Ruling on Uruk-hai "swords" and special strike/s

templar_tony · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 4:08 pm

For the purposes of special Striking...

Is it just a Sword? Or is it a Sword that also features a Pick?

As far as I can see there is a huge number of uses to having a spike like that on a weapon.

If i had to choose one between feinting or Piercing strike. I'd take piercing strike, especially if say.. I was running a berserker heavy, pure Isengard army with a fairly good idea of what other armies might feature for an upcoming tourney. ie lots of monsters lol.

So yea, what are people's thoughts? Ideally I'd say both due to the nature of the weapon. Its not a real world weapon(correct if i'm worng) so I can only theorise as to real military application. the closest thing i could think of would be say war axe of some description:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_axe

SouthernDunedain · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 4:35 pm

There is no official ruling but in the GBHL they are classed as swords. There was a long discussion on this last year. It looks more like a sword than it does an axe or pick.

Dr Grant · **Joined:** Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:50 pm **Posts:** 1339

It's a sword, the spikes are purely an aesthetic touch added by Weta that were never intended to have any in-game benefit. This was debated at length in another thread last year, have a look at page 2 to see a variety of opinions:

viewtopic.php?f=49&t=26365&p=334520&hilit=beserker+sword+axe#p334520

This is copied and pasted from my response from that thread:

"The Beserker weapon is a sword, it's clearly meant to be a sword and trying to attritube piercing strike to the fancy bits on the end is taking advantage of the rules. Whilst it's not described as a sword in the Beserker's profile, if you look at the two handed weapon rules in the rulebook, the Beserker is used as the example of a model with a two-handed sword. As far as I'm concerend that's case closed"

rigg1313 · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 4:48 pm

I don't think they can be used to make piercing strikes though to be honest I've never seen it written anywhere what the uruk-hai swords an/can't do.
If they can be used to make piercing strikes them my elves will get cleaned up!

Coenus Scaldingus · **Joined:** Sat Aug 17, 2013 9:14 am **Posts:** 1121

Most swords also come with a pommel with which you can bash somebody in the face quite badly. Does that make the sword into a mace? No, of course not.
Unless otherwise specified, a weapon uses one kind of special strike. As such, a Uruk-hai sword is just that: a sword. Regardless of the practicality of that special strike with that troop type.

GothmogtheWerewolf · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 4:59 pm

If you read the "weapons and warfare" book, you'll see that the Uruk-hai did not use the spike to stab or hack enemies as the sword would have gotten lodged in the enemy and would have struggled to remove it in time to fight the next enemy, and thus only used the other side of it, thus no, they cannot use piercing strike.

Isilduhrr · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 6:01 pm

The spike was an design feature designed to grab riders and cavalry from charging horses to pull them off. Designed to combat Rohan, it was one of the many futuristic ideas of Saruman for his army.
Using it for piercing strike would not even be rule-bending, but downright cheating.

Wan Shi Tong · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 6:15 pm

As far as using piercing strike I wouldn't bother closely looking at any of the weapons to see what they are. The special attacks are pretty thin stuff in terms of how you could really use a weapon. Just call use the regular models proxies for guys with axes or pick rather than swords and leave it at that.

JamesR · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 8:09 pm

It's a sword. There's not enough there to classify it as a pick. When in doubt go back to old rule-books and read exactly what kind of hand weapon it is

LordoftheBrownRing · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 9:03 pm

Dr Grant wrote:

It's a sword, the spikes are purely an aesthetic touch added by Weta that were never intended to have any in-game benefit.

How can you say that? I mean, thats only something Games W. can say. First and foremost, its something that was created by the writer. Before that though, its a weapon of warfare, and that dictates all rules.

rigg1313 wrote:

I don't think they can be used to make piercing strikes though to be honest I've never seen it written anywhere what the uruk-hai swords an/can't do.
If they can be used to make piercing strikes them my elves will get cleaned up!

Very true and I hope they dont say they can I assume they wont.

The general thing I think they attempt to do is give each type of weapon one special strike.

Isilduhrr wrote:

The spike was an design feature designed to grab riders and cavalry from charging horses to pull them off. Designed to combat Rohan, it was one of the many futuristic ideas of Saruman for his army.
Using it for piercing strike would not even be rule-bending, but downright cheating.

First off, anything short of a rule book 5 times our current size, the full rules will never be known.

Second, cheating? Lol. No. The closest thing you can do to cheating is modeling a wood elf army with all axes. Or perhaps all goblins with axes.

Calling using a realistic strike from that weapon cheating is far from the truth. Maybe its rule abusing yeah, but so is most of what happens with winning armies.

It would be nice to live and die by what you see but armies in history who did that lost too.

JamesR wrote:

It's a sword. There's not enough there to classify it as a pick. When in doubt go back to old rule-books and read exactly what kind of hand weapon it is

Thats exactly what they are. Old books. Theres a reason why they included special rules and such. The game has become re educated.

GothmogtheWerewolf wrote:

If you read the "weapons and warfare" book, you'll see that the Uruk-hai did not use the spike to stab or hack enemies as the sword would have gotten lodged in the enemy and would have struggled to remove it in time to fight the next enemy, and thus only used the other side of it, thus no, they cannot use piercing strike.

Did you see who weapons and warfare was written by? I woulnt trust anyone other than Tolkein.

Furthermore...do you think a blade without any serrated edge would stick that much? Im pretty sure an uruk hai with that strength could easily pull it out even through the back half of any would be armor.

SouthernDunedain wrote:

There is no official ruling but in the GBHL they are classed as swords. There was a long discussion on this last year. It looks more like a sword than it does an axe or pick.

Totally agree with this because its true. It does look more like a sword. If this were a more in depth war game say one where people only had 5-10 troops and it meant more then yes, a pick option would be great.
Furthermore, Im glad its not. Isengard is already powerful. If they could all piercing strike I fear they would become one of the most powerful groups without effort.

templar_tony · **Posted:** Sat Mar 01, 2014 12:25 am

AS PER THE RULES... I could just cut off all the swords and replace them with warpicks of some description lol. Certainly wouldn't be cheating but it would be a really really low blow. BUT WHY RUIN SUCH AN AWESOME MODEL THOUGH!?!

I wanted to embed the video but it does not exist where the men themselves Richard Taylor and Jon Howe discuss what the intended purpose of the weapon's elements are. There is the segment pertaining to armour on youtube but is kinda irrelevant to the current discussion I think the segment i am thinking about is in the Two Towers documentaries for the Ext. Edition.

For those wanting a GW offical ruling, I totally forgot that they feature as one of the big four examples on the first page of wargear:

And GW says that they're a sword. I wanted to post a pic but that is against forum rules naturally. (still wanted the communities opinions)

In my first post I had a axe but as it was late and my brain wasn't working right, a more suitable example might be something like a bill weapon. Bill weapons were in chief because the men that used it couldn't afford the substantially more sophisticated poleaxe. The blade component itself was mounted on a pole to compensate for a generally lack of both quantity and quality of armour(usually referred to as munition quality) of these poorer soldiers.

Mix of 15cent. and 16 cent pole-arms.

Source: http://www.google.com.au/imgres?sa=X&hl ... =0&ndsp=33
Those spikes on those glaives and bills look rather suspicious looking...

If only I could just build an army of those gorgeous Men at Arms minis by the Perry brothers, all with poleaxes.

Then I'd be able to bash and piece for sure! Some how I would think that a 15th century English army would be a little too powerful army for middle-earth.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts, i really appreciate it. My competitive spirit wanting the best from my army lol :oops:

.

Cheers

LordoftheBrownRing · **Posted:** Sat Mar 01, 2014 3:47 pm

templar_tony wrote:

AS PER THE RULES... I could just cut off all the swords and replace them with warpicks of some description lol. Certainly wouldn't be cheating but it would be a really really low blow. BUT WHY RUIN SUCH AN AWESOME MODEL THOUGH!?!

I wanted to embed the video but it does not exist where the men themselves Richard Taylor and Jon Howe discuss what the intended purpose of the weapon's elements are. There is the segment pertaining to armour on youtube but is kinda irrelevant to the current discussion I think the segment i am thinking about is in the Two Towers documentaries for the Ext. Edition.

For those wanting a GW offical ruling, I totally forgot that they feature as one of the big four examples on the first page of wargear:

And GW says that they're a sword. I wanted to post a pic but that is against forum rules naturally. (still wanted the communities opinions)

In my first post I had a axe but as it was late and my brain wasn't working right, a more suitable example might be something like a bill weapon. Bill weapons were in chief because the men that used it couldn't afford the substantially more sophisticated poleaxe. The blade component itself was mounted on a pole to compensate for a generally lack of both quantity and quality of armour(usually referred to as munition quality) of these poorer soldiers.

Mix of 15cent. and 16 cent pole-arms.

Source: http://www.google.com.au/imgres?sa=X&hl ... =0&ndsp=33
Those spikes on those glaives and bills look rather suspicious looking...

If only I could just build an army of those gorgeous Men at Arms minis by the Perry brothers, all with poleaxes.

Then I'd be able to bash and piece for sure! Some how I would think that a 15th century English army would be a little too powerful army for middle-earth.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts, i really appreciate it. My competitive spirit wanting the best from my army lol :oops:

.

Cheers

Idk man games workshop could find a way to balance those guys. They'd each be like 12 pts or so and those weapons would be like 2 pts each or more haha you'd get swarmed by goblins and murdered like everyone hHa

templar_tony · **Posted:** Sun Mar 02, 2014 11:16 am

I would go for super super elite. Might start think about that those rules some time.
Bodyguard, defense 8 and burly(more just to represent professional fighting technique and well balanced nature of the late medieval weapons than any size) just for a start. Its 4 weapons in one!
I will keep any further discussion to the house rules thread.

LordoftheBrownRing · **Posted:** Sun Mar 02, 2014 9:49 pm

So like 20 pts each?

templar_tony · **Posted:** Mon Mar 03, 2014 1:07 am

I'll start a thread soon under the name "The Perry Project: Use of Perry Brother Miniatures in HSBGs" etc something like that.

Keep an Eye out. I've already got a first draft. For use of Men-at-Arms (Mounted and Dismounted), Billman and Longbowmen.

Will post up within the week. Once I'm happy with what I've written.

Ruling on Uruk-hai "swords" and special strike/s

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