It's pretty telling that the one of the only two reasons a Legionnaire can break ranks is to gather more ammunition for chucking.
Question. Has anyone of you used a sling just like the Balearic slingers of Roman fame? Or any sling at all? How quick can one get shots of with one at the absolute best?
Pretty damn quick. I've only fooled around with a proper sling but I know a chap who does it quite a lot, and he can get off 10+ shots a minute, aimed.
As in a sling that's used in a historical fashion; it's not a technical name, just to differentiate it from crappy slingshots and the like. As for distance, he usually has a target at 15-20m range, because it's inconvenient to set up a longer range. He gets decent accuracy (hits man-sized targets) at 50m or so, and when he goes for distance it's a bit past 100m. This is with, of course, a lot less practice and passive knowledge than historical slingers - he does it as a hobby sometimes, these guys trained all the time.
New question. Can you use a sword dance in actual battle? Even as a sort of...the dancer while having on hand a stick was attacked by a thug or a swordsman. Say...something like Geommu? Or this
Not unless you're in an anime. Dance is dance, fighting is fighting. There are some things that transfer over very well e.g. rhythm, timing, core conditioning and footwork, but you need to bear in mind that one's meant to look good while the other's meant to fuck up someone else's shit while leaving yours unfucked.
Being good at choreographed swordplay in no way makes you qualified in actual swordplay beyond a few universally translateable concepts, as Brainfart said. You will have a great foundation for learning actual swordsmanship, but your existing swordsmanship skills will be basically nonexistant.
More importantly, dance doesn't train you in the most important aspect of fighting, the mental. There's a whole lot of conditioning that stands between any normal human and being able to fight effectively. Even many martial arts don't address that sufficiently.
Well...too bad for my idea...next question. Is a blade around 40 cm (including the hilt) counted as a short sword or as a dagger? And can you use a short sword the same way you use the dagger as taught in the U.S. army?
The US army teaches dagger use? News to me. Anyway, the distinction between a short sword and a dagger is a hazy one. There isn't a clear line, and it's as much a matter of style (usage) as it is of physical attributes. What counts more is blade design - whether it's optimised for cutting or stabbing. That makes more difference to use than length per se.
Umm...if the blade can only do stabbing...since the...can you make jade sharp enough to cut someone's skin badly? Also...can you burn someone to death with a blade that is doused in oil and is burning?
Yea. Pretty much, if you're a good dancer, you can easily learn to be a good martial artist (which is something my teacher's commented on), but you still need that training. There's rhythm, movement, and moves, but you also need to learn to react to things coming at you, aim at a moving/resisting target, and so on. I'm pretty sure, yes. Outlook not so good. The trick is to cover them in oil.
This is a really important point. From what I've seen (on Youtube videos ) there's a really big difference between groups that train extensively in wrestling as a base for/in addition to swordsmanship. To paraphrase someone I know, it conditions them to be willing to invade someone else's personal space with bad intentions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smatchet
You could, but it's also quite likely that the knife would be fairly brittle, so it wouldn't be extremely practical. Yes, yourself. If you're wanting to burn somebody else, as Q99 said, you douse them in oil and set them alight. And really, something sticky like naptha would be much better.
It's not just about the wrestling though. The same groups that train wrestling intensively also have a pretty high standard for fitness and athletic ability, which is key to and developed by lots of wrestling. So it's not necessarily so much that the wrestling makes so much difference mentally as much as it makes them quick and strong. That said, wrestling is great, and yes, it does help cultivate the correct mentality. I find that knife fighting helps as well, especially with learning to accept contact from your opponent. I see your smatchet and raise you a hukari.
There's that too, though I'd add that these groups seem to be a self-selecting lot. They tend to attract more dedicated members than the average steel LARP group and the ones who can't take the training drop out pretty early on. Oookay. That thing looks like a hilariously oversized Chinese chef knife with an ergonomic handle. The choppyness appeals to the Ork in me, but I'm not so sure about the lack of a point.
Oh, it has a point. Kind of. If you thrust hard enough. It will then go into the soft things that scream and bleed.
FEDER and what was formerly (I still don't know what's up with them, mostly because I'm not that interested) ARMA Poland were/are amazing at this sort of aggression in training and fighting. Here's a good example: The willingness to close aggressively is a lot of what separates a trained fighter from Joe Layperson.
