Quote:
Originally Posted by Railstar
Polearms were popular all-purpose weapons, rather than mostly against cavalry – they did nearly everything. The Swiss halberdiers used them as their weapon of choice before adopting the pike. More or less anyone not an archer would use a polearm in the Wars of the Roses. Landsknecht made use of halberdiers against other pike squares.
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Polearms we're exceptionally versatile, and came with other advantages such as being cheap, relatively easy to drill with and allowed dense formations etc (although this later depends on what polearms and how they were used).
All of which is demonstrated by the fact that nasty things on the end of long sticks (which includes spears) were basically the pre-eminent battlefield melee weapon for thousands of years. However...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Railstar
Axes were overall pretty good, not ideal for armour piercing, but certainly far from horrible metal weapons.
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... the same can not be said of axes, despite their relative cheapness and wide spread use and availability outside the battlefield. The oft cited John II at Poitiers preference for an axe only goes so far in a wider context.