Vikings v.s. Samurai?

Who would win Vikings or Samurai?

  • Vikings

    Votes: 273 59.3%
  • Samurai

    Votes: 187 40.7%

  • Total voters
    460

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Amman de Stazia said:
why would it not be serious?  The first thing viking raiders did, if they were going to be more than a few hours on land, was steal horses.  They arrived by ship and therefore did not bring their own horses.  They fought on foot but - like many other armies - used horses for movement.
If they were to steal horses it would be for the purpose of using them for something constructive like hauling goods, not to use them as makeshift barricades. And a dead horse only provides limited cover anyway - it is far easier for a rider to circle a dead horse than it would be for someone to keep shifting positions around and behind the dead horse. The viking would exhaust himself long before the horse would, but of course he might hope that the comical display would have the samurai in a laughing fit.

Also, vikings didn't go on raids solo - if you assume he is on a raid, assume he is with friends. In which case they are far more likely to ready their shields against arrows than to give the order to kill the horses. If it's a one-on-one scenario, the stolen tiger for the samurai makes just as much sense as the stolen horse for the viking. Like I said, if we allow stolen equipment as part of the Deadliest Warrior kit, then anything goes. Hell, the samurai could have the exact same equipment as a viking, looted off a dead viking.


The post is of course somewhat tongue in cheek, as is only fitting for such a stupid discussion, but far more likely than a tame war-tiger.
Never said it was tame. Just that it was stolen.
 
Yeah, but the viking looted a laserrifle from a timetraveller who happened by the battlefield a few days ago and died of diarrhoea.
 
I'll risk the katana (which is about as dangerous as a slice of cheese anyway) 'cos I'd love a genuine Aesir longboat.

the viking was so much better than the samurai.  Why?  because they had names like Sven, Bjorn, Harald and Erik.  These are the names of winners, my fir-ends, and no samurai, regardless of his steel-watered Strange Great Sword, can possibly stand up to them.
 
Amman de Stazia said:
I'll risk the katana (which is about as dangerous as a slice of cheese anyway) 'cos I'd love a genuine Aesir longboat.

the viking was so much better than the samurai.  Why?  because they had names like Sven, Bjorn, Harald and Erik.  These are the names of winners, my fir-ends, and no samurai, regardless of his steel-watered Strange Great Sword, can possibly stand up to them.
Toshiro Mifune. 'Nuff said.
 
Amman de Stazia said:
I'll risk the katana (which is about as dangerous as a slice of cheese anyway) 'cos I'd love a genuine Aesir longboat.

the viking was so much better than the samurai.  Why?  because they had names like Sven, Bjorn, Harald and Erik.  These are the names of winners, my fir-ends, and no samurai, regardless of his steel-watered Strange Great Sword, can possibly stand up to them.

Well my friend, a katana is still a curved hand-and-a-half sword by design. Made from crappy ore or otherwise, it can carve you up real good in a middling hand if you don't know what you are doing. :wink:

Gambino said:
samurai with samurai cavalry ofcourse!

Samurai cavalry is crap. Japan have always lacked the sort of heavy horses needed for a good cavalry force. There have been many doubts whether the Takeda cavalry charge at Nagashino was actually a cavalry charge in the Pelennor Field sense or not, because even for the Horse-lords of Japan leading cavalry force in the archipelago at that time, there was literally no way they could have had the kind of horses required for such a maneuver. Against any disciplined shield/spear wall halfway capable and they'd get skewered if they even try.
 
I find it interesting that as a counter to the previous myth-trend that samurai swords were awesome and Euro swords were crap, there is now an anti-trend to this, where it has become popular to spout likewise ridiculous myths that Euro blades were awesome and samurai swords were crap. Understandable, I guess, from a psychological point of view, but one set of myth is as uninformed as the other.
 
Yes. That's why I'm a reformed character. Mostly because I recall Night Ninja railing against me for saying Japanese swords sucked. :lol:
 
AWdeV said:
And I don't think Amman was a 100% serious.
Oh, I know. Which is why I belayed posting in all seriousness until after Argeus' post. But it does betray Amman's bias, and in light of his earlier posts in this thread and others, it's not that far from 100%.
 
FrisianDude said:
If I read 'samurai cavalry' I tend to assume horse archers, tbh.

I doubt that, to be honest. As far as I know, historically East Asian horse archery is more like a showoff of skills by exceptional fighters - nobles, generals, what-have-yous - or as a side weapon rather than a practiced and proliferated art in the Mongolian style. It's like a rifleman packing a Desert Eagle as a sidearms because he might need it at some point, rather than because he intends to fight with a DE as a mainstay. If that analogy makes sense.

There is also the fact that samurai put excessive focus on one-on-one melee combat, after declaring a challenge and citing the adversary's five generations of ancestral heritage anyway. Doubt they'd just ride around and shoot each other in the head at 14.4 difficulty with that mindset.
 
Argeus the Paladin said:
FrisianDude said:
If I read 'samurai cavalry' I tend to assume horse archers, tbh.

I doubt that, to be honest. As far as I know, historically East Asian horse archery is more like a showoff of skills by exceptional fighters - nobles, generals, what-have-yous - or as a side weapon rather than a practiced and proliferated art in the Mongolian style. It's like a rifleman packing a Desert Eagle as a sidearms because he might need it at some point, rather than because he intends to fight with a DE as a mainstay. If that analogy makes sense.
The first samurai were horse archers, "Mongolian style". The O-yoroi is not very well suited for dismounted combat. The bow was never at any point the side weapon, but the main weapon throughout Japanese history, and the very symbol of the samurai until the sword gradually assumed that role -- though the bow never lost its status as a weapon most proper for a samurai to master.

And a bow would make a horrible side arm. If you carry a bow, you're an archer. You never, as in ever, carry a bow as a secondary weapon. What good would that do? In case the enemy you're fighting up close is suddenly further away? Why on earth would you carry a bow, which is very unwieldy to carry unless you can store it somewhere, as well as a bunch of arrows (which in bundles are pretty heavy), if that is not indeed the primary weapon? A bow is never a "just in case weapon"; I don't care what kind of bow it is. Bows allow you to soften up the enemy before you crush them in melée.


There is also the fact that samurai put excessive focus on one-on-one melee combat, after declaring a challenge and citing the adversary's five generations of ancestral heritage anyway. Doubt they'd just ride around and shoot each other in the head at 14.4 difficulty with that mindset.
This sort of ritualistic warfare has been blown out of proportion. For one thing, they stopped doing it at around the time of the first Mongol invasion. For another, there was never "excessive focus" on it. Archery still dominated the battlefields, before and after.

One thing was that samurai sought to find a "worthy opponent", but they also sought to kill as many as possible. "One against a thousand". And on top of that they prided themselves on marksmanship. Samurai, like the human beings they were, were 3-dimensional people. They had several ideals to live up to, and several goals to aspire to. And the samurai culture was frought with inconsistencies. Loyalty, for example, was the most important quality of a samurai. Yet samurai history is brimming with tales of treachery and deceit. The samurai were supposed to face adversity stoically, yet form demanded emotional outbursts of all kinds at times.

As for cavalry, while it is true that the Japanese horses at the time were very small, it does not follow that Japanese cavalry was "crap". Cavalry is very, very expensive to field, and if they were CRAP, they simply wouldn't use them. This rule of thumb is applied vigorously by most who have posted in this thread with regards to Western warfare -- but it applies in equal measure in the East, and everywhere else for that matter: if it is crap, it won't be used, because it is crap, as crap gets you killed in battle. War is nothing if not pragmatic.

The Mongols didn't have any bigger horses than the Japanese, either, and they did pretty ok for themselves.
 
Kissaki said:
[...if it was CRAP, nobody would use it].
This rule of thumb is applied vigorously by most who have posted in this thread with regards to Western warfare -- but it applies in equal measure in the East, and everywhere else for that matter: if it is crap, it won't be used, because it is crap, as crap gets you killed in battle. War is nothing if not pragmatic.

wisest post on this page so far...

Look, I am biased towards the Viking in the context of the orignal question, but everything has its place:
A Katana is not the sword for me, I prefer a thrusting blade (I fenced for a while) and I am leery of a blade designed primarily for slashing - slashing is for amateurs who think that swinging a sharp thing around wildly enough, for long enough, will win fights.
Katanas make passable (even good) thrusting weapons, and not every slash is executed by an amateur.  Katanas and sabres and falchions all have their role in killing.  I'd just rather have an axe for slashing, and a straight, thrusting blade on my sword.

I don't believe that generalising about weapon quality - in an era when few were mass-produced - is sensible.  If I was rich enough to go to the smith and ask him to make me a sword, we'd have a chat about that sword, and he'd make the sword I wanted to suit my height and strength.
If we were discussing 1796 pattern heavy cavalry sabres, generalise away about the crappy ore used in Sheffield and the ridiculous folding techniques that led to half of them breaking in combat (all false, I know). 
But to return to the point that if its crap, you don't use it:  If the ore was really that bad, then smiths would either find a workaround (folding the metal 999 times to reduce brittleness perhaps) or else find better ore.  If they could do neither, then warriors who carried hammers or axes able to shatter those crappy sword-blades would suddenly be winning all the battles...


and for the record:  This much of my post was 100% serious:
I'd love a genuine Aesir longboat.


 
I voted samurai, here is why:

no, the weapons arn't comparable, nor is the armor. However, the big thing here is discipline. Even if you tell me vikings were very well disciplined and working as units etc I doubt they would have the same kind of discipline as a unit of samurai, who know that their life is to do in battle as they are told to.

A viking will probably happily perform a suicidal charge when he drank enough or is high on bloodlust, just to draw the enemy out, samurai would do so on their honor.

One on one I'd give it an even chance, superior materials to superior training (yeah, samurai is NOT a title gained lightly. Yes, it was a title, there were normal soldiers too)

however

if you want them to compare to the top army of that era, take the chinese. They have grenades, experimental canons and handguns, crossbows in various sizes etc
 
Amman de Stazia said:
Kissaki said:
[...if it was CRAP, nobody would use it].
This rule of thumb is applied vigorously by most who have posted in this thread with regards to Western warfare -- but it applies in equal measure in the East, and everywhere else for that matter: if it is crap, it won't be used, because it is crap, as crap gets you killed in battle. War is nothing if not pragmatic.

wisest post on this page so far...

Look, I am biased towards the Viking in the context of the orignal question, but everything has its place:
A Katana is not the sword for me, I prefer a thrusting blade (I fenced for a while) and I am leery of a blade designed primarily for slashing - slashing is for amateurs who think that swinging a sharp thing around wildly enough, for long enough, will win fights.
Considering the existence and popularity of longswords, falchions, sabres, axes, picks and maces I do not see how you can defend such a position. Nor do I see why you single out the katana for special treatment.


Katanas make passable (even good) thrusting weapons, and not every slash is executed by an amateur.
Nor every thrust by a professional.


Katanas and sabres and falchions all have their role in killing.  I'd just rather have an axe for slashing, and a straight, thrusting blade on my sword.
I find it particularly odd that you would prefer an axe for slashing. In the first place, few axes are any good at slashing (they are primarily chopping weapons). Secondly, while many of them can thrust, the thrust is not their forte. I would think you would eschew the axe altogether, considering your position on cutting.


I don't believe that generalising about weapon quality - in an era when few were mass-produced - is sensible.  If I was rich enough to go to the smith and ask him to make me a sword, we'd have a chat about that sword, and he'd make the sword I wanted to suit my height and strength.
If we were discussing 1796 pattern heavy cavalry sabres, generalise away about the crappy ore used in Sheffield and the ridiculous folding techniques that led to half of them breaking in combat (all false, I know). 
But to return to the point that if its crap, you don't use it:  If the ore was really that bad, then smiths would either find a workaround (folding the metal 999 times to reduce brittleness perhaps) or else find better ore.  If they could do neither, then warriors who carried hammers or axes able to shatter those crappy sword-blades would suddenly be winning all the battles...
We are in agreement here, though I wan't quite referring to the Japanese ore itself -- Japanese iron rich sands does make for poor quality iron, but that does not mean you cannot make good quality steel out of it. It is a matter of how much effort you put into it, like you say. And tamahagane is of very good quality, regardless of the quality ore it came from.



and for the record:  This much of my post was 100% serious:
I'd love a genuine Aesir longboat.
As proud I am of the klinkerbuilt traditions of my country, I am a man for 18th/19th century tall ships myself. And I love the poncy uniforms.
 
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