With the Halbardier the undisputed spear challenger to Orc supremacy it adds fuel to the fire of the long festering question - does the Fang challenge the Dwarf infantry?

First the non challengers. Fists train attack somewhat as fast but have both less attack and speed than Stalwarts. 6 speed is rough. Man-at-Arms now have credible speed, but less attack and slower training rate. They’re not quite conversation pieces. That leaves the Fang, often considered the most underrated troop. And a surprise challenger we’ll see at the end?

For attacking forces it’s just not as close as you think. Fangs come close with about a 14% slower attack training rate than Stalwarts, and 12% faster than Axemen. But training rate seems to be considered the third place value behind speed and attack per upkeep - and certainly behind speed where they’re again 14% slower than Stalwarts.

This leaves upfront cost as the saving grace of the Fang - except that it doesn’t. While it’s nominally cheaper, it is actually more expensive than a Stalwart per attack point due to its abysmal 36% lower attack per upkeep. And that means as soon as you build a Stalwart and the 2.04 Fangs needed to hit as hard you start paying that 36% upkeep cost. Does it matter?

Lets use a fairly fast churn rate of 3 months, blowing out your armies every tournament. The Stalwart costs 2430g at current Centrum prices. The Fangs cost 2550g. With one infantry quarter the Stal costs 2.1g/hr and the Fangs 2.86g/hr. On average the troops will live 1.5 months so their costs are:

Stalwart 4700g vs Fangs 5640g

This is our biggest difference so far with a 20% price premium on the Fang even with a pretty fast churn. It’s not that far off from the long term 36% cost difference as the upfront cost gets buried in the upkeep. If you are holding Stalwart attack forces as a Dwarf you are holding almost 40% more power than the nearest competitor. And are Axemen even better? For a standing army the training rate fades while the Axe holds 32% more attack power with a radical 70% speed advantage. They are all terrain heavy cavalry, the undisputed infantry kings of standing armies.

You might be wondering why this is an actual debate at this point, but it is. Because Fangs train defence so fast they compete with the best defensive troops. Again, their defence per upkeep is rough, but defending a siege in a war is often more planned than attacking one, so the ability to train and retrain faster starts to matter more. Is the Fang’s upkeep really a problem if the churn rate blasts upwards during an active war, with the ability to use them up offensively *and* defensively? This is why the debate exists.

But there is one more wrinkle. The glorious short sword. If producing a short sword displaces 4 regular ones and the fur is 3000g it costs 5200g. At 60% on regular units it’s immediately worth 1400g on a Stalwart. On the T1 Fang with 22 attack it’s worth less than half in upfront value and upkeep value. After 125 days the sword has come to neutral value on a Stalwart, if you’re a forest dwarf. It comes even in more like 300 days if you assume half value due to having on average two terrains in your alliance. This is a fairly long wait, but maybe not that long in Illyriad. After that you hold twice as much power.