Deadliest Warrior/Headscratchers

Okay, time to put some ground rules in place.

• Headscratchers is for plot holes, not an excuse to complain about anything and everything that annoys you.
• If you want to complain about a single specific moment, use the Dethroning Moment of Suck page.
• They do more tests than they air, so complaining about how one type of test didn't match the other or that they only tested once is just wrong.
• They claim to take tactics, environments, and mindsets into account, the only question about that is if you believe them.
• Please remain respectful of other people. We understand if you have complaints, you're very welcome to do so. If you want to respond to complaints and support the show, you're very welcome to do so. Just don't be an ass.

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The tests

• The tests we see are often edited for viewing. The M16 vs AK-47 example (linked in the discussion below) is the most glaring that this Troper has seen. It makes it difficult to take this show seriously at any level.
• The absolute worst "test" that I noticed was testing the Maori warrior's stone club. One of the experts claimed it was stronger than steel. To test that claim, they put it against a steel knife in a brick smashing competition. Clubs crush and smash using blunt force and kinetic energy. Knives cut and slash using their sharpness. When facing brick, no knife made out of any substance (even diamond) will ever be a match for any decent club. They are different weapons designed for totally different purposes. This was the first episode I ever saw, and gave me the immediate impression that the hosts were just a bunch of fools having fun.
• The fact that the Flintlock pistol got the edge and more kills than the Ming three-barreled cannon. Sure the flintlock penetrated the armor, while the cannon didn’t, but it is extremely unreliable and takes a very long time to reload. The Ming weapon on the other hand, is wayyyyyyyyyyy more reliable and also it has 3 barrels so it takes a lot less to reload, and the armor thing is not an issue, as the weapon is accurate enough to hit the guys neck.
  • Actually it was a wheellock pistol. Why they gave the Musketeer a wheellock pistol I can't imagine, since not only were flintlocks much more reliable and advanced than wheellocks, but they were widely available to the Musketeers. Talk about a wallbanger. But anyway, the three-barrel cannon is not as invincible as it appears. The accuracy shown in the tests is deceptive since they were using a post to steady the cannon, which you might not have in the field. Also the cannon is much heavier and much less maneuverable than the pistol.
    • They probably used a Wheel-lock because the Pirates took the Flintlock...
      • Just because the flintlock was available for the musketeers does not mean the flintlock was available for that era of Musketeer. The Musketeer was created due to an assassination attempt on Louis VIII, and the Flintlock was mass-produced around Louis XII. Again, just because he had the gun, does not mean he has the gun yet.
        • That's an awfully selective criteria there. Give the Musketeers an inferior weapon because at one time, for a while, they once used it? If that's not a deliberate gimping I don't know what is.
        • They gave the Gladiator, the Celt and the Aztec a sling, and Alexander and the Centurion artillery weapons. The Wheellock is nothing compared to that.
    • The Flintlock mechanism was simpler, faster and cheaper to make and afford than the Wheellock, it's much more likely that the Musketeers would've had the Flint.
  • The Wheellock got the nod because of accuracy and penetration. In three shots at fairly close range, the the Ming cannon could not hit its target. Remember, the test was specifically to hit the breastplate to test armor penetration. The Ming cannon was not "so accurate it could hit someone in the neck," that was a one in a million shot because all of the Ming cannon shots were missing the target by several feet.
  • Also keep in mind the Wheellock Pistol racked up more than quadruple the kills of the three barrel cannon in the simulation. The "nod" has nothing to do with the simulation (which has been mentioned multiple times), they are only entering objective data ** like accuracy, armor penetration, killing potential, rate of fire, etc. The nod is only WMG on the part of the hosts.
• What bugs me is how they not only regularly matched up two types who fulfilled completely different roles in battle, but generally did the same for weapons. For example, the hit-and-run Apache versus the toe-to-toe Gladiator, as the most obvious example since it was the opening episode (Apache versus Ninja would have definitely made more sense for comparison). Or Samurai katana versus the Viking axe, despite having the Viking longsword later on against a different Samurai weapon (the giant club? Which, given how it's swung, would probably have been more logically matched up against the axe...).
  • The longsword was put up against the naginata. The longsword won the testing stage, and yet the naginata wound up facing the axe in the simulation and the katana faced the longsword in the finale of the simulation.
  • They specifically mentioned that they thought it'd be more fun matching up warriors with opposite styles and mentalities. Such as the highly specialized, slug-em out gladiators against agile versatile Apaches. And Shaolin Monks vs. the Maori.
  • That's bugged me a lot, too. Entertaining, maybe, but they act like the comparison is a) experimentally rigorous and b) meaningful. I mean, they compare warriors from different eras, who used different tactics in different regions with different equipment against different opponents to achieve different ends. Can you say "Apples to Oranges"?
    • Eh. I'll give you that at times, it just felt more like "Deadliest Equipment", and one weapon's lethality could make or break the entire "match up". Such as the Spit of Poison and the Black Egg.
      • The match-up of weapons was done for the TV part of the show; the computer apparently didn't take it into account. For example, the Maori vs. Shaolin match where the Maori basically won nearly all the individual matchups, but the Monk's one steel bladed weapon completely dominated the computer results.
        • To me, this show really seemed to be borderline racist and fetishistic towards MYSTICAL EASTERN warriors and arts. If Deadliest Warrior is to believed, every Asian is a cross between Spider-Man and Jesus and everyone else are dumb, slow barbarians with no martial skill. It was especially bad during the Maori vs Shaolin episode, when they stopped just short of saying the Maori were stupid brown savages, unworthy of facing the mighty Asian ubermensch (using weapons that have never seen battle outside of a film set, mind you.) Never mind that Europe had a huge selection of very old, effective martial arts, many of which are still practiced in some form (wrestling, anyone?) and yet others that were forgotten (look up kampfringen) due to Europe not having Japan's long periods isolation. Grappling and sword fighting isn't very useful when you're facing massed formations of riflemen, so it died off in Europe. Of course, if they had any real historians on the show instead of stuntmen and third rate actors, they might have realized this...
          • That's hardly fair, given the pasting the Ninja and later the Samurai got from the Spartan and the Ming getting curbstomped by the Musketeers for two examples. While there are plenty of issues with the show, Asian fetishism is not one of them.
            • Well, to be honest, the biggest issue is that the matchups themselves are bullshit. Ninjas (as they were, not as DW showed them) were assassins. They were not warriors. They avoided direct combat. Why would you put a ye olde hitman against an infantryman in a straight up fight? That's just stupid. That said, Samurai vs Viking and Shaolin vs Maori were pretty much assuming that Asians were invincible martial gods and everyone in the west was a clumsy moron. Even though the Samurai didn't actually have any weapons that could penetrate chain maile (The kanabo was a mostly a mythological weapon, real examples were just regular sized clubs, and the bow demonstration was done at an incredibly impractical range, and also disregarded the shield) he still won, due to the Viking relying on brute force instead of precision, and the Maori seemed to be discounted from the very beginning against the Kung fu movie weapons the Shaolin supposedly had. Even in the later battles, it was always assumed that the Asians were more precise and more disciplined, and only lost out due to the "brute force" of their opponents. It's pretty typical these days, really. Asians and Asian martial arts are precise, mytical, disciplined things, while all western arts are just brute strength. One would think that if you watched some MMA fights, you'd see differently, but I guess the invincible kung fu master trope dies hard.
• Alexander the Great vs. Attila the Hun. Dear God...
  • What a ridiculous episode. A BALLISTA V. AN AXE? HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?
    • They were "Special Weapons"; a lot of other Special Weapons in the past haven't exactly been even matches before. My only complaint was over how short the battle was. Still, it was still cool to see The Scourge of God stab Ozymandias in the neck with a sword forged from a meteorite!
    • The weapons not matching isn't the problem. The problem is them having the ballista in the first place. It is a siege weapon! It's meant to attack castles and strongholds, along with huge masses of troops. I'm convinced that if they had replaced the ballista (and possibly the gastrophetes, since it was used against masses of troops also) with a weapon that Alexander would actually be using in a one-on-one or even small squad battle, he would have taken enough kills away from Attila to win. And they didn't even factor the martial art into the testing.
      • Atilla the Hun did end up with a Lasso in return.
      • They didn't factor the martial art into the testing? Did you miss the 5 or so minutes they devoted to Rashad Evans brutalizing a ballistics gel torso? They didn't incorporate it into a weapon comparison (personally, I would have liked to see them compare it to an equivalent Hun martial art), but they definitely tested Alexander's pankration training.
      • Yes, they tested it, but it didn't have any effect on the final showdown simulations. They just talked about it, wasting 5 minutes of the show that they could have used to test his armor (which may have given Alexander an edge). They should have just counted it as a special weapon, or maybe a close-range weapon. Probably would have gotten more kills than the ballista, anyway...
        • Maybe. Armor would've only really helped Alexander on foot anyways.
  • What's really bothersome is that the show even considered Attila a "warrior" in the first place. Historically, Attila never even fought with his men on the front lines. Alexander, on the other hand, always led the Macedonian companion cavalry charge, and recovered from eight serious injuries during the course of his various campaigns. Moreover, Alexander fought the Scythians, whose fighting style was very similar to that of the Huns, on a few occasions, so he would have an effective strategy from the very beginning of the fight.
  • On that note, why was this a one-on-one fight? Attila and Alexander were both generals, they should have been commanding some number of troops for this showdown.
    • Because the show is about watching two warriors that never met fight to the death, not watching two guys barking orders at the actual fighters.
    • All of these complaints can be repeated about the Vlad the Impaler vs. Sun Tzu, with the volume turned up to eleven. We know a bit about Vlad, but for all we know Sun Tzu could have been a paraplegic. They even did a (less ridiculous) version of the ballista vs. axe, giving Sun Tzu the obviously-not-intended-for-single-combat flaming arrows.
• Look at a lot of the places where the famed nomadic horse archers come from. Mongolia, Turkey, etc. They all have wrestling deeply rooted in their culture. What's to say Attila wasn't a capable grappler himself?
• Roman Centurion vs. Rajput really disappointed me. Initially I was sure the Roman would take it, but the moment I saw that one of his weapons was going to be an artillery weapon, just like in Alexander the Great vs. Attila, I thought, "Oh, crap, the Roman's a dead man." The scorpion was supposed to be operated by a group of soldiers, with the operator being protected by others and overseen by a commander, and used to snipe targets on the battlefield that were a safe distance away and not trying to kill the operator. Like the ballista, it would have been hopelessly impractical as a weapon in single combat. They effectively left the Roman with one weapon less than the Rajput, as artillery is useless in a dueling scenario. Why, in the name of all that is holy, did they bring in that stupid scorpion when there will plenty of more practical weapons a Roman soldier could have used? Where were the plumbatae darts, which could have functioned as long range weapons instead? Where was the spatha, the sidearm of choice for a Roman leader that eventually replaced the gladius as the primary close range weapon? Where was the second, heavier pilum that every soldier would have carried? In addition to that, what about the Roman's scutum shield, which seemed to be mostly ignored during the battle? The khanda would have bounced off it, or, given the power of the weapon, sliced into the side and gotten stuck. Given that the strategy of a Roman soldier was to keep his body protected behind his shield and wait for an opportunity to strike with his gladius, this would have given him a huge tactical edge against the Rajput.
  • It's not like the Rajput wasn't gypped, too. The aara got 0 kills, and could have easily been replaced by the far more common and efficient mace. Also, the chakram could have been replaced by the composite bow used by the rajputs.
  • I was pretty unhappy at the edge with the aara vs. pilum. I actually agreed with the edge, but they did it for all the wrong reasons. The main thing was that they claimed the aara had no killing power. I was left wondering whether everybody went blind at the part where it cut a dummy's head in half.
    • A dummy without a centurion helmet.
• Green Berets vs. Spetsnaz. They immediately failed experimental design 101 by testing the two grenades under completely different circumstances, with the Spetsnaz guy throwing his in a washing machine and the Green Beret throwing his in a tall, glass box thing. Seriously guys, if you want to * prove* that one thing is better than something else, you have to do it under the same circumstances, or you end up with confounding variables. They failed again with the firearms later, which Spoony pointed out in his own review of the show. To paraphrase him, by setting up these little obstacle courses, the show is testing the user instead of the weapon. So what if the Green Beret guy hit one more target with his pistol? That doesn't prove that the Green Beret pistol is better, it just proves the Green Beret himself shot more targets in that specific situation. There are a myriad of reasons this could have happened. I will say, though, that at least in these more modern situations, they do a much better job at choosing comparable weapons. I mean, chakram vs. a scorpion? Seriously?
  • In response to the pistol thing: actually, in the pistol test we saw in detail, the Spetsnaz guy shot more targets. More to the point, I don't think they ever claimed that the test showed that the spetsnaz pistol was a better weapon by itself. This is Deadliest Warrior, not Deadliest Weapons, and they have to test skill and training as well as equipment. In fact, if you read through this page, there are more than a few complaints that they don't take skill into account enough. And in general, when it comes to handguns and accuracy, the skill of the wielder tends to matter much more than the design of the gun.
  • The problem remains though: You're testing one Spetsnaz guy versus one Green Beret with the pistol. That one guy representing one organization was 'better' than one guy representing another organization doesn't prove anything except that the one guy was better than the other guy. Why this is could have many reasons. That one has received better training from his organization is only one possibility. If you want to get an accurate idea of which are better trained and so on, you would certainly need a much larger sample than the handful of people they bring on.
    • Actually it proved even less than that. It only proved that in this one single particular circumstance one guy was better than the other guy. What if the Green Beret was just off his game that day?
    • The "Spetznaz vs. Green Beret" pistol testing becomes even more egregious when you realize that the Makarov doesn't even fire the same round as the Beretta, despite what they say on the show. The Beretta is chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum, a significantly more powerful round than the 9x18mm Makarov. The muzzle velocity is higher, to the tune of over 100 feet per second, and the bullet is heavier. Factor in the Beretta's superior magazine capacity (15 rounds vs. a maximum of 12 in the Makarov), and the longer barrel length of the Beretta, and the fact that the Beretta is a full-sized pistol with larger grips and thus easier to grip solidly, and it becomes apparent that they didn't even choose the superior weapon, simply going by the bare statistics.
  • "This is Deadliest Warrior, not Deadliest Weapons" No. The show has ALWAYS been about weapon vs. weapon. That's why they always test weapons rather than having each specialist face off against each other in a cage match. If they're going to shovel bullshit they should at least be consistent.
    • Really? And here I thought having each specialist go against each other in a cage would require a lot more paperwork.
      • Actually, another concern is raised here though. Because they shroud the workings of their SUPER AMAZING computer program in mystery, we have no idea of how it could take into account anything other than the statistics taken from their questionable tests. For instance, how would it take into account an ambush? Is it a + 5 to their agility or something?
      • No, it just provides a + 7 to hit/crit.
  • As I recall, they perform more tests than they air.
    • If this is true (do you have anywhere where they state this?), there are still a lot of loose ends. How many more tests do they run? How many different people do they have run it? Do the tests remain consistent? Do they ensure the results aren't contaminated (for example, with the pistol obstacle course above, do they make sure the first people running the course don't tell the next people about whats inside, possibly giving them an unfair advantage?)? I don't think I can just assume they are doing this right, as their failure with the grenade test and their habit of comparing apples and oranges with the weapons has shown me that these guys don't fully understand experimental design.
    • Yes they do run many more tests than they show, and they do re-run the same tests over again, the show shows the most interesting moments, but they run tests for a few days. I know they state it many times in the "DEADLIEST WARRIOR AFTERMATH" episodes you can watch on spike's web-page. Hope that helps.
      • Side note: I've been watching some of them and haven't yet heard them mention any extra tests or whether these off-screen tests are done more in line with real experimental design. However, in the Somali Pirates vs. Medellin Drug cartel Aftermath, one of the 'experts' actually straight up says that you can't compare two of the weapons (Uzi and AK-47, their roles are too different) and Max Geiger (sp?) also admitted they gave the edge to the car bomb over the RPG-7 entirely because it had "a bigger boom". I'm sorry, but these guys are no scientists.
        • One mention is in Green Beret VS Spetsnaz. Also, I don't see why they shouldn't give the edge to the car bomb--an "edge" is strictly opinion based off of what impresses them the most and has no effect on the final data, and the car bomb certainly was impressive.
        • I can't seem to find that one on the website. However, I have to say that the number of tests is not the only concern. As I have pointed out before, their methodology is also deeply flawed. It doesn't matter how many tests you do if you're doing bad tests. And about the car bomb thing, I realize that the edge they give doesn't factor into the final data, but the fact that their opinion was swayed to the car bomb entirely because it was a more impressive explosion shows, to me, very juvenile thinking on their part, which is why I mentioned it.
          • Damn, it seems the only Aftermaths on the site are of Season 2, and Green Beret VS Spetsnaz is Season 1. I'll see if I can find it hosted on another site, sorry. The extra tests line is basically "armor instantly doubles the tests we have to do", indicating that there's quite a few tests off-screen. I'm assuming, Spike being Spike, they only air the tests that appeal to the typical demographic. Also, I wouldn't say it's juvenile thinking, but having fun with the job; there's the old "Jamie want big boom" meme from Mythbusters, who are absolute professionals. Explosions are awesome, no matter whether you're an official type at work in a business suit or just a college kid wide-eyed off the latest Halo binge--if you think the explosion is more awesome than another explosion, that doesn't mean you're childish, it means you want big boom.
        • With Mythbusters though, unless it's specifically part of the myth they're testing, they usually only 'just blow shit up' when they're already done with the actual tests. With Deadliest Warrior, the problem is that as much as the 'edge' may just be opinion, this decision shows a lack of deeper, critical thinking on their part. Yes, the car bomb had a 'bigger boom', but it also requires extensive preparation prior to use, causes massive amounts of collateral damage, has a much greater chance of killing allies, and isn't portable like the RPG. I'm not saying they shouldn't enjoy what they do, I'm saying a real scientist should be able to step back and objectively assess the situation when forming an opinion, instead of deciding based on what's 'cooler'. Also, once again, more tests doesn't necessarily mean good tests.
          • Additionally, Mythbusters shows the multiple tests they do, and they tend to try and use the exact same test each time. I'll give Deadliest Warrior that sometimes the experts perform the same tests, but a lot of the tests aren't. They also don't take the human factor out of the picture or really make an attempt that we can see. Really, that's probably what it boils down to. Mythbusters doesn't claim to be scientific or experts, but shows the science and the tests. Deadliest Warrior claims to be scientific and have experts, but shows only a little bit of the science and test. We can see Mythbusters prove their work and are willing to go back and revisit the results, but Deadliest Warrior just says trust us.
          • I guess it's just down to a matter of opinion, then. Do you think the downsides outweigh the pros? They don't. I don't, either. I don't think the Cartel did, either, given how the real-life car bomb had far, far more than the test version. You do. I don't think it's fair to try and say they're any less objective because of a differing opinion. As for the quality of the other tests, we don't really know (nor will we) unless they plan on releasing footage of the tests--as much as I'd love to see them, I don't think they will. So it's really a question of if you'll take their word for it, which you already said you won't.
          • Sure, they can disagree with me about the car bomb, but according to Geiger in the aftermath of the episode, they didn't even consider any dimensions other than the 'boom'. And can you at least agree, given the evidence that they do not understand experimental design, that I have good reason not to just take their word for it that the tests are done properly?
            • I certainly agree that you can have whatever reason you'd like. That's the beauty of opinion, after all. Without seeing the entire cloth, I don't really think I've the ability to make an opinion with any real weight--I just see one test out of plenty of unaired ones, sometimes which sucks and sometimes which is cool. All we've really got with those are first impressions. So I focus more on ancient weapons stabbing things and modern weapons blowing things up.
            • That is really the major problem though. If they simply claimed their final decision was the result of opinion, I would have no issue with it, but they constantly remind us they are out to prove which warrior is deadlier with SCIENCE! while at the same time completely ignoring scientific methodology in their tests. They get to choose which tests they air, so if they really want to show what scientists they are, why would they refuse to air, or even simply release footage on the internet of, the actually valid tests if they have them?
              • I think you're asking questions that won't be given satisfying answers. Why do they choose what tests to air? You'd have to ask the producers about that. Why don't they release more footage? You'd have to ask marketing about that. What are the details of the extra tests and how tight-knit/loose are they? You'd have to ask the representatives about that. Frankly, as much as I'd like the info, I don't think any of us are going to get it.
              • Well I'm going to keep asking them anyways. Maybe I won't ever get a satisfactory answer to them, but hopefully along the way I can help people realize that the 'science' being done on this show is really no such thing.
                • Wow, we're using a lot of stars for this, and this is getting really long. This may need to get snipped later. Anyway, your original objection to the science (if I'm reading this correctly, which I may not) was to the different grenade tests--how do you know if they were the same set tests? It's quite likely that they snipped the Spetsnaz test from one set and the Green Beret test from another set. Regarding the pistols, they're testing the user as well as the weapon--undoubtedly one of their tests can be simply shooting at a target to test firearm power (as demonstrated in IRA vs. Spetsnaz), while then this test demonstrates how the user wields it. They can't exactly get all the Spetsnaz troops to come in as well as all the Green Beret troops, so they use the representatives--who are, well, representing as experts. They know the deal, so they know how the Warrior would typically use it.
    • (Un-Indenting this to put it back at a reasonable level) How do you know that wasn't the only way they tested it, even if they did do it multiple times? As easy as it may be to just dismiss complaints by saying "Well they do other tests", it is speculation on your part to claim that these tests would be any more scientifically valid than the ones they air. As I said above, they choose what tests to air, so if they had these valid tests and really wanted to show us what good scientists they are, they could. I, then, will continue to judge it based on what they do show me, which leaves me with the conclusion that they do not understand proper scientific methodology. Next, while I don't expect them to have every Spetsnaz or Green Beret soldier to test, there needs to be more than just the handful they bring on for the results gathered to be statistically sound. And finally, I used the Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz episode as an example of these problems, but they are all deeper problems with the show as a whole (along with their insistence on comparing apples and oranges), and are present throughout.
    • "Regarding the pistols, they're testing the user as well as the weapon--undoubtedly one of their tests can be simply shooting at a target to test firearm power (as demonstrated in IRA vs Spetsnaz), while then this test demonstrates how the user wields it." Except, again, you have nothing to back this up besides pure speculation. If they don't show us the tests, they may as well not have happened.
    • They may as well not have happened...to you, but they still happened. The tests I see are pretty in line with the basic scientific method: Hypothesis, sample, test, result. They put up a scenario similar to a real life situation, get the person into the mindset, and take the results. The pistol tests demonstrate how a Green Beret/Spetsnaz would handle a pistol, simple as that. We don't see the other tests, no, but I think it's easy to assume they follow the basic scientific method as well. Asking that they show multiple tests would not only double/triple/1.5/9001/etc the length of the show, but it would also cause hell on the editing team, marketing, web management, etc, because now their work has essentially doubled for almost no extra profit--as much as I'd like to see extra clips, I doubt they'd really satisfy people unless they went entirely and completely in-depth as to their methodology, and even then that'd probably cause even more of an uproar over different things. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
    • The 'basic' scientific method as you describe it works for a simple question. For instance, Question: do grenades explode? Hypothesis: Yes. Tests: Performed. Conclusion: Yes, grenades explode. Trying to compare two things presents a whole new set of problems, however. The most basic of these is that without testing the two objects to be compared under identical circumstances, you can end up with confounding variables. These confounding variables throw doubt on the results of the tests because it could have been said variables, instead of the properties of the object itself, that caused one object to appear superior to the other. This is why I brought up the grenade test. Say what you will about behind the scenes testing, what I saw on the screen was one grenade thrown in a washing machine and the other in a big glass box. Would it have been so hard for them to show both being thrown in a washing machine? I don't think so. As I said above, you can speculate all you want on the validity of these unseen tests, but it's all still just a guess, so I'll continue judging the show based on what they do show me. Another problem arises when trying to compare which is especially important when trying to compare people. We'll use Spetsnaz and Green Berets again as an example. In both organizations, there will be a significant distribution in the level of skill of the members. The problem with comparing only a handful from each, then, is that it is much more likely that, due simply to random chance, you will pick a handful of people from the lower levels of Spetsnaz and pit them against some of the best soldiers the Green Berets have to offer, or vice versa. This could cause the appearance that the Green Berets are better than the Spetsnaz as an organization, when perhaps, overall, the opposite is true. These are only a few of the problems present in trying to compare things scientifically, and that is why there are rules to scientific and statistical analysis. Rules that Deadliest Warrior routinely and casually breaks, all the while claiming to be SCIENCE! I'm sorry, but I won't agree to disagree, because the way I see it, it is demonstrably true that this show does not adhere to proper scientific methodology.
      • Another reason I offered to agree to disagree is because this is getting very long, I don't think either of us is going to convince the other, and you've said you're going to keep asking anyway ^[1]. This really needs to be snipped down--would you mind if I posted a snipped draft on your Troper page? I'd really like to streamline this without missing one of your points or accidentally misrepresenting you. That way, people can still read the essence of complaints and responses without scrolling down through five and a half (or so, depending on your monitor size/resolution) screens' worth of text.
      • I don't mind, so long as the basic argument (Deadliest Warrior is nowhere near as scientific as it claims to be) remains intact along with some of the evidence and examples provided of how it doesn't follow the rules of scientific and statistical analysis. Basically, the last paragraph I wrote summarizes my points for the most part. If I feel something is missing, I can just slip it in somewhere anyways.
• One of my bigger complaints is that they don't test technologically comparable warriors enough. Think about it, any time the technology was pretty even, the fight was much closer and much more interesting, particularly Viking vs. Samurai, Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz, and IRA vs. Taliban. I understand they want to match different warriors that never faced each other and have different attitudes towards battle, but in situations like Maori vs. Shaolin Monk, the technological edge was simply too great. Aztec vs. Maori is a very even fight between two cultures that would have never encountered one another, had different attitudes towards warfare, and both utilized stone-age technology. About the only real difference would be the Maori's size advantage. I think the show should consider mixing and matching some of the prior matchups, maybe in a sort of redemption show where some of the sides that lost face off against one another. As they say in boxing, styles make fights, which is best seen in how the samurai was able to beat one shield and spear wielding opponent, but lost to a similarly armed one. The knight will always lose to anyone who gets to bring firearms in, and likewise, if the pirate is facing anyone else with similar firearms, he probably gets smashed (think pirate vs. musketeer, for instance.)
  • The problem is deeper than that. They insist on pitting certain warriors against each other despite the fact that those warriors served very different roles on the battlefield. Spartan vs. Ninja is a perfect example. Spartan hoplites were infantry shock troops. Ninja were stealth assassins. They would never meet each other on a battlefield because both warriors served completely different functions in battle. Saying one is objectively more "deadly" than the other is the very definition of comparing apples to oranges.
    • Not only that, but the fact that they never take the warriors typical role into account can put some warriors at a massive disadvantage. Rajput Warrior vs. Roman Centurion was a great example of this. They specifically mention the Rajput were trained as single fighters whose purpose it was to pull a couple enemies from the main group and fight them one on one. The Centurion, on the other hand, was trained to fight with his Century, which contained as many as 100 men. And, well, it's a one on one fight, so it's pretty easy to see who has the advantage there. Then they went and made the Centurion's long range weapon a Scorpion...
• Viking vs. Samurai matchup: Okay, sure, I agree the katana wouldn't cut through chain mail, but the samurai developed techniques for that very purpose (Katori Shinto-ryu's maki-uchi men, mainly). The samurai would attack the places on his opponent that armor didn't protect. Plus, the test seemed to ignore that the katana could also thrust. Not as well as a longsword, yes, but still capable.
  • I don't know if the katana we were shown on air in the aired test was the real deal (has in actually capable of combat and the abuse such a sword would take.) or just a sharpened collectors replica but yeah I agree that katanas weren't just slashing weapons most of them had a hardened point at the end for thrusting.
  • Well, watch this and make of it what you will. Near the end they try cutting iron, but before you do, bare in mind the tests observed here are meant to test the man(Isao Machii) not the katana. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj1Jytiw8e0
    • While the video convinces me I want to say that ring mail would block a katana slash, not because it's made of iron but more because of how chain mail works.
• The fundamental flaw with the show is that they don't have enough time to go through all the weaponry that the team had available to them. the best example is the Vietcong vs. Waffen-SS. The VC were famous from their AK-47's, yet they couldn't USE them against the SS because the SS didn't have an equivalent weapon, so it had to be changed to a P.O.S. light machine gun. I Guarantee that the result would have been different with the AK-47.
  • Worse yet, sometimes they deliberately ignore weapons from one side or another for no apparent reason. For instance, in Viking vs. Samurai for long-range weapons they gave the Samurai a yumi bow and the Viking a javelin. Just one problem...the Vikings had bows and arrows too numbnuts!
    • In that same episode, Samurai had two swords, the wakizashi or the tanto to accompany the katana. They were a helluva lot more common than the kanabo.
    • This is almost explicitly shown in the Season 1 recap with IRA vs. Spetsnaz. When going over how they were going to "expand" the IRA's armory for comparison, they showed a table with a good twenty various guns at the very least. Yet they went with the slingshot...
    • FWIW, Viking (as well as most Western) bows of the era were pretty much shit, the famed Welsh longbow excepted. They were made up of a single, curved piece of wood whereas throughout Asia recurve, composite bows were used. The Yumi is a composite, recurve longbow - it would pretty much blow any Viking hunting bow right out of the water in terms of range, power and accuracy. It's not even a contest. Not to say that the Viking double spear throw they used wasn't stupid as shit (shit is stupid), but Vikings never were about ranged combat so it's only natural that they'd lack an edge in that department.
  • Also, with the AK-47 thing, had they just never heard of the STG-44?
    • Automatic-weapon tests sometimes failed to take into account key items such as the weapon's range, accuracy, ease of use, and reliability. Waffen SS vs Viet Cong commits this error. The Waffen rep is asked how well his gun would really stand up to the jungle (filled with gun-rusting humidity and mud, and pocked with rough terrain and Cong booby traps), then they allow him to plow through three magazines in the middle of an arid shooting range, without misfire or tactical movement.
    • I agree that they could have used the STG-44, but maybe they went for submachine guns in the episode to avoid using the AK-47 for the second time in one season? (And third time overall)
    • There's a few problems with what they did choose though. On the SS side, the MP-28 was outdated even by the time World War II broke out, was only used in any significant numbers during the Polish campaign, and was phased out quickly with the arrival of the MP-40. The MP-28, then, is not representative of the weapons the SS would have been using for the majority of the war. Maybe they did want to mix things up, but shouldn't accurately representing the weapons used by the two forces be more of a priority?
• Knight vs. Pirate struck me as the most unfair episode of all. The only weapon the pirate brought that actually penetrated the knight's armor was shown to misfire more often than actually work and it took too long to reload to get a second shot; and the test assumed the knight wouldn't be holding his shield in front of his torso as he charged the pirate. Meanwhile, every weapon the knight brought cut right through the pirate. The grenado test was especially egregious as they suspended the thing right next to a suit of armor (despite the fact that it required its user to light a long fuse and then throw it - useful when thrown aboard an enemy ship, but not exactly likely to go off anywhere near a mobile enemy; and again, they assume the knight wouldn't hold his shield up when someone threw a flaming metal ball at him) and it still doesn't penetrate it. Nevertheless, they give it an edge over a morningstar that crushed a skull to powder with a single blow on the rationale that the loud explosion could be disorienting. One would think that someone used to fighting and training wearing a metal helmet in the midst of other people covered completely in metal would be more likely to suffer from hearing loss than to be easily disoriented by loud noises. And even if you allow that the grenado might be effective as a shock weapon, that's giving "concussion" an edge over "skull reduced to powder." One of the show's mantras is "This is Deadliest Warrior, not Most (whatever non-lethal effect a weapon has just demonstrated) Warrior," and it's possibly the only time a weapon that couldn't score a lethal wound has been given an edge over a lethal one.
  • This was probably the worst simulation on the show. The pirate got numerous kills for weapons that were simply unable to pierce the knight's armor. 15 kills by a slashing weapon against an opponent in full plate? Nearly 200 kills by a weapon incapable of even damaging the knight's armor? Their "state of the art simulator", made by a company with a name right out of Harry Potter, is clearly just a medium consulting pirate ghosts.
• From Mongol vs. Comanche, they gave the Comanche two different bows for the test, one being a mildly recursive bow for the speed test, and the other being the more familiar 'D' bow for the accuracy test. To say nothing of the fact that they had a world-class horse archer on the Comanche's side, but not the same for the Mongol. Also, did they ever take the 2-to-1 range advantage into the Mongol's bow. And then there's the Glaive, where they only tested it with a thrust from foot, and not tried seeing how effective it was from horseback or the whole '360 defense' thing the Comanche claimed. Not to mention the fact they didn't have authentic Mongol armor for the tests, but instead the least amount of armor they could find (which was the exact same armor as from the Attila the Hun episode.)
  • Seconded, they really sold the Mongol short in that episode. Letting the Apache swap bows, testing the Mongol armor only against one weapon (which conveniently is the best suited to piercing armor), pitting a champion Apache archer against a merely "good" Mongol archer... Although at this point we should not be surprised that they hardly payed any attention to armor.
• From Vlad vs. Sun-Tsu, the Flaming Arrow test was a joke. Simply because the only use for it was ignored because it was a one on one fight. Guess what? You can still light the ground on fire around a single opponent. Or, my answer, because both were suppose to be military strategists. Make the whole test a Squad battle.
• Is it just me being paranoid, or does it seem like they rig the tests to give one side an advantage? Example; In Columbian Cartels vs. Somolian pirates, when they were testing the m60 and it jammed twice, it seemed very obvious that the "Jams" were dud rounds, not actual jams, and the m60 lost because of this.
  • Thats just those idiots letting random coincidences and human errors define weapons again.
  • They did apparently fake the gun test in IRA/Taliban: https://web.archive.org/web/20130522091821/http://vuurwapenblog.com/2009/10/21/spike-tvs-not-so-deadliest-warrior/
  • The reapeater crossbow vs the arbalest test was favoring the repeater. Shooting from such short distance (about 10 meters IIRC) and having most of the dummies weareing no armour took away the arbalests advantages. I dont know if they rigged it or it was just poor test design. The crossbow test in the Joan of Arc vs William the Conqueror episode was better, but they still didn't test the weapons against armour.
• What exactly is the point of the tests in the first place? Yeah, they are kind of fun to watch, but you can get simple things like a guns effective range, its caliber, and its clip size on goddamn wikipedia. To be honest, just pulling the facts off of wikipedia and comparing them would actually be much more accurate, because the way they do it now leaves WAY too much room for human error, which any idiot organizing an experiment knows is bad.
  • Cribbing stats from another source is appropriate when you're writing a research paper. When you're performing an experiment you really need to do your own tests whenever possible, if only to confirm that the officially published statistics are accurate. That isn't to say the tests they perform on this show are accurate, but the show isn't wrong for doing their own tests.
  • There's also the part where comparing stats from a Wikipedia page doesn't make for interesting viewing or sell ad time.
• One irritating was that the demonstrators would describe at length the specific moves associated with a weapon, but when it came time to test it, the style seemed to change to 'chop the carcass/ballistics gel torso as hard as you can.' A particular example was the Rajput's khanda sword, in which they extol the virtues of the whirly dance-like attack, and how after a strike, you can continue the arc for another strike... and then you see the demonstrator go Axe Crazy, but then suddenly remember the style he is supposed to be demonstrating as he awkwardly tries to add it in after a few strikes. Most of the demonstrators don't even try.
  • Well, in practice, you'd be using those moves against live targets who'd be defending instead of stationary dummies. Most followup attacks such as that are designed to take an enemy by surprise after they've parried the first attack, or finish them off before they've recovered from it. With a dummy that doesn't defend, doesn't move or stumble or flow with combat, that might seem less practical.
• Tests rely too much on the operator. From time to time you'll see inferior weapons getting the edge because the expert wielding it is a big burly man who can hit dummies with the force of a truck whereas the opposition brought in a geeky historian to present their case.
• The one test that bugged me the most was the stiletto vs bowie knife test in the James vs Capone match-up. Giving the edge to the stiletto for concealability is ridiculous; concealing a weapon only matters for surprise attacks. Getting close to an enemy without identifying yourself as a threat before stabbing them. I have no idea how that could possibly benefit the Capone gang in a match up like this where it's a clear verses match with instantly identifiable enemies. I take great comfort in the bowie knife scoring more kills in the simulation, but that it wasn't given the edge after disemboweling a pig and being proven as an effective throwing weapon still erks me.

The matchups

• Not wanting to sound like an Internet nerd, but Spartan vs. Ninja really bugged me. No way would a single ninja reveal himself in broad daylight. He would sneak into the Spartan camp and kill the Spartan in their sleep. The whole episode was just a Fan Wank to 300.
  • Eh-hem. While your complaint has merit, and yes, the Ninja would just sneak into the camp, this is about the Deadliest WARRIOR, not the Deadliest ASSASSIN. Otherwise, yes, the Ninja would kill the Spartan. So no, this is not simple Fan Wank.
    • Also, we're supposed to believe that a Spartan is so manly, he can take salt/pepper and crushed glass to the eyes, and not even be fazed by it?
    • He could have closed his eyes, you know...
    • Then why did he stumble around and try to rub his eyes?
      • Because it's a dramatized re-enactment and not a perfect true-to-life battle. You might as well ask why the Knight's visor is closed in some shots and open in others, or why his morningstar didn't kill the pirate instantly.
  • The "they would have just snuck up and killed them in their sleep" is a cop out. You could say that about any of the warriors. There's no way to test it and no way to compare it.
    • It's not a cop out. The ninja did not fight on the battlefield. Plain and simple.
      • Then they would be at a huge disadvantage * on* the battlefield, which was borne out by the tests. Again, there's no way to measure "sneaky." You could just as easily say the Spartan would sneak up on the ninja while the ninja was sleeping.
        • Fine, different answer. Spartans wouldn't have given a second thought passing a 'ninja' on a road. The reason being mentalities. A spartan is a born and bred warrior culture, 'peasants' are 'beneath them' (such was said in the episode). A Ninja is a Japanese peasant who got fed up with being treated like crap, if a Ninja didn't do the all black dead of night assassination, they would, you guessed it, attack lords and troops on the road AFTER THEY PASS THE 'PEASANT' by. In a straight fight the Spartan is understandably better, but 'war' is not defined as needing a battlefield to be won. The easier, and smarter, answer for a weaker fighter is to attack your opponent at their weakest moment. A mentality the Spartans DIDN'T HAVE.
          • This is a misconception. Very few, if any, ninjas were actually peasants. Ninja were actually samurai commanded to carry out a mission without making it obvious who their lord was. They were given crappy equipment to throw off the idea that it was a samurai at all, since no samurai would use such dishonorable weapons. Also, ninjas usually wore brown or white, not black. Brown because it was such a common color, and white because it's the color of death for the Japanese, giving them a psychological advantage.
    • Actually, some did, but not in the black outfits, which were reserved for infiltration. They fought amongst the regulars as a means to blend in. Sometimes, they would feign death and wait until a high-profile enemy target came near, and then spring from the ground and cut his throat.
  • Heh, I had the opposite reaction. Spartans fight as part of a unit. One Spartan just wandering around outside of formation... would not be remotely typical, and would not best represent the Spartans, whose training and tactics where oriented around group combat. Equally, Ninjas where just peasants, who relied almost entirely on surprise: Spartans where trained, professional warriors. I basically thought it was fan-wankery for Otakus that the Ninja didn't just get pounded into the ground without putting up much of a fight.
    • While coming from the same objection ("Spartans fight as a unit !"), I reach the opposite conclusion: the ninja should by all rights have won. Spartan phalanxes might have been the armoured threshing machines of the Bronze Age, but their strength and their entire philosophy of battle hinged on fighting as a cohesive group of anonymous badasses. In single combat, they would not have been at an advantage. The hoplon shield for example is extremely tough, but also extremely heavy and unwieldy. Can't actively parry with it, but that wasn't its purpose. The point was to hold it in place, with your buddy's shield covering half of you while the helmet and greaves did the rest. Solo and outside a phalanx, it's a heavy piece of crap you'd be better off ditching in favour of manoeuvrability. Same goes for the long spear: it's great in formation and used on another formation but in a duel it's predictable and easy to dodge. Ninjas are dodgy, aren't they ? Plus if anything, most of their (fictional) training is about killing people one-on-one.
  • The fact of the matter is, this is a fight that wouldn't happen even if the warriors had access to each other. And I despise Max's quote "this is Deadliest Warrior not Deadliest Assassin". Because depending on whether the Ninja in question is a disguised peasant, or an undercover Samurai, the Ninja might NOT be a warrior. They were always assassins, a Ninja is the very defenition of assassin. And as is the case with any professional warrior vs an assassin of the Ninja's nature, the assassin wins in every situation, except a fair fight. Even if this person had been a Ninja for years, he would be an okay fighter at best. The show has us believe the Ninja is in fact a peasant, and not a Samurai. And they had an episode on Spartan vs Samurai too, so I don't need to discuss that. This is all ignoring that they clearly used the Hollywood version of the Ninja, I'm half surprised he didn't beat the Spartan by turning into a log.
    • I had the opposite reaction: I didn't think they'd be promoting the Spartan as such a Memetic Badass had the film 300 not come out shortly before this episode.
    • The idea of Ninja being peasants comes mostly from the fact that Ashigeru(foot soldiers) would go undercover as Shinobi as well as higher class Samurai. A peasant Ninja, would know some martial arts though, as the only way I can imagine a Daimyo picking an peasant to do the work of an assassin would be if the peasant was somehow already talented in one or more of the Ninja's fields. And you don't want to send off someone to do such a dangerous thing unless they have some way to defend themselves if caught, hence, either by the Daimyo's orders or the peasant's own search for a teacher, someone would have to teach them a fighting art.
  • The entire premise of Ninjas vs Spartans on a battlefield is outrageous to begin with and the result should come as no surprise to anyone. Ninjas are assassins. Fighting an opponent on a battlefield, let alone one with incredible prowess and record historically (when they weren't being idiots and charging into suicide missions) is pointless and would likely result in any ninja's death. The match up implied that one of the two (or both) were under extreme pressure to be added...especially on a show that is basically Deadliest Arsenal.
  • Agreed. I also didn't like how they didn't take into account battle tactics. The ninja and the spartan fought each other head on, where I would imagine the spartan would charge the ninja, and the ninja would be climbing trees or just try to wear the spartan down in general.
• Sun Tzu vs. Vlad the Impaler doesn't exactly seem like a fair fight. There is one huge time gap between the two. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it looks like the biggest difference between eras that they have ever tested on the show.
  • You may be right there, but the bigger issue is more along the lines of their styles; Sun Tzu wasn't much of a fighter. Vlad was. Sun Tzu was a general, and a brilliant one. For this to have been a fair fight it should have been squad based like the Alexander vs. Attila match. The difference in weapons technology between Sun Tzu and Vlad, despite the huge amount of time the two were separated by, is less than the difference in technology between the Aztec and Zande, or the Maori and Shaolin.
  • One thing that bugged this troper was the dramatization itself. Maybe it's because I didn't look hard enough, but at no point did it seem like Sun hurt Vlad significantly at all. Granted, anyone remotely savvy knew Vlad would win when he got three edges, but they could have at least ATTEMPTED to retain drama afterward.
    • Bigger problem was the weapon choices. That stupid tiger claw wasn't even around during Sun Tzu's time period, and should have been replaced with the dagger axe, which was a standard weapon during Sun Tzu's lifetime. They also showed the wrong **** ing map of China when they were describing Sun Tzu's historical context
    • The edges mean scat at the moment of the test. Case in point: the Maori warrior got 3 out of 4 edges and still lost against the Shaolin Monk.
  • What bugs me about the dramatization was that Sun Tzu's arrows were supposed have POISON on them. Vlad clearly got hit by one of the arrows, and nothing happens.
    • On this side, all named fights are a bit confusing. There is little to confirm that the named people even used the weapons (and in Sun Tzu's case, there are few, if any, cases of him fighting in a battle as oppose to commanding it).
  • I think IRA vs. Spetsnaz was a bigger technology gap. Admittedly, that was more a special showdown more than an actual matchup.
• Are they running out of warriors to choose from? Why on earth is Sun Tzu even included, he's known for being a strategist, not a fighter. Does Real Life actually work on Authority Equals Asskicking and it's just me who hasn't noticed?
• Why exactly did they arm the yakuza with nunchaku, again? The yakuza have been around for centuries longer than mainland Japan even had nunchaku. Wouldn't the bokken have made more sense for a close-quarters weapon?
  • Because this wasn't early yakuza, this was yakuza after the invention/release/etc of nunchaku.
    • Still, the Nunchaku were ineffective, showy weapons at best. As shown in the tests, the nunchaku took three strikes to get a lethal hit in. The baseball bat took one. Had the nunchaku been, say, a bokken...
  • Because the nunchaku is actually a very effective close-quarters weapon that a well trained Yakuza enforcer would use to great effect. The problem, however, is with the way the Yakuza vs. Mafia episode portrayed the nunchaku. They portrayed it as a pure blunt-force weapon, essentially a glorified cudgel. And while the nunchaku can and often was used as a blunt force weapon, only the Filipino nunchaku styles emphasize striking. Traditional Okinawan nunchaku styles (the styles a Yakuza would most likely be trained in) emphasized gripping and locking over striking. They didn't even try to factor this into their tests. If they had, it might well have given the Yakuza the edge in the short-range weapons tests.
• I find it unlikely that a Spartan could defeat a Samurai one on one more than a couple times out of dumb luck. In a war maybe, it depends on the era of Samurai, has the arquebus been introduced to Japan yet? How about the lance? But the Samurai they showed us was from 1392 at the earliest. Not only is his equipment made form superior metal(steel as oposed to bronze), but how is it the spear gets the most kills when it bent against the Samurai's armor and was rendered unusable. If the Naginata they showcased was an ACTUAL naginata, it would've had a katana blade for a spearhead. It was a superior spear with superior reach, and the fake Naginata wasn't damaged against the Spartan's armor. Ergo, the Samurai would still have his spear and the Spartan wouldn't. And as for the Aspus, I'd like to see that spear and shield stand up to a naginata AND a horse, because Samurai were horseback warriors. Samurai vs Knight would've been much more accurate, and a more even match up.
  • You have to remember the Spartan had his Shield. That giant shield was probably the deciding factor in the match-up between both the ninja and the samurai. The shield provided both a perfect defense against anything that would be throw, swung, or stabbed at him, as well as a crucial blunt-force trauma weapon needed to by-pass that defelctive heavy armor that the Samurai wore. Combined with a full-bronze armor, there is no opening in the Spartan's defense. The naginata just can't strike past that giant shield, and should any hits slip past the shield (a feat in itself), you've got full bronze armor covering all of the vitals. It's a testament to the skill of the of the samurai warriors that they even managed to score a hit within all of that bronze. With that much metal in play, the skill of the person behind it almost doesn't matter, and the Spratans were certainly highly skilled and tough and strong.
    • Uh, no. No to all of that. Bronze is not a very strong metal compared to ANY kind of combat steel. If I were to take a sword made of iron and beat it against a bronze chest plate, the chest plate would give out long before the sword. Spartan armor left a lot bare, the neck, upper arms, and upper legs are all easy targets. Samurai armor only weighs about fifty pounds, and having worn it before, sometimes you forget it's even there. You also ignored part of my argument. The Samurai rode horses. In a war, yeah, a horse isn't easily coaxed into a shield wall with spears sticking out, but one on one, the Spartan is completely f***ed. FYI, the average horse weighs 2,000 pounds. It's the equivalent of going up against a combat vehicle with a riot shield, the Spartan still has his spear and javelin sure, but the horseback Samurai still has his naginata, which is a giant polearm with a katana for a spearhead, and it's just you, there aren't a hundred other guys throwing those javelins. The Samurai has his sights on you, you're never going to touch his horse, which might also be armored, the shield serves little more purpose than to be ironic when the sheer weight of the horse crushes him with the weapon that was meant to keep him safe. This is all ignoring that the Japanese, contrary to popular belief, were not strangers to shields. Rebellious peasant fighters used crude, makeshift shields, and Japan was right next door to China, which had shields comparable to european ones. The concept of a shield influenced to design of the Samurai's shoulder armor and one name for Samurai armor, Takenishi, means "armor that needs no shield". They had ways of dealing with them. Finally, the Arquebus, your whole argument died right there, I have a firearm, your argument is invalid.
    • And Ninja used firecrackers. Can a shield stop that? Well not a bronze one no.
    • It's pretty obvious by the test that the naginata was unable to do anything but put a slight dent in the Spartan's armor. What do you expect from taking a slashing weapon to a plate of solid metal? And it really doesn't matter which metal will "give out" before each other because these guys aren't just taking their weapons and blunting them against their armors. It's a battle, not a smithing fair. How many strikes in the same area would it take to do any significant damage to the bronze plate with a naginata, such that we would observe this lack of endurance? If your answer's anything more than 3, you're in some serious trouble, as I said before, getting past the shield to strike the armor once is a feat, anything more than thrice in the same place requires divine intervention.
    • Second, you are seriously underestimating the significance of the Spartan's shield. An amateur fighter with a wooden board strapped to his forearm does not compare against a highly trained and highly skilled Spartan armed with a shield that not only completely defends him, but is a dangerous weapon in itself. Just look at the way it is designed. There is no opening. At all. The tactics that the Samurai had to "deal" with peasant spear men clutching glorified wooden boards does not apply to a highly trained Spartan that has his shield strapped firmly to his forearm and clutched with his hand.
    • Third, what would be the purpose of giving the Samurai a horse? To tilt the odds in favor of one side in an already well-matched match-up? Honestly, this is Deadliest Warrior, not Deadliest Equipment. They tested one warrior against another to prove who is the deadliest, not who can trample over each other the easiest with the help of a 2000lb beast.
    • Fourth, the Arquebus is just one aspect of the Samurai's long history in Japan. Obviously the show creators and the experts had a very specific era of Samurai in mind, one that didn't happen to tote a firearm. And honestly, you know as well as I do what would happen if the Samurai was given an Arquebus in a match-up against an opponent who fought and dominated centuries before christ. Your purpose isn't historical accuracy, but simply whatever aspect you can dream of that would win the match-up in what you wanted it to be. Why not just give the Samurai a lightsaber? The result would be the same.
    • You're trusting this show too much, that wasn't a naginata. Look it up, naginata had katana bladed spearheads. And if a bronze chestplate were hit with a real naginata, the bronze would be severely bent and the man wearing it would have a shattered rib cage. Again, you ignored part of my argument, Chinese shields. Samurai weren't strangers to raw hide or metallic shields either. A favored technique was to put the spearhead of a yari under the shield(more commonly practiced against other spears), lift it up, then hit with the pommel end underneath the person, and bring the spearhead back into the now open opponent. Easily replicatable with the naginata. The purpose of giving a Samurai a horse? For one thing, historical accuracy, Samurai ALWAYS had horses. Unless the Spartan caught the Samurai during a casual situation, like at home, the Samurai would've had a horse. They had them for the ENTIRITY of their reign on the battlefield. You can't just throw out a huge chunk of Samurai history to make it "fair" for one side. Finally, the ONLY place where they mention the era of Samurai was on the bio page which currently tells us 940-1600, that's part of the title of their source, but it's the best we have to go on. The arquebus was a common battlefield weapon since 1550. I'm not "dreaming this up" as you put it, the fact of the matter is, Samurai had these, Spartans had a bronze shield. Effective for it's time but considering the Samurai were just short of 1600 years more advanced, I'd say the balance is tipped just a little. Arquebus or no.
    • Look, I'll trust the show for as long as they bring reputable experts on to look over the historical aspects. Neither of the Samurai experts had a problem with whatever they were testing to use the naginata, so I assume the model they were using was functionally similar to whatever was used in the past. While it may look different from what you imagine, they're the experts and they didn't have a problem with it.
    • Second, you're speculating a lot. A LOT. What makes a katana blade so much more different than the blade they tested on a show? Do you even know if the blade on the show was drastically different or not? And like I said before, you're taking a edge, and smashing it against a solid plate of metal. I'd believe that the naginata would be able to do considerable damage if it was more like a hammer, but a blade will deflect off of any hard surface, that's just physics.
    • Third, I have no doubt the Samurai had tactics to deal with XXX or moves to counter YYY. The truth is, a fight to the death is not something that is easily done apart by theory. That uh, move, you described there. Whatever a Yari is, it sounds like a hook or something to catch onto the bottom of the shield. Well, the move probably works fine and dandy if the Spartan was catatonic. But this is a fight. You cannot say, "well samurai had these tactics so they could deal with that no problem". What's to stop the Spartan from just smashing the offending hook...er with the shield? You can imagine tactics, sure. But to every tactic there's a counter-tactic; speculation and theory matter little in a real fight, it boils down to the raw skill of the fighters. My view is, the Spartan's defense was perfect. You've got bronze covering the vitals and limbs, and you've got a shield that covers from the neck to the knees. All the speculation of tactics in the world isn't going to negate the elegantly simple solution the Spartan had for defense. Standing up, as you saw in the episode no doubt, there is only the opening of the eye slits, and tiny sections of the feet. Given the Spartan's high pain threshold, we can safely say the only area where the Samurai could do damage would be the eye slits. And those are tiny openings. Looking at the Samurai's armor, can you really say the same? Against the blunt force trauma of the shield, not really.
    • About the horse, come on. They didn't pit the Shaolin against the Spartan for a reason. The samurai was perfectly capable to fight on foot, the purpose was to pit two heavily armored foes against one another (Viking v Samurai) and I have doubts that the horse would matter much as the Spartan would most likely just stab the thing and put them both on the ground anyways. There is no reason at all to throw in a horse in this fight; this show's focus was never meticulous historical accuracy and it was certainly not about running up the results of a man trampling another man with the aid of a beast in a one-way fight. This was about the Deadliest Warrior, and to muck up the balance for the sake of some obscure historical trivia that not even experts would have a complaint for being overlooked is ridiculous.
    • And the gun. I know the samurai used firearms. I also know that we have a very specific image that comes to mind when we think of samurai, and that is with a sword. Obviously, idea of samurai that the creators and the experts wanted to portray was one WITHOUT firearms. You know as well as I do that guns were never a big part of samurai culture, and we certainly know that the samurai have gone very well for the majority of their existence before firearms without missing out on a crucial element of their identity. It's not like all samurai mucked around medieval Japan, downcast because they felt that their identity as a whole desperately required something loud and noisy and needed little to no skill to fight with.
    • The gun was never a part of Samurai identity at all, I think, and it is not required to be represented in in the show, for the samurai's identity to be represented as a warrior. The same goes for a horse. Your purpose, I think, is not to honestly portray the samurai as best you can, but to seize on random trivia and footnotes of the Samurai's identity and inflate their significance in such a manner that the Samurai would certainly win the fight. And you're right there. A man sitting on a horse, clutching a bow and a firearm, would have no problem killing a Spartan armed with nothing but sharpened sticks from half-a league away. The question is, is that victor truly a samurai? Ask yourself that.
    • Except they aren't experts. One is a comedian and the other is a fight coreogropher, which is NOT the same as a real martial artist. This isn't the only instance either, read the rest of this page, you'll find a LOT of things wrong with this show. The people they gave us are not experts. I'm not speculating, I've hit swords against heavy things they shouldn't be, it's called torture testing. And blades don't deflect off, I've hit swords against steel breatplates and made pretty big dents and holes, now imagine that on a spear, with added weight and leverage against a much weaker, untempered bronze chestplate. Also you don't know what a yari is? You're trying to argue this point with me and you didn't even bother to research the word? Well to give you a crash course, it's a spear, it doesn't have a hook, it has an exceptionally long spearhead, it was an exceptionally long weapon in itself(the longest I've heard of was supposedly 17 feet) and it was significantly more common than the naginata. And what's to stop the Spartan is that that would all be one swift motion. The spear would give leverage, so you could get that shield out from under him no matter how strong he was. And Japanese spears had heavy pommel ends, so it's not just thrusting or slashing, it's also that hammering you mentioned. And by the way, the Samurai armor was inaccurate too, it would've had a neck covering for example. "Against the Spartan's high pain threshold" Okay, now you're just assuming a physical trait for your preferred warrior. How do you know Spartans had particularly high pain tolerance? And how do you know that Samurai didn't?
    • And the move isn't speculative. Check around 6:20. They didn't put the Shaolin against the Spartan for the same reason they shouldn't have put the Spartan against the Samurai. And the Samurai were always horseback warriors, they were founded as horseback warriors, this isn't "obscure historical trivia" this is an obvious and constant fact, and it doesn't cease to exist simply because it's ignored. And you cannot just spear a horse. Samurai warfare was mostly spear oriented, if it were that easy, they wouldn't have used horses, and it's just one Spartan with a spear, not a bunch of them, the Samurai also has a spear, it's likely longer than the Spartan's, and you don't just charge into a spear, that's not how mounted combat works. The Samurai would've swerved to avoid running his horse into the sharp, pointy object and swept his weapon or shield with his own spear, and with the momentum built up by the horse, that would've knocked the Spartan over whether he blocked it with his shield or not. Turns out long Japanese spears make good lances. And firearms don't need to be "a big part of Samurai culture". The fact that they were used is enough, and by your logic they shouldn't have had bows or spears either. By your logic of "the image of" the Spartan shouldn't even have armor. Most people's image of the Spartan is an armorless man with a miniscule shield that comes from 300. And the arquebus was just as common as any other weapon, they were a key element at the Battle of Nagashino and were widely used during the unification of Japan and the Japanese invasions of Korea.
    • These aren't "random trivia notes", as you called them. "The gun was never a part of Samurai identity at all, I think," You think? Look it up, this was a very common weapon on Japanese battlefields, and it's not like the people on the show are above using obscure weapons anyway, the kanabo was almost NEVER used on the battlefield. "Your purpose, I think, is not to honestly portray the samurai as best you can, but to seize on random trivia and footnotes of the Samurai's identity and inflate their significance in such a manner that the Samurai would certainly win the fight." Um, what? Were you listening to my argument at all? Samurai always rode horses in battle. This is an accurate portrayl. The arquebus was a common weapon, it wasn't restricted to the Samurai either. This is an accurate portrayl, you can't just ignore this. "A man sitting on a horse, clutching a bow and a firearm, would have no problem killing a Spartan armed with nothing but sharpened sticks from half-a league away. The question is, is that victor truly a samurai? Ask yourself that." YES! The victor is a Samurai, and a more accurate one than the one portrayed in the show.
    • Horses and the arquebus(or tempo, by it's Japanese name) were common things that the Samurai used, and your whole argument is "that doesn't count". But for the sake of argument, let's say the Samurai got into his armor, grabbed his spear and bow, but not an arquebus for whatever reason and left his horse because he just felt like going for a walk with all of that stuff that day. The Samurai would still defeat the Spartan he came across. I've listed my reasons why, if you looked into Sojutsu you'd know that there are several ways to get around the Spartan's defense. The stuff I'm telling you here isn't obscure, it's right there on That Other Wiki if you want. Or if you're a huge wikipedia naysayer there's a book I can recommend "Weapons and Fighting Techniques of the Samurai Warrior" by Thomas D. Conlan. I will gladly give you one point though "this show's focus was never meticulous historical accuracy", you're right, it wasn't. This is one of the least accurate shows on television. Scroll down a little, look at what people have already said and try to find a retort for all of it. This show isn't about historical accuracy, if it was it wouldn't be on Spike. But without historical accuracy, these aren't warriors they're portraying but loose characitures thereof. And given the overall accuracy of this show, the Spartan portrayl is likely about as accurate as the Samurai one, i.e. not. Your point about "this is the Deadliest Warrior", no, they've only ever paid mind to the weapons not the warriors themselves, and the use of the horse and arquebus makes the Samurai more deadly in a one on one fight, that's just the way it is. Anyway, this has gone on for a lot longer than it needed to, if you have anything further to say it would be in both our best interest for you to PM me instead.
      • Season 3's superior testing may have provided an answer to this admittedly long-winded argument: An armor comparison between Chingiz(Genghis) Khan and Hannibal Barca showed Hannibal's armor to flat-out fail..two things to keep in mind: 1. Chingiz's armor and weaponry are roughly in the same league as the Samurai, but probably inferior, and 2. Hannibal was the leading statesman and general in Carthage, a state which had wealth and resources that Sparta couldn't begin to dream about. So at the very least, his armor will equal that of the Spartan's, and will probably exceed it in quality. So, the comparison is valid. As far as the horse goes...it's a fair question. In this troper's opinion, the show needs to strike a fair balance between a fair fight and historical reality; if we are going to ask "who can beat who", then we need to acknowledge that some warriors will have advantages that others will not..in some ways, the above statement shaped the world we live in.
• The match-up between a Winchester and grenade in Jesse James vs. Al Capone is almost ridiculously silly: along with the ranges of these two weapons being insanely different, why would you consider a grenade a "long range weapon"? Grenades can only go as far as you can throw, while a well-made Winchester 1894 can take out Capone from 100 yards. I know they wanted a big boom at some point, but isn't there anything else that could have been given? How about instead they put the Thompson as their long range weapon and put the Colt pistols against a Winchester 1897 or Browning Auto-5 shotgun?
  • In the same episode, the stiletto was given the edge over the Bowie knife for "concealability". This is a factor that has never once entered the tests; they've always been about killing power and speed, which the Bowie knife demonstrated quite admirably. Had they been factoring in concealability (as if Jesse James couldn't conceal his knife under his duster?), the ice pick in Mafia vs. Yakuza would have done much better against sais.
• Ok, this is just to avoid the long arguments above, I'm just going to try and be polite as possible in my arguments. I have a little beef with the matchups of Pirate vs Knight, Samurai vs Viking, as well as Roman vs Rajput. For Pirate vs Knight, I find it very iffy that when during the simulation at least, the Knight hit the Pirate square in the head with his morning star, and as the test showed, shouldn't that break his skull entirely even with perhaps mild protection of that hat, necause the amount of force generated made the sim MUCH less likely than the James vs Capone episode with the knuckles and the pistol whip. For Samurai vs Viking, maybe this is just do to my ignorance on Viking weaponry and use of them, but didn't vikings sometimes angle their sheilds? I mean, their not like Spartans with a GIANT shield, and were quite quick with them, so I doubt a Kanobo could truly hit him square on. For the Roman vs Rajput, why did they use chainmail for the Centurion? Didn't they used a unique form of plate armor?
  • For the Roman armor, you're thinking of the Lorica segmentata. While the segmentata was widespread for much of the imperial period, this isn't technically a history fail on DW's part because the Romans also used mail, especially during the Republic and late imperial periods. In fact, the Wikipedia article on the mail claims, "Over its lifetime, the Hamata remained in constant use by the legionaries and it was the preferred armour of the centurions, who favored its greater coverage and lower maintenance" (This claim, however, isn't sourced, so take it with a grain of salt). To get to the point though, there are plenty of things to complain about in the Rajput vs. Centurion match (A SCORPION?!?), but to be fair to the show the Roman's armor isn't one of them.
    • Well, how about the part where they gave the Khanda the edge over the Gladius because they watched the dude using the khanda slash at some exposed hunks of beef for a few minutes before declaring it the hands-down winner? This despite the fact that the khanda, a pure slashing weapon, would have fared PATHETICALLY against Roman mail, much like the katana against the Viking mail in Ep. 2. Meanwhile, there was no inclusion and very little mention of the Scutum shield, which was basically the OTHER half of the Roman conquering machine...
      • If I remember correctly, even in the simulation the centurion either didn't even have his shield to begin with or lost it and never bothered picking it up. There was a lot of fail in that episode, in the research, the tests, and even the simulation that people usually like anyways. I'm just saying that to be fair, picking mail armor for the centurion wasn't really a mistake on their part.
  • For Viking (and, by extension, Spartan) shield vs. Kanabo the issue is YOU DO NOT BLOCK THAT THING. There are three things likely to break in that interaction; the Kanabo, the shield, and the shieldbearer's arm. Weakest link breaks first. Even if you angle for best survival, you're not going to be having a good day. This is not to say that the Kanabo will be enough to win the fight, the thing is a huge cumbersome heavy weapon. But you don't block it, with anything you wanna keep.
• This is not a strange matchup of charcaters, but rather a strange matchup of weapons, courtesy of Yakuza/Mafia. As will be oft pointed out, the Yakuza used nunchucks against baseball bats. Are nunchucks seriously the first weapon you connect with the Yakuza rather than a daggar of some kind? To make matters worse, the expert on the Yakuza brandished one in a shot at the beginning of the episode. Considering that the only serious use they put in the fight dramatization was it being used as a distraction (an attempt which failed, if memory serves), why not use a weapon that could intuitively be a match for a baseball bat? It can't be Rule of Cool, per the aforementioned failure. Really, it would have been pretty cool if they had just dueled with swords and bats, IMO.

The research

• The Vikings in episode 2 were viewed as raiders who fought for quick booty, but in reality they were just likely to be soldiers who fought for the control of the entire country, or served as a bodyguard to a chief or an emperor. Their main chose of short range weapon wasn't just an axe, it was also a sword. As long range weapons they didn't just use spears, they were just as likely to use bows with penetrating arrows, or even rocks thrown with deadly force. Their skills were underestimated, since they trained at fighting at least once every day, usually with experienced Vikings as teachers. They didn't just fight for a chance to go to Valhalla when they died, many Vikings were Christians and they were still just as Badass.
  • The Viking style was about strength, not finesse like the samurai. The typical way a Viking fought was to slash and bash against his opponent's guard until they went down, whereas the samurai would look for a weakness in the enemy's defense and then use that to tear them to shreds.
  • No! No no no no no! That isn't the typical way a Viking fought. Stereotypical yes, but just like most groups of soldiers throughout history, they had their own martial art, their own way of doing it. Mostly built around shield and 1 hand weapon. But they are not just mindless Berserks everyone portrays them as.
    • Even if the Vikings had their own martial art, they were not nearly as dedicated and refined as a samurai. A samurai's entire life was hours and hours of practice and discipline in their art. Sometimes, it would be done from dawn to dusk. A Viking, on the other hand, was not nearly as devoted or practiced as a samurai, for they had farming and other such tasks to take up their time.
      • Which is another thing that bothered me about this one: the samurai were a specialized class, roughly equivalent to European knights, but the Viking equipment used on the show would have been available to any relatively wealthy Norseman. Furthermore, if you take away the ability to fight alongside others, the Viking cannot make use of the shield wall, which was a key tactic. The samurai, being shieldless, doesn't have the same problem.
        • The battle was a singles matchup. If it were five samurai versus five Viking warriors, then the battle would have been MUCH different. The samurai were highly specialized one-on-one fighters, which is why the Mongols made short work of them at first during their two invasions of Japan. In one-on-one fights, a samurai would eviscerate any and all comers (except the Spartans, but there were a lot of things wrong with that particular episode).
          • I agree, but that's really the problem, isn't it? The premise of the show is that they're attempting to objectively define which of two selected warriors is "deadliest", but they repeatedly make unfair comparisons between warriors in the process. Warriors who fought in massed units or regimented formations simply CANNOT be fairly compared to elite one-on-one warriors. No matter what permutation you use, one side or another gets gypped. If you make it squad-on-squad the Samurai loses. If you make it one-on-one the Viking loses. The fact that one single factor can have such a profound effect on the outcome of the battle pretty much proves that the comparison is inappropriate on its face.
    • Not necessarily. The one on one style of warfare was dropped after the Mongolian invasion, and even then, that's before the katana was invented, so the Samurai they tested would have to be after that era(not that the rest of the episode was accurate enough that that would matter). I can't tell you whether or not the shield wall would've been effective because I can't tell EXACTLY what era of Samurai this is, so I don't know if the lance had been introduced yet(one of the lance's uses was to counter the shield wall). Or the Arquebus, which was not only a gun, but the Samurai had a three line formation designed to keep the enemy under a constant hail of bullets. Finally the Samurai dominated the Mongols in their second invasion, making Japan the only country to successfully resist the Mongolian Empire. It's one of the things that led them to believe that their land was divinely protected.
  • Side note on the "most Vikings were Christian thing." Not really. The mass conversions to Christianity did not occur until well after the heyday of Viking raids.
  • Also, if you take a look at the human statistics, they list a samurai's average weight at about 130 pounds. The guy demonstrating the samurai weaponry was much larger, which could seriously skew the statistics.
    • If those 130 pounds were pure muscle, which undoubtedly a well-trained samurai's body was, then no, not really.
      • The guy doing the demonstration looked to be around 200 pounds and in excellent condition. Adding seventy pounds of muscle to a frame changes things pretty dramatically. Imagine Manny Pacquiao fighting Muhammad Ali.
      • It makes sense. In the end, that sort of difference was the samurai's Achilles Heel in his fight against the Spartan (no pun intended). Instead of the 200 pound guy doing the tests, it was the Deadpan Snarker descendant, who was obviously less heavy and less muscular than the original tester. When he took the kanabo up against the shield, this troper realized that it wouldn't have the power that it had against the Viking shield because the guy wasn't able to put enough force behind the blow to break the arm holding the shield, which is what gave the kanabo the edge in the previous matchup. But what annoyed this troper the most was the fact that a NAGINATA was chosen as the medium-range weapon. MALE SAMURAI NEVER USED NAGINATAS!! What the samurai team SHOULD have used was the Jumonji Yari (aka Yukimura's weapons from Samurai Warriors) at medium range. It would've been five times as effective as the naginata, for sure. Hell, it probably would have punched straight through the Spartan chestplate (which the naginata couldn't do) and even through the bronze shield, allowing the user to disarm his opponent of said shield, which was one of the many uses of the Jumonji's secondary blades. The samurai/Spartan matchup Nerd Raged this troper most because the Spartans, though they did engage in single combat during routs, were not nearly as effective in single combat as the samurai, who essentially WROTE THE BOOK on it.
        • "MALE SAMURAI NEVER USED NAGINATAS!!" YES THEY DID. STOP YELLING AND DO SOME FRICKIN' RESEARCH.
        • I didn't yell for the most part of that, so way to totally glaze over the rest of my argument to nitpick. Even if male samurai used naginatas, it was still a poor choice for a medium range weapon. It wasn't meant to pierce armor, it was a slashing weapon. A Jumonji Yari could be used to both slash AND stab, and it would've probably won the samurai's match against the Spartan.
          • Look, I know what you're trying to get at, and I agree with you in principle, but have you, perchance, ever seen a naginata? They're perfectly good piercing weapons and far more suited to slashing than any spear. And I strongly contest your claim that a yari spear could have pierced through a Spartan's shield. Maybe I could see one piercing through a bronze chest plate, but not the shield. I don't know where you got that idea, but it certainly wasn't from any certifiable research. I certainly won't deny that the Spartan vs. Samurai episode was rife with problems (like every other episode of this stupid show) but this wasn't one of them.
            • I wasn't talking about the standard yari. I was talking about the Jumonji Yari. They're two entirely different weapons.
            • The Naginata argument has some merit but not much. It was at first traditionally viewed as a weapon for women of samurai descent because it kept the man at a distance but eventually the guys caught on that it was a pretty good weapon for them too and there are tons of accounts of male samurai using it. As for the reason the Samurai lost to the Spartan a big part of it has to do with the way Vikings fought and the way the Spartans fought in relation to the Samurai. Viking weapons were big and according to the experts they favored big overhand swings. Powerful yes but prone to overcommitment. The style the samurai used is practically designed to destroy and overcommitted opponent. I've trained in kenjutsu and fought against people using sword and shield and it's a really tough fight but it can be won if you keep calm and draw them into the overcommitment. The problem with the Spartan fight wasn't so much the size of the tester on the Samurai's side, but the Spartan Gladius' short size. The Spartan cannot fall into the trap the Viking likely fell into because he doesn't have a long enough sword and with the shield he had the samurai was at a huge disadvantage.
            • That makes sense, overall, to this troper, himself a student of kenjutsu. It was the samurai's inability to neutralize the Spartan's shield that wound up losing the match, in his opinion. But that's the thing: a jumonji yari's secondary blade, which were used to pull riders off of horses in addition to disarming peasant fighters of the shields THEY used, could very well have pierced through the bronze outer shell of a Spartan shield (steel is about 3x as strong as bronze) and embedded itself within the wood underneath, allowing the samurai to relieve the Spartan of the shield and bringing things to more even footing.
            • Really, though, Samurai could easily neutralize Spartan shields. Horseback archery (their original tactics) just would have been an unfair advantage, I suppose, considering just how badly Spartan infantry historically did against mobile missile troops.
    • The Naginata was slowly replaced by the Yari on the battlefield. Both are useful polearms but the Yari was very inexpensive to make by comparison. The problem is that that WASN'T a Naginata. It was... I don't even know what that was, but Naginata had recycled katana blades for their spearheads. Not only that but between the two spears, sure, if we ignore that bronze and a bronze age formation fighter should stand no chance against a warrior with steel, and training, armor and weapons comparible to the Knight in a one on one fight, then the spears are comparible, but in a one on one fight, I'd sure like to see how that "legendary, inpenetrable" Aspus stands up to a one ton horse. And how is it that the bronze spear gets the most kills on a warrior like that, especially considering that the spear was ruined beyond use when it went up against the Samurai's armor, and the not-Naginata wasn't damaged at all. God this show is pretentious.
    • Not all naginata had katana spearheads, but the weapon they showcased didn't look quite right to me either.
• Going from the above, the kanabo? Really? Why not something more common to the Samurai? Like a wakizashi, or a tanto. Or you know, a horse! Viking or Spartan I'd like to see one guy with a shield defend himself against a horse with an armed warrior on it protecting said horse.
• I'm pretty sure Ninja wear armor. Oh, and they don't actually wear black. >_>
  • Ninja were screwed over like Vikings in this. There were multiple skills and weapons that were just ignored (battle planning, horseback fighting, meteorology, knowledge of the land, kunai, needles). The only reason they wore black was to be a surprise in plays as people usually ignore the Kuroko (you don't even notice them in Sentai unless theres something comedic).
    • The way the show is done (Or appears to be done), simulating things like planning, tactics, etc., is much harder to check than weapons. (Personally, my guess is that green Beret/Spetsnaz would be the one most affected by this, though since those groups are more similar than the ancient matchups, it doesn't show up as much.)
  • Ninja wore black on infiltration missions. It wasn't just drama that gave them that look. They wore black in order to infiltrate castles and the like in the dead of night, usually during new moons.
    • Still, it wasn't night time and they weren't in a castle. They explained why the battle didn't take place at night, but then why would the ninja wear black? Brown or green would make for better camouflage. Heck, it could've even made the crushed glass to the eyes more effect.
    • Ninjas didn't wear black, even at night. You just stand out in silhouette to anyone with their eyes adjusted. Dark blue was the color of choice.
  • There are plenty of weapons that Ninja could've used and not only did they force him to use five, they made him use the ninjato. There's still some debate as to whether or not such a sword ever even existed, but if it did, it wouldn't have been the straight blade they showed us. In order to be able to be used in Iaijutsu the way it was described it would have to be curved, and they said the blade was shorter than the saya to cause enemies to misjudge the length of the blade. Yet the sword they showed us didn't actually have that quaility, you can see it! They're just mocking us now. So not only did they take away all but four of his weapons and force him to work outside his modus operandi(assassination) they made him use an impractical sword that didn't even exist!
    • The ninjato DID exist, but it was made as a disposable assassination weapon. All they were was a simple molten lump of steel that was poured into a mold and then sharpened when it cooled. There was no tempering or folding involved like in the forging of a katana. They were also regularly painted black in order to avoid the blade glistening in the moonlight. But they definitely weren't the "legendary" blades portrayed in the show. They were pieces of crap.
    • In the aftermath, they claim to have tested a weapon that penetrated the Spartan's armor and left it out. Just because. Oh, and by the way, Ninja were known to use firecrackers! I'd like to see an ARMY of Spartans, or anything from the bronze age hold it's own against a ninja with enough firecrackers.
      • I don't think firecrackers are the winner for you here. The Bronze Age did have fire based weapons, albeit primative ones, such as the infamous Greek Fire, but outside naval warfare they didn't see much use. The reason for this is simple: if your soldiers can hold their nerve (and you'd better believe most hoplites, Spartans particularly could), early explosives are distracting, not killers.
• Pirate vs. Knight, which I think earns the distinction as the most horribly inaccurate episode to date. There's really too much wrong in the episode to summarize, but this is a good place to start.
  • I'm not seeing a lot in that blog except for BAWWWWWWWW. At the very beginning, he just says stuff is useless over and over without even saying why, and then ignores a lot of basic facts once he DOES get into why later--such as, say, how grenado shrapnel may not pierce armor but can get into joints and grind (not to mention the blunt force trauma of an EXPLOSION), getting in melee with the boarding axe does not equal instant death via aneurysm, saying grapeshot is the "progenitor of modern shotgun ammunition" despite how shotguns are renowned for their many different types of ammunition and the spray-and-pray shots are an invention of Hollywood/

Video games, the fact that it DID pierce armor (despite how he's saying "no it totally wouldn't") and that knights DID use crossbows. This really seems to be nothing more than just another person sad his side lost and is trying to "recreate" the results to fit himself--and basically just saying "this wouldn't happen", "this couldn't happen", "this shouldn't happen". Oh, and saying the Spartan advocate was professional...? ...nnnnnno.

• • I'm didn't say that blog was 100% accurate and the Word of Truth, just that it was a good place to start. There were a lot of issues that were very real, like how the grenado was even going to be used in a one-on-one fight at all, how the crossbow would have likely eliminated the pirate before he got close enough to fire any of his weapons, and the overwhelming advantage of the knight in close-quarters combat due to his armor.
    • And the results reflected that. The cutlass and boarding axe got the least amount of kills on the Pirate's side. The crossbow got the second-most amount of kills on the Knight's side, missing first by a whole two kills.
      • That doesn't matter! The fact that, somehow, the cutlass and boarding axe got ANY kills at all is rather wall banger worthy as it is. Add in the fact that the blunderbuss was just as likely to EXPLODE in the user's hands as it was fire its shot...the Knight should have won easily.
      • Sorry but this complain is stupid. The knight is not a block of concrete. Get the blade of the cutlass or the axe in a joint or under the helm or right through the eye line and the knight is dead. The fact the battle is performed hundreds of times makes results that can be unlikely but still possible to happen. Remember that obviously ineffective, childish IRA slingshot? It still got two kills. Not to mention we don't know exactly how the goddamn program works; it may very well take into account cases where the knight is already on the ground and bleeding because of an explosion or a close shot of the blunderbuss, and the pirate just walks to him and stabs him in the face (the usual way to off knights in Real Life, BTW). The kill goes then to an "ineffective" weapon that did not make the situation possible, but was the one that made the final blow.
      • Except that the Knight would have wiped the floor with the Pirate well before ANY of those situations could have happened. Neither of the Pirate's guns could match the Crossbow's effective range, which outstripped their effective range COMBINED.
      • "Not to mention we don't know exactly how the goddamn program works"
        Sorry but I really take issue with this statement. Is this really supposed to be a defense of the show? How does the fact that we know nothing about how their simulation program works lend them any credibility whatsoever? If anything it massively detracts from the show's credibility. If we haven't the slightest clue how the program works, how do we know it's the least bit accurate? In fact, how do we even know this simulation program even exists? How do we know the outcomes aren't decided by a majority vote among the show's producers? Hell, as the Spoony One pointed out, for all we know the outcome of the fights are decided by two guys playing Civilization 3 or rolling d20s backstage.
  • I agree with just about everything that the tropers arguing in favor of the Knight have said. My complaint is that the Pirate had more than just those two guns. More often than not they got their hands on muskets. The Pirate is very lucky to have won without that weapon.
    • The musket would've been more commonplace than the cutlass. Despite popular belief, very few Pirates had a sword, and fewer knew how to use them, since not many Pirates were ever high class citizens who could learn sword techniques. The Pirates who could use them to that effect were likely ex-soldiers or other Pirates who studied under those ex-soldiers. Compared to the Knight, who would've learned several forms and done precision training as well. In this troper's opinion, the outcome of the match was right for the wrong reasons.
  • I aggree with this episodes outcome despite my love of knights, the knight of the era shown would lose to the pirate of the era shown and it fits the show if two warriors came from different eras (wallace vs shaka), you can't change history...but knights (of one sort or the other) did exist during the time of early firearms, the main selling point of armor was that the new suites were made better (new tech and designs) so the people making and selling would say "hey look, my shit can stop bullets, buy it"...so, given the circumstances of the show, pirate wins, given equal time periods and technology advancements, at least a slight advantage in knight's favor and if we reverse this equations and take the pirate back to the knight shown in said episode era, no guns or bombs, Knight twists pirate head MK style a goes home.
  • I don't think we can know for certain who really would have won, pirate or knight, but I do know that the tests they showed were totally unconvincing of the eventual result. What I saw was that the grenado, when it went off at the knight's feet, failed to penetrate his armor. I saw the pistol fail to penetrate his armor. The boarding axe did not penetrate in any way that would be dangerous to the knight, and that was when being tested against a non-moving, non-resisting target. They didn't even test the cutlass against the knight's armor, but it seems obvious it would have been ineffective. The only pirate weapon that was effective against the knight's armor at all was the blunderbuss, which misfired repeatedly on the firing range; it is all but certain that it would have been even more unreliable on the battlefield. Meanwhile, all the knight's weapons were one hit, one kill. One of them, the crossbow, in addition to being deadly, had a longer range and shorter reload time than any of the pirate's weapons, and was much more reliable. They also didn't factor the knight's horse into any of the tests, which they did do for other mounted warriors in later episodes. So all in all, their conclusion may be true, but their argument was not valid.
• As the main says, William Wallace did not use most of the weapons given to him in his episode. just one question- what would have William used? would he have the same weapons used in the Celts episode? And what did the highlanders use in the William Wallace period? I'm just curious.
  • He wouldn't have used Celtic weapons- there's roughly a thousand year gap (give or take a century) between Celtic Britain and the time of the Scottish Wars of Independence (which Wallace fought in). My understanding is that the standard weapon of a Scottish infantryman at the time was a long pike roughly twice the height of a man. This would be used by infantry in a tight circular formation called a "schrillton", with the pikes being held facing outward. This was a highly effective defence against mass cavalry charge (which English tactics of the time where largely built around, in conjunction with heavy support from massed ranks of longbowmen). Of course, such a weapon, being effectively an unwieldy lump of wood would be all but useless in a one on one Deadliest Warror style fight. Hand-weapons used by the Scottish at time time where largely similar to those used by the English (so think standard medeival weapons like those used by the knight- arming-swords, warhammers etc). Oh, and Wallace wasn't a highlander- he was born in lowland Scotland.
    • It doesn't matter, as Wallace was still primarily supported by Highlanders, whereas the Lowlands generally sat around and did nothing during the Wars of Independence.
• Okay, so the one thing that bugged this troper the most about the Spetznaz/Beret matchup was the idiotic reasoning Geiger used to justify giving the ballistic knife, an Awesome but Impractical weapon with HEAVY reliability issues(they were prone to springing out at the slightest instance), the edge over the Entrenchment Tool. First, the fact that the Beret experts chose the E-Tool, as opposed to a Spec-Ops knife(Blackhawk Tatang or a K-BAR), was pretty stupid to begin with, as Desmoulin was all "Lolz, itz a SHOVEL!!" before being shown its effectiveness in close range. But then Geiger vetoes this and gives the edge for quite possibly one of the stupidest reasons to EVER give the edge to a weapon. When Desmoulin(or was it Dorian?) cites that the E-Tool is a multi-use weapon whereas if you fire the Ballistic Knife, you're essentially DISARMED unless you get a killshot, Geiger says "Yeah, well, a BULLET is a one-time use weapon, too! You use a bullet and you're essentially DISARMED unless you get a killshot!(Paraphrasing)" Yeah...just...yeah. You see, Geiger, THAT'S WHY YOU HAVE AN ENTIRE BLOODY CLIP OF THE GODDAMN THINGS IN YOUR GUN(the actual weapon, BTW) WHEREAS THE BALLISTIC KNIFE HAS ONLY ONE BLOODY BLADE!!!!
  • Not to mention the fact that Dorian breaks the tie in favor of the Spetznaz on the grounds that the ballistic knife is actually a weapon, and the E-Tool is merely a repurposed shovel. As to the issue with weapon choice, Sonny Puzikas and Matt Anderson (Spetznaz and Green Beret experts, respectively) have both indicated that the weapons are assigned to each side by the producers.
    • It was Geiger who broke the tie, not Dorian. Desmoulin was the one who voted in favor...even then, it doesn't excuse the pathetic reason Geiger gave the edge to the Ballistic Knife.
• The Maori vs Shaolin Monk episode and the Shaolin's appearance in the game. The only weapons that are very heavily associated with the Shaolin Temple are the staff and the monk's spade. If a monk were to use twin hooks, meteor hammers, whip chains, and other such weapons, they'd have to be a recent generation of monk, because these weapon styles have only recently been taught at the temple, and they're mostly wushu styles anyway. Yet the episode portrays an earlier period Shaolin from when attacks on the temple were frequent. It's kind of ironic that the monk's two signature weapons didn't make it into the game, yet the emeici, the signature weapons of the Emei school made it in, and that he was given the jian, the signiture weapon of the Wudang school. Also sleeve arrows were assassin's weapons, they'd never be used by budhhist monks.
• the zombie/vampire ep.I'm still preying this turns out to be a fluke.I am legitamtely disgusted by this desision. I mean,not only do they open the floodgate of crap that is fictional warriors, but they do it with such a redicuolusly mis match fight.I mean what weapons are the zombie gunna use,and how can it kill any but the most nerfed of vampires?
  • And just watch: Despite having the advantage in power, speed, and strength, the vampire is gonna lose!
  • Well to be fair, the trailer for the episode makes it seem like they recognize that one on one, vampire will win every time, so it looks like it's going to be a couple vampire vs. a mob of zombies.
  • I say give this episode a chance. At first, I thought it was stupid too, but that was before the new season started. With the new simulator, the show got a lot better in my opinion, and it's going to be interesting how the match works out. According to Wikipedia, they will be having Max Brooks and Steve Niles as experts -- people that wrote books on the fictional creatures. Tee Vampire powers are: Vampire bite, claws, and supernatural senses. The Zombies have Zombie bite, Strength, and Numbers (63:1). I'm not even close to a vampire or zombies geek and I'm excited for the episode. And don't worry -- Mac already said the show is a "special", and they won't be doing episodes like this.
  • It seems like the largest risk zombies pose to vampires is to infect all their food. Unless they dogpile a vampire until sun-up it seems like they'd never be able to win. I'm curious how they'll test these things though.
• They keep using butted mail and not riveted. They should know that few butted mail armour have been found was probably not used very often and that riveted was much better. The reason why reenactors uses butted mail is that it doesn't take as much work to make the armour, but I don't think that Deadliest Warriors budget is so small that they can't afford riveted mail.
  • Riveted mail is both more expensive and more time consuming to make, full shirts would become a burden on the budget and the people making the mail. For the testing they should just make a swath of riveted mail at the center of the shirt, and test that against being punctured. But, even while riveted does provide a bit more protection from piercing weapons, it is mostly designed to prevent death by blood loss being slashed dozens of times in a battle. Plate is also just overall superior in every way, so using riveted in place of butted doesn't make that much change.

Etc, Etc, Etc.

• The Knight is a steel-age horseback warrior that uses polearms, swords, a bow-like weapon, used powerful armor and were trained from their teen years to be a warrior so pious they were almost Church Militant, and had firearms historically in their latter run but were deprived of them in the show. The Samarai is a steel-age horseback warrior that uses polearms, swords, a bow-like weapon, used powerful armor and were trained from their teen years to be a warrior so pious they were almost Church Militant, and had firearms historically in their latter run but were deprived of them in the show. Both were tested in season one. The show loves "Mystical East vs. Elegantly-Simple West." Do I need to spell out what they should have done?
  • What, matched up two nearly warrior with similar beliefs and tatics? Much more fun to match them against different warriors.
• Two things, one the hosts seem to get all excited about the Special forces (Spetsnaz Navy SEALS etc.) saying how cool they are, when other experts representing criminal and terrorists show as much if not more skill. For example the Somali dude shooting from a boat was the most impressive show of skill with firearms for the whole show so far, far surpassing anything the special forces guys have done. And second, when they show warriors as ouright evil. Maybe the SS deserve this label, but everyone else is pretty much equivalent morally. Yes the Medellin Cartel and Somali pirates do bad things, but each did some good, the cartel helped build up Medellin and the Somali pirates bring money to the local economy and keeps out illegal foreign fishers. And the CIA has done some pretty thuggish things such as overthrow a democratically elected gov in Iran.
  • • That "Somali Pirate" was ex- U.S. military. He was shooting a weapon he'd come to be familiar with without the gear and body armor that he was usually forced to shoot with (and that the former-- we don't know for how long, could be years-- Spec Ops soldiers were forced to shoot with.)
  • While I'd agree that the CIA can hardly be called the good guys, I think you're giving a lot of leeway to the Cartel and the Pirates. Please remember we are talking about cocaine dealers and violent theives, both of them murderers. Not soldiers fighting for the wrong side, actual murderers who kill the innocent and unarmed on a regular basis. A few acts of charity does not make them them ok. If anything this show tends to downplay the unpleasent nature of it combatants; the James gang might have been enndearingly close, but they were still killers and theives, the IRA had damn good reason to oppose the British, but they still planted bombs in shopping centres and shot people for being from the wrong end of town.
• Joan of Arc? What, why? She's just a farmgirl, and she never actually killed anyone. In fact, she held her banner with both hands so as to avoid using her sword.
  • She's a much better choice than say Hannibal, Sun Tzu, Vlad the Impaler, etc, who spent far less time on the actual battle lines than Joan. She was typically on the frontlines of a battlefield in 50 pounds of armor, without fighting, waving a banner (making her a huge target), and survived every single time. She was hardly a thin little waif of a girl playing soldier. Most men can barely move in that much armor, let alone wear it for hours on end without passing out from exhaustion. If she really wanted to kill someone, she probably could have.
    • Surviving on the battlefield is not quite the same as knowing how to fight skillfully.
  • Besides it does give some novelty to what is just going to amount to rehashing a knight.
    • Meh. They rehashed the Mafia in the James/Capone matchup.
  • Choosing Joan didn't really bother me. It was clear that they wanted to do a female warrior, and Faux Action Girl notwithstanding, she does tend to be one of the first images a lot of people get if they hear "Female Warrior." My big issue was doesn't it seem awfully lopsided? Joan of Arc was 15th century, William the Conqueror was 11th century. It would seem like anybody could win if they had 400 years of advancements in weapons technology and battlefield tactics on their side.
    • Insofar as the crossbows were concerned, William's composite crossbows seemed better. They were nearly twice as fast and didn't require a two-man team to operate. Having a lower range and accuracy doesn't seem so bad if you can fire four bolts in the same time it would take a steel crossbow user to shoot one.
• I know most of the matches have featured the warriors just charging at each other at random, and appreciate when they try to create a mini-story. But why would Jesse James be robbing a museum? And a museum featuring an "Old West" exhibit??
  • I thought it was cool. D:
    • Because there's no cops in a museum! Also, I guess they wanted to find the Ulysses S. Grant exhibit and use it for target practice. But I do have a question about the scenario: Who keeps a LOADED rifle in a museum display case!?
      • I'm pretty sure that the James Gang are shown to have brought the ammo with them.
    • Yeah, the Jesse James-Al Capone fight was really good. Some of the fights are so terrible, and then the James-Capone gang fight was outstanding.
  • Not complaining about the quality of the fight (one of the best), I just can't imagine why they didn't have the James Gang robbing a bank? Were they Time Traveling? Historical anachronisms have never seemed to bother the creators of the show in the past, so why attempt to justify it now?
    • I have a theory. Maybe the fights aren't all done by the same director.
    • It probably would have looked more comical if cowboys were robbing a bank in the 1920's. Plus Al Capone would have walked in and it would have looked like he was saving the day...probably not a good scenario. I thought the museum was pretty cool, and it looked like they were there to loot stuff, money in particular.
  • My first thought was...Night at the Museum.
• The end-of-episode Azande-Jaguar fight was just terrible, mainly because it did the same thing Samurai-Viking fight did: Had them start by just standing opposite one another (this time tall rocks, leaving them easy targets) and just sling long-ranged weapons at one another. Kind of ruins the whole thing when it starts out like a Pokémon fight.
  • Yeah, the final showdown was lame as could possibly be. Which is a shame, I thought this episode was the absolute best when it came to weapon matchups and demonstrations.
  • Strange... has it ever happened before when the weapon with the most kills was NOT on the winning side?
    • Yes. Viking VS Samurai, Green Beret VS Spetsnaz, and the recent Jesse James VS Al Capone and Waffen-SS VS Viet Cong.
  • It was also bad because of the ending, which was pretty much the same as the William Wallace vs. Shaka Zulu one.
    • Yeah, the fight wasn't too great, but in those 1 on 1 fights, they have to showcase the range weapons somehow. Although that Jaguar helmet was so fucking terrible. I laughed when the makraka knife got stuck
      • Here is how it SHOULD have gone down: the Zande warrior is on a hike, being stalked by the Aztec Jaguar (story wise, he needs him for a sacrifice). The Jaguar launches his spear, which was proven to lose accuracy the further the distance. With his cover blown, he charges the Zande who shoots him with the botto/prima. The Jaguar goes down. As he approaches to inspect the body, the Jaguar pulls the arrow out of his CLOTH armor, and takes a swing with his obsidian chainsaw. He grazes the Zande, but not seriously. The Zande throws his penis blade, which takes him down at legs. In desperation, the Jaguar pulls out his ceremonial dagger, the Zande does as the Queen of Hearts commands -- Off with His Head!
  • What annoyed this troper about the final showdown was how it was proven that the Botto/Prima bow could not penetrate the cloth armour of the Jaguar...AND IN THE SIMULATION THE ARROW PIERCED THE CLOTH ARMOUR!!!
    • The final showdowns really seem to do a lot of things that the tests prove couldn't happen. Such as the brass knuckles not breaking bones, arrows piercing cloth armor, and the infamous black egg to the eyes. I know it's just dramaticized combat instead of an actual real scenario, but it's still funny.
• Was anyone else bothered by them having an obviously Arabic actor portraying a Persian?
  • Could anyone else possibly tell? Not trying to sound like an asshole, but I seriously doubt anyone who wasn't already middle eastern could really tell the difference. I doubt they had a real Zulu play Shaka Zulu, but in the end, who cares?
    • That's just it, though. They at least got an African-American to play Shaka Zulu. Arab =/= Persian. The Persians were/are for a lack of a better word, "white".
    • I've seen and known a good many "white"-looking Arabs as well, as well as seen and known a good many Persians/Iranians who don't even look Middle Eastern in the least. I think it's fairly negligible, to be perfectly honest. I mean, we could go on forever about this, because I could swear that one of the guys on the Yakuza side looked just like a Mexican buddy of mine.
• Outright stating that in the case of the Viet Cong vs. Waffen SS that both sides were "bad guys". I don't think anyone here is going to go and say that the Nazis were "good guys". But "fought against America" =/= Evil. We're not in the Cold War anymore. Just because the Viet Cong fought to defend communism does not make them evil.
  • Agreed. The Nazis committed genocide on a scale the world has never seen. The Viet Cong were defending their country.
    • Not actually the case. The Viet Cong didn't start advertising their involvement until then, but they were around for a long time prior to America's involvement. They were active even before France finished withdrawing their forces. They operated under front organizations and attempted to harass South Vietnam to vote for reconciliation of the two countries. When South Vietnam refused to even hold the vote, specifically because the Viet Cong fronts were harassing non-communist allied groups to get them to vote for reconciliation, they started getting more violent and aggressive. This ultimately led to the Vietnam War. The average person in the Viet Cong, due to the cell structuring, might not have known these details, but it doesn't change the fact the organization as a whole wasn't simply "defending their country." It was a long drawn out plan involving a large amount of violence, even before the United States became involved.
  • While I wouldn't call them morally equivalent with the SS, the Viet Cong were still "bad guys." They performed rather horrific atrocities of their own-They fought a campaign of terrorism against sympathizers, stole food from some of the poorest people on Earth to sustain themselves, and used civilians as unwilling suicide bombers.
    • So? Plenty of the "good guys" have done similar things, if not worse. It is being heavy handed.
      • The fact that Americans also committed atrocities does not absolve theirs, just as theirs do not absolve ours. The question implies that the only reason the VC are considered "bad guys" is because they fought the US. That is demonstrably false.
    • I'm pretty sure that if the "good guys" were committing such war crimes en masse, international medias would be having a field day...
• Why does David Wenham use a pseudonym on this show? It's clearly him doing the narrating. Who does he think he's kidding?
  • Perhaps he's hoping to avoid Typecasting?
  • I've heard several voice actors say they use pseudonyms while doing non-union work, because doing it openly under their real name would get them in trouble. That could be the case here.
• The way they automatically eliminated all those warriors in the Back For Blood special without giving them a chance. They've been surprised by the results before (the amount of kills the Shaolin Monk got, for example), so why not give those warriors a chance to surprise them again? They have all the data. Do you know how awesome an entire episode devoted to just the battles would have been?
  • Yeah, but do you think the twin hooks had a chance of getting past the Spartan shield? Or through the Samurai's armour?
    • Maybe. Hooking the edge of the shield and yanking it away would have been a very obvious tactic to someone trained in the use of twin-hook swords. Samurai armor would be a bit trickier, though.
      • Hooking the Shield is Hollywood Tactics. Seems reasonable, true, until you look at the angle you have to be in to do it. No matter what direction you approach, you are going to place your undefended stomach right in position to get stabbed by the Spartan sword. The only way to avoid this would be the approach from behind and catch the Spartan unaware, but in the scenario, you could just stab him.
  • Heck, this troper is convinced that the Apache could have taken the Spartan. While great warriors, Spartans suffered from Crippling Overspecialization and were at their best in a shield wall. In any kind of situation involving movement and speed they were at a severe disadvantage and there are accounts where Spartan armies were cut to pieces by skirmishers armed with slings and javelins.
    • Spartan armies does not always refer to a group of Spartan Warriors. Keep in mind the Spartans also fielded Helots during battles, which are far worse equipped, poorly trained troops.
    • That's a common misconception. Spartan hoplites were expected to be able to fend off the enemy and recover their phalanx formation in the unlikely event that their lines were broken. To that purpose, Spartan military training focused just as much on wrestling and single-combat sparring as the phalanx. In a one-on-one battle against a close combat warrior like the Apache the Spartan would either discard his shield and spear and resort to his xiphos short-sword or keep his shield and resort to turtling. Not a guaranteed win for the Spartan, but, not a guaranteed win for the Apache either.
    • True but the Apache fought opponents with gunpowder I'd say he'd have a strong chance if they didn't butcher the warrior's fighting styles to make it "fair".
      • They fought opponents with gunpowder, yes, but gunpowder weapons back in those days were quite primitive. They were slow, hard to load, and inaccurate compared to a bow and arrow. Put an Apache up against a warrior with metal weapons who didn't have to rely on primitive gunpowder muskets, and the odds change considerably. I'd say an Apache's chances against a Spartan would be about 50/50. Both were very capable fighters. In the end it would come down to tactics and terrain, which this show never takes into account.
    • I suspect the Apache would have almost certainly lost in a one on one fight against a Spartan. They just don't have the weaponry to kill a Spartan without a very lucky blow at extremely close range.
      • Bow and Arrow? Useless. A shield capable of blocking multiple arrows can block one. Even then, no armor penetration means you have to hit a small area in the face or neck to kill, which would be difficult on a non-moving target at any noticeable range.
      • Tomahawk and Knife? Useless. Both can't penetrate the armor, so again, you are relying on being in very close proximity to a Spartan and getting off a neck or face shot.
      • War Club. Finally something actually capable of killing someone in armor. Except, it is incredibly slow, which means you completely lost the speed advantage. On top of that, Samurai vs Spartan proved the much larger, heavier, better made Samurai club did nothing to the shield.
    • Keep in mind that the Apache, if they ever fought opponents in armor, might have developed effective techniques to defeat it. They didn't, which puts them at a ridiculously awful disadvantage.
    • Also, keep in mind "speed" differences are not as significant as people think. Knights, Spartans, Samurai, and any heavily armored warrior spent years training in that armor to the point they moved so quickly in it that it was almost as though they weren't wearing it at all. They were Lightning Bruisers, not Mighty Glaciers.
  • Something I hadn't realized before is how the knight got cheated in the Back For Blood episode. They divided the warriors into two groups: those before gunpowder weapons and those after gunpowder. Okay, that's reasonable. But since the knight lost to the pirate (who used gunpowder) he wasn't included in the pre-gunpowder category. I think the knight could have been a contender in the decision of deadliest ancient warrior.
    • Well I tell you one thing, I would've rather seen Knight vs Samurai than Samurai vs Spartan.
    • The Knight wasn't eligible in either group. They were only considering the warriors who won, and the Knight lost to the Pirate.
      • Exactly my point. He lost to someone he shouldn't have been fighting, so he doesn't get qualified to fight someone he SHOULD be fighting.
  • I was griped by how none of the warriors in the ancient category were actually ancient. If the monks in question were to use hook swords and whip chains and any of the other weapons showcased besides the staff, they would have to be a recent generation. As warriors the Apache opperated in the gun powder era, they just didn't use gun powder. The Samurai they showed us is from 1392 at the possible earliest, William Wallace lived in the late 11th century, and I have a hard time calling the bronze age Spartan ancient.
    • No, technically the Spartan is ancient. But despite popular belief, fighting monks are not part of ancient China, and the Samurai weren't established until long after ancient Japan. Not that the Deadliest Warrior guys know or give a shit. The show's format seems to be built around the Spartan anyway.
      • "Ancient" and "Modern" were just convieniant terms. The actual division was "without guns" and "with guns." Also while not ancient in actual age the Apache was using Stone Age tech, making it the most ancient in technology level the show has had (in a tie with the Aztec and the Maori).
• The fan Backlash Completely Missing the Point in the Musketeer Vs. Ming Aftermath. Honestly, it's just half an hour of French Bashing.
  • Read the comments on Spike's website for any episode and you'll see a litany of Fan Dumb - it's one thing to complain that one of the recreation fights at the end wasn't realistic or wasn't well done, but these people seem to honestly believe that they're computer-generated simulations that decide the outcome of the episode. You'll see comments like "Come on - if he hadn't just stood there staring at the pipe bomb, the Taliban guy would have won!" No, loyal Spike TV viewer, if the IRA hadn't won the matchup, the person who wrote and choreographed the final fight (with the specific intent of showcasing all the weapons from the episode and arriving at the winner determined by the computer program by any means necessary) wouldn't have written in the part where the pipe bomb kills someone. (And that's just the ones that are there to actually discuss the episode and not just make racist comments, or brag about their own alleged martial expertise.
  • They actually film both sides winning, so the people on the show don't tell everyone on the internet.
  • Or the people complaining about how no Asian warriors won in the second season, when they're clearly forgetting that the computer is probably Chinese.
  • Is India no longer a part of Asia then? Because that was a pretty convincing win from the Rajput warrior.
    • The Rajput shouldn't have won that matchup, anyway...
• In the simulation, why would one of the Musketeers (who we have been told can afford the best weapons in Europe) want to take an enemy sword stuck in the ground?
  • This was discussed in the Aftermath; the mine system could be triggered by more than just weapons stuck in the ground. Maybe some crude form of tripwire, or maybe even remotely triggered with a long piece of wire. Naturally, the old weapon-in-the-ground trick was more practical for the Ming Warriors. As for why the Musketeer pulled it out of the ground in the simulation...well...the weapon had to be demonstrated eventually...
• Why do the warriors famous for conquering vast empires always say that "All [other side] wants to do is protect their homes/land/stay alive--they don't have a REAL reason to fight?"
  • Trash talk and cultural posturing. Simple as that.
  • I guess the logic is that raging ambition and bloodthirst count for more in a fight than the mere desire to defend your home. I'm not sure I agree with it but, there it is...
• I'll out this in here because I don't know where else it would go -- WHY DO THEY KEEP SHOWING SHIELDS BEING USED AS OFFENSIVE WEAPONS?? In Real Life shields are defensive weapons. You use them to keep the enemy's spear/sword/whatever out of your guts while you kill him. They didn't use them as clubs! And you worked around it, not throwing it out to the side every time you took a swing or stab! Sorry but this just bugs me.
  • Because there's more than one use for a shield? Did you see what the Spartan's shield could do? It could break necks and fracture skulls. Shields can be used offensively by hitting your opponent with the edge or bashing them off-balance with the flat side. Yes, a shield was primary used for defense; but as it turns out, big, heavy objects that you can hold in your hand are pretty good at killing. Did Not Do the Research, indeed.
  • Because their stupid computer program is apparently too simplistic to take differing tactics into account. All it can do is calculate the "kill quotient" of any given piece of equipment.
  • William Wallace: "My shield has a spike on it. Your argument is invalid". Seriously though, they actually take the defense into account for the shields. Many of the tests are based on using a weapon against the respective shield (ex: Kanabo against Spartan Shield).
• Geoff Desmoulin's big fat mouth. Thankfully he only does this during testing.

"THREE! TWO! ONE! LIGHT 'EM UP!!!"

• • I actually find that endearing. Silly as the show is, it's nice to see a guy who enjoys his work.
• Recently, the Deadliest Warrior got a LITTLE better in my book, due to more squad battles. But why don't they actually have a fight like an army vs an army? Would it really cost that much money to hire that many actors? Look, just hire about 15-20 guys for each side, it will make the show way better. It wont be completely realistic, but it will be a lot more realistic than a 1 on 1 fight, and it will let them take tactics into account. Why are they always so concerned with a 1 on 1 fight anyway when, as explained earlier, a one on one fight is pointless, especially when some warriors (like the Spartan) are specifically designed to fight in an army.
  • I'm going to disagree that an army vs. army fight would be better. The squad battles put a reasonably sized amount of warriors into a fight and present a realistic situation. Not every warrior even fights in groups that large, such as the Navy SEALs. For other warriors that might have fought in larger groups, there doesn't need to be 15 guys when 5 is just fine. One-on-one battles aren't pointless when they're tested 1,000 times, and besides, the show is supposed to be about mano-a-mano, Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny fights anyway.
  • But thats just it... Mano y Mano fights are POINTLESS. It severely under powers people like the Spartan. Plus, I have no problem with special forces units or criminal syndicates fighting is small squads, but when you've got a group that requires team cooperation a large scale (Spartans, Centruions, Pirates) then the fights just come off as pointless. Plus, how am I suppose to know that the simulation is accurate? They never show the program. Squad battles just plain don't work in ancient warfare simulations, case in point, Attila VS Alexander. The point of the huns is that they rode around on horses and bombarded you with arrows , keeping out of range of their enemy and running at the sign of trouble, and the point of alexander the greats men was that they formed phalanxes with 12 foot pikes to kill everything in front of them as they marched forward. In the actual simulation, they use siege weapons even though those are designed to siege cities, and have the huns only fight on the ground.
    • That's one of the biggest fallacies of this show. The hosts frequently (and I mean almost every single episode) mistake the very point and purpose of the weapons and the warriors being profiled. Example 1: Spartan vs Ninja. Ninja were spies and assassins whose primary defense was stealth. Spartan hoplites were regimented foot-soldiers who ALWAYS fought as part of a large unit with dozens or hundreds of other Spartans to back them up. The scenario depicted on the show would never happen in real life. Even if you imagined an alternate reality where Japan and Sparta were somehow at war with one another, it would never happen. The Spartans would never send one fully armed and armored hoplite against a ninja. They would've sent a huge troop of hoplites capable of forming an impenetrable shield wall to hold off enemy soldiers. And the Japanese would never send a ninja out to challenge a heavily armed and armored enemy fighter in open combat. They would've sent the ninja to sneak into the Spartan camp at night and slit their commander's throat or poison their food and water supplies. The point is, BOTH are useful and effective warriors, but BOTH intended for completely different situations and can't be fairly compared to each other. Example 2: In Al Capone vs Jessie James they put a Winchester rifle up against a pineapple hand grenade (as part of the "special weapons" test, IIRC), completely disregarding the fact that no one would ever use a hand grenade in the same situation that you would use a rifle. The very idea that you can make a valid comparison between a firearm and an anti-personnel explosive device is ridiculous. Again, BOTH are useful and effective, but BOTH are used in entirely different situations and can't be compared. There are countless other examples (seriously, I could list at least one fallacious comparison from almost every episode of this show) but I think I've made my point.
      • On Spartan/Ninja: The argument above is one of the more annoying and whiny ones around (Since it is a theoretical show, and having one on one fight like these is definitely a Rule of Fun deal). As for weapons comparisons, even if the show were being more realistic with them, it's unlikely that all weapons could be slotted into neatly compared categories, and as a result, odd comparisons like these will stick around. (Which still leaves the issue of how, say, alternative uses aren't considered when picking edges.)
      • Just because you don't like it doesn't make the argument "annoying" or "whiny". The simple fact of the matter is you can't make a fair comparison between heavy infantry and spies/assassins. And you certainly can't declare that one is objectively more "deadly" than the other. BOTH are useful and deadly when in their native element. Take one of them out of their native element and it's no wonder that they get trounced. Also, the Rule of Fun does not apply here. The frustration of watching these idiots make the same obvious mistakes over and over again completely negates whatever fun might otherwise be derived from this show. It would be one thing if they were just doing this for fun and they made it clear that nothing they say has any real basis in reality, but the hosts go out of their way to portray this as a serious, objective, and fair comparison between two different warriors. That was, after all, the original basis of the show's appeal. The tagline is "Who. Is. Deadliest?" not "Who would be the most fun to watch in a choreographed fight scene?". You can't claim to be realistic on one hand and then say "realism doesn't matter, it's all just for fun" when someone points out a glaring flaw in your method.
        • I've heard the above points before, the argument is still quite whiny and pointless. The show, even if it were being done more honestly , with better research, etc., is a completely theoretical exercise, and a lot of simplifications would need to be made. (The show's not going to measure, say, the ability of Vikings and Samurai to assemble ships and supplies, sail to a neutral location, get time travelled to the same time, tan fight battles with different sized armies, do similar comparisons of Vikings and Samuri sailing to each other's homelands, than fuse the results, it will simply assume all that extra stuff away and do equal sized groups of the two fighters.). In the case of Spartan vs. Ninja, the theoretical exercise is between a single Spartan and a single Ninja. In addition, a lot of people seem hugely invested in "The spartan is a group fighter! the Ninja would have killed the spartan in his sleep!", while completely missing other similar examples, than may not involve warriors out of their element. (Vikings fighting in group with shield walls, Centurions, Immortals, and probably a bunch of others that I forget, fighting not only in large groups, but in large groups with different sorts of supporting soldiers, for some examples) Yet, for some reason, all the focus is on whining about how "the ninja would have killed the spartan in his sleep".
          • You're not listening. The show purports to be a serious, objective, scientific comparison between historical warriors. The complaint that they are using improper tests or not taking realistic scenarios into account is a perfectly valid complaint. Again, just because you don't like the complaint does not make the complaint "whiny" or "pointless". If the producers didn't want to get hit with this sort of complaint they shouldn't have advertised their show as being rooted in science and objective reasoning.
          • "The frustration of watching these idiots make the same obvious mistakes over and over again completely negates whatever fun might otherwise be derived from this show". How is that not whining? The show is "Deadliest Warrior" not "Deadliest Army" nor "Deadliest tactician in completely accurrate historical situation". And the science they claim to use is still billed as to test the warrior's weapons. The only reason they make squad fights in gunpowder battles is to make sure the battle isn't decided by stray bullets.
          • "How is that not whining?" Um, because it's exactly correct? The show is a stupid mish-mash of bad science and moronic frat-boy arguments between the "specialists" about who has the bigger cock, and yet it purports to be a serious, objective, and scientific comparison. If they didn't want to get hit with complaints about bad science then they shouldn't make patently false claims of being a science-based show. Don't pretend to be a scientist when you're not, and people won't yell at you for fucking up your science. It's just that simple.
• Hopefully I can keep from being as overzealous as some of the other posters when I say that the arguement "Deadliest Arsenal" doesn't really fly with me. They actually are testing out the skills of the men using the weapons, putting those same results into the sim. Also, any idea what they're gonna do with all the other weapons tests they run on the show?
  • 1. But are they really factoring the skills of the specialists into the sim? After all, we really have no idea how their simulation program works and they don't seem inclined to tell us. 2. Even if they are factoring in the skills of their experts, can those numbers be considered valid? The abilities of one specialist are hardly representative of an entire class of warriors. 3. Even if they do factor in the strength/speed/etc. of their specialists into their program, they don't appear include variables for tactics or terrain. In a real fight, tactics and terrain will make or break a fight far more than the weapons and armor of the combatants. An unarmed, unarmored fighter with a good sense of tactics and fighting on terrain that favors him can easily beat the crap out of the most heavily armed and armored opponent. But the Deadliest Warrior guys don't seem to even spare a thought for either of those factors.
    • If they're using numbers from the demonstrators using the weapons, than the skills of those demonstrators are indirectly included in the program, since the results of how the weapons hit will depend on how the demonstrators use them. (Which still doesn't solve the problem of how the demonstrators match up to how actual fighters would have performed, so a lot of problems are still left over.)
      • Except, again, we have no idea what this program is or how it works. Really, the only evidence we have that the numbers from the tests are factored into the simulation is the word of the hosts. They could be rolling d20s for all we know. And again, even if the test results are factored into the simulation program somehow, one test by one specialist is a piss-poor sample size.
        • Sure, all of the above is entirely possible, but whether they are true or not, the weapons aren't really being considered independently of the demonstrators. (If the show is being somewhat honest, and actually using real numbers, the demonstrator skill effects the results, if not, than the weapons themselves aren't being factored into the results, apart from "coolness" estimates, or guesses from somebody, or something else from along those lines, which are not actually testing the weapons, thus neither the weapons or demonstrators are making a difference.)
      • Except those specialists are supposed to be the best reps of their Warrior around. And the Warriors being tested are supposed to be the best of the best of either side being pitted against each other. The greatest Samurai versus the greatest Viking/Spartan. The greatest team of Berets versus the greatest team of Spetznaz. ect.
      • They've never said they're choosing the best specialists to represent the warriors. They're just choosing specialists. They also aren't taking the "best" warrior of a certain class, either. What would constitute the "best" Apache, or Navy SEAL? We don't even know how they factor in a warrior's abilities in the simulation. If they take the supposed "best" Apache for instance, what are they going to do; max out his stats?
      • "They've never said they're choosing the best specialists to represent the warriors." Even then their choices are pretty questionable. They seem to think hiring fight choreographers is the same as hiring actual martial arts experts (hint: it isn't). And in some cases they've been caught trying to pass off amateurs who know nothing about martial arts or weapons as "experts". One example that comes to mind is Kieron Elliot who was billed as a "Highlander weapons expert" but it in real life is...a stand-up comedian and radio host.
    • Similarly, in the Viking vs Samurai episode, they bring in someone based on the fact that he did some stuff for The Last Samurai. Despite the fact that there are plenty of Japanese martial arts instructors who would've made better choices, Japanese martial arts have been perfectly preserved(Ninjutsu is a survival, assassination and espionage technique, and an effective one, but it's not a fighting style or martial art). When arguing the Samurai's abilities and weapons, particularly in comparison to a Viking's or Spartan's, would you rather have someone who did some coregrophy for The Last Samurai? Or this guy?
    • And following that, the other expert was ANOTHER comedian. So for the first guy's partner, decendant of a Samurai or not, would you rather have him or this guy? Impiticular it really gripes me that they never even THOUGHT to bring in Japanese martial artists(in the case of these two, the heads of two seperate schools) to test the Japanese weapons or the Japanese techniques of a Japanese warrior. Or even an ACTUAL Japanese historian to check the accuracy of all this.
• Pol Pot, really? O.k., so they do like to drum up controversy, and they have had a genocide associate fighter in the SS. But at least the SS were also known as a group of very strong soldiers. The Khmer rouge (I'm assuming this is what the show will be based on.), aren't really known for being particularly skilled fighting wise (Mostly pretty standard guerillas from what I understand), or for "accomplishing" much outside of genocide. Having Pol Pot on there as a warrior just feels really, really wrong.
  • Actually, that points out another history failure on the part of the show. The Waffen-SS were not an 'elite' organization in the German military. In fact, some Waffen-SS division received worse training and equipment than the standard Wermacht divisions. Some of the divisions were elite, mainly the first, second, and third, but because the Waffen-SS was made up of volunteers, there was no guarantee of quality. But I would agree that yes, at this point the show is just trying to milk controversy for ratings. So, just another reason for me to hate this show.
• I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed it, but why do the Americans always seem to win? Just the examples from Season 2 (the only one I caught) SWAT vs. GSG 9, KGB vs. CIA and Navy SEALS vs Israeli Commandos. No I'm not American, but it doesn't take from the fact they always win.
  • I take it you missed Spetznaz vs Green Berets in season one. Where the Yanks lost.
  • Also, if you want to get specific, the SEALS are one of the finest Special Ops forces in the world today, with some of the best training and discipline found in the American armed forces. The CIA is rather notorious for its "fast and loose" style of espionage and conduct, and in terms of training, the SWAT and GSG 9 were equivalent in terms of training, with the GSG 9 probably being a bit more skilled, but the SWAT were highly-trained AND they had high-end weaponry to back their training up as opposed to the GSG 9, who used rather dated weapons.
    • Also SWAT is a general emergency response team, GSG-9 is specifically an anti-terrorist group. Needless to say SWAT gets more exercise.
  • I'm American, so feel free to ignore this on the grounds that you find me biased. But America DOES have the best Navy, best intelligence agency, and arguably the best police force in terms of weaponry and combat training. It's actually not hard to believe we'd win all these fights. That being said, damn near nothing about this show is accurate, a lot of people consider everything either horribly inaccurate or out right FAKED. The Green Beret losing to the Spetsnaz may very well have been faked so that they could say "look we're not biased". Think about it, if the Green Beret won that fight, people would've made the same comments, and if say, the GSG-9 beat SWAT, people would suspect they did that because the Americans won last time and now they're trying to make it look different. By having the Americans lose first, they have that safety net. I know, paranoia but it's still something to think about. And maybe it's just some blind patriotism I don't know I have but a 17 person kill difference seems a little too close to call for me anyway.
  • To me (probably others as well), this has become (more of?) an issue in season 3. Washington seemed a stretch, Roosevelt seemed a big stretch, but the overall pattern does really stick out. (Which is too bad, since I am otherwise enjoying season 3 more than the others.)
    • While I haven't actually seen the episodes in question, I'm somewhat inclined to agree, at least with the Washington/Napoleon fight. Now, if it had been one on one, yea, I'm fairly sure George could take him, but I don't think Washington could win a military battle against him. Roosevelt...well, I'm less inclined to make a judgement on that episode as I know little about Lawrence of Arabia. But, based on what I do know about Teddy I would give him the edge in a one on one fight as well based simply on the fact that he's Teddy Roosevelt. He might not win a battle between them, but he'd win a fight.
    • Both episodes were pretty much won by a single weapon though. And in both cases they were right. Washington's combo of musket and rifle is in every way better than just musketfire. On the strategy and "X-Factor" aspects, Napoleon was a very wasteful general, having no problem getting a huge chunk of his army slaughtered in one battle to win. Which goes along with his impatience. Teddy should have lost by all accounts of strategy, tactics, logistics, everything... but some doctor named Gatling was very capable of designing a killing machine. Roosevelt won only because the Gatling gun is a very good suppression artillery machine of death. It might've been different if the Vickers didn't jam during testing, but it did, so the numbers reflected that problem. What probably doesn't help the "Americans = Badass" issue this show has going on is both Washington and Roosevelt punched their opponents in the face like a man. No matter how awesome it was in the cinematics, it wasn't very... strategic (or subtle).
      • Granted, but Roosevelt at least was a bare-knuckle boxer in real life. Him punching his enemy in the face is completely in character.
• When you stop to think about it, even though technically the CIA "won" the matchup against the KGB, the operation playing out in the scenario was a failure. They lost both the intel they were trying to get and the cash they used to buy it, caused an international incident by shooting up a foreign embassy, and got four agents killed. That last surviving agent is going to have a lot of explaining to do back in Washington...or am I thinking about this too much?
  • This is pretty much how all the squad battles go. It always comes down to one guy left standing, having lost his entire team. In that particular example however, yes, that mission seems like a major failure.
    • I can think of three teams that got a good result in the re-creation: Jesse James lost two guys, but still has his brother and can rob the museam blind. The SS squad may be all dead, but the guy they were rescuing survived and if he was important enough to risk a rescue that's probably worth it. The last one is the Somali pirate, so long as he wasn't that close to the rest of his crew then he just got a warehouse full of coke, money and weapons and doesn't even need to split the profits.
      • The "special forces" (spetznaz, SEALS, Rangers, possibly some others I forget), also seem like possible successes, in a larger sense. If the mission was one in support of a larger army, it may be that the 1 person surviving is enough to complete the mission. Season 3 with its focus on commanders also could be considered full of "successes" in the sense that all groups end up killing an enemy commander while their own survives, although the results to feel more closely in line with the above comments.
• They decided to not make more "gun vs knife" battles after the Pirate vs Knight episode because gunpowder is doomed to make more damage than steel and the warrior with gunpowder weapons will always win. Well, just after watching Jaguar vs Zande and Shaolin vs Maori I notice a similar pattern: Metal always beats non-metal weapons. So why do they keep doing these? I, for one, think that an Jaguar vs Maori fight would be as awesome as intriguing, for example.
  • Because metal doesn't always beat non-metal. Check out Apache vs Gladiator and Comanche vs Mongol.
  • The second example doesn't really count, since the Mongol was kind of "dumbed down" by giving him leather armor and bone-tipped arrows when metal ones would be as accurate, and most of his opponent's weapons were made of iron.
• What really, really bugs me is how people still act like the simulation at the end is what decides the outcome of the show.
• They say that they do more tests than they show, and for the sake of argument let's pretend we believe them. And that the "edge" is just their opinions. Then why have the "weapon gets the edge format" in the first place? Why not go more in depth with the individual tests instead of making them a cock fight. Because sometimes you can't really compare the arsenals of some warriors. Winchester Rifle vs Pineapple Bomb, really. And it's hinted that just because you compared the blunderbuss and the halberd or whatever doesn't mean the warriors will use those when they fight. So why do it? Why not go further into the scientific and historical facts about the weapons and/or show us MORE of all these tests they claim they do. That would be more interesting and convincing than the "edge" format the show uses. Because, Geiger, Desmoulin, Dorian, it may surprise you but we don't give a flying fuck what weapon YOU and only you think is better. And since none of it is factored in and they mean NOTHING, they don't really give us a reason to watch anything but the ending fight, and not a whole lot of reason to take any of the tests or edges seriously.
• In the Ming vs Musketeer episode. The ending fight scene unsuprisingly comes down to a sword fight. But a rapier can NOT block a dao. The blade is too thin and flimsy, compared to the dao which was meant for hacking and rough treatment, it'd break. That's not to say someone with the rapier and main gauche combination can't beat someone with a dao, they can, but certainly not in the way demonstrated. The coreogropher of the scene knows nothing of the weapons and went with a stereotypical sword fight, as opposed to showing how someone with a rapier might use other advantages, i.e. speed and reach, to get around that, proving his incompetence as a coreogropher. And neither the "experts" nor the so called "historical fencer" who loved the rapier so much caught wind of this?
  • Or maybe They Just Didn't Care and wanted to show a sword fight like any other swrod fight on the show: the two warriows bash their swords together until one person hits the other.
• In reference to the Kilij: "I think it's the first sword, that can rival the katana". Then they go on to show outright disrespect for the jian. Here's some food for thought though. The forging techniques that were used to make the jian are nearly identical to the katana's, and indeed the Japanese got their techiques from the Chinese. The jian, for all intents and purposes is a straight, double edged katana. Both served as war swords, scholar's swords and more traditional martial arts swords. Another thing they share in common is that they're both cutting and thrusting weapons. The kilij is almost entirely cutting, just look how far back the tip is, it looks like a golf club. That's not to say the kilij is a bad sword or that it can't stab but it's certainly not on par with the katana or the jian. Historically, structurally, and philosophically, the jian has WAY more in common with the katana than the kilij. This isn't a case of being historically or scientifically inaccurate but it still bugs the hell out of me.
  • Granted a steel kilij should have every advantage over a bronze jian(though jian would go on to be made of iron and steel, it's an old weapon with a lot of development behind it), but the jian shown looked like and very well may have been a sharpened taichi sword.
  • As usual, this one can be blamed entirely on the crummy testing methodology used by this show. The kilij was given the edge because it cut a pig carcass in half and for no other reason. Even though the jian achieved an instant kill shot on the very first stab, which realistically is all a real warrior would need to do to end the fight. For that matter, the kilij and the jian are both fine weapons with very different styles. Assuming equal fighting ability for each combatant, which weapon has the greater advantage depends more on the circumstances of the fight than the mechanics of the sword. But the show never spares a thought to this.
• The cutlass and broadsword were declared even because of allegedly even cutting power in spite of the fact that curved swords in general make better cutting weapons than straight swords. That's a general rule of swords. It just bugs me that no one on set knew that.
  • Except that the cutlass was unable to cut all the way through its pig while the broadsword cleaved the pig in two. So that result was wrong for different reasons...
    • Two different guys doing the test, a very illy done test at that. And while yes both swords could very easily have cleaved a pig or a man in half, the cutlass and curved blades in general just make superior cutting weapons than straight swords, it's scientific fact. Not that it makes that much of a difference with the Knight's armor. I'm not saying that straight blades are inferior, they have other advantages, like two edges. The broadsword impiticular has a pointed edge better fit for thrusting than the cutlass. But the weapons were declared equal based on cutting power without scientific backing.
• The testing of the muskets in the Washington vs Napoleon fight. Why did Washington get not only muskets but long rifles as well? Napoleon surely had his own sharpshooters in battle.
  • They actually explained that in-show, and it comes down to resources; Napoleon had better training and resources, so he could afford to equip most of his soldiers with muskets, whereas Washington was too strapped for armaments to be able to do the same, hence why his team had more riflemen than Napoleon's army likely had. In essence, while he likely did have some sharpshooters that were skilled with rifles, Napoleon didn't have to rely on them as much as Washington did. Plus, it's part of Washington's famous "hybrid warfare" strategy.
  • That, and Napoleon actually had something of a disdain for the rifle in the first place. They never seemed to factor into his own strategy, but were crucial for the Americans. The American practice of picking off officers with hidden sharpshooters armed with long rifles horrified the British for many reasons.
    • Besides which, those long rifles were most likely guns the 'soldiers' brought from home. Like said before, Washington and his men couldn't afford to buy and arm themselves with muskets. So many of them brought their hunting gun to the battle, because it's all that they had to fight with. And like shown on the episode, long rifles were terrible at the style of battle utilized by most European armies at the time, but perfect for hidden sharpshooters, which was a tactic employed by Washington.
  • There where sharpshooters in Napoleon's army (voltigeur), but they didn't use rifles. I think the French didn't use them because they where more expensive than muskets and took longer time to reload. Napoleon therefore decided that it was better using muskets. Some other nations thought otherwise and used rifles, such as the British Baker rifle, which, unlike the American long rifle, where made for military use and not hunting.
• Does anyone else really not like the new x-factors? They're taking subjective ideas and arbitrarily giving them numbers based on "analysis". Personally, I think the Washington vs. Bonaparte battle would have gone the other way without them.
  • If you're going to compare warriors, and especially when you compare Historical Domain Characters, you need to compare how they fight and not just what they bring to the fight. It's not called "Deadliest Arsenal", remember?
  • They'd been giving subjective numbers to the weapons since the show started. I actually think it makes the show much more intriguing since you're adding a myriad of dimensions. Not only that, but it seems it's an entire team of historical experts we don't see who are deciding the scores, as opposed to just Max like before. I'm actually curious to see what would happen if they apply this new system to the previous battles we've had, because I think we'd get some very interesting and potentially, very different results.
• True but it seems they can't go five minutes without handing out handfulls of "x-factors" I'm just waiting for one of the experts to tell them to shut up about the x-factors already.
  • I would rather have more information on X-Factors, or at least information online, since they supposedly have over 100 but only show around four or five.
  • The x-factors are a good idea in theory, until you realize they're assigning them with the same kind of thought process they used when they gave the Centurion a siege weapon for a one-on-one duel. Apparently, Joan of Arc's 80 pound weight disadvantage against William the Conqueror is worth only 14 points on a 100 point scale for the "Physicality" x-factor. Joan, whose most impressive weapon is cast iron and uses gunpowder and cannonballs, beats William in "Logistics", despite the fact that William's equivalent weapon fires rocks. The fact that they somehow try to quantify "Intuition" as an x-factor speaks for itself. Despite this, it is still Joan who seems to get the short end of the stick in terms of x-factors! They don't seem to think it would matter that William's troops were following a person who they thought was a pretty cool guy, while Joan's troops were following a person who they thought was a prophesied warrior maiden sent by God himself.
    • They may not have actually shown it in this battle, but I have to imagine Joan's psychological warfare stat may have been close to maxed out. It's been historically proven that an army motivated by religious zeal and with obscenely high morale is capable of winning over and over again. Imagine the thought of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and Theodore Roosevelt showing up in Afghanistan with power armor and gatling guns alongside their fellow Americans to motivate them, because that's probably the equivalent of how the French must have been motivated by having a religious prophecy fulfilled right before their very eyes in the guise of a 17-year old French girl with a direct connection to God.
• North Korean vs. Rangers. I'm okay with the result. All accept one category, Hand to hand. When they demonstrate from both sides, the gave it as a draw but after the test they give an edge on the Rangers. Beside, it doesn't quite fair to put marine combat against Taekwondo when they allow the Ranger to have the gun when they fight. Didn't the North Korean army teach their Special Ops to 'disarm' at all?
  • Who knows? They're too secretive. Best way is to ask someone who defected from the North Korean special forces. Which I doubt will happen given their loyalty to North Korea. But I'm sure they do in their unarmed combat training.
    • You're saying it's unfair to give the Rangers a gun as if this were a regulated fight. Tae Kwon Do is all about fast striking, and while I'm sure they're taught disarm moves (if you can even do that when the Ranger's gun has a shoulder strap) the Ranger's fighting style is all about making enough space so that they can kill their target with their weapon. Also "The Edge" and the X-Factors are two different parts of the show. The Edge is just what the hosts think is the better weapon/technique, the X-Factors take into account the finer aspects of the technique and quantify it. Just because the hosts said they were even doesn't make the X-Factors 50-50.
      • You got the point here. However, it doesn't explain that they didn't ask the Korean 'how would you do when someone charge at you when you have rifle with you?" I don't think that any military would suggest that you should throw your gun away and punch them while you can still use it as a club( hit the opponent with a buttstock for example). I have my suspicion that this one might be a set-up or at very least a misinterpret on the Korean expert side. They didn't answering the 'hand-to-hand' on the same condition. Korean intepret it as 'fight only with bare hand' while The USMC interpret as 'close quarter combat with full equipment.
  • Why are the x-factors always so high and close together? Especially "Extremism". I can understand giving such a high rating of 90 to the North Koreans, but but the Rangers were close to an 80!
    • Extremism I could see with the things like "leave no one behind", straight patriotism probably being pretty strong, and such. Do agree that the numbers seem unusually high and close in general, though.
• WHY, after two years of boasting the x-factor as "something that can't be measured", are x-factors now the most crucial part of the show? And to have them decided by a single old man sitting at a computer?? You could probably get the same outscome if one of us was randomly making up the numbers!!
  • Actually, they state that they have a "team of researchers" doing the research and coming up with the numbers based on the results. We don't see the "team of researchers" because people doing research is boring to watch. Its mostly quietly reading and scribbling down notes, and then getting together to discuss their research so as to come up with the X-Factors.
    • They could at least show a video montage of the researchers so we know these people actually exist. Mythbusters often airs time-lapsed footage of Jamie, Adam, and/or someone else on the show sweating away at a desk or a computer trying to research some factor of the myth to be tested. And then they actually present the research to the audience (with a citation for where they found it, who published it, etc.) so we know they're not just pulling the info out of their asses. Rule of Perception. The audience will know only what they can see and hear. If we never see any evidence of research being performed, why should we believe they did any research at all?
• Given the large amount of close matches in Season 3, is the computer guy or someone else biasing the results to be even, whether consciously or subconsciously? (Could see it done for raitings/loyalty reasons, but could also see someone fudging the the data entry in their mind to get a close result without realizing it.)
  • That may have to do with the fact they raised the number of matches to 5000.
  • If they are, it wouldn't be the first time. They've been caught leaving out weapons common to the warriors being compared or giving an obviously inferior weapon to one side or the other. While this is only speculation on my part, I believe they do this to avoid having too many blowout match-ups. Doesn't make it any less dishonest, though.
• So far in season 3 all of the episodes have been 5 vs 5 matches. Isn't this show called "Deadliest Warrior" not "Deadliest Commander"?
  • How do you suppose many of these commanders even got to be in that position? Had they not been exceptional warriors, chances are most of them may not have lived to attain that rank, let alone command the respect, loyalty, and admiration of his men. The farther back you go, the more you see nearly all commanders led from the front to begin with. Even later on in history, George Washington earned his stripes fighting in the front lines during the French and Indian Wars, Napoleon was a distinguished artillery gunner during France's wars after the French Revolution, Theodore Roosevelt was right there with his Rough Riders when they stormed San Juan Hill, and Lawrence of Arabia wouldn't have even garnered any respect whatsoever from the Arab tribesmen had he not proven himself in battle. In order to be a truly effective commander, one has to understand and experience what it's like to be a warrior, and in order to live long enough to become one, he likely has to be deadlier than both his foes and his allies.
• This isn't so much about the show as about certain fans of the show. After reading through this whole page I've noticed several people trying to use information never shown on screen to defend controversial fight outcomes. If someone asks why only weapons are taken into account and not tactics, someone pipes up "Well, we don't know how the program works so it could be taking tactics into account". Or when someone asks why they only do one test per weapon a defender of the show will respond "Well just because we don't see the other tests doesn't mean they didn't happen". I don't understand this mindset. I don't understand why so many fans are willing to give Deadliest Warrior the benefit of the doubt in these kinds of situations when it would be shockingly easy for them to actually SHOW us how the program works or the additional tests they claim to perform. I hate to bring up the Mythbusters comparison again, but Deadliest Warrior is considered a Experiment Show so the comparison was inevitable. The point is, the Mythbusters don't do this. When fans started accusing them of basing their results on a single test they started showing the extra tests they perform, either as part of a montage or as extras on the Discovery website. When fans started accusing them of doing shoddy research the Mythbusters started showing the research and the calculations they do to test the myth. After such a stellar (if not wholly perfect) example of tv science, I don't understand why so many fans of Deadliest Warrior are willing to give them a pass on their loose science.
  • I wouldn't mind if they did that stuff either, and they do show some extra tests online, but you're forgetting how different the Mythbusters are from Deadliest Warrior. For one thing, almost all the "tests" we see are edited so that the people watching will be amused at the carnage and elaborate missions they put the experts through. Remember, this show runs on the same network that airs MANswers, not the Discovery Channel. Second, most normal people aren't quick to believe there's a massive conspiracy and that Deadliest Warrior is making up all the numbers and making sure America wins every time, so when they say that they do more tests than they air (and that these are presumably the "boring" tests that nobody wants to see) we believe them based on my earlier statement. Third, the show is just not Mythbusters. If it ever becomes more like Mythbusters it's going to take a long time for them to be able to do the kinds of things Mythbusters does.
    • For your first point: no matter what network airs this show, it purports itself to be objective and scientific. As such, it opens itself up to complaints about its scientific rigor, whether it likes it or not. If they framed it as "We'll look at these weapons and warriors and give our opinions on which is cooler/who would win/ect.", these sorts of complaints would have no grounding. Point two: I don't see anyone advocating any conspiracy theories, but I also don't think we have any reason to trust their research teams. Look at the page above, and see all the myriad complaints, not only about their science, but also their historical research, including giving warriors blatantly anachronistic weapons, misunderstanding the purpose of other weapons, and burdening warriors with ridiculous weapon choices, like giving Alexander the Great and the Roman Centurion siege weapons. Point three: No, it isn't, but it wants us to think it has the same level of scientific and historical rigor (which, admittedly, the Mythbusters aren't perfect about, either), which is completely untrue.
• So far in season 3 they seem to be spoiling the winners pay attention to the computer models at the begining of the episode, one is blue and one is red. So far the one in red has won most if not all of the time.
  • Seems to be broken at the Cortez.Ivan episode.
    • Likewise Roosevelt/Lawrence. Looks like it was coincidence.
• OK, probably gonna get some flack for this one, but here goes: Something been bugging me as I read this page. Many people are bringing up genuine problems with the show and that's fine. Others are bringing up silly problems and that's fine too, if a little mistaken. However some seem to be constantly saying how the entire show is stupid, unwatchable, awful, insulting etc. To which I can only ask if the show irritates you that much, why are you still watching it?
  • This is the only place left on this wiki where they can really complain, since all other places usually devolve into a mindless whine-fest. Even though the disclaimer at the top says that this isn't what this page is for. Some complaints are legitimate and reasonably presented, others (like that Knight/Pirate whine-fest earlier) is just plain bitching for the sake of bitching, and this page is not for bitching. Someone needs to take a chainsaw to this page and purge out all the ill-suited stuff--someone far braver than I to handle the backlash.
    • Amen to that, brother.
• Vampires vs Zombies. Mr Dorian, I respect that as a practicing doctor your medical knowledge is greater than mine, but I think a key point was missed with regard to the Vampire's possibility of catching the zombie virus. A virus is an infectious agent that can replicate only in the living cells of organisms. Note: Living cells. A vampire is dead therefore is is impossible for any virus to have an effect on it. They could be a carrier of the diesase, through infected blood etc, but they wouldn't turn into vampires. Either the zombies aren't a virus or vampires can't catch it. Still, they didn't outright say the vampire turned into a zombie, just that he was infected, so no biggie.
  • Some diseases do infest in and infect dead things. Also, despite being dead, the vampires still rely on working biological functions, such as flowing blood and a beating heart. If that disease gets in a vampire's bloodstream...
    • Some diseases, yes. But not viruses. They need living tissue to replicate. And the show clearly said that the zombie disease in this case was a virus. As for the vampires bloodstream, it functions supernaturally not biologically (it must do, while there are borderline scientific rationales for zombies vampires as portrayed here are impossible in known science). The heart might pump, but it's not alive. Also the vampire in the sim only bit one zombie and immediately spat out the blood so it's hard to see how the virus could get into his system, living or not.
      • These are fictional creatures we're talking about, so some leeway will come into play here as to how they actually work.
  • Also, considering their source material for vampires (ie 30 Days of Night), they are using the "new school" interpretation of vampires: the vampires are not undead (at least not in the same sense as zombies), but a separate species all their own. So they are some form of "alive." Although whether or not they can be infected by illnesses carried in the blood they drink is still up for debate.
• In regards to Vampires vs. Zombies...every single episode has had it's detractors who were upset that a warrior that they like lost...hey, this troper pleads guilty as charged to that as well, especially in regards to the Roman Centurion, Mongol, and Napoleon. But I really need to address an irritating claim by some zombie fans, that "fast Rage-Virus" vampires like those from 28DaysLater would have fared better or even won...even though the basic gist of that is a trade-off from the lack of pain inhibitors in muscular activity and the brain being the only vulnerable point(meaning that the vampire has a lot more in the way of options) for normal human speed. Giving up what advantages the zombie does have in strength and invulnerability for a "greater speed" that still doesn't even touch the vampire's speed..great tradeoff.
  • Vampires vs. zombies seems a harder one to complain about than others. Presumably, if the zombies had been considered stronger or faster in some way, the number of zombies per vampire would be different (Say, 20ish fast zombies per vampire, for example), while other matchups are fixed to even numbers.
• Why does the show assume that all these fights are to the death? It seems to me that in a number of these match-ups, warriors would retreat or surrender if they thought they were losing and believed they might be shown quarter. That's important, because it could skew outcomes a lot in some of these matches.
• It seems in season 3, you can almost from the get go of an episode, you can determine a winner. For example, in Napoleon and George Washington, almost every time Napoleon was mentioned, he was described as a bloodthirsty general who tried to put the entirety of Europe under his name. Failing that, he would be noted for his horrible management of a Russian invasion (and Russia being bailed out by a blizzard). Washington would always be portrayed in a brighter light as a hero and ignoring his failures in multiple battles (at least once snatching defeat from the jaws of victory), historically being more of a brave figurehead than a real general. Similar events happened with Joan of Arc/William the Conquerer, US Rangers/NKSOF (though admittably, I would state that the SOF are much weaker than they were portrayed), and Ivan the Terrible/Hernán Cortés.
  • Political correctness does seem to be an X-factor at times. In any battle between a 'good' warrior and an 'evil' one, count on the good one prevailing. Failing that, ask yourself, would they really show the father of America getting skewered on TV? Would they really show a young farmgirl getting impaled? North Korea winning?
    • If they really cared about political correctness, then they wouldn't have had IRA vs. Taliban or Waffen-SS vs. Viet Cong. And by the way, in the latter matchup, the Nazis won.
• The arbitrary fairness between contestants reeks of studio editing. Especially in the third season, every single matchup ends in a close battle. The DW team can't very well know the outcome of a matchup before they perform the tests, and close victories/defeats were the exception, rather than the norm, in previous seasons. This makes it look like they run the test a couple of times before the end of the episode, see if they like the result, and then tweak the X-factors accordingly.
  • "If we bring this side's Logistics factor down to 72 from 78 and the other's Tactics value up from 83 to 87, it's still plausible, and we'll get a more exciting outcome to boot."
  • Worse still is that this makes the victories almost meaningless. If the winner will be gimped anyway to the point that his victory seems like a matter of luck ("it could've gone either way!") it comes sooner across as a weak excuse to dissuade the many complaints of biased testing ("it's not biased if the battle was close!").
• I apologize if this was asked before, but here goes anyways. About the "edges" they give after weapon demonstrations: A lot of people on this page have said the "edges" don't really mean anything in terms of the computer simulation (let's leave all the questions about the basic accuracy of their mystery computer program for another time) and it's just the hosts giving their personal opinion of which weapon is better. But on the other hand, the show makes a big deal of noting which weapon got the "edge" after the tests. To the point of recapping all the edges just before the final simulation starts up. So are the edges taken into account by the computer or not? And if they're not, then what's the point of them? I can see wanting to show the hosts arguing amongst themselves about the results of the tests, because that's at least somewhat interesting. But if they have absolutely no bearing on the final outcome, why bother with a handy-dandy graphic and recap telling viewers which weapon got which "edge"?

1. ↑ Also, I'm kind of lazy and tired of checking every couple of days and typing long paragraphs. :P