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Mail in this type of combat was very useful, but it was not long before pieces of plate armor began to be added at the elbows and knees and then to other areas of the body. This evolution spawned another and the arms race was on! One popular adaption was the increasing use of impact weapons like hammers, axes, maces, flails and clubs. Through the inventive change in circumventing the better armor of the day (300100), the sword still remain...

The sword (500020) was still the preferred weapon in the early medieval period and was used almost exclusively in tangent with a shield (801506). Two hand war swords were used as well (500794), and one could deliver heavy blows with one, but the user lost a great deal of protection that a shield provided, so unless you were the swinging justice of the headsman or breaking a pike line, you often times opted not to carry one with you....

The style of fighting with sword and shield varied little through out Europe and consisted mostly of cutting at the foe from behind the shield. With the sword drawn back it could be held out of sight of an opponent behind the shield so they could not see where a cut was coming from. This type of deception is why the quickest and most aggressive usually won an encounter- you had little warning where to move your shield to block a blow. It s...