Broad Sword or Straight Sword

[IRKguy]

Traditionally, straight swords are good for duelling, broad swords for combat, if by combat you mean melee. Of course, slashing swords are better for mounted soldiers. Stabbing is better on the ground if you want to kill someone. However, combat isn't about killing someone. It's about getting out alive. A good slashing sword tends to make people not want to attack you and can attack many angles. A stabbing sword can attack only one person at a time. While you're killing that person, someone else can attack you.

Maybe a good analogy is whether a sniper rifle or a machine gun is better in combat. If you want to kill a specific person, the snper rifle is better. In war, a snper's life expectancy is much shorther than a machine gunner's

[Aigloblam]

While both are efficent, i prefer the control of the straight sword. If you asked me to pick one weapon, and one weapon only, to use the rest of my life, i would choose a good weighted Machete, Capoeira style.

Control for me is more important than anything else. I have nowhere near the power that most of my friends do, but i have more control and speed than all of them put togather, so usually i can pull off things that they think are impossible.

For me the broadsword is more power than finess, while it can be alot harder to block, it takes alot more skill/talent to use a broadsword good enough to get the same abilities posessed by the straight sword.

[bushido_man96]

Does Caporiea use the machete as a weapon? What kind of training do you do with it?

[baronbvp]

Traditionally, straight swords are good for duelling, broad swords for combat, if by combat you mean melee. Of course, slashing swords are better for mounted soldiers. Stabbing is better on the ground if you want to kill someone. However, combat isn't about killing someone. It's about getting out alive. A good slashing sword tends to make people not want to attack you and can attack many angles. A stabbing sword can attack only one person at a time. While you're killing that person, someone else can attack you.

I fenced with foil in high school, which is obviously a thrusting (stabbing) weapon. I have tried some moves with my Navy officer's cutlass. See a photo here: http://www.militarysabers.com/navy-officer-sword-hi.html. A history of this sword can be found here: http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/uniform_sword.htm

Would you call a cutlass a straight sword? It's not curved like a cavalry saber, but rather a single-edged cutting and thrusting weapon designed to be used in close quarters aboard ship against - you guessed it - pirates. Obviously thesa are now purely ceremonial. I find the ornamental grip on the hilt roughs up my hand unless I wear a glove.

[bushido_man96]

Well, Baron, the cutlass is much akin to the sabre, just smaller, I think, in blade width. Uses would be much the same, but the curvature would lend it more towards slashing, I would guess. You could thrust with it as well.

[baronbvp]

My cutlass has no curve, but it is meant for slashing as well as thrusting. Maybe I should sharpen that baby up! The only thing I've ever cut with it was my wedding cake.

[lordtariel]

I think straight sword and broadsword really need to be defined. They mean different things in the eastern and western world.

[bushido_man96]

I think straight sword and broadsword really need to be defined. They mean different things in the eastern and western world.

As far as Western weapons go, most of the swords where long swords (broad swords). Rarely were they curved, until the sabres came along.

[baronbvp]

I thought a broad sword was a specific type of very large, two-handed, two-edged weapon. I'm thinking Highlander or Monty Python and the Holy Grail. No?

[lordtariel]

I thought a broad sword was a specific type of very large, two-handed, two-edged weapon. I'm thinking Highlander or Monty Python and the Holy Grail. No?

I believe western broadswords were traditionally one handed and had a wide blade.

http://www.swordsdirect.com/cold-steel-horseman-basket-hilt-broadsword.html

Chinese broadswords(Dao) were one handed, single edged, curved weapons: http://www.swordsdirect.com/paul_chen_swords.html

while straight swords(Gim or Jian) were thin, flexible double bladed weapons: http://www.wle.com/products/W451-T.html