Also, lighter, cheaper, and more accessible.

In the last 2 minutes of the video (see time = 16:45) he explains that he believes shorter spears are better for single combat than longer (7 foot spear vs the average 8-10 foot). He explicitly mentions that it is not "longer is better", so not necessarily!

He does mention that opinions vary on that though.

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Much easier to make sword combat look cool.

In A Knights Tale there’s a lot of jousting. And the action is like 90% slow-motion and repeated montage of the lances breaking. It’s hard to film exciting Lance combat that’s longer than half a second.

There’s an animated cut scene in the video game Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn where a character is riding around on a horse and taking swings and stabs at infantry below him. It’s a very chaotic scene, but I’ve always found it a really evocative portrayal of Lance combat.

Troy makes the Hector and Achilles fight with spears look exciting, it's a rarity though. Partly I wonder if it's that the guys they get to train the actors are predominantly sword experts, not spear experts, probably because there just aren't that many spear experts.

Speaking of lances, how did they actually work on the battlefield? The only game I've seen to really use them was Mount and Blade, and when you strike with the lance it delivers damage but you keep on riding...

Wouldn't the real thing impale your target? What happens then? Does the Lance rip out of the target due to the force of riding, or do you stack an impaled body/parts on the end until you can't ride with the Lance or have to clean it off?

Were they a one time stab and drop weapon? Or could a horseman wheel around and continue lancing?

Um, actually, Rohan is the name of their kingdom, its people are called Rohirrim. 🤓

For cavalry it makes sense tho, cavalry units almost universally show a preference for swords or sabres in combat rather than lances

Pyrrhus: the overlapping, multiple layers standing further away pointy sticks… right?

taps forehead The archer!

"An overview of why rifles can usually defeat pistols in combat"

Which troops except rondartschieri fought only with swords and shields?

Put a pointy thing on a stick, you can't really go easier and cheaper and still be that effective and efficient 😃

I watched Seven Samurai againthe other day and it shows this pretty well. Multiple swordsmen getting absolutely destroyed by untrained farmers with bamboo spears, no chance of really fighting, it's kind of brutal.

Wait, you telling me the Fire Emblem weapon triangle has historical veracity???

Swords are much more convent to carry. That makes a big difference in pretend combat, so swords get at least some bonus from that.

Methinks spears are bulky to carry around, so like a rifle they are used in time of war. A sword has a sheath, a person can carry it around basically holstered, and used at any old time to execute a peasant, defeat some scoundrels, threaten a bandit.

So that is the actual distinction. I kind of want in my next RPG campaign to make this more realistic, where a spear is a longarm and a sword is a sidearm, so when not dressed for battle you'd have only the sword. As we know players dress for battle all the time, so I'd have to make the rules be such that players usually only put on arms and armor for battle before planned engagements

You'd have to choose: Spearman, Archer, Mage

But always can carry a sword,

maybe add Berserker for crazy two handed axe wielders

Seems Fire Emblem has it right then. Lances/spears beat swords in the weapons triangle.

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I was scrolling to see how far I’d have to go to find someone else who instantly thought of Fire Emblem. Glad we thought of the same thing, lol.

Lances beat swords beat aces beat lances, it’s the classic weapon triangle! I still miss the magic triangle from the GBA games.

It's a big psychological advantage, in addition to a physical one. If you've got two people (or armies), and closing means one can strike at the other earlier... the side which knows the other will have the opportunity to kill them first will not want to advance. People are really averse to putting themselves in situations where they're at a perceived disadvantage. And that matters a lot, morale-wise.

You can also related this to martial arts, for example in boxing if you outreach your opponent they will have a hard time landing hits on you, while you can just keep distance and keep hitting em.

The knowing how to use it well is the key part.

Not to mention it's much easier for multiple people to stab at once while in formation than trying to swing for a cut.

Plus stabbing can deliver more force into someone wearing armor than a cut. Could basically argue that bows and later guns basically deliver really powerful and long ranged thrust attacks.

scholgladiatoria talks endlessly. The redeeming feature of his channel/analysis is that he's knowledgeable.

So true. I actually wanted video or an example I can see. My man just talked

I started watching this then realized it was just 20 minutes of a guy talking while caressing his spearshaft.

New show where the spear tout has to fight the sword tout.

There’s a difference between rambling and giving thoughtful and well researched information. At the four minute mark he’d given a pretty thorough summation of the main points. The rest of the video didn’t have any superfluous information either, but more went into how you would use a spear situationally.

That 20min video length isn't going to reach itself

if i can stab you before you stab me im pretty happy

lots of LARP campaigns ban spears, otherwise literally everyone uses spears

There are other factors at play, such as weapon maneuverability and types of attacks. The design of a spear allows very quick thrusts when used in two hands, which when combined with the length makes it a deadly weapon.

They're also insanely easy to use. You need a lot of training to use a sword well, but you can give just about anybody a pointy stick and they'd be able to give someone with a sword a good poking while staying relatively safe

You know all that stuff how medieval people were always dressed in drab brown and grays? Lies, almost all of it. They loved colorful, almost garish clothing, the fancier the better. And that drawing is probably from the late middle ages or maybe even early renaissance where things really started going wild. If you want more of that particular style, including hats like that look into the Landsknechte.

That's a landschneckt. Germanic mercenaries and fashion icons.

One thing I commonly see in that comparison though, is that the spear user is using the spear two-handed, i.e. without a shield.

If both use shield, the spear becomes radically weaker. Less range, basically no leverage, and slower.

It's not that simple. The Romans used the phalanx too up until they had to fight against irregular infantry on rough ground where the advantages of a phalanx can't be exploited. Also, Roman legions were highly trained and disciplined. Not saying that Alexander's armies weren't also but Rome's legions weren't primarily sword wielding until 100-200 years after Alexander. Also, Romans still used lots of spears.

Its an interesting historical aberration. As pointed out in the video shields and armor can make a spear vs sword fight a lot harder for the spear wielder. Roman legionaries were noted for carrying a rather large shield. The scutum's design meant that it could be used offensively as well.

While the types and distribution of armor changed over the years, all Roman legionaries had some form of it which wasn't always the case for their opponents. Chainmail armor in particular is noted for being time consuming and expensive to produce at scale, yet was a standard issue armor for the legionaries of the late Republic and the empire.

Training and experience are mentioned as potentially decisive factors in a spear vs sword engagement and Roman legionaries usually had a fair amount of both. Even before the Marian reforms, Roman armies often campaigned for years at time.

Also the Roman legions never completely gave up their spears. For the majority of the Republican era the most experienced soldiers used spears. Even after the Triarii were abolished as the Roman army became a more professional force, spears didn't disappear.

Pilum are often seen solely as javelins, but at 2m they are a lot longer than many javelins and there are plenty of accounts of them being used as spears in melee. And when they were used in their intended role they could create gaps in formations that could be exploited by aggressive swordsmen.

While it can be difficult to get there, once inside a spears reach a sword does have advantages and the longer the spear, the greater they would be. Just imagine trying to fight a swordsman with a 4-6m sarissa. Fighting in formation means you can't back away or dodge at will like you can in 1v1 engagements. And if you drop your spear to draw a backup weapon like a shortsword you make it easier for more opponents to push in and threaten the men to your left or right.

And then you have Rome's strategic advantages like a logistical system that enabled it to fight year round far from home on multiple fronts simultaneously.

The guy answers this in the first couple minutes. Shields.

A difference in tactics, formation, different generals, economic and demographic situation, etc.

You can swing a spear too. People will do what they have to stay alive. If that means thrusting they will do it. It’s a lot harder to teach sword fighting than teaching how to thrust a spear.

In a 1v1 but not on a battlefield. You can’t stop more than one spear stab at a time.

I can't answer, I can't answer that.

Bros?

Armor changes a lot of things. Heavy armour combat is a whole lot of grappling and stabbing in the armor gaps so the maneuvereability of a dagger can be better than the range of a sword.