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Of course power swords have better armor slicing power. This isn't real world logic we're using, they're swords from the future sheathed in a field of energy! A field of energy like that over a hammer head is just going to make it hit harder, not pierce armor better. You're using logic from 40,000 years in the past

Now the question, how are different chain weapons going to compare. Chain axes had the same AP as mauls, so would would those look like? Ap-1, bonus attack and S+1? Or just the ap and attack minus the strength buff they should have.
Chainfists will be pretty brutal now, I imagine they'll get d6 damage instead of armourbane. That would pretty much turn them into pseudo destroyer weapons.

Deadshot wrote:

A broadsword still doesn't have the weight and momentum transfer of an axe or mace

Depends on the mace or axe and sword. Axes in particular arent amazing combat weapons, they're often really a tool improvised into a weapon, and rarely saw use amongst those who could afford better except in very specialized forms. I can swing my Longsword feder with much more force than a typical feudal levy hand axe for example.

Likewise, I dont need much force to hurt someone with a sword, I can cut someone to the bone with relatively little force with a sword, where the same force with a mace will do no more than bruise at best. With a sabre wrist cut I can leave uou with a 2" deep cut, while a mace would have just hurt but not inflicted any lasting harm with the same amount of force.

Ultimately however swords will inflict grievous wounds just as easily or easier than a mace against a soft target, maces only come out really amongst really poor or really heavily armored fighters.

But maces don't have better armour penetration. I mean that literally. They bypass it, but they don't penetrate. You shouldn't have better Armour Penetration values if the weapon is actually worse at armour penetration.

The point is that it doesnt need to penetrate. The armor is ineffective against the attack. The armor does not protect.

Same way an IS2 couldnt necessarily penetrate a Panther turret from lots of angles, but it was irrelevant because the big whomping HE shell would simply blast the turret out of its ring and kill everything inside through shock. Yeah the armor wasnt penetrated, but thats irrelevant because the armor didnt offer any protection anyway.

When it comes to melee weapons, if you're fighting someone in armor, a sword is not the optimal choice, hence the rise of the warhammer (lowet case) against armored opponents.

Even then actually, warhammers could penetrate when given a tip to do so, such were very strong relative to a sword tip (and wouldnt cut flesh the same way) and would absolutely crush and penetrate plate.


.

Which is why it has higher strength, as armour save can't protect vs an easier To Wound roll.

Which is largely nonsensical with these weapons, because the sword should be the weapon that has a far easier time wounding, while the mace should be much more effective against an opponent in armor. With a sword, you have to adopt a totally different, much more close range, much more grapply/wrestling fighting style against an armored opponent and attack gaps in the armor, with a mace you just swing and cave the armor into their flesh and crush bones beneath it without worrying about gaps or closing distance.

Those plate armour sets and swords in history were made of comparably strong materials (tempered or forged steel). 40k Power weapons have an armour-sundering, monomolecular-edged, handwavium powerfield around it that rips apart the atoms in the way, so the materials aren't of comparable strength.

And the armor is similarly advanced with high tech materials and force fields and the like. More to the point, it's almost all modeled and conceptualized off Fantasy/medieval stuff in the first place

Also, you contradict yourself because in your first point you say this

"all you need to do with a sword to run them through is just point it and step forward and it'll go right through end to end."

Which is counter to the point I've just mentioned where you say that the sword will slip and roll off plate. Can't do both.

Hrm, no, my earlier statement was in regards to thrusting a soft target, not an armored one. Very different things.

If I swing a mace at someone's chest, I may break some bones and bruise flesh, maybe even rupture an organ, but I'm not going run them through. If they are in armor, the armor may absorb a bit of that but I can otherwise inflict the same harm with enough stonk behind it. A sword will thrust right through an unarmored target with great ease and go completely through, the flesh will yield, the tip will peirce and the edges will slice as it goes through, but will do squat all against an armored plate were it'll slip or shed instead, particularly as the blade is flexible, no matter how much stonk you put on it.

Really what a sword should do is increase your ability to hit and defend, it is a much more agile and versatile weapon than a mace or axe, not be the super penetrator weapon.

nekooni wrote:

Yeah, but that's the point. A sword can be used as a piercing weapon versus armour, so it's effective at ignoring the armour.

Swords are really, really, really bad at this unless its chainmail.

Relieved that Powerfists and (presumably) Thunder Hammers aren't strike last weapons anymore. My Salamanders will be happy.

This thread is an entertaining demonstration of how little most people know about the effect of common medieval weapons. Which is fine because it's only a game, right? But then to argue that a power sword has some unknown power field space magic, etc., is just as lazy. Why then use the terms of axe, sword and maul? Don't all these weapons have the same magic techno-disruption field? And if the overall effect is relatively the same then why bother having 3 categories of weapon types when I thought the whole idea of 8th was to streamline the game?

It doesn't really matter to me; it just seems somewhat unnecessarily counter-intuitive. I just find it funny when people apply their mental gymnastics to defend whatever GW spews, cuz it's all NEW AND IMPROVED!

 amanita wrote:
...This thread is an entertaining demonstration of how little most people know about the effect of common medieval weapons...

And/or just how enthusiastic we are to get into arguments about fiddly little granular bits of a company-scale wargame in which we should probably have just stuck with "power weapons" instead of splitting them up.

 amanita wrote:
This thread is an entertaining demonstration of how little most people know about the effect of common medieval weapons. Which is fine because it's only a game, right? But then to argue that a power sword has some unknown power field space magic, etc., is just as lazy. Why then use the terms of axe, sword and maul? Don't all these weapons have the same magic techno-disruption field? And if the overall effect is relatively the same then why bother having 3 categories of weapon types when I thought the whole idea of 8th was to streamline the game?

It doesn't really matter to me; it just seems somewhat unnecessarily counter-intuitive. I just find it funny when people apply their mental gymnastics to defend whatever GW spews, cuz it's all NEW AND IMPROVED!

So you don't like how people don't understand how medival weapons work, but you also aren't ok with people being ok with a fictional scifi explanation for it either?

Its not mental gymnastics, its that most people who paint and push miniatures around aren't historical weapons buffs. I don't know how space travel works, and I know its all kinds of impractical in Star Wars, but that still doesn't mean I don't get to enjoy Star Wars.

 Don Savik wrote:

 amanita wrote:
This thread is an entertaining demonstration of how little most people know about the effect of common medieval weapons. Which is fine because it's only a game, right? But then to argue that a power sword has some unknown power field space magic, etc., is just as lazy. Why then use the terms of axe, sword and maul? Don't all these weapons have the same magic techno-disruption field? And if the overall effect is relatively the same then why bother having 3 categories of weapon types when I thought the whole idea of 8th was to streamline the game?

It doesn't really matter to me; it just seems somewhat unnecessarily counter-intuitive. I just find it funny when people apply their mental gymnastics to defend whatever GW spews, cuz it's all NEW AND IMPROVED!

So you don't like how people don't understand how medival weapons work, but you also aren't ok with people being ok with a fictional scifi explanation for it either?

Its not mental gymnastics, its that most people who paint and push miniatures around aren't historical weapons buffs. I don't know how space travel works, and I know its all kinds of impractical in Star Wars, but that still doesn't mean I don't get to enjoy Star Wars.

Bizarre internal mental-gymnastics logic says "the power field covers the blade only, not the haft, so a power sword has more power field because the blade is a bigger portion of the weapon, therefore it has better AP."

Woo mental-gymnastics logic!

D3 damage per Force Weapon wound is also a bit weird, they're dramatically less effective against targets which may now have double or triple the number of wounds they had before.

they are trying to cancel any way to one shot a model, until 8th force weapon could be very dangerous,a lucky hit and you lost a big model, they are trying to avoid those kind of things. they are doing the same with D weapons and stomps for example, and i agree with them.

Well, those bigger titan-type attacks with fixed damage of 4+ are still mostly one-shotting and individual infantry model, including characters if the wound gets though, but I'm ok with that. I'm also very ok with there not being an easy way to one-shot the more expensive vehicles.

 Fenris-77 wrote:
Well, those bigger titan-type attacks with fixed damage of 4+ are still mostly one-shotting and individual infantry model, including characters if the wound gets though, but I'm ok with that. I'm also very ok with there not being an easy way to one-shot the more expensive vehicles.

that can be accettable , it's not lost a BT for example with single 6.

I quite like the dynamic of Axe/Maul/Sword. It doesn't appear that any 1 of them is superior. Had they made Axes AP -3 and Swords AP -2, there would be a clear winner.
There also is no such thing a "Unwieldy" in 8E so the Axe needed some kind of balance.
This change also makes power weapons good again as they have a good affect on any target (unlike 6E & 7E).
Combine with the new 'to-wound' chart, Power Sword wielding Terminators are no longer garbage.

-

 Vaktathi wrote:

Deadshot wrote:

A broadsword still doesn't have the weight and momentum transfer of an axe or mace

Depends on the mace or axe and sword. Axes in particular arent amazing combat weapons, they're often really a tool improvised into a weapon, and rarely saw use amongst those who could afford better except in very specialized forms. I can swing my Longsword feder with much more force than a typical feudal levy hand axe for example.

Likewise, I dont need much force to hurt someone with a sword, I can cut someone to the bone with relatively little force with a sword, where the same force with a mace will do no more than bruise at best. With a sabre wrist cut I can leave uou with a 2" deep cut, while a mace would have just hurt but not inflicted any lasting harm with the same amount of force.

Ultimately however swords will inflict grievous wounds just as easily or easier than a mace against a soft target, maces only come out really amongst really poor or really heavily armored fighters.

But maces don't have better armour penetration. I mean that literally. They bypass it, but they don't penetrate. You shouldn't have better Armour Penetration values if the weapon is actually worse at armour penetration.

The point is that it doesnt need to penetrate. The armor is ineffective against the attack. The armor does not protect.

Same way an IS2 couldnt necessarily penetrate a Panther turret from lots of angles, but it was irrelevant because the big whomping HE shell would simply blast the turret out of its ring and kill everything inside through shock. Yeah the armor wasnt penetrated, but thats irrelevant because the armor didnt offer any protection anyway.

When it comes to melee weapons, if you're fighting someone in armor, a sword is not the optimal choice, hence the rise of the warhammer (lowet case) against armored opponents.

Even then actually, warhammers could penetrate when given a tip to do so, such were very strong relative to a sword tip (and wouldnt cut flesh the same way) and would absolutely crush and penetrate plate.


.

Which is why it has higher strength, as armour save can't protect vs an easier To Wound roll.

Which is largely nonsensical with these weapons, because the sword should be the weapon that has a far easier time wounding, while the mace should be much more effective against an opponent in armor. With a sword, you have to adopt a totally different, much more close range, much more grapply/wrestling fighting style against an armored opponent and attack gaps in the armor, with a mace you just swing and cave the armor into their flesh and crush bones beneath it without worrying about gaps or closing distance.

Those plate armour sets and swords in history were made of comparably strong materials (tempered or forged steel). 40k Power weapons have an armour-sundering, monomolecular-edged, handwavium powerfield around it that rips apart the atoms in the way, so the materials aren't of comparable strength.

And the armor is similarly advanced with high tech materials and force fields and the like. More to the point, it's almost all modeled and conceptualized off Fantasy/medieval stuff in the first place

Also, you contradict yourself because in your first point you say this

"all you need to do with a sword to run them through is just point it and step forward and it'll go right through end to end."

Which is counter to the point I've just mentioned where you say that the sword will slip and roll off plate. Can't do both.

Hrm, no, my earlier statement was in regards to thrusting a soft target, not an armored one. Very different things.

If I swing a mace at someone's chest, I may break some bones and bruise flesh, maybe even rupture an organ, but I'm not going run them through. If they are in armor, the armor may absorb a bit of that but I can otherwise inflict the same harm with enough stonk behind it. A sword will thrust right through an unarmored target with great ease and go completely through, the flesh will yield, the tip will peirce and the edges will slice as it goes through, but will do squat all against an armored plate were it'll slip or shed instead, particularly as the blade is flexible, no matter how much stonk you put on it.

Really what a sword should do is increase your ability to hit and defend, it is a much more agile and versatile weapon than a mace or axe, not be the super penetrator weapon.

nekooni wrote:

Yeah, but that's the point. A sword can be used as a piercing weapon versus armour, so it's effective at ignoring the armour.

Swords are really, really, really bad at this unless its chainmail.

Interesting argument. I'm not sure the stats don't like up better not just in the future sense but even versus current admiring technology. In the past a mace had the energy to deform the metal used to make armor. If someone were to build armor out of hardened steel much less ceramic I'm not sure the mace would be effective at that point at bypassing armor. Fast forward to 40k times and everyone is wearing ceramic hardened armor. So I don't know that the mace is really effective in that manner. Then there is the additional consideration of which part of hitting/wounding/penning does each part of the combat go into. A sword is more finesse does that go into hit or does it go into pen because in can manage to stab in weak parts of armor?

 amanita wrote:
This thread is an entertaining demonstration of how little most people know about the effect of common medieval weapons. Which is fine because it's only a game, right? But then to argue that a power sword has some unknown power field space magic, etc., is just as lazy. Why then use the terms of axe, sword and maul? Don't all these weapons have the same magic techno-disruption field? And if the overall effect is relatively the same then why bother having 3 categories of weapon types when I thought the whole idea of 8th was to streamline the game?

I've been enjoying people argue about the relative merits of particular types of weapons while treating armor as some single monolithic entity that always functions in one manner with the same weaknesses and benefits. Not to mention I don't think anyone has really been talking about effectiveness vs modern military armor or riot gear.

As for your questions:

Streamlining is good, but as with all things moderation. Unit customization is one area you can easily trim way to much if you aren't careful.

It's worth noting that, at least in the fantasy flight games, the weapons did have some justification for why they acted differently. Also they are all melee weapons so they can work even without power (so at least you still have a sword/axe/maul to defend yourself, if it breaks).



So that's the logic I've seen from an admittly questionable fluff source. In the new edition, it seems they kinda ran with a similar idea. Larger power generators can be fitted on more weapons that don't require much finesse, which means the weapons hit harder, but those weapons diffuse the powerfield over a larger area meaning worse penetration (this all supposes the sword is stabbing, or the powerfield somehow makes the axe more like a hammer?). One of those basic sci-fi things you get from people with a real basic knowledge of physics.

Didn't chainswords have an AP value way back in 2nd Ed, or am I making that up? I think there is a precedent for them being different than a standard CCW, but I could be mistaken.

I'm guessing with orks they aren't going to make a distinction between chain choppas and regular choppas. Orks have such a wide variety of mis-matched stuff within a single unit that I think they're just going to go with an approximation. That's how I always pictured ork armor saves. Many orks aren't wearing any armor, while some have enough are plates to plausibly be considered 5+, so 6+ is just an abstraction for an average amount of scrap plates and squig hide.

I am really curious to see what the rules are going to be for the choppa though. If they keep regular ork boyz at S3 (and I'm hoping they change to S4) I'm guessing they'll give choppas a +1 Strength modifier.

I like the rule that pistols can shoot in close combat. At first glance that is actually bad for slugga boyz, as they are garbage at shooting, but it's too early to say as their rules have not been released. I'm optimistic that slugga boyz will be good.

I'm moderately pleased with the way ccws are shaping up. My grey knights will all caused d3 wounds with their weapons. And their swords actually will have a purpose over halberds. We won't be disadvantaged vs other 2+ saves.

 amanita wrote:
Why then use the terms of axe, sword and maul? Don't all these weapons have the same magic techno-disruption field? And if the overall effect is relatively the same then why bother having 3 categories of weapon types when I thought the whole idea of 8th was to streamline the game?

Because choice is fun.

In the fluff power weapons all essentially function the same, with the changes in shape being mostly symbolic. But mechanically having the power spears, swords, axes, maces. staves, fists, hammers etc all use the same profile would not only be boring but would mechanically create problems. If spears had the same profile as swords then no one would ever take shining spears, whereas swords having the same profile as spears would probably be overpowered and create damage creep.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 amanita wrote:
Why then use the terms of axe, sword and maul? Don't all these weapons have the same magic techno-disruption field? And if the overall effect is relatively the same then why bother having 3 categories of weapon types when I thought the whole idea of 8th was to streamline the game?

Because choice is fun.

In the fluff power weapons all essentially function the same, with the changes in shape being mostly symbolic. But mechanically having the power spears, swords, axes, maces. staves, fists, hammers etc all use the same profile would not only be boring but would mechanically create problems. If spears had the same profile as swords then no one would ever take shining spears, whereas swords having the same profile as spears would probably be overpowered and create damage creep.

Isn't that how it used to be? All power weapons were the same stat wise no matter how they were modeled

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 amanita wrote:
Why then use the terms of axe, sword and maul? Don't all these weapons have the same magic techno-disruption field? And if the overall effect is relatively the same then why bother having 3 categories of weapon types when I thought the whole idea of 8th was to streamline the game?

Because choice is fun.

In the fluff power weapons all essentially function the same, with the changes in shape being mostly symbolic. But mechanically having the power spears, swords, axes, maces. staves, fists, hammers etc all use the same profile would not only be boring but would mechanically create problems. If spears had the same profile as swords then no one would ever take shining spears, whereas swords having the same profile as spears would probably be overpowered and create damage creep.

Sure. But if you are going to use terminology people are familiar with, why not let those terms represent their real world counterparts? For example, an axe is much better at penetrating armor than a sword but is much less handy. So why did they make a sword better at penetrating? Why not just make the axe also -1 to hit?

I don't have an issue with making a few categories; I just have an issue with GW's assessment of said weapons - and with people defending the reasoning without really thinking about it.

it strikes me that swords have a better armor peircing because they're more accurate. a blade tends to be better balanced, it's easier to be precise etc with it. thus a power sword is proably easier to direct at the weak spots of your armor (like say... the joints on a space Marines armor) the power axe, little less precise but still directable, but also hits a bit harder, thus it's got less AP, but more STR, a power maul? well at that point you've pretty much abandoned any pretense of fencing and finding weak spots and are just trying to power through his armor.

and yes medieval full plate may be partiuclarly vunerable to concussive weapons, but it does NOT follow space marine power armor would be. power armor is a LOT more complex then just an outer shell of metal

BrianDavion wrote:
it strikes me that swords have a better armor peircing because they're more accurate. a blade tends to be better balanced, it's easier to be precise etc with it. thus a power sword is proably easier to direct at the weak spots of your armor (like say... the joints on a space Marines armor)

This is an excellent example of how you can fit the rule with fluff if you think it through enough.
it's a similar reason why I like that Power Fists are a simple -1 to hit instead of striking last. Both affects represent using a heavy cumbersome weapon, but in a system in which the assaulter attacks first, -1 to hit feels better.

-

 amanita wrote:
So why did they make a sword better at penetrating? Why not just make the axe also -1 to hit?

Because then it would be strictly inferior to a power fist and the only reason anyone would ever take it would be to save a small amount of points- just like how it was pre-8th. The objective here is to make each weapon have a clearly defined tactical niche- not to have a similar dynamic to pre-8th where the only incentive for taking weapon A over B was points costs.

I just have an issue with GW's assessment of said weapons - and with people defending the reasoning without really thinking about it.

Unless GW has claimed at some point to base their weapon profiles off of real-world mechanics your criticism is essentially a strawman, attacking an argument that was never made.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
...Because choice is fun...

Cool. Now how about profiles for a power-longsword versus a power-shortsword? Power-throwing-axe versus power-handaxe, power-battleaxe, power-greataxe, power-orc-double-axe? When do the power-glaives, power-guisarmes, and power-glaive-guisarmes arrive? Why not power-knives? Power-tridents? Power-nunchucks?

(I know I'm slippery-slope/logical-extreming this argument, but there's a really big difference between choices that are relevant/meaningful and choices that exist solely to be choices. Over-specializing power weapons does nothing but make people spend more time squinting at their models/make people grumble that they've got to find a whole bunch of extra axes because GW only shipped the box with one.)

I'm pretty excited on this direction. Not because I agree with the stats and decisions on the weapons, but one of many traits of older 40K which I liked immensely was that weapons were very clearly different. If you allow the difference to exist in a game between an axe and a sword, or a heavy bolter and a lascannon - ideally they should be different enough to be viable choices in different situations.

I personally think 40K has way too many damn weapons and I think that's a bad choice, because I see a hell of a lot of copycat weapons, repeats with minor changes just for the sake of saying "Oh no, that Ork doesn't have a bolter...he's got a shoota!", etc. This is completely unnecessary. It's fine when you have maybe 5-6 armies, but 25+ factions don't all need unique rifles or missile launchers. I don't think it adds much at all to the game. Do the Eldar lose anything by returning a bright lance to a simple lascannon? No, not really.

I'd like to see the hinted at close combat weapons be the stats for the majority of armies. Unfortunately I think we'll see...Scorpion Chainswords, and Ork Chainswords, and special Chaos Power Axes, and bla bla bla. This is the kind of chunk that I find completely pointless. GW finds itself trying too damn hard to make everyone a special princess instead of just letting the stat line do the work (oddly something that stated would happen...though we're not seeing that in the current rules previews).

So, in short...happy to see weapons differentiated, as long as we don't end up with 468 other special close combat weapons. Keep it simple, stupid.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
...Because choice is fun...

Cool. Now how about profiles for a power-longsword versus a power-shortsword? Power-throwing-axe versus power-handaxe, power-battleaxe, power-greataxe, power-orc-double-axe? When do the power-glaives, power-guisarmes, and power-glaive-guisarmes arrive? Why not power-knives? Power-tridents? Power-nunchucks?

(I know I'm slippery-slope/logical-extreming this argument, but there's a really big difference between choices that are relevant/meaningful and choices that exist solely to be choices. Over-specializing power weapons does nothing but make people spend more time squinting at their models/make people grumble that they've got to find a whole bunch of extra axes because GW only shipped the box with one.)

Because you've had an entire edition to get used to the sword/axe/staff mechanic. And marines have been equipped with swords/axes/staffs and nothing else for the past every edition ever. Its not a big deal.

Darkagl1 wrote:


Interesting argument. I'm not sure the stats don't like up better not just in the future sense but even versus current admiring technology. In the past a mace had the energy to deform the metal used to make armor. If someone were to build armor out of hardened steel much less ceramic I'm not sure the mace would be effective at that point at bypassing armor. Fast forward to 40k times and everyone is wearing ceramic hardened armor. So I don't know that the mace is really effective in that manner.

As advanced as the armor may be, so too likely are the maces. Ceramic armor will smash quite easily, it will prevent penetration from something like a bullet but will still transmit shock (hence, the bullet may not penetrate but you can still be left with cracked ribs and breathless) but is then compromised and easily defeated by subsequent attacks. Hardened steel will resist deformation far better than older materials, but is also expensive and heavy and will still yield to sufficient force as something like a Power Mace would likely be imparting and will pass shock through as well.

40k is also really, at its core, still a fantasy universe, not a scifi one, and the armor and weapon designs and type reflect that.

Then there is the additional consideration of which part of hitting/wounding/penning does each part of the combat go into. A sword is more finesse does that go into hit or does it go into pen because in can manage to stab in weak parts of armor?

it's really hard to do that with a sword in practice, again, there's a reason the warhammer (lowercase) came about as it did. I dont know anyone doing HEMA fighting that could reliably land shots on unarmored weak joints in actual sparring/combat, it might happen sometimes but it'd be very hard.

BrianDavion wrote:
it strikes me that swords have a better armor peircing because they're more accurate. a blade tends to be better balanced, it's easier to be precise etc with it. thus a power sword is proably easier to direct at the weak spots of your armor (like say... the joints on a space Marines armor) the power axe, little less precise but still directable, but also hits a bit harder, thus it's got less AP, but more STR, a power maul? well at that point you've pretty much abandoned any pretense of fencing and finding weak spots and are just trying to power through his armor.

In swordplay, you dont really "aim" for weak points like that, rather there are either specific lines of attack (e.g. if holding on your right side from the shoulder and throwing a direct attack at your opponent, you're going to hit an upper quadrant target, ideally where the shoulder meets the neck on their left side if you are cutting the line correctly) or targets of opportunity (like extended hands), but not really directed aim at weak joints, that requires getting in close and doing stuff like halfswording which is as much wrestling as anything else.

You kinda get some aiming with thrusts, but, like firearms, it's pretty much center mass, not trying to hit a half inch gap under the armpit or something. I wear a gorget when sparring as a safety measure in case of a thrust to the throat (a narrow target often not coverrd by armor, such as on a Space Marine) and it has absolutely saved my life at least 3 times while sparring, but that's also out of hundreds of bouts over several years. It's really hard to land those kinds of hits

You can attack and follow through with second intent attacks or parry wayyyyy easier with a sword over a mace or axe, it handles and moves nicer, but they're awful against armor.

and yes medieval full plate may be partiuclarly vunerable to concussive weapons, but it does NOT follow space marine power armor would be. power armor is a LOT more complex then just an outer shell of metal

the basic principle is the same, power armor may be superior to metal plate, but we have equally advanced supermaces. Power armor, from the depictions we have, will fundamentally act the same way as plate as portrayed in 40k most of the time, basically it's all generally fantasy stuff given a scifi skin.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Then there is the additional consideration of which part of hitting/wounding/penning does each part of the combat go into. A sword is more finesse does that go into hit or does it go into pen because in can manage to stab in weak parts of armor?

it's really hard to do that with a sword in practice, again, there's a reason the warhammer (lowercase) came about as it did. I dont know anyone doing HEMA fighting that could reliably land shots on unarmored weak joints in actual sparring/combat, it might happen sometimes but it'd be very hard.

Yup, and if you wanted to put a weapon into a weak spot then you had the stiletto.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Darkagl1 wrote:


Interesting argument. I'm not sure the stats don't like up better not just in the future sense but even versus current admiring technology. In the past a mace had the energy to deform the metal used to make armor. If someone were to build armor out of hardened steel much less ceramic I'm not sure the mace would be effective at that point at bypassing armor. Fast forward to 40k times and everyone is wearing ceramic hardened armor. So I don't know that the mace is really effective in that manner.

As advanced as the armor may be, so too likely are the maces. Ceramic armor will smash quite easily, it will prevent penetration from something like a bullet but will still transmit shock (hence, the bullet may not penetrate but you can still be left with cracked ribs and breathless) but is then compromised and easily defeated by subsequent attacks. Hardened steel will resist deformation far better than older materials, but is also expensive and heavy and will still yield to sufficient force as something like a Power Mace would likely be imparting and will pass shock through as well.

40k is also really, at its core, still a fantasy universe, not a scifi one, and the armor and weapon designs and type reflect that.

Then there is the additional consideration of which part of hitting/wounding/penning does each part of the combat go into. A sword is more finesse does that go into hit or does it go into pen because in can manage to stab in weak parts of armor?

it's really hard to do that with a sword in practice, again, there's a reason the warhammer (lowercase) came about as it did. I dont know anyone doing HEMA fighting that could reliably land shots on unarmored weak joints in actual sparring/combat, it might happen sometimes but it'd be very hard.

BrianDavion wrote:
it strikes me that swords have a better armor peircing because they're more accurate. a blade tends to be better balanced, it's easier to be precise etc with it. thus a power sword is proably easier to direct at the weak spots of your armor (like say... the joints on a space Marines armor) the power axe, little less precise but still directable, but also hits a bit harder, thus it's got less AP, but more STR, a power maul? well at that point you've pretty much abandoned any pretense of fencing and finding weak spots and are just trying to power through his armor.

In swordplay, you dont really "aim" for weak points like that, rather there are either specific lines of attack (e.g. if holding on your right side from the shoulder and throwing a direct attack at your opponent, you're going to hit an upper quadrant target, ideally where the shoulder meets the neck on their left side if you are cutting the line correctly) or targets of opportunity (like extended hands), but not really directed aim at weak joints, that requires getting in close and doing stuff like halfswording which is as much wrestling as anything else.

You kinda get some aiming with thrusts, but, like firearms, it's pretty much center mass, not trying to hit a half inch gap under the armpit or something. I wear a gorget when sparring as a safety measure in case of a thrust to the throat (a narrow target often not coverrd by armor, such as on a Space Marine) and it has absolutely saved my life at least 3 times while sparring, but that's also out of hundreds of bouts over several years. It's really hard to land those kinds of hits

You can attack and follow through with second intent attacks or parry wayyyyy easier with a sword over a mace or axe, it handles and moves nicer, but they're awful against armor.

and yes medieval full plate may be partiuclarly vunerable to concussive weapons, but it does NOT follow space marine power armor would be. power armor is a LOT more complex then just an outer shell of metal

the basic principle is the same, power armor may be superior to metal plate, but we have equally advanced supermaces. Power armor, from the depictions we have, will fundamentally act the same way as plate as portrayed in 40k most of the time, basically it's all generally fantasy stuff given a scifi skin.

I can confirm it's difficult to hit a weakspot with a sword.

Anyway, it's worth mention that during WWII, blunt-headed penetrators were found to be superior to pointy-headed penetrators, because the latter deflected off of armor easier. I suspect that, if your sword or spear point were to strike perfectly perpendicular to the armor panel it would defeat the armor easier than a mace or hammer, but as the armor becomes increasingly angled, the mace or hammer would retain effectiveness for longer.

Also worth mention is that warhammers had a spike on the back side, also for breaching armor.

I do agree the Axe>Sword>Maul penetrating effect is kind of backwards.

On a marginally related note, I kind of want a Vigilator half-swording her Executioner Greatsword.

This thread is about 90% fluff, armchair weaponology, and hype, and I'm disappointed how few people are looking at this critically...

Napkin crunching the numbers, it seems like the differences are minuscule in actual practice. a number of combinations do the same damage because of how the to wound chart now works, which make the sword the better choice most of the time with a situation. where the situation might have a difference, it means little.

For example:
Str 4 Vs Space Marines
Sword = 4+ to wound, 6+ to save= %41.6~ to damage
Axe = 3+ to wound, 5+ to save = %44.4~ to damage

We're quite literally arguing over %2.8 This is Diablo/Borderlands levels of "Is this weapon better?"

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
This thread is about 90% fluff, armchair weaponology, and hype, and I'm disappointed how few people are looking at this critically...

Napkin crunching the numbers, it seems like the differences are minuscule in actual practice. a number of combinations do the same damage because of how the to wound chart now works, which make the sword the better choice most of the time with a situation. where the situation might have a difference, it means little.

For example:
Str 4 Vs Space Marines
Sword = 4+ to wound, 6+ to save= %41.6~ to damage
Axe = 3+ to wound, 5+ to save = %44.4~ to damage

We're quite literally arguing over %2.8 This is Diablo/Borderlands levels of "Is this weapon better?"

Well, it's not really armchair weaponology. I have some actual experience with swords and maces and spears, and Vaktathi has quite a bit more. It's more of an observation that the arrangement of AP values is in reverse of reality. Whether or not it make balancing sense from a game perspective nonwithstanding, it doesn't make a lot of sense for a mace to be the worst at defeating armor.