To deal with high, heavy armor, what is better an axe or a mace?

To deal with high, heavy armor, what is better an axe or a mace?
Assume the weapon to be used with a shield and the user to be recently trained, strong and use heay armor himself.

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Mace, no contest. Flanged maces - along with the pointy end of warhammers and various polearms like halberds - are designed to focus the force of a blow on a single point, allowing the possibility of penetrating plate armor. Axes, meanwhile, distribute that force over a broader area. You'd never be able to hack through Late Medieval/Renaissance plate with one, even if getting hit with one wouldn't be a good time in the slightest.

Almost 100% the mace

>To deal with high, heavy armor, what is better an axe or a mace?

A mace.

Maces were specifically built for dealing with heavy armor because they bash and rattle the person in the armor.

An Axe is still a bladed edged weapon that hacks away at something and heavy, thick, armor doesn't give a shit about edged things.

A mace would do so much more reliably, especially a flanged mace

Thanks friends.

Mace, if youre a non human with higher str than a human use the axe though. Beating somebody till their armor is dented to shit and the blows go through is fine, but taking their arm off through the armor is better.

Accept no substitutes when you need to beat, break, batter, and otherwise demolish heavy armor (and whatever is under it).

The correct answer is a pick or hammer.

Main thing you'd do with an axe in those circumstances is hack at the joints of your opponent's armor, hoping the edge would catch and the weight of the axe would provide enough shearing force to get through the (relatively) more fragile joints. Battering through a helmet or a breastplate would be extremely impractical, and a mace or hammer would be the better choice.

>litereally an impratical ugly mace
>a tool of war


Hammers are not meant for war, they not real weapons.

Imagine that you've got a bit of sheet metal and you're thinking to yourself "my, I'd like to get past this."

Do you reach for your hammer or for your axe?

Imagine you say to yourself "You know, I don't care about this sheet metal, I'd just like to dent it up a bit."

Do you reach for your hammer or for your axe?

>comparing sheet metal to heavy armor

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a samurai sword

if you can pull off behind-the-knee hook and pull with a sword
a simple rondell dagger can finish the job

>doesn't answer the question

>shitposting

Dane Axe.

Because despite popular theory, maces didn't crush or mangle people because plate armor was layered with thick cloth and chainmail and would withstand the impact of a mace while the mace itself would break or be so cumbersome it was unwieldy on the battlefield.

Dane Axes however were extremely effective weapons of war

BTFO, Can you nerds disprove this true nerd?

Against chain mail, a mace
A hammer, pick or dagger+wrestling against plate.

Halberd or Pollax, the grandchildren of the dane axe built to deal with plate armor.

Warhammers man. There was a reason they're a thing. Also see pollaxes and other polearms with hammer heads and spikes added.

Reiterating the Veeky Forums reply to the near identical question with the same op image, what time period specifically? This dictates how heavy/what style of armor counts as 'heavy' which has a large impact on weapon choice.

>Halberd or Pollax and warhammers

How do they work exacly? Because after this nerd's explanation l can't quite see how they are efficient.


>what time period specifically

Fantasy :^)
Your average low fantasy settings I suppose, i came up with this doubt after playing Royal Warfare 2 and imagining different classes if that matters.

Warhammers generally have pointed or spiked faces allowing them to get purchase on curved sections of armor. They may not penetrate, but there is still concussive trauma even with padding. It mitigates a lot, but it will wear someone down. Combine that with hooks to snag at limbs and spikes to prod at joints and you have a solid weapon choice barring wrestling with the guy and ramming a dick knife in his eye or throat.

And the only reason specific periods matter in this is what armor's available. Straight mail functions differently from lamellar or a coat of plate over mail which acts wholly differently from a full harness. Moving in each is different and weapons can function differently against them.

Seeing as fantasy, plate harness. You got two nimble motherfuckers trying to prod at each other's joints then get in close to grapple and either break limbs, knock them to the ground to start stabbing or just start stabbing in the bind. Anything else is just something leading up to that unless the armor fails or one guy gets a luck hit in, essentially.

They were out of fashion before plate armor became common. Axes were used against maille, contemporary heavy armor.
>because plate armor was layered with chainmail
Quick question. Do you know what "transitional plate armor" means and why it was used? It seems you don't.

Pretty sure that nerd's wrong. Dane axes evolved considerably before the rpg depiction of heavy armour. If dane axes (which were widespread 1100s) could effectively defeat fullplate then knight's simply would have kept using them instead of gradually changing to maces, hammers, picks and polearms.

IIRC there is a fighting manual or perhaps an ecclesiastical account the recommends against using the blade of a pollaxe against plate armour and to use the hammer or spike end instead.

So I think axes are less useful than some may think.

Even big fuck off warhammers struggled to get through plate apparently.

>Even big fuck off warhammers struggled to get through plate apparently.
I completely agree. Even with maces, picks and warhammers you'd want to aim at the head or joints.You're also very unlikely to kill them without a few blows (and of course the ability to score disabling but not lethal blows is a perk in an era where you can ransom nobles back to their family).

My understanding is that the majority of battlefield deaths among knights were from a stiletto through the eyeslits (or joints if your foe couldn't afford compression joints). Of course this would usually require another armoured cunt to wrestle them to the ground or a bunch of peasants to shoot their horse out and hope they got a leg trapped beneath it.

so , i am curious

what made them more effective than maces? (no matter if one or two handed variants)
aside from impact , were these able to chop into the armor or something?

as far as i know , the rounded shape of plate armor gives the possibility to deflect strikes , thats why maces and hammers had flanges or spikes to get a hold on it.

as for weight , maces and such werent necassarily heavier , but had lots of mass concentrated towards the end which increases the impact you can deal

Honestly it seems like a war pick or something would be best against armor

Heavy armor is not much thicker than sheet metal. A bit, but not much. A person needs to be walking around in that stuff for hours in hot sun and exhausting battle conditions without tiring so much they collapse and just get executed while fumbling around on the ground like a bitch.

the warpick,flanged mace and estoc all ended up specialised for dealing with armour in the same way, lots of force concentrated on small points. which ever of those you have too hand will work as well as anything.

i take a wild fucking guess that using a longsword to strike at a full armored knight is less effective than punching him with a plated gauntlet

Useless. It denies everything a mace is supposed to be: a bludgeoning weapon that puts its center of mass at the head, allowing for heavy blows. That is a wimpy piece of shit aluminum sword, but with no sharp edges.

never heard of the bar mace?
it was a legit weapon

If you're stabbing, no. Either is shit otherwise.

going for thrusts, especially while halfswording would be adequate. but not ideal.

Both are shit, the only weapon worthwhile against plate is a dagger through the visor.

Weapons until you can pull that off are just blugeons to beat your opponent to make it easier to get them on the ground so you can rip their helm off and dagger them

Mace would be better for that though, axe would be 100% pointless as the force would be entirely directed away from the point of impact

Mace