What is it about axes that makes them so under-represented? They're often relegated to the Big Dumb Barbarian or Token Dwarf weapon, but that's it. Swords are a status symbol, more or less, for heroes and villains alike and maces are THE go-to weapon of the traditional Cleric. But what about the axe? No great, famous hero I've ever heard of famous for wielding a mighty axe. Sure there are examples of famous axes (pic related is one), and there many examples of wide axe usage in history, but compared to the reputation of swords alone? What is it about the axe that causes it to get shoved to the back in legendary weaponry both historical and fantastical? Would there ever be a world where the archetypal hero weapon is an axe?
To put it in Dwarf Fortress terms, maces are blunt weapons good against armored enemies, spears are piercing weapons good against large creatures like Dragons, swords are a jack of all trades weapon, and axes are a good weapon against small unarmored enemies where their chopping allows for easy dismemberment. But small unarmored enemies are not all that dangerous to begin with, and thus you won't get many people singing your praises for chopping some wolf's head off with an axe.
Axes were utilitarian weapons for germanic people. As in, if you were someone, you'd have a sword, basically better in any way.
Axefags should happy that there is Gimli, honestly.
Cooper Powell
I always figured a large and heavy enough axe would pretty much serve the same role as a hammer of equal size, except having a bladed end on it. In that sense, the axe's role overlapped with large, blunt weapons.
Realistically speaking though, axes are unbalanced compared to swords making them very slow to wield in the situation of a duel and the pickaxe style hammers were superior in use due to combining the weight of a hammer with the small point of a spear vs the axe's long edge. Poleaxes were eventually used to combined the heavy bladed end of an axe with the reach of a spear, but most people tend to think of those more on the spear side of things rather than the axe side.
One of the subconscious reasonings of the relative ignominy of an axe might be that its origins are in being a tool, and a tool of the peasantry. Axes showed up as ways to chop wood and gather other resources rather than being a purpose built weapon of war such as a sword or spear or mace. Although you could say blunt weapons have their origins in hammers, it's most common that axes as weapons aren't so distant from their tool cousins that you couldn't use the same axe made for combat to be used as a tool for gathering. In short, axes are weapons you start using because you had one for work, rather than something you go out and craft specifically because you were joining an army.
Matthew Davis
Axes are arguably the second most popular melee weapon after swords though.
Polearms are likely middle of the pack.
Talk about hammers and other bludgeon weapons if you want to talk about neglected weapons. When was the last time you saw the hero of a fantasy epic use a warhammer or a mace.
>inb4 anecdotes of that guy in your party who always uses a warhammer
Charles Richardson
>axe has a black sun on it I'll go ahead and assume this is some neopagan shit and not what it probably stems from. I prefer to use axes, maces, and spears on my TTRPG characters over swords, because I prefer the aesthetic, and I like playing "everyman" characters that, through the course of the game, turn into heroes. So they start out with, and often finish with, commoner's weapons. It really depends on the game and setting. Folks rallied around the sword for a reason, but if you're the sort of person who will use weapons for flavor reasons regardless of the mechanical inferiority, then axes have appeal since they're usually still heavy-hitters and can often pull double-duty as a camp tool.
Yeah I'm the anecdotal warhammer fag you're talking about. But part of the issue is that they were shit weapons through many of the earlier iterations of D&D, and in many other systems too. Maces were usually better as a bludgeon.
Cooper Ramirez
The titular warhammer of Sigmar is one that comes to mind, there's also Gilgamesh's talking club
Adam Green
>Polearms are likely middle of the pack. Dude, polearms are the most popular weapons in the world no contest. Every region, every continent has abundance of spears and polearms. Polearms are sneaking in everywhere.
Range. Any ax that would be sword length would need two hands and at that point you might as well have a halberd.
Ryder Russell
>What is it about axes that makes them so under-represented? So axes come in three flavors. Waraxes suitable for war, weapons best used in combination with a shield to punch through mail. They are good for fighting heavily armored enemies but maces can do that job too. Just regular axes, tools used in a pitch to defend your village, they are worse than swords in every way but still better than empty hands in a fight. Ceremonial axes which just look cool.
Which of these do you think is under-represented?
Elijah Harris
I'd say waraxes but I damn I don't think I've ever seen, or heard of, a ceremonial axe. Need to expand my axe-lore, I guess.
Ryan Morales
Aren't ceremonial axes the two-headed ones?
Tyler Jackson
I dunno, I always thought they were just double-headed axes.
Matthew Davis
Think Minoan Labrys...
Ryder Torres
Perrin ultimately chose the hammer as his weapon of choice.
Carter Powell
It's really only fantasy (both eastern and western) that made the sword king, and pretty much purely for social-class reasons in both halves of the world. Whether you were hanging out with 30 other buddies playing hedgehog with your pikes, or whether you were wielding a halberd as comfortable in tight corridors as it was in the field against multiple foes, people who went to war used longer sticks with things on them.
Hunter Hughes
Yeah but it makes sense. What purpose could be served by having an identical blade on each side of the axe? The only appeal is aesthetic. Fits for a "weapon" that is not intended to see actual content.
Colton Rogers
Axes are a good weapon, and eminently suitable to the kind of foes an adventurer might face (far more so then, say, a sword). However you must remember the greatest advantage of the axe lies in ease of manufacture and use, two things it shares with the spear but the spear is simply a far superior battlefield weapon.
This leaves it to cultural reasons for using the axe, and as a sidearm for people unwilling or unable to make use of swords or knives.
Brayden Smith
Herc used a club though
Juan Cook
its great on a timber axe where the extra weight is a good thing rather then liable to kill you, it also helps as you don't need to go back home to re-sharpen the blade after it dulls.
Basically a good civilian tool, horrid military weapon.
Xavier Wood
They appear as far back in literature as Ovid as a weapon, so it could be legit. Although the "hero" that wields it is a buffoon who gets killed like a noob, so maybe it's intentionally wrong.
Zachary Hill
They get automatic crits VS people not listening to Jazz
Cameron Green
Appearance in old literature could be for the same reason they still appear: people think they look gnarly.
Robert Ross
>The only appeal is aesthetic. Fits for a "weapon" that is not intended to see actual content. George Seers was a famous outdoors writer who carried a double headed axe.
You can use one head and use the other one once it gets dull. Or you can sharpen one head with a razor edge for fine tasks and the other with a coarser edge for rougher tasks.
And whips are actually really tiny slade hammers at the end of some rope.
Oliver Robinson
They were widespread in the middle east and Egypt as well
Xavier Thompson
I haleard of these guys that used swords as their primary weapon for a long time, with javelins and a dagger as backup. They raped clustered groups of polearm wielding guys and were called the Romans, look them up
Eli Lewis
underrated post.
Tyler Hall
>Romans didn't use spears don't understand this meme
never herd or perun? chief of the gods. axes also grants greater control in close fighting, allowing you to hook your opponents shield, weapons, legs allowing you to force openings in their stances. also has a blade that juts out of the handle that goes around shields, works best with height advantage. used to go to Renascence society fighting club called the new Varangian Guard. lots of axe use they dominated a lot of other clubs in shear craziness and skill with axes.
Logan Young
real life examples of battle axes had very different proportions to fantasy axes. The overall weight might be similar to a sword, but the distribution would be different, and the blade of the axe would be thinner and smaller than many would suspect. Flesh is a lot easier to cut than wood, so a thinner axe head just made more sense than a thick heavy axe head. Some people seem to think battle axes were more "practical" than swords, but this is only true in fantasy. If you tried to chop wood with an axe like pic related you would ruin the axe in a hurry. Where axes really shined was for hooking weapons, and wounding unarmored opponents. Easton's videos explain a lot about this topic.
I still think silly huge fantasy double bitted battle axes are super cool and fun though.
No dumbo even a good waraxe is as good as a status symbol for germanic peoples. It is even considered a holy item by some baltic tribes and people in the black forest. It was also a prominent weapon in the Mediterranean as well.
Easton Morris
Ceremonial axes are just like every other ceremonial weapons, ornate and unwieldy. Just like that ottoman 2 headed axe. In history axes is as common as any other weapons used by common folk and nobility.
Elijah Baker
Actually no, roman legions have had a really hard time dealing with phalanxes, often-time losing to pike formations. They're winning streak is more attributed to them exploiting the weakness of the formations. i;e hit them anywhere but the front.
Owen Sullivan
>What is it about axes that makes them so under-represented?
They're more tools than weapons
Hunter Edwards
>spears are the same thing as throwing javelins
The only spears used by the romans in melee was by the triarii in the maniples period, who most of the time didn't even get into combat anyway. Afterwards the legions would use the gladius
Chase Robinson
>I'll go ahead and assume this is some neopagan shit and not what it probably stems from. They stole the black sun symbol along with all their symbols, yknow that.
Don't know. I'm not really fond of swords because they are so present in fantasy imagery. I need to be a special snowflake so I prefer axes and maces, to be honest. I loved playing a warrior with two axes swinging them wildly all around him.
Luke Sullivan
>I always figured a large and heavy enough axe would pretty much serve the same role as a hammer of equal size, except having a bladed end on it. Which is why giant hammers of the fantasy variety were never a real weapon.
Nathan Richardson
Ancient Indoeuropean symbolism. Was quite ballsy and stupid to sell that stuff as 'Nordic' though.
Andrew Ramirez
that's a kolovrat, not a black sun you retard. stop making assumptions of things you know fuck all about
Alexander Martin
>nazis "stole" the black sun They didn't "steal" a symbol. They were Germans who wanted to use the symbols of their ancestors. They're not stealing a symbol, they're reusing it. It doesn't matter whether you think they're bad or not, the symbols they used weren't stolen
Jose Brooks
>the symbols of their ancestors >the symbols of slavs and indians are the symbols of their ancestors
Germania pls
David King
>maces are THE go-to weapon of the traditional Cleric
Because the axe was made obsolete with the creation of ever-greater forms of armor, you silly goose. The power of the axe was it's ability to break shields, which were the most important tool in a soldier's arsenal during the Dark Ages. Once people stopped carrying shields, the Axe lacked a reason to exist.
The mace has been seen as a kingly weapon since the Persians, user. The royal scepter is an older symbol of authority than the sword and it has it's origins as a royal mace.
Adam Evans
I'm probably wrong, and I'm sure metal quality has something to do with it, but I feel like you could split some smaller logs with that by the campfire, the kind of thing you would need a hatchet for but not an actual splitting axe. Or clipping kindling off a fallen evergreen or something.
Thomas Ward
In Canada we have a ceremonial mace lain on a table during sessions of parliament and the house of commons.
I just remember in elementary school social studies, one of.my favourite teachers, knowing I was obsessed with knights and armour and swords and stuff made a big deal out of it for my benefit. Thanks, Mr.Singer!
Jace Cook
Not entirely true, Prince Rupert used to use a battle axe during the English civil war, and were also utilised by the Parliamentarians during the battle of Edgehill in 1642. The axe was rather useful for breaking pike squares and was actually only phased out during the Napoleonic wars.
The kolovrat is clearly different from the black sun. search up kolovrat then search up black sun. GO BACK TO R*DDIT
Easton Watson
t triggered slavs
Evan Nelson
The Black Sun isn't Indian, the swastika is.
Austin Taylor
People in the military still use axes regularly. Only they double as portable shovels now
Carson Smith
the swastika isn't indian, its been used by thousands of cultures for thousands of years. btfo
Oliver Wilson
That's not a black sun you oafs
Cameron Watson
how the hell do you steal something from your ancestors??
Ryder Harris
It's just stereotypes and shit. Swords are the weapons of nobles and truly skilled warriors, while axes and most other such weapons are commoner shit and not really for adventurers - except for maces, those are totally for the religious characters.
Feel free to break those molds any way you want, just don't all show up with billhooks and picks and expect me to let you use techniques you vaguely read in some history book.
>javelins aren't spears meme javelin is a type of spear senpai
Ian Peterson
>no cavalry axes The fuck? Horsemen used axes all the time, honking great things made largely from metal. Swinging at a foot soldier with one while charging of them would but a man in full plate down for the count no problem. Popular in the Near East I hear
Axes were really good against shields, this while also being able to deliver some blunt damage and being cheap ontop of that. Specialized maces and swords were what knights started using and the peasants later stuff like helberds
Kayden Sullivan
>opponents shield has just hooked your weapon >overstrike breaks haft
Jaxson Butler
maces no, but warhammers are decently common
robert baratheon, the lionheart, thor, wulfgar, off the top of my head
Falchions don't tend to be any heavier than other swords of a similar length though, and machetes are built for cutting brush, not piercing metal. Also, saying a shamshir and an odachi are the same thing doesn't help either. And cutlasses being treated as finesse weapons, when they were used to give marines a basic, easy-to-use cutting sword. Whoever wrote fantasycraft should do us a favour and neck himself.
Jackson Edwards
Why bother with that shit when you can have oversized heavy gauntlets? >huge as fuck >double as a shield >can't be disarmed >cause the same damage as a giant bastard sword >can be dual weilded despite their size because they're gauntlets >triple damage on crits >max out StR and the size penalty doesn't matter because you'll still be +6 to hit at level 3
Elijah Wood
more weight falls on the cutting edge of a falchion than on other swords, giving them a punch-cut like axes and axes are made for cutting brush or other wood, not metal
dunno what they were thinking with the shamshir; they aren't even two-handed as far as I know
nothing you said about cutlasses implies they aren't finesse weapons
Leo Brooks
To be fair, in Dwarf Fortress the axe is probably the single most all-round useful weapon in the game, at least for equipping your militia. Against a large, non-biological opponent, spears are useless when no internal organs can be prodded, swords aren't as good at hacking off extra large limbs, and maces and hammers can only do chipping damage. Meanwhile the axe performs at least as well as every other weapon except the spear in dealing with large, biological opponents, and better than the spear when they can't feel pain. Against humanoids who can feel pain the hammer is the best, followed closely by the spear, but the axe is really not far behind at all, and against those that cannot feel pain like the undead, the axe is excellent because it disables them rapidly and causes a lot of wide-area trauma to make parts unresurrectable. It's only beaten at this task by the mace, and only in the hands of an exceptionally skilled macedwarf. Against armour of the same material as the weapon or better, the hammer is best, followed by the spear, and then the axe and the mace, because the axe's weight allows it to perform about as well as a mace.
tl;dr axes are great, and there's nothing more satisfying than seeing your dwarves turn a narrow corridor filled with dozens of goblins or undead into the inside of a blender.
Justin Ortiz
>Not painstakingly importing whips for your militia
Camden Torres
>axe has a black sun on it It's better to be thought an idiot, then to open your mouth and prove it.
Samuel Morales
It's great that Dwarf Fortress is designed in a way where hammers and axes naturally wind up being the best weapons for your dwarves to use.
Jeremiah Gonzalez
Ask Egyptians about their Tombs, some time.
Robert Stewart
Thor has a hammer you absolute fucking moron
Luis Bell
Maybe that's why Thor came to user's mind when someone asked " When was the last time you saw the hero of a fantasy epic use a warhammer or a mace".
Nicholas Jenkins
>nd against those that cannot feel pain like the undead, the axe is excellent because it disables them rapidly and causes a lot of wide-area trauma to make parts unresurrectable The axe is arguably the WORST weapon to use against the undead, because it's so slicey that it ends up chopping off limbs and heads all the time. Which wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that those separate limbs and heads can also then be resurrected as well.
Colton Martinez
Thats why you slice down the length of the limb, not the span, turn their arms and legs into splinters.
Juan Hughes
Yes, I know that.
Except it is a black sun, you willfully ignorant Neanderthals. If you did more than 10 seconds of googling on the subject you'd know the kolovrat and black sun are derivatives of the same basic shapes and symbology. And yes, they had meaning before the Nazis, and yes I knew I'd trigger you faggots by pointing it out because the number of armchair historians here is hysterical. I'm sorry I quipped that the axe might have been made for/representing something that polluted some ancient symbology, and also mentioned said symbology in the same breath being reclaimed by neopagans, which of course you ignore because it doesn't fit into your complaint.
Neck yourselves.
Jaxon King
An axe was a tool as well as a weapon. A sword is purely a weapon and usually better made than an axe. You point out how a sword is a status symbol. There you go. The swordsman can afford a slightly higher quality tool that is purely a weapon. The axeman's weapon is a multi-purpose tool that is of slightly lower quality.
Jacob Harris
Waraxes are certainly not a tool. If you're trying to chop down a tree with an axe built for war, you're gonna have a real bad time.
Matthew Smith
This is true to an extent. There are several utility axes that can be used as tools, but several designs of dedicated ones that should not be. But yeah, cutting down a tree with any axe is tough on it, so imagine how hard it is on one that's been purposely lightened for battlefield use solely.
Jayden Turner
"polluting ancient symbology" HAHHA So using a symbol your ancestors used is "polluting symbology"? Go back to r*ddit Keep on calling anyone who agrees with you a nazi, typical leftist behaviour. >muh kolovrat and black sun are derivatives And? Perun and Thor are derivatives of the same indo european pantheon, they're still different
Phew lad, do more to contain your butthurt next time.
Gabriel Wright
While I agree and all, the swastika and any of its related symbols are forever going to be associated with one very specific usage and no one beyond Veeky Forums autists and historians are going to know any different. That's the pollution. Those symbols can never really be used anymore because of one thing.
Oliver Mitchell
wow nice argument against all i've said. maybe because you got BTFO and you don't have an argument? Yes they can. the germanic tribes drowned sodomites in bogs and hated "degeneracy", it's not like you'll make the swastika into a symbol of hippie peace because it wasn't.
