In Defense Of: Mattocks

Good morning gamers,

A surprising number of posts in the last two rounds of this "In Defense Of" series have centered around two-handed weapons - whether it's models who have to fight two-handed (like Bofur the Dwarf or Moria Blackshield Captains) or models that can fight two-handed even if they have other options (like Morannon Orc Captains - if you give them a two-handed weapon instead of a shield - or Mordor Trolls). I've even written an entire article talking about why two-handing can be okay (ignoring models who don't suffer the dueling penalty from the discussion). Today, we're going to continue looking at the topic of two-handed weapon options by looking at an equipment choice that I've come to appreciate having here and there in my Erebor Reclaimed lists: mattocks.

Photo Credit: Spikey Bits

For starters, there are a handful of models that have this rather specialized kind of weapon - most of them can be found in the Erebor Reclaimed/Iron Hills factions:

• Bofur the Dwarf (Thorin's Company)
• Iron Hills Captains (Erebor Reclaimed/Iron Hills)
• Iron Hills Dwarves (same)
• Iron Hills Goat Riders (same)
  

A mattock is described in Bofur's profile as being a "two-handed weapon, which can use either the Bash or Piercing Strike Special Strikes," which is neat since Bashing with a two-handed weapon makes your Bash more likely to work and getting +1 To Wound when you've raised your Strength value to improve your wounding roll is even better. There's nothing to dislike about this, right?

Well, actually no - most competitive players (including the Into The West podcast team) will tell you that the models look cool, but the mattock isn't worth taking. And on its face, I think they're right. However, there's more to this weapon than meets the eye - let's see why mattocks are critiqued so heavily and then we'll look at why (and more importantly how) they can be worth taking.

Why NOT To Take Mattocks

Our discussion of mattocks has to begin with a comparison between a mattock and a pick-hammer. If you look at the Grim Hammer profile from the Army of Thror, you'll see that a Pick-Hammer is a "hand-and-a-half weapon, which may use either the Bash or Piercing Strike Special Strikes." Wait a minute - did you say you can choose whether you want to use this thing one-handed or two-handed? Are you telling me that the Grim Hammers of Erebor knew how to wield things that look almost EXACTLY like the mattocks wielded by their Iron Hills brethren with one hand! Why yes, yes they could - and that's stop number one for many players (including our very own Rythbyrt): there's no reason why a mattock should have to be wielded two-handed when pick-hammers are a thing.

A second critique about mattocks is that two of the units that can take them (Iron Hills Captains and Iron Hills Goat Riders) are/can be mounted on war goats - and since both of these profiles swap their war spear for a mattock (free of charge), they are trading a weapon that could be used as a lance while mounted (+1 To Wound if you charged that turn with no penalties to your dueling roll) or as a spear on foot (supporting attacks are good - especially if you're a D6 Iron Hills Goat Rider and you have a D7-8 Iron Hills Dwarf with a shield in front of you) for a two-handed weapon . . . why would anyone do that?

The third critique is that taking the mattock on the other Iron Hills warrior option (Iron Hills Dwarves) requires swapping the shield, which means you're taking a D6 model that really should be fighting two-handed to make up for not having a shield AND is a model who doesn't have a shield to trigger the shieldwall rule anymore. From experience, if you have a few of these guys in your front rank and a bunch of D7+ models around them . . . they become archery magnets like nothing else. I think for most players, getting +1 To Wound with a -1 penalty to the dueling roll is just not as good as being D7-8 and having the option of shielding.

These are all solid critiques - and if you look at most competitive lists for the Iron Hills or Erebor Reclaimed, you won't see a mattock in the list. But I think they're worth taking - not only because I think you can make two-handing work, but because there are things that a few mattock-wielding Dwarves can do that you just can't get anywhere else in the Erebor Reclaimed or Iron Hills lists. Let's see what those are . . .

Why TO take Mattocks

Before we jump into the main discussion about mattocks, I need to begin by saying that I'm not going to talk about Bofur the Dwarf here - I've already done that and have nothing more to add on him (he's great, give him a go). The TL;DR on that article is that he hits hard and should have a spearman backing him up (a similar thread was pulled when talking about the Moria Blackshield Captain last time).

The second preliminary we need to cover here is that I'm not going to defend the choice of a mattock on an Iron Hills Goat Rider or an Iron Hills Captain on war goat - both of these models have to trade their war spear (a weapon that is easy to get +1 To Wound without a dueling penalty) for a mattock (which gives +1 To Wound with a dueling penalty) and I agree with the greater community's wisdom in foregoing that swap here.

But I do think that mattocks are worth investing in for a few Iron Hills Dwarves and all Iron Hills Captains on foot. It's unclear to me whether an Iron Hills Captain on a chariot would benefit greatly from having a two-handed weapon option, but I'm inclined to think the answer would be yes if his war spear doesn't give him a +1 To Wound on the charge . . . though one could argue that knocking someone down and doubling your dice makes the +1 To Wound a bit superfluous in most cases. Why are a few mattocks worth buying? Well, there are a few reasons for it . . .

The first is that Erebor Reclaimed (and to a much lesser degree the Iron Hills) has a LOT of heroes without mount options. Dwarves in general lack mounts, but there are only a handful of Dwarves in either of these factions that can take mounts (Dain, Iron Hills Captains, Thorin, Kili, Fili, and Dwalin in the Hobbit era). While these heroes are often enough for most players to have an "all mounted" hero corps, there are other perfectly good heroes who will have to wound their opponents without doubling their dice - these include big slaying heroes like Gloin, Dori, and Old Dain who all get +1 To Wound without penalties, as well as tactical heroes like Bifur, Nori, and Thorin III. When you have a hero who can't take a mount and would like to double their wounding dice against an enemy hero, it helps to have a buddy at your elbow whose sole job is to knock someone on their back before the hammer falls.

This is particularly true in the War of the Ring era Erebor Reclaimed list, where the only mounted hero option you have is the Iron Hills Captain (what with Dain getting older, Thorin/Kili/Fili dying, and Dwalin apparently being too old to ride but NOT too old to have the Venerable special rule). If you invest money on Old Dain (who is still awesome), Thorin III, Dwalin, Gloin, Nori, or Dori - all of whom are budget hitter heroes - it would be nice if they could go up against a big hero and have a chance at doubling their dice against him (or her). While two of these guys can Bash (Dori and Nori), it's far better to have that Bash be on a S4 model with 1 Attack instead of a S4 model with 3 Attacks.

This continues to be true if you're fielding Murin and Drar in an Iron Hills list (no mount options - and Murin's damage output goes up by a TON if he's fighting someone who's prone) or if you're fielding the War of the Ring Erebor Reclaimed heroes in the Defenders of Erebor Legendary Legion where you pick up a bunch of infantry heroes and warriors from Dale. As someone who has run this Legion a fair number of times, I can tell you that there are times when you can get an Iron Hills Goat Rider into the same fight as a hero, but most of the time, these guys are going to be embedded in a battle line . . . and you'll be better served by having an infantry model that can set up the Heroic Combat for all-but-certain success.

When you look at allying into other factions, there are a surprising number of factions with infantry-only heroes who benefit greatly from having a good Bash model (and you can't really argue with S4 and +1 To Wound when you Bash) - Lothlorien is WOEFULLY lacking in mounted hero options, as are the Halls of Thranduil (just Thranduil and Legolas), the Survivors of Lake-town (just Bard and Gandalf), the Army of Thror (no mounted hero options), and the aforementioned Garrison of Dale - all of which can be either historical or convenient allies with either the Hobbit-era Erebor Reclaimed or the Iron Hills. Most of the other Good factions become convenient allies if you run the War of the Ring variant of Erebor Reclaimed - though if you lose your army bonus, Dain becomes a lot less useful. While you could invest in Iron Hills Goat Riders, you could also just jump for a few 11-point Iron Hills Dwarves with mattocks . . . just saying.

Mattocks don't have to be used just for Bashing though - the increased damage they bring (+1 To Wound and potentially +1 Strength with Piercing Strike) can turn even a lowly Iron Hills Dwarf into a dangerous player when there's a friend in the fight. Consider this: a S4 Iron Hills Dwarf who uses Piercing Strike (boost to S5) with a Mattock (+1 To Wound) can wound a D7 model on 5s normally, which becomes 4s after the +1 To Wound from the two-handed weapon is applied - that means every other fight that's won by an Iron Hills Dwarf with a mattock is supposed to translate into a kill against a DEFENSE 7 MODEL! That's insane if you ask me (though it's about what you expect from models with effectively S7, like Khazad Guards). 

Furthermore, since Old Dain can count as a 6" banner in a pure War of the Ring Erebor Reclaimed list (and Dain, Thorin III, Brand, and Bard II count as 3" banners in the Defenders of Erebor Legendary Legion), any two-handing warriors within that banner radius (either in the banner-hero's fight or just killing other people nearby) will have a reroll on either their dueling die OR that of the spearman behind them - that greatly increases the reliability of winning fights, despite having that penalty applied. If you have a higher Fight Value, your likelihood of winning is even higher - and all you need is one good round with these guys and your heroes and you'll have severely reduced the enemy's numbers.

Photo Credit: Beasts of War

Iron Hills Captains on foot suffer very little from swapping their war spear for a mattock, since they would only be able to lend a single die to a friendly model if they spear-supported - and while spear-supporting a F4 Dwarf with a F5 Captain could be great, it's far better if the 2-Attack F5 Captain is in the front being supported by a F4 spearman. Furthermore, since Iron Hills Captains have Master of Battle (5+), it's possible that a Heroic Combat called nearby would allow the Captain to charge into additional enemies if he's in the front rank - a spearman can't declare Heroic Combats on behalf of the model he's supporting, so you'd have to let the chance of a free Heroic Action and potentially more fallen foes pass you by . . . who wants to do that?

My last defense of the mattock is simple: when you're up against something big that you need to maul to death NOW, you don't want a S4 Iron Hills Dwarf. D7-8 is great and all, but if you run afoul of a Balrog, a Mumak, or just another army of Dwarves, you NEED the two-handed weapons. Like a Shaman in an evil list, if you need this in your tool kit and you don't have it, you're going to wish you had it. It's that simple - so take a few (not a lot, but a few). There are other principles that should be followed if you're to get the most out of two-handed weapons, but I submit my previous defense of two-handing as well as my discussion of the "windmill" formation for very practical thoughts on how to make this work.

Making It Work

One of the lists we've talked about where these guys can be helpful is in the Defenders of Erebor Legendary Legion. The following list is a 700-point, 39-model list that has three Iron Hills Dwarves with mattocks to escort Bard II, Thorin III, and Bifur (the Captain of Dale isn't intended to be near the action, so he can stand near the crossbow guy instead of a spearman).

• Thorin III Stonehelm [ARMY LEADER]
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves
  
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves with mattocks
• 8 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
  
• Bifur the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor
• 3 Iron Hills Dwarves
  
• 1 Iron Hills Dwarf with mattock
• 4 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
• 1 Iron Hills Dwarf with crossbow
  
• Bard II, Prince of Dale
• 6 Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows
  
• 3 Warriors of Dale with shields and spears
  
• Captain of Dale with Esgaroth bow
• 5 Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows
  

700pts, 39 models, 12 Esgaroth bows hitting on a 4+ AND 1 crossbow hitting on a 4+, 24 D6+ models, no fast models but 2 Might for Heroic March, 10+ Might points

Our second list is a pure War of the Ring Erebor Reclaimed list - and the first three purchases I buy for this list are ALWAYS King Dain, an Iron Hills Captain on foot (with mattock, of course), and Bifur.

• Dain Ironfoot, King Under the Mountain [ARMY LEADER]
• 4 Iron Hills Dwarves
• 1 Iron Hills Dwarf with mattock
• 5 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
• 4 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows and spears
  
• Iron Hills Captain with Mattock
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves
  
• 1 Iron Hills Dwarf with mattock
• 4 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
• 1 Iron Hills Dwarf with crossbow and spear
  
• Bifur the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves
• 1 Iron Hills Dwarf with mattock
• 4 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
• 1 Iron Hills Dwarf with crossbow and spear
  

700pts, 39 models, 12 crossbows hitting on a 4+ AND 1 thrown stone hitting on a 3+, 39 D6+ models, no fast units but 2 Might for Heroic March, 7+ Might points

Conclusion

I will openly accept criticism from veteran Iron Hills and Erebor Reclaimed players on the inclusion of mattocks in these armies - and I am certain that I have failed to convince Rythbyrt (who very much prefers the mounted Hobbit-era heroes rather than the infantry-only War-of-the-Ring-era heroes for Erebor Reclaimed anyway - and REALLY likes Grim Hammers, who don't have this conundrum). Still, I think these guys have a place in the game (albeit a small cubby of a place) and I've enjoyed putting them on the board in small numbers to add some extra oomph to the list. 

Next time, it's a tag-team article between me and Centaur defending one of Centaur's most beloved units: Uruk-Hai Scouts. Often overshadowed by other Uruk-Hai models, these guys are usually seen in their Legendary Legions and are noticeably absent from generic Isengard lists. Their Captain equivalents will also be showing up, as will their Feral cousins. Join us next time for a grand old Isengard discussion - and until then, happy hobbying!