and after successful lock there is small chaise, rapier trying to pull blade and if not successful, get stab with free dagger.

I wonder, how that would change, if the fight took place in a smaller room with obstacles, in a forest or a narrow alley or in a group of fighters with different weapons.

you can use a sai in a manner similar to that parrying dagger despite being a blunt impact weapon

Angles off of his straight line attack works for me

Man, rapiers are one of the scariest swords out there. Imagine getting stuck in your face or gut with that thing. And it's so freaking quick. Like 1/10th of a second and boom, you've been run through your liver. 😬

Is that drachinifel just chilling in the background?

Would have been interesting to see you two swap. I can't help but feel a lot of the doubles were even more an artifact of fencing conventions than they are with matched weapons. Matt did great getting those. But dealing with sharps, how many people with a dagger would be brave/suicidal enough to get into that position? Coward that I am, if I couldn't just run away, I still wouldn't have much nerve to initiate offense to keep the opponent honest, and would instead hope for a big mistake on their part. Even if that's not the optimal strategy, it's for me the most realistic one. Huge advantage to the fellow with the long stabby sword. I almost feel something like (classic) saber fencing right of way would be a more credible simulation of the asymmetry involved: no doubles, nobody with a deathwish, both people want to neutralize the other but survive the encounter.

super very interesing

I would like to see what would happen if he had a dagger with a bit more protection. I believe that would have eliminated some of those points that were gotten from scoring a hit on the hand.

Is that Drachinifel sitting on the bench? I couldn't get a good look it was a quick glimpse.

I was thinking Rapier wins 8/10. Interesting results!

What about two daggers vs 1 rapier?

Grabba di rapier!

Does Matt have a longer reach?

Yeah, this tracks with my rather informal experience. It pays for the longer weapon to be swift and aggressive, as to overwhelm the shorter one. If one relies on defense, one is likely to be rushed by the shorter weapon, and while likely still doing the wielder harm, will very likely take harm oneself. At least that's what I've found.

Now try with an alehouse dagger and see if the hand protection changes things up.

You kick ass!

Maybe you should try a switcheroo: switch weapons each round and then you diminish user skill disparities.

Nice aggression can carry a day!

One (or possibly depending on the setting more than one) interesting szenario would be... With what ratio could the dagger guard a retreat... So if the rapier guy wants to murder and not duel you... Would the dagger be enough in a certain szenario to act as a defensive tool to fend of an attack and allow the attacked to reach a certain position...

With sturdy gloves that so you can grab the rapier blade, esp. it covers the forearm, the guy with the dagger is not so helpless at all!

Is that a Bellatore rapier? I'd love to hear your opinion on them! They look great and elegant in the design but I've heard they're quite stiff and have almost no flex in the thrust

Hammerfist with pommel? Using knucke guard as knuckles? Wrestling/ boxing ( kicking?

Real fight, the dagger wouldn't let the rapier draw his weapon. Immediately grapple and pull the dagger after.

In a duel rapier but I think in a street fight or just going in to kill the dagger.

Both of your skill lvl is very good. I did find the hand exploitation interesting. Even though the advantages, I was amazed that the dagger is not totally inept. Some daggers have better hand guards. Wonder if that would be a game changer?