Warhammer

A warhammer is a hammer wielded for war, rather than construction. Just like the battleaxes, they evolved from the tools and could be used as ones outside the battle. Unlike the battleaxes, warhammers hadn't see much use until the late medieval.

Fullmetal one handed warhammer. A big "Fuck You" towards full plated knights.

Real warhammers have smallish heads on long shafts, designed more like claw hammers or pickaxes, and were used to both hammer unprotected heads and bash and break plate armor to the point where it became useless. To put it simply, they can do maul's and axe's work, and two handed ones can also be used to grapple things like halberds. The blunt side of the warhammer coul be used as a less-lethal weapon, for when you need to capture some aristocrat and later torture some information out of him or sell him to his relatives. Otherwise it was damn handy for reducing people into bags of broken bones and shredded flesh. The spiked side of the warhammer had one of the best armour-piercing capability of its time, rivaled only by the ridiculously slow musket (yes, better than arquebuses and pistols; a well-drilled soldier could get off two or three shots per minute with a flintlock, three or four with a caplock musket). The main downside is that the warhammer's spike usually stuck inside armour after penetration, forcing the user to either spend a few precious seconds to pull it out, or just leave the weapon there. For this reason one-handed warhammers were usually carried by knights and elite troopers as their sidearm, and used only against armored opponents as one-shot weapons. Two-handed warhammers on the other side become "poor man's halberds" - a cheap and effective weapon to make men at arms somewhat not useless against knights.

Fantasy art usually shows them with massive heads the size of anvils and used almost exclusively only for bashing things with blunt end, even if they have the claw. It is obvious that nobody actually used weapons like these because they were too goddamn heavy to carry to battle, let alone swing without throwing your back out. The only possible exception would be some of the larger all-wood or metal-reinforced mauls, but even those were intended more for bashing down doors and pegs than skulls.

Warhammer can also refer to one of several games by Games Workshop:

• Warhammer Fantasy Battle (or WHFB), a wargame taking place in a fantasy universe (orcs, elves, dwarves, magic, etc.).
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WHFRP), a RPG based on the Warhammer Fantasy Battles world.
• Warhammer 40,000 (WH40k or just 40k), another wargame, but this time taking place in a distant future, sci-fi version of the fantasy universe.
  • Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay (WH40KRP), a system of role-playing games set in the grim, dark future. Funnily enough, except for the little "Warhammer 40,000" logo on the covers, none of the games themselves actually have the word "Warhammer" anywhere in their titles.
• Warhammer Wednesday The fires from which /tg/ was born.