It is weird, because most HEMA people say again and again that overarm grup is rubbish and underarm grip is way better when using spears.
BUT of course, sources show overarm grip all the time. Is it a tropos of the visual art, a remnant of a time where soldiers wore heavier armour and spears needed a lot of thrust and less reach and maneauvrability? Did they use them in a way HEMA people just don't know about?
Your point seems robust.
Over arm does not produce stronger blows than underarm. It is, indeed, actually harder to put your full weight into the blow. Over arm is only more forceful if you only stab with your arm alone and not your full body. Further, you can stab from above in an underarm grip. There is certainly not more an arc of danger.
Several reasons are possible for the archaeological evidence. One, the people fighting were just bad. This isn't unprecedented, the average greek hoplite was entirely untrained, indeed most disdained the idea of training. So they could just be fighting in a foolish, but gut feel way. It is easy to assume perfect competence and sort of map modern conventions onto ancient soldiers (This happens especially with romans and spartans), especially if you aren't actually a historian, but ancient warriors did not have the same contexts that modern militaries do and were beholden, at times, to conventions that seem entirely foolish to the modern eye. I want to note here, again, that the hoplites of greek city states had absolutely no formations, barring the spartans, until well into the peloponessian war. They did not know how to march in anything but a sort of blob, as attested quite well by thucydides. Of all the greeks, only the spartans marched in formation to music.
Another reason may be that the evidence is by people untrained in warfare entirely and just painting what they think would be happening in battle.
A third reason is that moderns are misinterpreting the evidence and that the ancient pottery paintings and sculptures are depicting a man about to throw their spear. This has actually been a point of argument among historians. It is easy to read into archaeology and hard to have certainties.
I'm not an expert, but afaik HEMA is mostly duels, while historically it's mostly shield wall vs shield wall. And in tight formation overarm seems superior. Because your shield doesn't get in the way, you can thrust to the left and to the right freely, and you can attack over enemy shields, and you can throw the spear at any moment, and so on.
Edit: if shields in the front row overlap, it seems impossible to hold a spear any other way..
See the guy there two handing the spear. Take one hand off and wield a shield. This is the proper way to deliver a higher blow. Underarm provides a great range of motion. You aren't stuck stabbing at gut level and waggling the spear tip in the air.
While the way you phrased that sentence is mild enough, I'm still debating as to what force has to be applied for a spearhead to pierce 3 mm of steel, then find its way through the thick gambeson underneath the plate, and still have enough kick to it to deal significant damage to body tissue. Unless you're fighting with some sort of a poisoned spear, just punching through all that protective gear, which is already a tremendous feat, is gonna do jack to the person inside it. My bet is that a spear thrust from horseback would shatter the spear rather than penetrate plate, although the armor wearer is still gonna be quite unhappy because of the impact (don't quote me on that, I don't claim to have any level of expertise on the matter).
Piercing through chainmail, even higher weave density mail, sounds at least more credible, but debatable nontheless. It isn't like armor was designed to resist slashes and do nothing with other, not edge-based cutting weapons - you still have to overpower the strength of linkage, then the gambeson underneath, yada yada.
A very important point to consider when discussing MnB armor in such context (though it has nothing to do with Hndzm's post, just wanna throw that thought out seeing the direction the thread itself is progressing in) is that buying plate doesn't mean you're wearing it over a bikini - the other undebatably important shock absorbing and thrust-stopping piece such as the gambeson underneath is always implied.
I hate people so casually go "And chainmail only protects against slashing attacks". No, no it doesn't. It's actually very good again speartips and arrows. Like, concentrating force on a smaller area is better at piercing literally every armor ever made in history period. Including tank armor and modern body armor. Plate armor is less good against a spear tip than a sword slash, but no one goes "And thus plate armor was made primarily to block slashing attacks". It's this silly conceit that seems to come from the idea that you can totally just, like, stab through that small hole in the ring that even people who know better get infected by this brainbug. Chainmail was an effective armor against literally anything it was contemporary with. The nature of a thrusting or other type of weapon that concentrates force in a smaller area means that they are always better than a cutting or slashing weapon against armor for the same amount of force applied.
I never said puncturing plate armor was easy. I said it was possible, which it is, and it can be deadly. Spears against plate armor is somewhat anachronistic, a peasant levy wielding spears would run before they fought plate armored knights, and trained footmen would be using two-handed polearms (pollaxe, corseque, halberd, etc), which have far more deadly offense against plate armor.
I remarked about gambeson & chain not being thick enough to stop a spear from hitting vitals if effort is applied, such is not necessarily true for plate armor, unless the specific style of armor had thin spots or a fatal design flaw guiding the spear-point to an opening in the armor(surprisingly not uncommon, such as some Gjermundbu style helmets guiding spears into the eyehole).
It's not really relevant to the game, where there is no true plate armor anyway. Spears should be a viable weapon in the game, right now they have some serious flaws that prevent them from being competitive.
Better be a lot of effort to stab through chain and gambeson. Cause, I'll tell you now, it ain't actually that easy. And indeed, may not be possible against a torso section (chainmail would have different thickness depending on where on the body it was) without repeated blows damaging the rings. And this is if the chain isn't just acting as a supplement to even more armor, like a coat of plates.
I misspoke somewhat about spears through plate armor on foot, the likelihood of you penetrating and killing a knight as a spear wielding footman is incredibly low (praying for cheap armor), but you will be able to leverage the main disadvantage of plate armor, the fact that it deforms and can be made to be more cumbersome than it is protective. A spear driven as deep as possible into a plate cuirass may only penetrate 1mm through the armor, and of course because of the gambeson not reach the knight, but now the knight has a spear driven into his armor, giving leverage and maintaining distance. A similar concept to the pilum, I've shared a video of what they do to shields here previously. (
Edit: Didn't refresh page, vid has already been posted) You won't be fighting much with spears lodged in your armor, and taking time to remove one could get you killed.
In regards to spears or lances off horse, they absolutely would penetrate plate armor and kill the wearer. There is a reason for jousting tournaments the lances were blunted and the armor extra heavy, the force generated from a horse at full charge will give a small spear point deadly penetration, at the very least crushing the armor and leaving the knight unable to move, if not outright killing them from the trauma and broken bones or a quick death from being hit in the head.
Yes, penetrating chainmail is not easy, but very much possible. Even an untrained spearman can deliver a fatal stab through chainmail if their spear has an appropriate thin head and not a broad leaf blade. Once you've made it through the mail, the gambeson is hardly a factor, as the rings hold the spear straight and basically give you leverage to push deeper.
In game, I really wish Taleworlds would be more ambitious. Give us different TYPES of armor that are better or worse vs certain damage types, or more damage types that react differently against higher/lower values of armor, preferably both. Hack damage for axes, as an example, could have higher armor penetration stat up to a certain armor threshold than slash damage for swords, but slash damage gains bonus damage when they deal damage exceeding armor threshold by a certain number. Blunt and pierce could be alternately better vs different types of armor, blunt doing more consistent damage across armor types, but dealing lower value damage, while pierce could possibly completely negate armors such as cloth, leather and cheaper mail and deal higher damage than anything except high value/two handed axes until you reach lamellar and basic plate (coat of plates for Vlandia) armors, where blunt would deal the most damage not accounting for horse speed bonus, which should be higher for pierce weapons.
If the pillum is stuck inside you so far that you can't pull it out, you're, uh, probably already in some deep ****.
Note that the pillum is the name for a very broad array of throwing spears and not all of them had the same design. And most of them weren't made to bend or deform. A long head works fine enough. Notably, it pierces far enough through a shield to hit the person wielding it. also Pillum could be, and were, used just as spear on occasion.
And using youtube videos of random people stabbing random chainmail is not rigorous, considering just how variable in quality modern reproductions of chainmail are. I mean, that last video that mail looks like, well, ****. It's density on the torso is obviously off.
Nah it's just Lindybeige who says that and he isn't really a hema person per say. He's more of a reenactor. You can tell that by the gear he uses when he goes to teach people about spears. He doesn't tell his bois to wear face protection and as a result the head has to be excluded from the target zone which is quite misleading. You MUST be wearing fencing mask and using rubber safety spear tip to understand the effectiveness of the overhand grip. The overhand grip allows you to retract your spear behind you, to prevent the opponent from establishing a bind with your spear, thus making it much harder to parry. And because it comes down from above it has added speed and power making it difficult to parry even with a shield, as the weight of the shield may prevent you lifting it up in time to parry properly, and even with a proper parry it could still bounce off shield edge and hit somebody's face.
Lindybeige isn't really a great source.
The majority of experimental historians that have tested, however, agree that underarm is a superior technique. HEMA isn't super material to this, except in so far as some HEMA groups are run by historians that sometimes use them for testing, but not the most rigorous of tests I'd imagine.
