How I Killed Your Master Page #001 to whenever we close this thread

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by krogothwolf

Also that Tree looks even more amazing when coloured. Nicely done!

I hope you're complimenting Matt, and not me.

[krogothwolf]

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

I hope you're complimenting Matt, and not me.

Both. The tree is pretty amazing on its own but the colour helps bring out all those little details even more. Well at least for someone who's half blind anyways!

I really do love Matt's style though, it's impressive.

[rpgdemon]

Well, thanks then!

[MSperoni]

I'd color it myself but I'm too busylazy

[BossMuro]

I have to say, I'm really loving Jiao's expressions in the last couple comics. He seems to be enjoying this a bit more than is healthy...

[ninjagrover]

Originally Posted by yoshi927

Sucks for left-handed people? Do you know how annoying it is to fence someone who's left handed? Argh!

Or, what, are you talking about kendo or something?

Never done fencing. Although it would be intersting to see swordsmanship from a western perspective.

I'm talking about the straight sword (Jien/Jian/Gun) and the saber (Dao). Although with the jien we pratice drills and techniques with both hands, forms are performed with the right hand. Saber less so, as it's pretty much all done with the right hand (in my experience).

When sparring against my sifu with jien, it's doesn't feel that different when he's using his left or right (he is quite skilled with either hand, he has beaten left handed people with his left [he's right handed btw]).

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by ninjagrover

Never done fencing. Although it would be intersting to see swordsmanship from a western perspective.

I'm talking about the straight sword (Jien/Jian/Gun) and the saber (Dao). Although with the jien we pratice drills and techniques with both hands, forms are performed with the right hand. Saber less so, as it's pretty much all done with the right hand (in my experience).

When sparring against my sifu with jien, it's doesn't feel that different when he's using his left or right (he is quite skilled with either hand, he has beaten left handed people with his left [he's right handed btw]).

In fencing, being a lefty has definite benefits. It pretty much screws your opponent over, because everything that they have to do is almost mirrored.


As for swordsmanship from a western perspective, in my (un?)biased opinion, I'd say that Fencing is a more efficient fighting style than Eastern styles, simply because it's based on short quick movements, and pretty much created for efficiency.

[MSperoni]

Seems to me that the most efficient sword system would be something like iaido. One of those "one cut one kill" type systems.

[rpgdemon]

Well, if we're talking efficiency, there's the Palace Hand fighting style, which was only taught to princes back in the day.

[MSperoni]

Never heard of that style before. I tried google-ing it and came up w/ nothing. Is it a sword style? Is is Asian? European? African? It might be something worth researching. I'm assuming because it's Palace "Hand" it's a hand-to-hand style, and I'm gonna structure the next bit o' this post around that assumption:

My vote still goes to something like iaido because I feel the essential purpose of combat is to kill/injure the most people in the quickest amount of time with the minimum amount of personal loss (loss either via troops or finances) or personal injury/death (in the case of individual combat). Therefore the means of doing that best is the best method of combat. I have a hard time considering any hand-to-hand style more efficient than any weapon style (even though I prefer the former) because a weapon has more reach, a higher chance of injury/death if it connects, and training someone to swing a weapon around effectively enough to kill someone is much easier and less time consuming than training someone in hand-to-hand to do the same. Add body-armor to the equation and it's no wonder weapon combat preempted good ol' fistacuffin. War/sports are very pragmatic operations (unless the one in charge is an idiot or hopelessly stubborn), that's why we use bombs nowadays instead of flying kicks.

ExtraHowever one thing that comes to my mind which seems to contradict that whole preemptive thing is samurai going from horse-archers to swordsmen. I would think horse-archery would be better, but maybe the reason they eventually became swordsmen was that it was harder to field a lot of horses, and you'd have to train a man to be a great archer and a great rider, whereas w/ a sword all you have to do is train him to be a great swordsmen.. the latter might be more cost-effective (that's how rulers think in feudal systems)..

Hand-to-hand's aesthetic appeal is nice, but if you take away the mythic quality of it and look at combat in gritty realistic terms I have to say a style built on a quick one-hit-one-kill would be the most efficient means possible (assuming we're just comparing weapons to hands, if we're taking all means of combat into the equation, my opinion is that germ warfare is the most efficient, I mean, you can kill like millions of people and you don't really even have to be there that long. All you have to do is get sick with a disease that doesn't kill you, sail off to wherever all the Aztecs or the Mayans are, cough on 'em a few times, and then leave).

This "Palace Hand" style intrigues me though, mainly cos I think it's kinda stupid to teach a bunch of princes to fight to a degree in which they can effectively kill people in hand-to-hand combat. Seems like a waste of time/resources. I would think a prince's job is primarily of a civic/political nature, and if they are taught in a military art, I would think it'd best to teach 'em in the way of military tactics so they can be at the head of an army as a commander. I wouldn't want to risk the death of a possible heir to the kingdom/empire on something as trivial as a brawl.