The Force Awakens - Spoilerific Discussion.

[Kirsten]

Samurai are the most overrated warriors of all time

yes and no, a roman army would win sure, but one on one using katanas was the stipulation. a roman legionnaire, even a veteran, would likely break it within moments. a samurai is trained all their life for one on one combat, they would kill a legionnaire in seconds.

[Mr Mystery]

Depends if you've just lobbed your Pilum through his silly bamboo armour

[grimmas]

yes and no, a roman army would win sure, but one on one using katanas was the stipulation. a roman legionnaire, even a veteran, would likely break it within moments. a samurai is trained all their life for one on one combat, they would kill a legionnaire in seconds.

Oh yeah, sorry forgot the stipulation that they were fighting Samurai style, which was fairly pertinent to the point. You are correct. Please excuse me I got all excited when Titus Pollo got mentioned.

[Charistoph]

Anyone wearing even a bit of armour would probably deflect a katana as well.

Well, any armor designed against heavy slashing weapons. Samurai armor was better at deflecting arrows than sword or halberds/spears. Heck, before they were invaded from Asia, Samurai were bowmasters and rarely used any melee weapons.

Even Viking chainmail is remarkable resistant to the katana. But if the user knows this, he could direct his strikes to avoid them, and that is where the skill lies.

yes and no, a roman army would win sure, but one on one using katanas was the stipulation. a roman legionnaire, even a veteran, would likely break it within moments. a samurai is trained all their life for one on one combat, they would kill a legionnaire in seconds.

Not necessarily. If they were fighting in Samurai style, you would be correct. But if the legionnaire veteran fought more on his own style that he made up as he went along, he would probably focus on disrupting the Samurai's focus till he felt at least somewhat comfortable with the weapon. This would involve running away, cheap shots, throwing dirt in the face, etc.

Also remember that legionnaires are trained to be soldiers first, warriors second. While a Samurai is trained to be a warrior. What I mean by this is that the soldier is trained to use teamwork in combat, and rely on those teammates to support him. While a warrior is trained to be a solo killing machine.

Now, if the legionnaire was a brawler who fought in combat as well as in the equivalent of bar fights or often ended up alone in battle, he would have a chance, as the brawler uses what is handy and doesn't care about formalities. A relatively fresh legionnaire who may have only the experience of fighting in mass battles, would be toast, though.

[Gotthammer]

Well most samurai armour was made of metal, so there's that for one.

Also samurai as a class spans almost a thousand years, evolving from the 8th and 9th century as warrior nobles akin to medieval knights, to the warrior poets of the Edo period around the 17th century. Also during the Sengoku period of warring feifdoms around the 16th century samurai basically meant any skilled or professional warrior, including the classic ronin figure but also just professional soldiers.

Katanas only became the truly fearsome weapon they are recognised as in the 14th century. Before then, and even long after, samurai were mounted archers - which is why their armour is designed the way it is - the well known design of the O-yoroi has the large shoulder guard to protect against incoming arrows, as is the broad helmet skirt.
It's also why most art of samurai pre ~1600 has them wielding bows, and they were fiercely deadly with them, shooting through each other at long ranges (and even once purportedly sinking a ship loaded with men).

The precursor to Bushido was Kyuba no michi - "The Way of Horse and Bow" - which started becoming the way of the samurai around the 5th century when horses were introduced to Japan. Bushido only really starts to appear as a concept in the 16th century, developing in the 17th when the samurai were becoming a more gentrified class due to Japan's relative political stability (for instance the 47 Ronin incident - peak Bushido, happened in the 18th century, long after samurai were a pure warrior class and were more akin to their contemporary European aristocracy).
And it only became really popular in 1900 when a guy wrote a book about it. Which with all of its code of honour and dying before disobeying ideals was twisted even more by Imperial Japan during the war years for their own ends.

Also the one on one honour is not really backed up by period texts, there's even one where a samurai challenges another to a duel, and though the duel is accepted, the challenger is still shot dead with arrows almost instantly as the guy he challenged had buddies who didn't really care for that sort of thing.
And battles at the time involved tens of thousands of soldiers, often tens of thousands of samurai, so there's no evidence that the honour duels are anything but a later fantasy akin to ours of valiant knights fighting one on one.

[Erik Setzer]

[URL="http://www.the1585.com/dorksawaken.html"]Source[/URL]

That's how I viewed it... Kylo Ren feels more "real." I think the worst part about him for some people is how much they can actually relate with him.

[grimmas]

That's very informative Gott, but we need an opinion from you, would they take the Romans or not?

Knights did fight single combat though. Before a battle in challenges usually, sometimes an army's leader would even do so, like Robert the Bruce did at Bannockburn.

It is just me or are we all wildly off topic?

[Erik Setzer]

Didn't Darth Vader start out as a whiney little insecure sh*t though? I thought that was what Episodes I,II & III were about

Yeah, and people hated that version of him. Though part of that is the awful writing, which adds so many other layers. Like a nine-year old pining for (and having, um, "dreams" about) a girl five years older than him that he barely knows, the creeptastic "romance," the abusive relationship he has with the woman he was infatuated with... And while you can understand some of his motives, his actions don't really match them all that well. He's supposedly turning his back on everything and trying to slaughter all the Jedi just so he can be taught how to save his wife from a bad dream he had, and then attempts to harm and damn near kills said wife. That's not a case of "forgetting what you're fighting for," that's a case of her not being even remotely important enough to him that he would have gone to such extremes to protect her.

Meanwhile, Kylo's motivation is basically that he was raised hearing how special his grandfather and uncle were, seeing how much more powerful his grandfather was, then having a guy coming along and saying, "You can be special like that, too. I'll teach you how. Luke's holding you back, he's probably afraid of you being better than him." The fluff also mentioned Kylo's part of a bloodline that includes strong Sith *and* Jedi... that's got to put a bit of pressure on him to be something special and amazing, even if that something is kind of evil (which is all "from a certain point of view").

[Tyrendian]

That's very informative Gott, but we need an opinion from you, would they take the Romans or not?

Knights did fight single combat though. Before a battle in challenges usually, sometimes an army's leader would even do so, like Robert the Bruce did at Bannockburn.

It is just me or are we all wildly off topic?

yup, and I'm liking what I've started I took Samurais and Legionaries more as general examples - of a well-known, powerful but specialised weapon with its "masters" versus the first "general purpose well-known warrior" that sprung to my mind. Knights might have worked as well, and would have had the added benefit of (theoretically) both having some sort of honour codex. I'd add no armour at all as a stipulation, since that fits light sabers that go through anything except that one ore from the EU, and each other.

[Kirsten]

challenges are always a dodgy prospect, especially if one army has an advantage over the other. in ancient Greece the Spartans encountered an army from Argos I think it was, and they decided to settle it with a challenge involving one hundred men from each side. two Argos men were left, and one Spartan. the men from Argos left claiming victory, the Spartan claimed victory for being last on the field. the two main armies then each came to put up a victory monument and ended up having a full pitched battle...