Before I attach the weapons on my six Iron Hills Goat Riders I’m trying to decide on whether one or two should have mattocks. Model equipment matters to me, since I prefer to play WYSIWYG. So, I’m thinking through the pros and cons of each weapon.

War Spear: +1 to wound on charge only, but no penalties to use.

Mattock: Piercing strike and +1 to wound any time; but -1 to win the fight. This can be mitigated by the possibility of a knock-down on the charge or another friendly model engaged.

What am I missing? Does anyone have experience with both options, and what do you think works out the best during actual games?

Can't say I've used them myself, but purely theoretical, there really doesn't seem much reason to ever use a mattock when mounted, at least from an optimised point of view.

When charging, the warspear is obviously better. +1 to wound, no penalty.

When not charging, warrior cavalry is vulnerable, with typically just the 1 attack. Reducing your odds of winning the fight does not help there. Even if you have other figures in the same fight, you are still reducing your chances of winning. Even if the enemy is already in the ground, you are increasing their chance of winning the duel and standing back up.

The infantry (may lose their shield when taking a mattock, but having 1-2 mattocks in a warband could still be useful to get the +1 to wound every now and then. For the cavalry, I don't think the small advantage of a two-handed weapon offsets the penalty. Maybe if you could have used it one-handed for a piercing strike (when guaranteed the opponent cannot strike back), but as it is...

I could see having some mattock armed models if you ever thought you'd like to do a battle companies campaign with them. Heroes can get burly easily enough and that means you will have a plus one all the time, rather than just on the change. For points matches, that would be another matter. I guess having a few might be useful if you could think of a reason for a rider to want the 'bash' special strike. I could see that being used against monsters or larger than man sized models but would it be better than just trying to kill the thing out right? I don't know. I concede that it is possible use though.

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