Weaponry

[thomas]

a katana requires finese, it's more of a giant razor, you don't hac kand slash rather, when you make yuou slash, you draw your blade back as you are slicing into him.

[Vanguard3000]

Yes, it's the slicing action of the blade that allows for the cutting, rather than simply beating someone with it.  If you rested the blade on your hand, between thumb (which is pointing skyward) and forefinger, and drew the blade back without pushing down, the slight weight of the blade would cause your hand to be cut right through.

I saw a video where they fired a gun at a katana, and the bullet was cut in half.  That was really cool.

[nemafakei]

Exactly, which would be the case with the katana (it wouldn't cut through harder materials though, no matter how sharp), but he's talking about something different. Personally, I would prefer a blade with a guard.

[Caid Ivik]

Katana is too heavy for true razor-slicing effect, not saying about low curving. You can make only about one hit, well, that's whole japanese style, to concentrate everything to this one. Eastern european and polish sabres are much more effective. Turkish sabres aren't bad too, tough tend to be more axe-like in combat, using weight instead of blade sharpness. Superiority of polish and russian (tough originally Russians used mostly straight swords, they adopted sabres from Mongols and Cosacks) sabres was due to their swiftness, needed if you wanted to harm enemy where he wasn't heavily armored. Metal armor was unknown to Japanese.

[exatreide]

Turksish Saber's were used heavily in with mounted troops,

As the curved blade is alot better when slashing down on infantry, a streight blade gets caught between bones and is hard to pull out when your on a moving horse.

Much better for beheading to.

Battle axe still owns though...

[Khan]

Let's not get into the whole 'Katana Vs. Berserker' again please.

[exatreide]

Alright only becouse Im right though  ;)