tbh even in longsword vs. longsword an overhead into leg-cut is comedically rude to bust out, just drop a knee. with a zweihander you (probably) wouldn’t even have to worry about the retaliatory hand-shot!
@VirtualFechtschule I've heard from a few people who have done Filipino Martial Arts for decades that, how hard leg shots are to land successfully (not getting hit in return) goes in cycles. People don't expect them, someone starts landing them, training group all starts doing them, training group now expects them and counters them, people stop doing them and then people don't expect them, cycle continues.
I feel like the guy standing behind should have parried his backswing (with both hands while wearing gauntlets!) to foul him to let the other 4 gank him. Not safe by any means, but...
@@DanielMWJ it would be nice if someone invented a long long weapon that could tackle enemies from a long range and was also extremely effective to use in a formation by multiple people at the same place. Or even better… a weapon that would throw miniatures of it so that you can kill from afar! If there is something you learn from videogames of simulation of medieval warfare, it's that greatswords are extremely nice weapons to fight on the melee but no lunatic would ever take it to a real war where you fight in formations and there are arrows flying that you cannot block because you have no shield.
@@jmmh1313 Fun fact: Pike formations had no shields and they were fighting with pikes, great swords, halberds, crossbows, guns and short swords. Their protection was thick, bulletproof breastplates and helmets.
@@smithsmithersonactually it’s already been proven that bodkin arrows went through most armor with complete ease. So that heavy protection didn’t mean much. Although no one having shields meant friendly fire wasn’t off the table
You clearly missed the parry window. Messer has a parry window during it inital frame instead of most weapon which happen during 30 ms after the initial animation starts.
At first I thought the problem was that he wasn't locking out his elbow properly, then I saw him lock his elbow and his wrist failed. Very informative.
Obviously dont take a heavy object at its highest potential. Move in and block at the hand (that would have the power of a punch), or dodge. This is the same concept as fighting against an axe, the handle is safer
@@apackman1822that’s why he twirls the sword around so much,it’s so you don’t get to move in. Plus,”just move in” is always more easily said than done when someone is swinging a big fuckoff sword at you
@@apackman1822you are a special kinda of stupid. What do you think the purpose of the flourish is? It’s to maintain and test distance. He doesn’t have to hit but with the very edge of the blade. That gives you no chance to move in that close
@@apackman1822also axes are a completely different case you. Axes only have so much blade on them. While a great sword is literally all blade and little handle. You have got to learn how weapons works, or you would just get slapped down.😂😂😂
I mean having a shield will certainly help. And while you couldnt parry in the traditional sense, the greatsword could get stuck in or slide off of the shield depending on the material
That's if you're tense and not trying to redirect the force from the blow.. simply hit the sword as it comes in away from you in whichever direction you can if it comes in from a downwards swing/hammer swing deflect the blow downwards and to the left or right of you, no damage done and you save your arm.. only a novice will try and stop the blow dead on 😂@joshschmidt3841
the idea of parry is to redirect the force. He wouldn't break the arm because you would use your body movement and shield/weapon angle to redirect it. The video is kinda nonsensicalas well, considering their knowledge, as he just stood there static taking the full force of the blow instead of actually parrying
Former HEMA instructor here. I would never attempt a single handed block against a greatsword using ANY one handed sword. Even if you dont take damage, it will have definitely moved your blade out of the center line, leaving you wide open for a follow up strike. Simple solution though. Just half-sword with your blade. Step into the attack and block/parry. It will give you an advantage as you close the gap. And with your blade being held in a half swording style, you will be able to very effectively block/parry without your blade being knocked away, and you will be in a better physical position to counter attack, while being too close for the great sword user to also be able to effectively counter attack because you're too far inside their effective range. The second to last clip is a perfect example of this. Its the only clip where the messer user didnt have their blade knocked away, and actually got close enough to counter attack. Another valid historical technique was to reverse your grip and hold your blade by the tip. Use the cross guard and pommel as a bludgeoning weapon while also taking advantage of the cross guard being able to catch and push the blade away from a further distance. This was a technique historically used by longsword users against spears and pikes.
This is the best solution in my opinion, but check the video we did: it's still very easily counterable if the greatswordsperson knows what they're doing.
@@RenABFF0 It's in a more recent video we did on Halfsword blocking the greatsword. It's works well enough, but the greatsword can quite easily cut around.
As a sidenote, I wouldn't attempt a Mortschlag to be honest. It might knock a greatsword aside, but doing so would leave you wide open and the greatsword wouldn't have a hard time cutting around. I'm quite firmly with the halfsword block if you have no other option but to fight.
@@aclock2 The original point I was making is that while Griffith was studying and doing political stuff for his goal/dream of his kingdom. Guts was always training never changing his goals because in that time he had no dreams other than to protect him with his sword alone
I've been a bouncer for many years, and I can tell you with confidence that this is accurate. Whenever someone has pulled a knife or bladed weapon at the door (always one handed knives, except for one time someone went to their car and came back with a katana), I unclip a rope and start swinging a bollard (similar affect as greatsowrd). The person with the knife can pretty much do nothing but run away or get dropped. The bollards are not made as weapons, so they are slow and cumbersome to wield, but so far, no man has been patient enough to dodge the bollard and strike with their knife. A greatsword is made for fighting, so it's much less cumbersome/awkward to wield as a weapon (obviously).
People who took middle school physics class all understand that it's not a good idea to block a huge long heavy item with a lot of momentum behind it, with a tiny light item
This is just as difficult, really. The speed the great sword is moving and the variety of angles of attack they can choose means you have to pick a path of deflection and move your sword into the perfect position within half a second. And, say that you DO parry it. That doesn't stop the momentum. They can still bring the bastard around for another deadly swing while staying outside or your striking range. If you don't have a weapon of equal or greater reach, then someone trained to handle a greatsword well can make any attempted lunge/bind deadly even when they are virtually surrounded.
@@goranpersson7726yes, given that swords are very light, a greatsword might weigh 3-4 times a regular sword. But still, paperback book vs. 5-lb dumbbell…dumbbell is gonna move the book.
Reminds me of a book I read as a kid. "Because of your technique and the quality of the daggers, you should be able to block any swordsman if you're desperate enough." "... And what if we're facing an axeman?" ".. then you're better off jumping off a cliff to escape."
Speaking from steel greatsword sparring against single sword. I used control while swinging and even with a 20-40% strenght my opponent with sword and buckler could not keep the weapons together, yer he could catch them on the buckler with the sword behind to create a bigger barrier for me to get around his defence. But fair to say that if you can't parry with the sword on it's strong, then you can't parry it. As for the redirects, the "easy" comments, with the test we made defending a narrow passage (simulating a door). The first one to go in would always die, so yeah, easy, just have one of your mates die and then you can rush in.
@@dmytrostepanyuk7808 Waiting out the swordsman is not a great idea; swinging the greatsword with inertia is not light work, but it's not exactly hard either when physics is doing some of the work. A real one is around 8 pounds of steel, weighted nicely near the handle, which is not the definition of unwieldy. Waiting a trained swordsman out may take longer than you anticipate. That leaves us with a few options as an attacker: 1. Put ourselves in grave danger by being close enough to keep him swinging (and thus are easily in reach if he decides to go on the offensive, which we cannot adequately defend against with a one-handed sword) 2. Back off enough for the swordsman to stop swinging and return to guard, where he can conserve or regain his energy. You either commit to the attack, or you don't; the swordsman has agency and is not required to just stand there and swing at you defensively. If he thinks you're just trying to tire him out, he can retreat to more favorable position where he doesn't have to expend more energy or he can just seize the initiative and kill you outright. And if you *do* commit, make sure you have friends with you, because historically, at least one of you is going to have to die for everyone else to get an opening on the swordsman.
@@wesleyowens4089did you miss the part where they said they can just… stop swinging? Swordsmen aren’t dumb and greatswords arent as unwieldy as you seem to think, so in all likelihood you're either expending more energy trying to dodge the attacks without committing, or giving them time to recover.
@@jdirksen okay? Did you miss the part where he said they wouldn't get tired from swinging a sword constantly? That's what I was replying too but you didn't bother to read it understand and instead became aggressive for quite literally no reason. What did I do to hurt you for you to respond so aggressively? The answer is nothing
I love how so many people here treat this like it’s some kind of game where there is a “solution” that is easier than stepping back and getting out of range of the big sword the maniac is swinging around
Yeah exept that wasnt realistic at all and we all know that was just plot armor. In actual lore a trained mage would litterally obliterate him with no effort at all. Teleportation, master destruction spells, invisiblilty, illusion spells that can effectively wipe your mind or force you to run away, armor negation spells (from oblivion and morrowind and even ESO too), etc etc. The Knight in that eso trailer was fighting complete new recruits. The mage didn't even teleport or even cast a spell from distance and the rogue didn't even do anything or go invisible or use any bow or poison for the entire fight. Infact the mage just sat there and didnt even do anything and waited for the others to attack and take turns.
@@gabeinthebox Not even that. The whole party just didn't even use any of their skills, didn't coordinate at all, and for some reason took turns trying to attack while half of them just sat there and waited for him to attack. So it wasnt even about their level.
I tried and still ended up eating a pretty powerful cut. A good greatswordsperson will be quite capable of quickly redirecting momentum into another powerfull swing unfortunately.
@@VirtualFechtschule so what if as you step in you use your blade to bind the great sword nearer the guard, wouldn’t that make it so much harder to get a redirect swing in ?
In my experience fencing with greatswords, the blow will just go throught anyway. The only possible way for a one on one scenarion with montante and single sword is to wait for the greatsword user to stab, that way you can parry and close in more easily but it's far easier said than done.
@thor498 they also had you know medal plates covering their body, a parry would include getting hit lightly, but not enough to hurt you which is doable in all those actions he showed.
I did kung fu, actually they have at least 30 weapons, including great swords, double swords, and soo much stuff dammit take 50 years to learn all that.
Chinese arts do not use the Fingers to stop swords. They use the fingers as a 2ndary weapon, in the form of a Finger Strike. You might parry with the Sword, and counter with a finger strike to the OPs throat. It really depends on the positions, angles, timing, number of attackers... and more.
I think all the tough talkers need to film themselves testing out their theories for how to counter the greatsword. Other than a longer weapon or a shield, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of ways to get in and get the wielder without getting wrecked.
This guy has literally no idea what he's talking about. Trying to stop the great weapon is what no one was saying. His movements are predictable, slow and tiring. You beat the great sword in the direction it's already traveling to force a massive over correction, which anyone else can exploit. Or you beat the weapon up or down. I'll never be close enough to be struck because I'm aiming for the tip of your great sword to maximize the force your wrists feel when I slap it in the direction you were already swinging it. I've done kendo, fencing and freestyle Fighting, what he's doing is utter nonsense and I promise you there is no one teaching the "undefeatable 6v1 swing my sword wildly around myself" technique for a reason.
To answer your other insanely stupid point, a spear very very easily counters this nonsense. In the time it takes you to twirl about like a ballerina 1 time a skilled spearmen could have stabbed you 3? 5 times if he's quick? From 10+ feet away. If there were 5 of them you'd be dead in under 3 seconds from 20 stabs in 5 different directions, without them ever having to enter your reach?
When it comes to a great sword, your best bet is to anticipate the swing, close the distance as fast as possible and disarm/incapacitate the target. It's not easy but I had the same dilemma with my instructor and that was the only solution I ever found moderately effective.
If anyone doubts his explanation, here's a good analogy for you. Imagine this in a more modern scenario. The people with the shortswords are instead people armed with only pistols and the person with the greatsword instead has an LMG or some other kind of suitably powerful weapon. Instead of maintaining distance the pistol weilders are taking cover. Sure they could poke their head out and try to get a good shot in. It would only take one hit to take out the single person with the LMG, but they're much more likely to get shot if they poke their head out of cover than they are to hit the guy.
Law of conversation of momentum. If you want to parry a 4-5 lb sword with a 1-2 lb sword, you need to be swinging the smaller sword 2-5 times as fast as the larger is moving.
yea but this momentum interacts with speed of swings. If you are extreamlly agille you can try shorten the distance or you will just wait since swinging 5 lb sword with mass distribution at log distance requires lots of energy.
@@ShuRugal I'm no swordsman or fencer so I would not win even with a bow but there is reason why great sword was not used in later centuries. I'm not saying that it is good idea to pary great sword, but there were techniques to fight against it. Not everyone could fight with great sword, the fancer need to be very strong. In Poland we have a novel from Nobel price winner Sienkiewicz, called Ogniem i Mieczem (with fire and sword). It's plotted in XVII century during rebel of Kosacs in Poland. There was a fictional character called Podlipięta who was bearing great sword due to oath of his house (kind of tradition). But he was a big man, more like modern strongmans and still could not fight very long and he was an exceptional character during that time. That was because of changing the fighting style form strength to agility (and of course more distance weapon). That's why waiting of tactic and than shortening the distance is very good against that weapon.
I remember last year i was dueling a great sword wielder with only a shortsword, and i tried blocking even with two hands: that force is immense, i almost hurt my wrist
Accidentally broke a friends wrist in LARPing because he tried to 1H block my naginata downswing. I had no idea what kind of force it could produce until then and feel horrible about it to this day. I can only imagine the force if it had been real weapons
Only time I did a HEMA-like years ago with foam covered weapons, I "practiced" blocking with a 1 handed sword against a guy fully twirling his greatsword and it took all my strength, being taller and more fit than him, to stop the attacks. He did 2 or 3 and then his friends stopped him. They didn't do full force attacks, no face shields, etc. They acted like he had seriously broken rules of force.
Ya'll know there's a difference between parrying and blocking right? (not in every school right?) It looks like they're just eating the momentum of the shot. By not allowing the greatsword to continue with it's momentum, the one handed is also missing the opportunity for counter attack; they don't need to gang up on you. Also, engaging the tip end of the greatsword, with the closest parts of the Messer will help close the gap between the two weapons. Leverage. Length makes the two handed sword great. But it's silly to think "See, watch these guys block badly" is proving a point.
Sheezus that was a nasty amount of power dude was turning and stepping into those blows...being new at this sort of content I never considered the amount of force that would be delivered onto an enemy weapon.
With two hands it becomes a different story, but one handed is just no chance. Halfswording is actually the counter that I think is the best option for a terrible situation, but it is very timing dependent and still not a 100% solution. So if you don't absolutely need to engage the greatsword, most people will quite rightly decide to keep their distance.
@@VirtualFechtschule it depends on the scenario, of course, i would be curious to test what kind of damage someone would take if they blocked with one handed weapon and absorbed the impact. Potentially even blocking with the flat of the blade and just taking the strike onthe body to let the others pile on the great sword user
@@vladimirgertner3960 This would be super interesting to test. It would have to be done very thoroughly and you'd probably have to find a way to do so without actually putting a person in harm's way, but I'd be super interested to see what results that would yield.
@@VirtualFechtschuleIn theory couldn't you use 2 1 handed swords to even out the force being received from the block I know duel Wielding isn't very easy or something anyone can just do as it takes a lot of muscle development but was that something you tested?
or a shield, or literally anything but an axe or sword. Reach is just a really powerful weapon and longer weapons also generate higher amounts of force. Great demo!
Some guy with 15 years hema experience here. In the shot where the greatsword wielder is doing these big whirling strikes is suicide. Your option is get out of the way and that's it. But the first shot where the greatsword comes directly at the opponent is quite doable. The problem is that the blocker just kind of recoils while putting his sword in the way. He doesn't even really take much of a step back. That doesn't work obviously. What he should be doing is actually stepping toward the swing and rotating his top half (so it's more of a diagonal step to dodge followed up by a block for added safety) I would also recommend having the sword tip facing down while blocking and extending the arm out. What this does is create more of a brace and wider blocking potential. If you try to block the greatsword at the tip, all that momentum will carry through. If you block closer to the middle or cross guard/quillions you take away a lot of that force
I'm not convinced on using (what I understand to be) a hanging parry away from the cut. Against most swords this is great, but I wouldn't be able to do this against any of my students with a greatsword. Reason for this is the fact there's just more force in cuts and also that greatswords are so long that even a downward cut will be much closer to horizontal than with other weapons, meaning that a bogen like that will probably be overmatched most of the time. Instead, we tried something more similar to a bogen underneath the cut (so moving into another direction), which worked well enough to be safe, but was still not great for getting close enough to do anything.
@@VirtualFechtschule That's fair. My school was very "sink or swim" (it's disbanded now for obvious reasons). I had to do a lot of self directed learning and practice. My "Teacher" favoured greatsword and basically told me to "figure it out". This method I use is a very "Throw caution to the wind" kind of method but I discovered that, with greatswords superior range you can't allow them distance. The most success I had was quickly closing the gap and locking up the swing.
Moving in closer is what you would need to do. The blocker needs attempt to parry closer to the greatsword's crossguard to deny the leverage advantage the longer blade has. As goofy as it sounds, ducking and stepping in might buy you the extra time to get a a foot or two of leverage away from them. Then you're best option probably just spring from the crouch into a body tackle, grappling them before stabbing or braining them with whatever is on hand.
I agree that coming in is best, since you actually cant do anything from afar, but you are really disadvantaged against reach like that. Its not a good success rate.Greatsword isnt that slow, your legs carrying your whole body, vs his arms w that sword, cant be that fast, unless you began the fight really close. He can prob hit you twice if you try to close the huge distance.
This is what happens when you confuse fiction with reality. Try that in real life, lets see how fast you would be to close a gap of such distance, without getting hit by a high speed moving sword.
You: step in to try blocking at his hands. He: steps back You, now desperately trying to parry a follow up strike still far from where you intended it to happen: *Pikachu face*
@@hazir3561 Pretty sure I've seen manuals describe doing this sort of thing to defeat longer weapons so... I'm not gonna call it safe or remotely ideal, but the old masters weren't just spouting bull to make you feel safe. It's better than standing there and dying.
I got myself a lovely little greatsword a while back and a handful of clubmates were willing to spar gently with me with mismatched weapons. We kept it about 50% speed and low intensity for safety. Even then, the greatsword had massive reach advantage and was nearly impossible to block. Sometimes the desire to win would overcome my club mates and they would ramp up so they could get in and out without getting hit. We had a diacussion and they concluded they did not want me to swing faster, and neither did I. When I ramped it up to about 70% my opponents just kept far away because they couldn't get in without getting hit, even blocking with a longsword was too difficult
Some things I wonder about: 1. What if the one-handed user held his weapon with both hands (on the hilt, I mean, not half-swording)? Even with a shorter hilt, it's possible to at least partially grip with the offhand for extra leverage, which could stabilize a block. 2. When it comes to deflecting the heftier weapon, one thing I would try is not trying to directly resist it by swinging in the opposite direction the greatsword is going, but to essentially beat or push it to the side. Its hard to explain a visual, but I'll try to give an example of what I had in mind. A greatsword user swings diagonally down to the left. An upward diagonal to the left with a smaller sword would only be crushed. Instead, I swing an upward diagonal to the *right* (whilst sidestepping for good measure). The opposing blade is still going towards the same general direction, but its pushed more outward to be displaced. I'm not sure if i explained it right and if it would work (I never tested it. I hope I can with a lighter weapon vs a heavier one. I'm curious about playing with physics), but I just felt like throwing it out there. 3. Why was the half-sword clip "nope"? It looked like he blocked it and avoided getting hit. Even if it didnt turn out exactly perfect (maybe he didn't time it right), I'd keep testing that technique multiple times to verify. 4. Are we sure the foam greatsword is accurately weighted? Isn't it possible the padding gives more heft than an actual greatsword, which otherwise could be parried like a standard sword? Keep in mind, Im not saying the shorter blade user is not at a disadvantage. Reach is an important factor. I'm just throwing out various ways I can see a defense working.
You don't have to parry a greatsword, you just have to wait until the greatsword user wears themselves out swing around a large metal object....which wont be long
I mean, if I were in that situation and I wanted to block and strike, I feel like I'd side-step and deflect. Of course I probably wouldn't do that when actually sparring, seems like more of a drill thing
It’s a bit like the shotgun situation: “We have surrounded you five to one. Your shotgun can only take out two of us!” “Yeah, who wants to be one of the two…?
I imagine it’s not a parry so much as it is “guide the great sword where your head isn’t” for this to even have a slim chance of working, and even then, the timing would have to be impeccable
I mean, two-handing a one-handed sword is awkward and wouldn't do much due to the weight difference, but at least it gives you a chance to block the greatsword, even if you couldn't parry it.
A Rawlings messer weighs 600 grams, while a real Messer probably weighed 900-1200 grams. Unless the padded greatsword is also scaled down in weight this is going to be a problem for equivalency as the relative masses colliding will matter to the effect. But certainly a greatsword is hard to pary passively, you need to actively push/ punch into it or deflect it rather, or at least block further away from the body than you would a normal sized sword. Or halfsword...
Most commenters would welcome giving a greatsword treaty a read. Foll equipped with swords and knives being able to parry you is pretty much out of quedtion, hence all the crowd control techniques.
This is a physics question, mass, inertia, etc. The amount of mass you are swinging around is not likely to be stopped by some pitiful one hander. More likely to lose your sword trying to block that big ol thing.
I definitely think making it come to a hard stop is impossible but I think you could use the smaller sword to redirect the great sword hit while moving to dodge or close in. I've not had experience doing this but it sounds possible to me
