Great Weapons vs Additional Hand Weapons, For Minotaurs, Characters, etc...

This reinforces my notion that great weapons should be akin to halberds (IE: +1S and require 2 hands only).

I'd also be curious to see the number run with dragon ogres. S5 against T3 infantry should do just fine for the most part.

Dragon ogres are different, but in many ways the same. Also, you take dragon ogres to take out different things than minotaurs.

Dragon ogres are there to take on steamtanks, treemen, enemy heavy cavalry, and chariots.

I can tell you, never once have I thought "damn, should have given my DOs ADWs instead of GWs", even against armies where it would have helped, because the difference was not huge.

However, I can think of tons of games where if I had not taken GWs, I would have severaly regretted it.

Well...I thought that once when I was fighting some gutter runners and skavensklaves one time, but the dragon ogres made short work of them regardless (I just elected not to use the GW).

haha...I never even thought of electing to use the hand weapon!

It doesn't seem like it'd come up much though, since S7 is better than S5 obviously, and with I2 there are very few troops the DOs would strike first against to begin with.

The thing is against most soft stuff (T3 AS5+) S5 is plenty. But as you point out, they're better off going against the enemys harder stuff, where the S7 will come in handy more often. Depends greatly on your opponent of course. I was just curious to see the numbers and weigh them against each other, as the scales are probably more even than with minos.

Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

Well its kind of a catch 22. On the one hand in the base S4 GW vs AHW debate, everyone says how S4 is really bad and useless, the minimum you need for killing infantry is S5.

But then on the base S5 GW vs AHW debate, its so huge of an advantage to be able to auto-splat chariots and wound any monster on the game on a 3+ (as well as putting a dent in 1+ armor saves) that people still take the GW.

And it looks cooler
Your better of having them for tourneys

I agree...from an asthetic standpoint, great weapon weilding minotaurs look alot better than the really akwardly posed 2 HW ones.

The only time I have not used GW for my minos was when I had to stop a unit of flagellants (sp??) I flank charged them and decided using my hand weapon would be better than a great weapon. It took a couple rounds of combat but I took out the unit. They didn't attack back once because of my higher Int, had I used GW I think it may have not gone so well. But that's the only example I can come up with where it was better.