Hermodr said:
Nodachi – The Japanese great sword, the nodachi was, surprisingly, used as a thrown weapon or dropped after the initial charge as it was too heavy to use throughout the fight. The nodachi was about 4ft (1.3m) in length and had a 1ft (0.3m) hilt.
I wonder where you got this piece of information. The O-tachi, "great, big sword", is the sword you are talking about ("no-daichi" simply means "field sword", and was usually longer and thicker than the civilian katana of the Edo period, but not necessarily an O-tachi). But that's not really what I take issue with here: thrown weapon? That's absurd. There are other weapons much better suited (not to mention cheaper) for throwing. Also, I haven't come across any source that says they were dropped after the initial charge. You wouldn't necessarily charge in with them, anyway.
The O-tachi wasn't extremely prevalent on the Japanese battlefield, but prevalent enough. They still debate their exact use, but I'm leaning toward them having the same use as the greatswords or even Zweihänders of Europe: they were weapons to be used against enemies with even longer weapons, especially long spears or pikes. In Europe they were often used in tangent with pollaxes or similar, and I imagine this would be useful in Japan as well. The Zweihänder is also a heavy weapon to be swinging around, but you don't use a Zweihänder as you would a longsword, and you don't use an O-tachi as you would a katana. The Zweihänder was not meant to be thrown or dropped, and neither was the O-tachi. You
could throw it, yes, just as you could throw your helmet at someone in desperation. But that's not what it's designed for.
Omi no Yari – This yari ranged from 15-20+ft (5-6+m)! For gameplay purposes I don’t believe we’ll find the longest of this type in game, but this will obviously be a cavalry deterrent. This type of yari found itself in the hands of the Ashigaru and never in the hands of a samurai.
I'm afraid I have to question your sources on this one, too. Long yari of this kind became quite popular on the Japanese battlefield, from around ~1400, also among samurai. By this time, individual combat between samurai were mostly romantic relics from the past. Still you would have samurai charging in on their own for the sake of glory, a disciplinary short-coming they shared with European knights. But there was nothing "un-samurai" about the long spear. This print is quite telling in a number of ways:
This is a depiction of a mock battle between short and long spears. It is comprised mainly of ashigaru on either side, but there are samurai there, too. The long-spear gang actually has the most samurai. The placement of samurai is also a very interesting one: most of the samurai are at the
back, behind the ashigaru. It is certainly not unheard of for samurai to act as "ushers" from behind, to provide moral support for the front ranks and make sure they tow the line, and this goes to show that the samurai certainly didn't mind having a secondary role in battle. And this we also know, of course, from the fact that ashigaru were sent into the fray before samurai. It's just good sense, really.
And just because I'm a pedant: it's yumi, not yami.
