No, SixThumbs -- if you cannot see the difference between soldiers training skills for combat that will very likely save their lives
You fail to see that our training will actually very likely (and already has, in some cases) save our lives in situations such as mugging, fights on the street, and knife fights.
The techniques that especially my trainer uses can be applied to long weapons, short weapons, and unarmed.
And due the way we do it, which is less honour, restriction and rule-bound, it very much raises our chances of winning a fight than someone who's -never- done anything like this ever in his life. Give me a sword, give me a small stick, heck, even give me a keyring, or only leave me my own body.
I'm incredibly more effective at bringing people down with it if I have to thanks to my training.
And as opposed to most martial arts, the crazyness needed for our sports and especially our groups, it actually reduces the chance of not being able to "do it" if a life-at-risk situation comes up.
(Who doesn't want to read an opinion about soldiers, don't click the spoiler)
Soldiers should not be overrated, in my personal opinion. Every human is different, and not every soldier will be able to fight for his life as hard as a trained combatant in our group. Of course there are completely hard-ass soldiers that would whoop my ass, but it's not the majority.
The part I like least about soldiers is the indoctrination.
Soldiers follow orders. Soldiers are indoctrinated.
Warriors aren't indoctrinated. Warriors don't follow orders, but do what they feel is right.
I'd rather be a warrior, thank you.
@EverkistusYe, Holmgang Hamburg are basicly the complete nutjobs in the scene. They're all nice and fun people to be around.
They're lacking a bit finesse (probably due to their complete ignorance of historical fencing), but they fight very hard.
We train alot with them, but we want to have a bit more finesse in our fighting styles ourselves.
@SgtTeehNowhere did I say that plate armour is impervious to all weapons, but it reduces any damage immensely.
You are right - if you hit an armoured head with a mace strong and often enough, the person will -eventually- be knocked out or killed by blunt trauma.
However, how soon and how fast that happens is completely overestimated by anyone who hasn't actually got a mace bashed into his face yet.
The issue is, for that to happen with a standard-weight infantry mace, with a fully armoured soldier as your opponent, you would basicly have to bring him down on the ground and keep swining at his head when he's lying on his back. If your opponent is up, the chance of blunt trauma, neck damage and killing is reduced very much due to several factors:
1. Your opponent is a trained warrior that knows how to let blows glance off and not take them full force, or well, parry them.
2. Your opponent is moving around and trying to bring YOU down. He's not going to just stand there and take your mace to the face.
3. Thick padding was and is worn under every helmet, and that padding highly reduced damage from blunt instruments.
Thucydides
Sparring is something we could agree on.
Yes, we do have fight-clups where we go to extreme risks to get a real fight, where we don't hold back one bit and go completely nuts and berserk, sometimes even with sharp weaponry.
But the regular training, the regular fights we do, when we're not doing a fight club or something, yeah, that's sparring.
Only armor Xant wears is the chastity belt given to him by Siiem.
I got the keys.
Quiet now u bitches. 
I believe you, sir, win this thread.
