Clearly the ultimate sword consists of a handle with no blade, but instead a threaded pommel at either end. There would be no opponent that could ever face that sword without being ended...and rightly so...
Wait, technically a gun is a bladeless sword that throws pommels, they are even rotating (as in unscrewing) when they leave the weapon and move towards the opponent.
Back to the whole sci-fi technology not being used deal. Why hasn't anyone just made a Cortosis-weave crossguard on a lightsaber? The one in force awakens looks like a quick way to stab yourself with your own weapon.
I think reach is the most underestimated feature in any weapon, even through it gives you an enormous advantage in combat... After all that's the reason of why the rapier is designed as it is... xD
@@fredstead5652 reach is incredibly important. As someone who is quite short I can't tell you how much just the difference in arm length impacts a fight because quite simply an opponent can hit you while you can't hit them. And the length of a sword would make a much bigger difference than the length of an arm.
How about hand protection? Reach? Usefulness when parrying other swords? At the end of the day, being able to stab deeper under ideal, laboratory circumstances is much less useful than being able to inflict wounds on an opponent while remaining unscathed.
+Noah Weisbrod Kriegmesser, it's basically the perfect sword. Great center of balance, great handling, great cutting, alright thrusting and decent recovery from the swing, as well as having a great handguard/interchangable, three prongs ya know?
But it's a knife. :P In all seriousness, I would agree that the kriegmesser is one of the best all-purpose swords, but versatility doesn't necessarily make it the best choice for any one situation.
Noah Weisbrod It makes it the best choice for every situation. That's why versatility is often the best, like a jack of all trades and master of some. Sure it won't beat the rapier in a thrust, but it has so much more going for it.
Viability vs armor, short-term/long-term durability, and maybe even sword hardness/edge-holding are other potential aspects. Another important point to consider is that not only would the swords have to be rated in the 3 (very generalized) categories, as well as any of the other categories determined to be essential for a sword, but these categories themselves kind of need to be ranked. It's entirely possible that thrusts are more effective at killing than cuts, or that certain kinds of cuts are more useful than others. The contexts of armored vs unarmored, duel vs battlefield, open vs enclosed spaces, and 1v1 or asymmetrical all change the relative importance of the requirements so greatly that the best sword, while not being truly impossible to find, might be practically so.
runkurgan lightsabers have no hand protection. Until we see how this lightsaber crossguard performs in real fight, this leaves the user's hand vulnerable.
runkurgan Lols! so would a regular lightsaber win, or one with a crossguard? what about two handed lightsabers vs one handed, or darth mole's double lightsaber, or a regular sword that a lightsaber can't cut through, made out of those non cannon materials in the star wars extended universe and, and. . . 0.o I better stop before I give myself an aneurysm
I am Shad Dear Sir, you've just made a bunch of katana-freaks mad as hell :) Having said that you've said VERY IMPORTANT thing, so it's the context that matters. Weapons were made to get through the armor currently used. Katana was quite good in Japan but would not be of much use in Europe. Thumbs up obviously :) Cheers Kuba
@@TheCompleteMentalNow you see why the first guy's argument falls flat lol. And this video could have been summed up as "the english longsword, it was designed to be dominant to other swords on a battlefield." No one cares what is most effective against unarmoured targets or from horseback or when dueling, they want the #1 scariest sword to see on a battlefield and everyone knows it was a knight in armour with the big boy in his hands.
The best sword at hacking is an axe. The best sword at thrusting is a spear. Why is there no bashing category? I don't want a perfect sword that can't stand up to me using it to just bash stuff. What about the fact that the point always beats the edge? What weight should you give to the thrust category over the others?
Yeah, is approach makes sense, but because of the nature of metric spaces there is no best swords and you can prove it given the following assumptions: -There is at least one parameter of the sword you can chose arbitrarily (for example the length) -The scoring metric is continuous (that means a small change on the sword doesn't change the score by much, or if you drew a chart of score and any given parameter there would be no jumps) The parameter space is open (because you could choose one from all the [natural, whole, rational, real...] numbers), so the set of all the scores must be open, too. Thus there is no best sword, because no matter what sword you pick, there will be a better one. If you didn't get it (don't blame you, it's university maths), try to read a bit about open/closed sets (in metric spaces) and about continuity/continuous functions (in topological spaces)
Skallagrim does a pretty good approach towards it, and almost reaches the same conclusion although his opinion did rest on the longsword I'm fairly sure, but getting a second opinion was worth it
@@JK03011997 But that's math, not sword fighting. The best sword imo is one that has the most versatility while still being effective regardless of all the circumstances the other swords might be catered for, and that's obviously the Longsword. Every other sword needs to be put into context way more than the Longsword does, it simply performs well in most everything and has the unique ability to also be used as a blunt weapon. That's not even counting the fact that Longswords have perhaps the most variety out of any sword that I've ever seen which simply adds to this. It's going to do virtually everything rather well and some other things unique to itself that it excelled at.
But then you have to keep your humanity up, so only better in a physical test. Also, there is the chaos zweihander which, in my experience, beats the furysword every time.
The sword to which you are referring that performs consistently well in all three categories you've outlined (what I call a "default" sword because it's not the best in any one category, but isn't the worst in any category) would be a leaf shaped blade. The dimensions are: 40 inches overall. Ten inch handle. Thirty inch blade. The base of the blade should be no more than two inches. The maximum of the convex should be no more than three inches, and the maximum of the convex should be at twenty inches up the blade, after which it tapers to the point. There should be a gentle fuller, and the guard should be oval shaped like an elongated tsuba with an upward curve on both sides. The pommel should be slightly ovular as well to facilitate emergency gripping, but not so narrow the lower hand can slip. The tang should be almost nearly full, but slightly encased on all sides by a soft wood and no more than two holes to secure the handle. A textured grip with a braiding of cloth should also be on the handle to reduce slippage due to sweat. The guard and pommel should be of bronze or brass. Ideally there would be a fair amount of flex similar to a well forged broadsword, not as rigid as a katana that can chip or deform, nor as flexible as a rapier as too much flex negates a deep cut.
I actually think the way the point is at the back, at the spine of the sword, the shape of it's Arc actually makes a Katana's thrust very powerful and sturdy
Ooh, I love it when pure math comes into the play. :) What you've done in this video is you've represented each sword as a vector in a three-dimensional space (the dimensions being thrust, cut and chop), and then defined the space's norm - basically, a way to reduce the coordinates of a vector to one number (with a few additional rules which I'm not going to get into). Your norm in this case is the sum of the vector's coordinates, which is a mere one way of defining a norm in this space (the so-called "first norm"). The two other popular choices are: to pick the maximum value (the "infinite norm"), and to take the square root of the sum of the squares (the "second norm"). These are just three out of infinitely many ways to define a norm in this space. So even if by some ultra-scientific way you get true values for each sword, there's still the question of how to process the data. Cheers for making a nice video!
surely hand protection is an important factor. Crossgaurds, basket hilts etc.. because I would like my sword hand to be protected and feel it is an important aspect of sword evolution. Also we must think of the sword uses in context, yes some swords were designed to be used with a shield and some were not, completely changing their designs and features. The tests here however seem not to take this into account but rather only focus on the independent swords performance which will favor swords designed to be used independently.
It's the main problem I see with the katana. Being a shorter sword than longswords, blade contact is almost inevitable, when you pair that with a poor guard, there's trouble.
I like your scientific approach, and I think this is worth some evaluation. There are a number of things to think about how to set it up, though: For a start lets just stay in your system of performance in cut (C), hack(H) and thrust(T) and suppose we could measure representative values here. How do you combine them? Would you just add them up to get an overall rating R = C+H+T ? That would imply, that you would in a fight hit with all three types of attacks at the same probability and the damage would add up linearly. Or would you treat it like the dimensions of a vector and say R^2=C^2+H^2+T^2 ? That would imply that in an actual fight, you would not necessarily perform any of exactly these attacks, but perhaps something in between a hack and a cut, and the damage done behaves as a combination of the extremes. Or, perhaps, one could say that if one type of attack is obviously the one favored by this sword, then we would mostly use this type of attack, and we should count that higher that the others. Then we could calculate it like electrical resistors in parallel: 1/R = 1/C + 1/H +1/T . (This last method would by my preference/best suggestion.) But now to some general problems with the system. You already mentioned, that there are more parameters. So lets list some: -maneuverability: weight and point of balance* -One-handed/Two-Handed -Reach -Specialization against type of target (unarmored/padding/leather/paper/steel/mail) .... and there will surely be more.... [*Suggestion: To numerically measure this, one could measure the rotational inertia of the sword at the point of the grip.] So how could we make a system that works. Well your suggestion is good for a "normalized damage output per hit", so we can build on that. I think the target material can be integrated, as you implied, by a clever measurement of the C/H/T parameters. Reach and maneuverability do not really come into that, but they are undouptedly important. So speaking in video game terms, the "normalized damage" (lets keep calling it R) would be the damage rating, and we could introduce an agility rating (lets call it A) to complement that. So while one type of attack is enough for us, we definitely need both reach (L) and maneuverability (M). So how do we combine those? I suggest A^2 = L^2+M^2 . I would generally consider one handed and two handed swords seperately, because one handed weapons were usually wielded with something in the off-hand, and that is kinda important ;) So now we have a damage rating R and an agility rating A that tells us, how likely i will hit with the sword. We can treat this as a weighed probability and give an overall sword-rating of: O=R*A = sqrt(L^2+M^2)*(1/C+1/H+1/T)^(-1) With O: Overall sword rating R: Normalized hit damage rating A: Maneuverability/Agility rating L: Bladelength M: Moment of inertia measured at grip C: Cutting damage rating H: Hack damage rating T: Thrusting damage rating I propose this as a rating of the swords OFFENSIVE capabilities. What do you guys think of this model?
+Robin Mate, this is bloody amazing. Well done. I've been mulling over a possible model for sword evaluation for a while now and you have some truly awesome suggestions. I particularly loved your suggestion about counting the sword's favored attack method higher than the others. I'm actually intending to build a sword cutting rig to do these tests in the future but it's a long term goal. My hope is give each individual sword a rating out of a hundred. I would break down the sword into its different qualities and set a minimum and max value for each quality which represents 0 and 100. The maximum value would be determined by the sword test themselves. Whatever result happens to be the best becomes 100. zero will always be zero as to reach or cutting depth. Every result becoming a percentage in between. This means there will always be a sword holding the 100 score for a specific sword quality. If a sword test results in getting a better score then the sword currently holding the max, it will replace the place holder and each rating would be updated accordingly. I plan to do this by recording all the results on a working spreadsheet programmed to update all the percentage scores if say, a newly tested sword performed better in the cut then all others. This would update what score represents the 100 value and each percentage would update accordingly. Once I’ve measured each value I would try and combine them to make an average overall. The problem I run into here is in determining the value of each specific sword quality as compared to another. A score of 83 in reach doesn’t necessarily equate to the same value as a score of 83 in cutting and therefore making an average out of them without adjusting the value wouldn’t work. This value adjustment would have to be based in the most educated decision regarding which offers more advantage over another but in the end will be arbitrary. I’m thinking to try and make an interactive website where people can adjust the value of a sword quality as opposed to another and have the spread sheet calculate accordingly. Of course there’s other problems, such as hoe to make a score out of a hundred for hand protection. Yes the amount of coverage would come into play but then how to factor in for the specific type of guard protects from different angles of attack. So yes, I’ve been casually thinking about this for a while and any help will be appreciated. I’ll also be doing a video about this, proposing this ratting method and asking for feedback and thoughts, eventually.
There is a big problem with the scores and that is that the "normalized hit damage rating" is depended on the target. Will you measure against an unarmoured target or one wearing mail or full plate? If you want to asses the best sword for every possible situation, then I think the far more important value is not which sword is the best, but which is "good enough" so that you survive. e.g. a katana is probably not good enough against someone wearing plate amour, and maybe best against unarmoured opponents. a longsword is good enough against plate amour AND good enough against unarmoured opponents. If you don't know the situation in which you need the sword, the second option would then be the best. I guess you could extend the formula to include cutting without armour, cutting against mail, cutting against plate. And "not good enough" would automatically score zero in a category instead of just a lower number.
Hi Shad, somehow I only read your reply now. Its nice to see you actually read through such a long comment ;-) I like your normalization Idea. But rather that normalizing it to the best performance (which will likely be some specialized sword that no one can really refer to), I suggest taking a really common weapon as a reference, so your results are easily reproducible. Also, you save yourself the trouble of recalculating everything once a new record comes in (And communicating this change to everyone who wants to use your system). "This cuts 1.7 times as good as a regular arming sword" also is a lot more intuitively understood than "This has a cutting power of 83% compared to this one special sword I found to be the best cutting sword." Another Idea that I kinda read out of your suggestion (alternative to my normalization idea suggested above) would be to give an overall rating for the sword in combination with a fighting style. This way, you don't have "The best sword" in general, but "The best Weapon for German Fencing" or "The best weapon for Escrima" and so on. So I study engineering. We learn to make a linear model for everything in a first approach. So here is a very simple vector-model: Step one: Make a weapon rating for all the parameters. Normalize these to something that has all properties near average (important because we linearize) and is very common (i.e. reproducible). I guess you will know better than me which sword to reference. An arming sword perhaps. Make a vector out of these properties. (Cutting, slashing, reach, defence, balance, hand protection...) So our arming sword will be (1,1,1,1,...1), but a longsword might then have a 1,5 in reach and a 1,2 in slashing and so on. Step two: Make a vector of weights to describe the fighting style. Now we decide how important a parameter is for the style in which I use the weapon. We rate this on an arbitrary scale (be in percent) and then normalize the whole vector to one (sum over all vector elements = 1), so that our overall weapon rating will be normalized to the arming sword again. Finally, multiply both vectors with a normal vector product (c = a1b1+a2b2+...) to arrive at a weapon rating for a specific style. As you can see, I really like making up systems like these ;-) If you want to discuss more abut it you can write me a message (does that work on youtube? I think but im not sure. Ill look at the notifications more regularly now anyways). Regards, RObin
Robin. I like you comment but I think your missing the point a little. if you think of a sword simple as cuting tool then you can paer down the your testing facters. the best sword has little to do with how effective it would be in combat . it simple how effective the sword is as a cutting , trusting and chuping tool. aka all facters found in the sword its self. i think your idea adding things like the mass or if the sword was 1 or 2 handed. i was use this testing facters f force on target D deth if intre then avrange the numders to set a bar and then pick the most bar in all 3 facters
How to best sword in 5 steps: Step 1: build a robot (something like terminator) Step 2: give him a sword Step 3: make army - people in varied armors Step 4: measure efficiency - how man people will it kill in set time or how much time does it take to kill set amount of people (Step 4.5: test the pommel) Step 5: pick the winner.
Here's another one: resistance to bending and breaking. If you fight in armour with swords, you have to half-sword. This often involves using your sword as a crowbar to lever your opponent onto the ground. Swords have to be pretty tough to survive this, otherwise they will bend or break.
The perfect sword is the one you have when you need it. This goes for any tool outside of a perfect situation (a weapon being a form of tool, with a very specific purpose). I do really like your idea of a rating system though. I think durability and edge keeping are important factors to rate as well.
If you were only allowed to choose one sword to use in 20 duels against other swordsmen, which would you choose? Your opponents' swords will be various designs. Some opponents may dual wield. Neither you nor your opponents have armor or shields. The duels are to kill/disable. You will have plenty of time to recover between duels. You and your opponents have equal skill and physical attributes.Does the answer change if your opponents are not limited to swords, but may be using any meelee weapon?What if the duels are first blood instead of kill/disable?What if you and your opponents wore gambesons?What if you and your opponents wore mail?What if you and your opponents wore plate?
If you can only chose one sword (no sword and daga or two swords or anything), it would probably be a two handed sword for all cases. The main advantage of a one handed sword is that it frees one hand so you can carry a shield/dagger/another sword/something, so if it is only one sword, is probably going to be two handed. I would go for a long sword, because great swords movements are very telegraphed, and I personally prefer them over hand and half swords and katanas. If your opponent wears armor, the longsword will be more focused on thrusting (as cuts will be pretty much useless). I wouldnt change my option if the opponent goes for other melee weapons. Just my thoughts. Yours?
+Marcus Grunnesjö What about recovery, technique of its regarded school and might I add, weight. Unless you meant agility as an umbrella term for all things manuerable. But all in all, I think the Kriegsmesser wins.
Hello i am new on you channel, of course i am a sword enthusiast, and now following you, and enjoying your videos, so i want to ask you: Do you have a video talking about Jian, or Dao or just ant Chinese sword??? regards
My gut usually tells me that the “best” sword is probably some kind of cut and thrust sword. My rationale is that even if it’s not as good at cutting as the best cutting sword, not as good at thrusting as the best thrusting sword, and so on and so forth, it should be able to perform each of those tasks well enough to get the job done, thus allowing you to accomplish all of the same things as the more specialized swords but with more available options at any given time.
The katana is a great cavalry weapon, and has most likely been used in such a way multiple times. Best sword? Depends on context obviously, who are you fighting? what are they wearing? What weapon and skillset do they possess? If I did not know of these things I would personally use something like a german greatknife (grosse messer).
+Level 58 Death Knight Most backup weapons used by the cavalry are, just look at the pick weapons used by the medieval knights and all the different kind of warhammers. And no I dont, it was merely speculation and opinion.
+Hachi Roku tachi is more or less a katana mounted differently, they are both generally the same size. katana faces up, tachi faces down. the katana rests in a saya and the tachi has two rings that attach to a belt
I like your channel a lot and your way of thinking is pure common sense About this video's topic, I think it would be funny to give a score to each type of sword that would be based on their thrust, hack ans slash capabilities and them do the same to every armour types based on their resistance to those 3 criterias and then see which weapon would be the most effective on which type of armour ... because in my opinion, weapon evolution is following the armour evolution and vice and versa. A good sword is only good to get rid of a certain type of protection (and then became useless with the coming of firearms that rendered personal protection close to useless)
A perfect sword means you could beat any other sword type with it. You can beat any swordsman if you have a gun That means the ultimate sword is a gun.
To find the ideal sword I think these things would need to be tested, 1. Cutting 2. Thrusting 3. Chopping 4. Ease of use, how does it handle, weight, etc 5. Durability, edge and overall durability 6. Good for use from horseback? These are what I've come up with but tbh I think there would still be a strong case to be made for having speacialized swords. For example, in a world with plate armor you'd probably want the best thrusting sword you can have so you pick the Estoc because it's both an excellent thruster and it's great from horseback.
Another very important factor : hand and forearm protection. Sorry, katana fanboys, but on that point european renaissance swords simply drive over the katana. Now, I'd say that a late medieval or renaissance "cut & thrust" european sword would be the best overall sword. First, hand protection becomes excellent. Weight is well balanced, allowing for fast attacks. Cutting is good, thrusting is very good, and a nice length of blade. Yes about cutting, not that important IMO. You don't need much cutting power to severely harm unarmored enemies, and you don't cut at metal armor anyway.
***** Yeah the lack of hand protection on the katana is a big flaw. I too think the cut and thrust sword (sidesword) would really be a contender in this monolithic competition ^_^
Depends on where you are of course, if youre having a one on one fight in a field itll still be pretty effective :P Also, id rather half sword a greatsword than fight somebody off with a knife.
Daniel Taylor Ah but did Sir Easton get permission to use this word from the almighty wordsmithing man. I went on a mighty quest to find this man and he gave me permission, so I'm safe. I just hope Matt has done the same for the wrath of the wordsmithing man is beyond comprehension, he has curses ready to insult you with that ear has never heard and tale is that when you do hear these mythical profanities your head would EXPLODE. And yeah I'm sure I got a little inspiration from The Incredibles ^_^
Daniel Taylor "Context" should be any scholar's favourite word. Matt Easton has a background in archaeology, as do I. And "context" is perhaps _the_ most important word in archaeology. After all, an archaeological artefact only has value insofar as it can tell us something about the past, and so the context of the find is extremely important. To historians, context is no less important. I really don't know why people have gotten so hung up on Matt's use of the word. I never reacted to it myself, and have by no means found him to use it excessively.
Gilmaris I agree with you everything you said about Matt Easton. I was just joking with Shad, you might say trying to be witty. I however forgot to arm myself and entered battle unarmed:)
I actually totally agree with you on this video, normally I take on a little of what is said and use that in adjusting my opinion, but every point you bring up in this video makes sense to me.
My favorite sword is Bastard sword and therefore I consider it the best sword. But if someone likes Katana and if he knows what Katana is, I won't argue with him. (I personally don't class Katana as a sword)
GOD FUCKING DAMMIT SHAD,WHY COULDNT YOU JAVE MADE THIS VIDEO WHEN MY HISTORY CLASS WAS HAVING DEBATES ON SWORDS,I COULD HAVE DESTROYED THOSE STUPID KATANA FANATICS
And then you also want to consider how it is used. Do you need both hands? Can you use it with a shield? How is it on horseback? How expensive is it to make, and how long does it take? Can you easily carry it at your side or is it too big?
I say the Longsword is generally the best sword. Mainly for the utility that it has, it clearly is outperformed in many aspects such as with the Katana that excells at Cleaving and chopping. Clearly outperformed by an Estoc when it comes to thrusting/piercing, but the Longsword generally can be held in one hand, both sides are sharp, it can be used two-handed, it weighs around 1kg, have a good guard, and if need be can be used for blunt attacks. So where it ain't the best in particular aspects, the utility of it wins in my eyes, even though I love Katanas, I strongly disagree to them being the best swords.
The katana is either a dedicated cutter, or a cut and thrust sword, depending on the design. A katana with a shallow curve will have excellent penetration in the thrust, but if we take reach into consideration, the longsword is certainly better - and if we take balance into consideration, dedicated thrusters are definitely better. I see many people (in this comment section, as well) assume that the disc guard - the tsuba - is inferior because it is so small. Well, it certainly gives inferior protection to basket hilts, and to European swords sporting rings on both sides in addition to cross guard. But as far as protection is concerned, it is superior to swords with cross guards alone. Yes, the cross guard protrudes further - but not out of need for protection. Thumb rings, for example, protrude no further than the tsuba does. Nor does the Messer's Nagel. The tsuba is as big as it needs to be to provide ample protection - after all, if it wasn't big enough, there is no reason whatsoever why the Japanese wouldn't have simply made it bigger. Ditto with the clamshell guards of smallswords, which are no bigger than Japanese tsuba.
Aye, but that's not really a unique thing about the katana, though--very rarely were swords of *any* sort a weapon of first resort in warfare. Pikemen in Europe carried swords as sidearms; English archers in the HYW often carried a sword (and sometimes also a buckler) to use if the enemy weathered their arrows and came upon them. It's generally my opinion that even the best swords will falter in the hands of one not well versed in their use. The degree of said faltering may be greater or lesser depending on how forgiving the design *is*, though.
Is there way to make these swords in something like AutoCAD and test them? I know that it would make no one happy but it would be a place to start. I'd also like to throw into that mix a stress tests. The stress I’m most interested in is the stress sword receives during impact, at a perfect strike and at a strike where the blade is off by 5°-10° (because people aren’t perfect always).
In terms of fantasy, if you had some kind of transforming sword made of malleable magical steel or something, that would probably be the ultimate sword because you could change it on the fly to become the perfect tool for any given job.
I would also like to mention (and ironically suggest ot we weighted less than the big three mentioned) bludgeoning ability. how much damage can you do without breaching armor
Length or reach are also very important. You'd have to count the actual length for thrusting but for cutting you'd have to define if you want to use the part where it starts to be effective or where it cuts best. Also hand protection and a weapon you'd be likely to pair it with like sword and buckler or rapier and dagger.
yo i was thinking materials more then design like can you make a titanium rapier with dimond tip or a buster sword made out of somthing light enough to be useable and as a sheald
Hello, I am a math major and I am very good at thinking outside the box. I have given it some thought, and I might have some ideas that can help you along. 1. use ballistic gel for The Cutting substance. specifically a stack of relatively thin Wafers of ballistic gel, where the top ones are softer in the bottom ones are firmer. 2. track the blade with lazers as it goes down. get a series of laser sensors say that when the blade passes between them, the device that's measuring everything will know where it is. 3. track force output over time. paired with the position information at certain points in time from the laser array, this will tell you how much force it took the sword to cut through each wafer of ballistic gel. 4. only worry about the blade stuff for now. everything else can be developed later. 5. develop this further and name it "Shad blade effectiveness scale" also: track points on a scale, each wafer is worth different amounts of points, depending on how difficult it is to cut through, and each blade gets points based on how many of the layers it is able to cut through,/ number determined by how much force is required for that blade to cut through it.
to bypass the need for exactly uniform material, larger numbers of separate instances of that material tested on each blade can make up for the variations. as for numbering scale, i would determine what you want to measure, such as depth of cut/penetration, and do % of the average given measurement of the highest value sword. So determine the best sword (multiple strikes taking the average value) for each and use that as the baseline for the scoring of each category giving you a 100pt system that would be comparable across all 3 (or any more) categories you are considering.
I would also add length. What is the optimum length of a sword? Does it add to its manoeuvres or detract? When does it do so? How dependent is the length to the size of the wielded? If dependent what is the optimum ratio?
Material: ballistic gel. How: with a machine that allows you to simulate controlled thrusts and cuts. Cuts will need to be calibrated on the 'chopping point', the one measured making the sword bounce on a wood block, if i remember correctly. How to measure: we will have to get swords with the same weight but different shapes but coherent ratios, and having them dropped on the ballistic gel to measure the thrusting power, and having them fall in an arc to measure the cutting power. Ballistic gel: cube of 10xcm, assigning 1 point for every mm of cut/penetration. ...theoretically all this should work.
Hey Shad. I had a shad-marathon the last days (that must have been at least 5 hours, dude you could do a trilogy out of that material) and this is the first video of which I thought "Mhhh, hmmm..., mhhhh..., No, not really." I would indeed agree to the statment, that there is no perfect sword. For basically three reasons, that you partially mentioned, but in my opinion undererstimated in your video. First, there are soo many factors that can influence the effectivity of a sword. (I am actually doing a sword forging course at the moment and designed my own sword and thus I was thinking about a lot of stuff to consider for my design.) You were mentioning predominatly the effectiveness in the cut, hack and stab and stated that there are of course other factors to consider. Some people already stated further examples, but let me give a quick overview of what I can come up with right at the moment. Reach, durability (resistance against breaking, rust, cuts in the edge), armor piercing capabilites, weight, balance, one or two edges, handprotection, ability to be frown (you never know), having a pommel to end him rightly and so on. And then there further characteristic which are not positive or negative but come down completly to preferance and situation, like appearance, one-handed/two-handed/between, size/shape of the handle, used with or without shield. Take the mambele for an example. Reach: bad. Stabbing. Not possible. Hacking: Probably bad, Durabulity: Probably not good. But, it can be used in very interesting fighting styles. Second, to rate the effectiveness of a sword, you would have to clearily the effectiveness of doing what and how. Effectiveness to fight on a open batlefield? A one-on-one duel? A fight on horseback? Against one or several opponents? Is the opponent armored (if yes, leather, mail, plate?) Or perhaps a fight in close quarters, the woods, a swamp, reduced gravity (swordfight in the middle of space, that would be interesting right?). All, or at least most of these scenarios have been important in history, so it would be unrepresantative to select one and neglect all others. So you would have to consider all these scenarios at the same time, while some may be more important than others. Now, someone could also rate the importance of the different scenarios right? This brings me to my last point. Although cutting/stabbing/hacking perfomance could in theory be performed in a scientific experiment and rated, many of the other factors (right balance, size, handprotection, one-/two-handed) are completly or at least some part open for discussion and hard to be tested scientificly. Most importantly, you would have to, as mentioned, rate which scenarios are more important that others. But how? You can basically just go after opinions, which are subjective and are always differing. I see it in science. Everything that is not based on rock hard facts is often enough discussed as hell and nobody agrees to anything. And if it is how to name a new frog or whatever. So as everybody will give different aspects and scenarios more or less importance, it is not possible to define a ultimate sword. I think, it makes it more clear if you think of a sword as tool. A tool to kill a person and/or defend yourself under certain cirumstances, in a certain way. You would never think about, if the screwdriver is superior to a wrench. Because they have different purposes, as it has been with swords through history. You can say that you have a very good screw driver, or a very bad wrench depending on the quality of the material they are made of and how they are made. But you can not really compare them in terms of superior/inferior. A rapier is great in a duel, a katana probably good against leather armor, a pointy arming sword against chainmail. You can only comapare them in terms of a certain scenario, like "what weapon would be best for one-on-one dual in chain mail armor on an open field, without an additional sidearm/shield". That is at least what I think about it. I hope I made my point clear and encourage you to make more videos, as I enjoy them very much! Greetings from somewhere else, Jushin
I really liked your approach on what is the best/ultimate sword. And i agree completelly, but i would like to also add some more factors like reach and hand protection. So in that content the Knecht Kriegsmesser and the Principe, both from Albion swords would be the two best overall and maybe my two most favorite swords. Kriegsmesser has a little better hand protection with the ''nail'' and better cutting/hacking ability, but the Principe has better thrusting ability and a little better point of balance and reach (and i still think it can cut good).
