Obviously improvised peasant weapons suck in warfare but how well would something like this work against a another peasant/freeman who has a 12 inch dagger or even a small sword?
Would the chain & ball do anything useful?
Obviously improvised peasant weapons suck in warfare but how well would something like this work against a another peasant/freeman who has a 12 inch d...
>Would the ball and chain do anything useful
Yes, it can wrap up someone or break bone if swung properly. It's not the same as having a good club, but it's certainly lethal.
Really? Obviously a professional MLB player can hurl a ball pretty damn fast but could a average person really do the same here? Obviously the chain gives some leverage but it's not awfully long.
If you worked the fields, your throwing muscles would be extremely good. Sure, you won't have experience throwing, but your throws would be strong.
first of all, bullshit. your average dirt farming shiteating malnourished peasant was not even benefitting from manual labor in a general health sense. strength excess and transferability, forget it, that is magic.
second, weapons throwing has far more to do with technique. if you try to chuck something at full power you're just going to glance or miss.
>hurl a ball
>throwing
You don't throw the weighted chain like a baseball you imbeciles, you swing it.
ESL here, what's wrong with the phrase "hurl a ball"?
I wonder if that's really the case. Nipponese peasant would be what? 150--160cm long and be kinda malnourished because of the rice diet? Also eating meat was banned or at least heavily restricted
"Hurl a ball" is basically the same thing as "throw a ball". It implies the ball is traveling away from you. It's grammatically correct, but it's not how this weapon was used.
>ESL here, what's wrong with the phrase "hurl a ball"?
It isn't the phrase that's wrong, what's wrong is that you don't just throw the weight here at the enemy as if it was a ball, you use to chain to swing it.
>Also eating meat was banned or at least heavily restricted
Bullshit. They didn't eat a terrible lot of meat, but that's because prior to modern industrial meat production meat was expensive stuff. Odds are your great grandfather didn't eat much meat by modern standards. Hell, odds are your parents grew up thinking meat was the fancy stuff that made a meal enjoyable while potatoes/rice/pasta was the bulk food that actually filled your stomach. And of course as far as animal protein goes, do note that Japan is an island nation...
>They didn't eat a terrible lot of meat, but that's because prior to modern industrial meat production
Anon, there's more to it here than just meat being expensive, Japan had a specific ban on eating meat starting in 675 AD and lasting until the 1800's.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-meat-ban
You swing it and it picks up plenty of speed on its own. A heavy slug like that can break bones if it hits your hand or face and it's worth than enough to tie up/deflect a weapon.
I had a three outlet extension cord wrap around a bean and hit me right over the temple and I had to stop and think about life for a few minutes. That's a hunk of hard plastic, that metal thing will fuck you up
Anyway there are techniques for this thing and a few schools still passing on the old stuff, but you won't find s a hell of a lot of it on the internet. I have a couple of books on kobudo that show kusari game and rope darts techniques
Part of the usefulness of obscure weapons is the obscurity itself, if your enemy isn't familiar with your weapon then he's going to have a much harder time against you. Of course, it likely wouldn't have stayed obscure if it was all that good an idea beyond that...
Also some exotic weapons and flashy ways to use them were kept around with an eye more to showing off at village festivals and the like rather than actually using them to fight.
Some hints as to how it could be used, though with all the usual caveats about things having been cleaned up to clearly show techniques instead of trying to be an accurate portrayal of combat, important facets of the technique possibly being intentionally obscured, bits of the movements perhaps being "over-correcting" so you'll do it right when the adrenaline spikes, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXesoopsWGE
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Absolutely. You could sling the weight for a far reaching attack or just wrap it around your arm for some forearm protection. Mostly, however, it was a distraction from the sickle. You had to keep your eye on the swinging weight since it would hurt but the Kama would flat out kill you.
A metal weight swung to the side of the head or swung down from overhead could absolutely break a skull.
Can you hit it though? If your opponent has a sword then he can just block it
>blocks swinging weight with sword
>A. chain wraps around it, get stabbed by kama while frantically trying to free your sword
>or
>B. Weight swings around the sword and still hits you in the head or hands or further entangles you
Yeah… blocking. No idea why nobody thought of that before.
You'd basically need to hit the weight directly rather than just the chain. It's difficult since the weight is about the size of a golf ball but possible. However, this has two problems.
First, the impact can chip or crack your weapon. It might chip the weight too but that's just a blunt mass.
Second, it opens you up to attacks with the sickle. Either by distraction or taking your weapon out of line with your opponent, you'll be offguard for a moment while you're dealing on the weight.
>It's difficult since the weight is about the size of a golf ball but possible.
Practically impossible and it would ruin any nip or chink blade on contact.
Retard.
You need to read more before typing.
It could but you were more likely to take the hit on the face, limbs or body while the Kama can pierce into your vital organs.
>chain for grappling/weapon trapping
>meme weight for distracting opponents by yeeting it at their face, would do some damage if you connected to the head
>hand protection
>war picks are great and underrated for anti light/medium armor usage and will penetrate the extra heavy ""clothing"" commonly worn in non military settings which limit effectiveness of some cutting weapons surprisingly well
Honestly its got a bit much going on but seems like it could be pretty effective if you practiced with it.
look up a kusari gama demonstration. often the chain is longer than this, and sometimes it's mounted up where the sickle is instead of the bottom of the handle. if the chain is long enough you can twirl it with your hand, otherwise the stick is used to twirl it similar to a flail. you can get the thing going pretty fast. it would not feel good to be hit by it. if they close distance and avoid getting hit by the weight, they can get wrapped by the chain.
does it give you some kind of supreme advantage against another poorly armed peasant like you described? no, but it's definitely something. the chain buys you time and distance, and if you're lucky you can end the fight without getting into stabby range or maybe just scare a bad person away. even better if there are multiple of you with these chain weapons. peasants are not going to pull off complex chain-jitsu or whatever but you might think twice about going in on multiple guys whipping heavy weights at you. also it's frankly not that easy to take advantage of someone tangled by a thing that's directly attached to your weapon, but a second person could take advantage of that really well.
i've also seen variations of this where the chain is attached to a short spear