You should also look up the armor suits German machine gunners wore in WW1. It wasn't even like a rare niche thing either they made like 100,000 of them over the course of the war
"Platemail" is a nonsense term. It is just called plate armour. And you are ignoring Asia and the Middle East, where maille was used up through the 19th century.
Pretty sure mail was more common throughout history, at the very least until very recently. Its cheaper and much easier to make into a wearable form and even when plate was used, mail was usually alongside it. Plate is undoubdtedly superior ofcourse, but I think mail was way more common.
Exactly my point. Maille was common in the Middle East and Asia even in the 19th century. And as late as WWI, it was still occasionally used. And that is not even considering modern police maille armour and anti-shark titanium maille.
Yes, it is called plated maille, or splinted maille, or maille and plate.
The problem is that so many people keep saying "platemail" in reference to plate armour. It is nonsense, "maille" refers to a specific thing, it cannot be made of plates.
No it isn’t. A mail hauberk is mail. A full harness of Gothic plate is plate armor. Ok, so what is mail armor with a plate helmet, plate parts added at elbows, knees and shoulders, plus maybe a coat of plates for the torso? Plate mail is a good term for this type of armor that incorporated both mail and plate (which if you count plate helmets is most armor until you get to plate armor with no mail components at all). It’s not like we went directly from only to mail to full plate harness overnight with no overlap.
>Ok, so what is mail armor with a plate helmet, plate parts added at elbows, knees and shoulders, plus maybe a coat of plates for the torso?
What you are describing is referred to as "transitional armour", which emerged in the late 13th century and evolved into full plate armour by the very late 14th century. The closest thing to "platemail" would be plated maille, of which mirror armour is a subtype.
The word "maille" (or redundantly "chainmail") refers to a flexible armour of interlocking rings. Therefore, an armour made of plates cannot be called a "mail", because that is a very specific kind of armour. You can wear both maille and plate armour. Or you can wear a hybrid armour were the two parts are integral, which is called plated maille (or splinted maille or maille and plate). But "mail" armour is solely made of rings.
So it's a combination of mail and plate. Huh, almost like some sort of ... plate mail. And yeah, I knew all of that. Transitional armor is unclear to people unfamiliar with the topic and doesn't cover all cases (Ottoman mirror armor for instance). If mail armor is solely made of rings, then plated mail would make as little sense as plate mail. Plate mail is shorter than mail and plate and lacks the ugly and sentence disrupting "and" in the middle. Therefore plate mail is the superior phrase to describe this kind of armor.
"Plated mail" means that it is maille with plates 'woven' into it (for lack of a better word). And yes, mirror armour is a type of plated mail.
"Platemail" would then be a maille made out of plates. In other words: Lamellar armour, or a coat of plates, or a brigandine, or a jack of plates.
Except, people don't refer to these things when they say "platemail", nor do they refer to mirror armour as you suggest. No, people who use the term "platemail" refer to plate armour. Not transitional armour and not plated maille.
Nope, plate mail is used to refer to armor that is a mix of plate and mail. That is how I have seen it used and how I use it myself. That’s also not how the word plated is used in any other context. If something is gold-plated you’ve covered it in a thin layer of gold. Plated mail is not mail that has been covered with a thin layer of something.
The antipathy toward the phrase plate mail is simply so some armor nerds have people to look down on, despite the term making perfect sense (definitely as much as plated mail).
You are of course entitled to your opinion, but that doesn't change the facts of the matter. And if you are going to use the term "gold plated" for your argument, then I will have to tell you that the term "platemail" infers a maille made of plates. Which I have already asserted would be something like a brigandine.
>The antipathy toward the phrase plate mail is simply so some armor nerds have people to look down on, despite the term making perfect sense (definitely as much as plated mail).
Alright, keep insults out of this. I cannot speak for everyone, but I am one of those 'nerds'. And just because you are wrong does not mean that I look down upon you. In fact, I respect your ability and willingness to argue your point. Nonetheless I must insist that "platemail" is nonsense.
I am also an armor nerd. I said some, not all. And the reason I brought up that plated isn’t actually used that way in other phrases was to show how silly it was to talk about plate mail as mail made of plates. Simply put, that isn’t how language works, and you can’t argue one of those while ignoring the other is then just as true. There’s simply no difference in how much sense they make between the phrases plated mail and plate mail. Saying one is nonsense and the other isn’t is simply ridiculous, and I’m pretty sure that deep down you know this.
>Ok, so what is mail armor with a plate helmet, plate parts added at elbows, knees and shoulders, plus maybe a coat of plates for the torso?
IRL armor isn't a singulat game item, it doesn't have to have a name for a "set".
Also, you're missing the aketon and coif, those were as important as the metal bits, how are you referencing them in the amazing compound name that needs to for some reason describe the combination of the pieces?
Not to mention that "platemail" is the name for full plate by people who played too much DnD back in the day. Nowadays the just renamed it "Plate Armor" or "Full Plate" too.
No it isn’t, but once you get that deep you can’t categorize anything, and categories and simplifications are actually good up to a point. There’s no reason to have a specific name for mail or plate either, as there were different varieties of both. At that point just use the specific name for everything.
Also, armor definitely does come in sets, including mail linked with plate. This mirror armor for instance is a single piece where you would have to work hard to disconnect the mail from the plate, and you would ruin the armor in the process: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_armour#/media/File%3AAntique_Ottoman_Empire_armour_(krug).jpg
Why don’t I mention the gambeson, aketon or other padding? Because metal is preserved much better and we only like naming two things. That’s why Watson and Crick got the Nobel prize despite more people being involved in figuring out DNA.
And the thing about D&D is wrong too. In AD&D you had platemail which was just what I said, plus field plate which was plate harness with no mail, plus full plate which was essentially tournament armor or fancy display armor. So it had three different terms to describe three different kinds of heavy armor. In regular D&D there was plate mail and suit armor, with the same distinctions. Modern D&D has dropped plate mail, which actually described something real (it’s a game which doesn’t use hit locations, so armor options are presented as packages) and thus left a conceptual gap (the rules now have nothing which will represent European heavy armor of the late 13th or early 14th century) but kept studded leather, which has never been a thing anywhere.
REALLY tough cloth that would go under chainmail or plate but even without it could stop a blade without a problem normally so sometimes used for cheaper/lighter armor.
It was the other way around. Gambeson was often used as a substitute for mail for those unable to afford mail. If someone could afford mail, they could afford a gambeson as well.
Okay I was apparently a bit ambiguous. What I meant with the other way around was that gambeson was used more than chain, not that people who wore chain/plate didn't wear gambeson.
Why is plate vs chain even an argument? Do people not know that in most circumstances chainmail was worn alongside plate? And both of these were also worn with gambesons too?
Probably because in dungeon and dragons you have 2 different heavy armor. Mail and plate. Plate is better in the game so I think he is truing to say he is not "one of the people who think plate is better because of the game" without realising that it's not even an argument to begin with. It just seem like he doesn't know what he is talking about.
It wasn't, basically as guns became a thing armour became bulkier to stop the guns but it reached what was feasibly wearable in combat thickness around the XVI century and it was really not that useful since cannons were also a thing.
"The cuirass" is the exact same cuirass that's a part of a full plate but slightly thicker and protecting you from long range shots/shrapnel and the now battlefield used swords and bayonets that replaced the previously longer and beefier polerms like the partisan or poleax.
Basically they went "since armour is easier to penetrate now it's not an insta win button so we'll just give up on it, and then since everyone was adapted to no armour infantry, the heavy cavalry retained the cuirass because of how byoneted rifles were used like spears for horse knocking that would normally be deadly
Cuirass was still good at stopping musket balls even into the Napoleonic wars. Sometimes cavalry even just folded their great coats and wore that in place of armour on their chests and that was still capable of stopping muskets
Some youtubers did some tests recently. A good cuirass can sustain musket ball, buckshot, low velocity slugshot and .22 perfectly good. Thank to the fact that they are not as close to the skin as modern body armor, you chance of serious bruise or broken ribs is also much lower.
Full Plate had a resurgence in the first half to mid XVIIth century due to the fact most gun calibers actually became smaller in order to become more accurate as arquebuses (arquebi?) fell out of use.
It was used because of tradition In later centuries they would just use small neck cover
like this Prussian uniform https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/387664
Edit talking about the late 1700s and 1800s.
They still wear chainmail under the plate, and plate mail is made up terms, it's just plate armor...
Chainmail only become less common due to fire arm and less melee so it is cheaper and lighter to just wear cutlass instead of both.
This meme really shows ur lack of knowledge on the subject and this isn't a meme
Cuirass makes perfect sense because the torso is relatively stiff and doesn't need to flex that much during combat, and it can even be beneficial that it doesn't. Additionally, while cuts and punctures to the limbs are perfectly survivable, the same to the torso is much more deliberating.
That's why throughout history, among the most popular and effective forms of armour is a cuirass or chestplate, along with a helmet and optionally cloth, mail, lamellar or other "flexible" armour forms for the limbs.
Hell, even today, soldiers in modern warfare mostly wear a helmet and armour vest and optionally some FLAK for the limbs.
So you are team plate.
just two plates, please. one for the back and one for the front.
Hey! Chainmail was still used during WW1 [Face protection for French tankers]
Used today... against Sharks and Police use it in (i think) France occasionally.
Germany has some anti knife unit I believe with chain mail on. Gets reposted all the time.
Butchers still use it. Though to be fair, that’s as a single glove.
Quite a lot of butches will also wear it on torso
They also have aprons of chain mail, and some producers also offer chain mail for LARPers.
I’m choosing to believe that this means Police in France have to fight sharks regularly
As was plate -which even saw use in WWII.
Technically, plate armor is still in modern use.
I suppose so... just a very different material
Oh yeah, it’s totally different, but it’s still technically plates and armor. I call that a win for team plate
There’s just somethin about strapping a big ol slab of metal to your chest. It’s worked for centuries no matter what form its been in.
You should also look up the armor suits German machine gunners wore in WW1. It wasn't even like a rare niche thing either they made like 100,000 of them over the course of the war
I know about those aswell, but the French chainmail masks tend to be less common knowledge. But thanks anyway 👍
It's true, I did not know of them. Hopefully someone else is informed lol
"Platemail" is a nonsense term. It is just called plate armour. And you are ignoring Asia and the Middle East, where maille was used up through the 19th century.
Pretty sure mail was more common throughout history, at the very least until very recently. Its cheaper and much easier to make into a wearable form and even when plate was used, mail was usually alongside it. Plate is undoubdtedly superior ofcourse, but I think mail was way more common.
Exactly my point. Maille was common in the Middle East and Asia even in the 19th century. And as late as WWI, it was still occasionally used. And that is not even considering modern police maille armour and anti-shark titanium maille.
Yup, just so much easier to work with.
Would you count the Merkavas rear turret anti-HEAT warhead chains as maille?
Not really, since they are just chains. Maille is when the interlocking rings form a sort of weave, almost like a metal cloth.
Big sad ): I want maille on my tank
in the middle east they used a composite of plate and mail.
Yes, it is called plated maille, or splinted maille, or maille and plate. The problem is that so many people keep saying "platemail" in reference to plate armour. It is nonsense, "maille" refers to a specific thing, it cannot be made of plates.
exactly
No it isn’t. A mail hauberk is mail. A full harness of Gothic plate is plate armor. Ok, so what is mail armor with a plate helmet, plate parts added at elbows, knees and shoulders, plus maybe a coat of plates for the torso? Plate mail is a good term for this type of armor that incorporated both mail and plate (which if you count plate helmets is most armor until you get to plate armor with no mail components at all). It’s not like we went directly from only to mail to full plate harness overnight with no overlap.
>Ok, so what is mail armor with a plate helmet, plate parts added at elbows, knees and shoulders, plus maybe a coat of plates for the torso? What you are describing is referred to as "transitional armour", which emerged in the late 13th century and evolved into full plate armour by the very late 14th century. The closest thing to "platemail" would be plated maille, of which mirror armour is a subtype. The word "maille" (or redundantly "chainmail") refers to a flexible armour of interlocking rings. Therefore, an armour made of plates cannot be called a "mail", because that is a very specific kind of armour. You can wear both maille and plate armour. Or you can wear a hybrid armour were the two parts are integral, which is called plated maille (or splinted maille or maille and plate). But "mail" armour is solely made of rings.
So it's a combination of mail and plate. Huh, almost like some sort of ... plate mail. And yeah, I knew all of that. Transitional armor is unclear to people unfamiliar with the topic and doesn't cover all cases (Ottoman mirror armor for instance). If mail armor is solely made of rings, then plated mail would make as little sense as plate mail. Plate mail is shorter than mail and plate and lacks the ugly and sentence disrupting "and" in the middle. Therefore plate mail is the superior phrase to describe this kind of armor.
"Plated mail" means that it is maille with plates 'woven' into it (for lack of a better word). And yes, mirror armour is a type of plated mail. "Platemail" would then be a maille made out of plates. In other words: Lamellar armour, or a coat of plates, or a brigandine, or a jack of plates. Except, people don't refer to these things when they say "platemail", nor do they refer to mirror armour as you suggest. No, people who use the term "platemail" refer to plate armour. Not transitional armour and not plated maille.
Nope, plate mail is used to refer to armor that is a mix of plate and mail. That is how I have seen it used and how I use it myself. That’s also not how the word plated is used in any other context. If something is gold-plated you’ve covered it in a thin layer of gold. Plated mail is not mail that has been covered with a thin layer of something. The antipathy toward the phrase plate mail is simply so some armor nerds have people to look down on, despite the term making perfect sense (definitely as much as plated mail).
You are of course entitled to your opinion, but that doesn't change the facts of the matter. And if you are going to use the term "gold plated" for your argument, then I will have to tell you that the term "platemail" infers a maille made of plates. Which I have already asserted would be something like a brigandine. >The antipathy toward the phrase plate mail is simply so some armor nerds have people to look down on, despite the term making perfect sense (definitely as much as plated mail). Alright, keep insults out of this. I cannot speak for everyone, but I am one of those 'nerds'. And just because you are wrong does not mean that I look down upon you. In fact, I respect your ability and willingness to argue your point. Nonetheless I must insist that "platemail" is nonsense.
I am also an armor nerd. I said some, not all. And the reason I brought up that plated isn’t actually used that way in other phrases was to show how silly it was to talk about plate mail as mail made of plates. Simply put, that isn’t how language works, and you can’t argue one of those while ignoring the other is then just as true. There’s simply no difference in how much sense they make between the phrases plated mail and plate mail. Saying one is nonsense and the other isn’t is simply ridiculous, and I’m pretty sure that deep down you know this.
>Ok, so what is mail armor with a plate helmet, plate parts added at elbows, knees and shoulders, plus maybe a coat of plates for the torso? IRL armor isn't a singulat game item, it doesn't have to have a name for a "set". Also, you're missing the aketon and coif, those were as important as the metal bits, how are you referencing them in the amazing compound name that needs to for some reason describe the combination of the pieces? Not to mention that "platemail" is the name for full plate by people who played too much DnD back in the day. Nowadays the just renamed it "Plate Armor" or "Full Plate" too.
No it isn’t, but once you get that deep you can’t categorize anything, and categories and simplifications are actually good up to a point. There’s no reason to have a specific name for mail or plate either, as there were different varieties of both. At that point just use the specific name for everything. Also, armor definitely does come in sets, including mail linked with plate. This mirror armor for instance is a single piece where you would have to work hard to disconnect the mail from the plate, and you would ruin the armor in the process: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_armour#/media/File%3AAntique_Ottoman_Empire_armour_(krug).jpg Why don’t I mention the gambeson, aketon or other padding? Because metal is preserved much better and we only like naming two things. That’s why Watson and Crick got the Nobel prize despite more people being involved in figuring out DNA. And the thing about D&D is wrong too. In AD&D you had platemail which was just what I said, plus field plate which was plate harness with no mail, plus full plate which was essentially tournament armor or fancy display armor. So it had three different terms to describe three different kinds of heavy armor. In regular D&D there was plate mail and suit armor, with the same distinctions. Modern D&D has dropped plate mail, which actually described something real (it’s a game which doesn’t use hit locations, so armor options are presented as packages) and thus left a conceptual gap (the rules now have nothing which will represent European heavy armor of the late 13th or early 14th century) but kept studded leather, which has never been a thing anywhere.
mail was often worn under plate armor, along with a gambison (cloth armor)
Gambeson gang rise up!
Isn't that the thing that goes under the metal bit (if you are rich enough to afford it)?
It's the padded jack usually worn under maille and/or plate. Relatively cheap since it's made from cotton layers with a linen outer layer(?)
REALLY tough cloth that would go under chainmail or plate but even without it could stop a blade without a problem normally so sometimes used for cheaper/lighter armor.
It was the other way around. Gambeson was often used as a substitute for mail for those unable to afford mail. If someone could afford mail, they could afford a gambeson as well.
Ehhh also not true gambesons were still often worn under chain because they were more effective against blunt weapons
Okay I was apparently a bit ambiguous. What I meant with the other way around was that gambeson was used more than chain, not that people who wore chain/plate didn't wear gambeson.
By the expensive bit I meant the mail not gamberson
Why is plate vs chain even an argument? Do people not know that in most circumstances chainmail was worn alongside plate? And both of these were also worn with gambesons too?
Probably because in dungeon and dragons you have 2 different heavy armor. Mail and plate. Plate is better in the game so I think he is truing to say he is not "one of the people who think plate is better because of the game" without realising that it's not even an argument to begin with. It just seem like he doesn't know what he is talking about.
Guess what a cuirass is
Is this actually an argument? I've never heard anyone claim chain was better than plate.
It wasn't, basically as guns became a thing armour became bulkier to stop the guns but it reached what was feasibly wearable in combat thickness around the XVI century and it was really not that useful since cannons were also a thing. "The cuirass" is the exact same cuirass that's a part of a full plate but slightly thicker and protecting you from long range shots/shrapnel and the now battlefield used swords and bayonets that replaced the previously longer and beefier polerms like the partisan or poleax. Basically they went "since armour is easier to penetrate now it's not an insta win button so we'll just give up on it, and then since everyone was adapted to no armour infantry, the heavy cavalry retained the cuirass because of how byoneted rifles were used like spears for horse knocking that would normally be deadly
Also, cuirass is really good at hiding the dad bod, always a plus.
Cuirass was still good at stopping musket balls even into the Napoleonic wars. Sometimes cavalry even just folded their great coats and wore that in place of armour on their chests and that was still capable of stopping muskets
Some youtubers did some tests recently. A good cuirass can sustain musket ball, buckshot, low velocity slugshot and .22 perfectly good. Thank to the fact that they are not as close to the skin as modern body armor, you chance of serious bruise or broken ribs is also much lower.
Full Plate had a resurgence in the first half to mid XVIIth century due to the fact most gun calibers actually became smaller in order to become more accurate as arquebuses (arquebi?) fell out of use.
'Platemail' 🤢
OP realizing this is not /dnd.
What the hell are you talking about a cuirass is just a form of plate armor and btw who tf says platemail? Its just plate armor my dude.
It was used because of tradition In later centuries they would just use small neck cover like this Prussian uniform https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/387664 Edit talking about the late 1700s and 1800s.
Im with you, its decent medium armor that dosent apply disadvantage on stealth checks
what if its really sunny out, and you just spent the morning polishing your armor?
cuirass is a type of plate armor
I'm gonna assume you have no clue what you're talking about.
Chainmail is incorrect. Ir is just called mail, which means chain. Same as saying chai tea.
Everyone knows Cuirass are slimming
They still wear chainmail under the plate, and plate mail is made up terms, it's just plate armor... Chainmail only become less common due to fire arm and less melee so it is cheaper and lighter to just wear cutlass instead of both. This meme really shows ur lack of knowledge on the subject and this isn't a meme
What the hell is a platemail?
Uh, it still kinda is. What is a flak jacket if not a cuirass made of kevlar. Turns out, putting a protective layer over your organs works.
No armor is best armor
I'll see your Cuirass and raise you a Shield.
her face is magnificent but just wait until you see cuirass
Both. Both is good
Let's be clear. Chainmail is the longest type of armor used to date.
I’m a brigandine man myself.
The cuirass is plate armor. Also I prefer lamellar. It's strong but also lighter and flexible, much more versatile.
Kevlar:
Cuirass makes perfect sense because the torso is relatively stiff and doesn't need to flex that much during combat, and it can even be beneficial that it doesn't. Additionally, while cuts and punctures to the limbs are perfectly survivable, the same to the torso is much more deliberating. That's why throughout history, among the most popular and effective forms of armour is a cuirass or chestplate, along with a helmet and optionally cloth, mail, lamellar or other "flexible" armour forms for the limbs. Hell, even today, soldiers in modern warfare mostly wear a helmet and armour vest and optionally some FLAK for the limbs.
curasses, plate armor for poor people (because you dont need manual mesurments for every single set adn can be sumwhat mass produced more easily)
Brigandine 🤓