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I know this is a meme… buuuuuuut the halberd is a specialized weapon that excels in its role and almost no where else. The spear, however, is versatile and useful in most combat situations.
Obviously the Poleaxe is the superior weapon.
Also, you can craft a perfectly serviceable spear with a wooden stick and a sharp stone.
Good luck crafting a halberd without some dope blacksmithing skills.
The glaive is the coolest polearm and I will brook no disagreement.
Us pointy stick fanciers have some words
What is specialized role of halberd?
Seems a weapon that long should be thrusted, and being a bit lighter would help with aim/retraction and retrusts. Using a super long axe seems impractical, hence my first question.
Halberd is a kind of specialized multitool. It’s for fighting in formation, looser than pikes, but still fairly close-order. The point allows it to stab and repel riders, the hook for dismounting any riders who feel like lingering too long, and the axehead for the killing blow on infantry or dismounted cavalry.
Think of it as the difference between a Swiss Army Knife and an everyday survival knife. The Swiss Army Knife will do some things better than the survival knife, but the survival knife has more universal versatility, is hardy, and easy to handle.
That being said, the halberd is more useful than the original commenter gives it credit for, the disadvantages compared to a two-handed spear mostly relate to a less-optimal weight and wieldiness (the axe head being rather large and heavy compared to a spearhead) rather than an essential inability to mimic the usage of a spear in most cases. The halberd is more useful against armored targets, or with some room to maneuver in formation. The spear is more useful in extremely tight formations and is more nimble.
Halberds can hook onto a guy with armour and knock them down so you can get out the baby knife and stabby stab.
I was just going to not say any of that because im not a nerd! Nerd!
Spears are awesome
Okay I’ll bite: so just what is that role? When do I need to poke and axe?
Poke horse so it doesn’t run into you
Hook rider to drag him off the horse, or at least control his movement
Axe rider when he’s vulnerable
Where the halberd is a very long weapon really only useful while fighting in formation(hooking and proning armored foes so your pikemen can finish them off), the Poleaxe is actually wieldable outside of formation and can do everything the halberd can do.
Have an opponent in maille? Stick 'em with the spear-point.
Have an opponent in plate? Hit them with the spike/hammer(there are variations on the poleaxe).
Have an opponent that can’t afford armor? Axe 'em, poke em, smack em, do whatever!
Plus! It’s a polarm weapon, which means you also get all the fighting benefits of wielding a staff!!
Plucks Yew.
That’s just miniature spears with a fancy propelling mechanism! More proof long stick with pointy end is the superior weapon!
So what you’re saying is it’s not the size of the spear but it’s how you thrust it?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
well, bullets are very small and girthy in comparison, so yes.
Imagine thinking a self bow is a suitable weapon of war. Laughs in turkic, Mongolian, and Magyar
These shoot through armor yours don’t
Yeah, tell that to the capharacts in the byzantine/Persian and Byzantine/Avar wars. You know, the ones more heavily armored than French knights ever were and have holes shot in them. Or the samurai that met Korean composite infantry archers.
Draw weight on any composite bow can match or beat a self bow, since bone and horn beat wood. The bow part of a crossbow is composite after all.
, the maximum draw weight of an English longbow was significantly higher than a typical recurve bow, with the best longbows reaching draw weights between 150 and 180 pounds, while most high-quality recurves would max out around 60-70 pounds depending on the design and archer’s ability; essentially, a historical English longbow could reach considerably higher draw weights than a modern recurve bow. So while you can penetrate some armor while riding around on your pony an Englishman will just knock you off the horse your on from farther than your maximum range with his longbow.
It has nothing to do with modern recurve bows. There is no functional limitation to the draw weight of a composite bow. They had plenty of examples that could hit 70 kg. Composite bow archers can and did produce the same exact results as longbow archers. They often flat out exceeded them with inordinately high draw weight bows. And that makes intuitive sense. Look at a crossbow: a small composite bow with a draw weight so high that humans needed mechanical advantage just to draw them. If you think the English were somehow more professional as archers and stronger than everybody else, you’re vastly mistaken.
Look dude. I’m not trying to get overly analytical and in a life and death debate but no that’s factually incorrect.
The reason I said modern recurve was because if you try to put excess strain on traditional recurve bows most of them will shatter or delaminate as they are laminate technology.
Yes, both types of bow will fire the same types of arrow. The key difference is the English longbow Men can put a lot more oomph behind his shots than a recurve bow man. I am not saying that the English would draw to 180 ft lb for every pullback I am saying that their artillery pieces could do that.
To put it another way, the theoretical maximum range was much higher on a longbow than the theoretical max range on a recurve bow because you can use double or triple the maximum draw weight on the same arrow.
You seem to be under the impression that there is a fundamental material problem in composite bows that prevents them from being high draw weight. Here’s a study examining historical ottoman bows which note that while most average around 110 pounds, they go up to as high as 230 with 140 not uncommon. The glue and laminations did not make them fundamentally unable to reach those high draw weights, it’s just dependent on what the draw weight is. A self bow that you overdraw will crack as well. Modern recurves are lighter because they’re not meant for slave soldiers raised from children like the Janissaries. Once again, if you think it’s a material problem, realize that early Chinese crossbows were constructed with this exact laminating bone glue and sinew technology and could reach draw weights of a truly ridiculous 750 lbs if drawn by both feet by a truly expert crossbowman. They likely looked essentially like a laminated composite recurve attached to a stock with a trigger.
Why should If ight you? You are absolutely correct.
Well, you might be able to win if you are able to afford and equip, say, 1,000 pike maidens to his one halberd harlot.
There’s harlots and maidens? Where’s this halbert place you speak of?
Maybe. But halberd harlot 🥵🥵🥵
They never said you have to disagree to fight them.
Idk man I quite like the simplicity of the goedendag
A good day to you too
Based and Flanders-pilled.
yeah it’s pretty light and meaty in comparison. I myself prefer the crunchwrap supreme
This is a billhook. It hooks Bill.
Bill here… GD it, hooked again.
Bill and his hookers again?
I coded my own simple spear sling in JSON to carry my halberd around as a cooking utensil in Cataclysm DDA–enjoyer verified.
Not goinna fight you while you pleasure yourself on your halberd like the picture.
“Always wait until your enemy as fully committed to lovemaking with their weaponry.” - Sun Tzu
hasn’t the halberd been confirmed to be the meta weapon in medieval times?
If you think about it, a halberd is just a defective, meaty trebuchet
Gonna need some help working out that one.
Heresy!
pointy end faces the enemy
Then we shall fite in the shade
As long as the halberd is designed such that it can stab as well as a spear, then yes, it’s strictly better IMO.
Well, it’s still heavier, and in extremely tight formations the halberd-heads can be more likely to get caught up on one another.
Can confirm. Got a halberd and turned it into a stripper pole.
