Zombie Pirate Deckhands Mob (Polearms)

Zombie Pirate Deckhands Mob (Polearems) is a Vampire Coast melee infantry unit in Total War: Warhammer II. The Deckhands’ polearms are rusty extensions of the decomposing arms that brandish them.

Description
Reanimated from corpses of dead drowned seaman and other unfortunates who perish at sea, Zombie Deckhands serve their eldritch zombie summoner admirals of the world’s oceans to make up the bulk of Undead pirate hordes. Festooned with rusty and corroded cutlasses and polearms, they are controlled via summoner foul dread enchantments which enable them to be competent as crewmen as well as fighters, making them ideal for piracy. As with all warriors reanimated from the dead, however, they tend to be clumsy combatants, with their advantages mostly being in the fact they have no will of their own so will continue moving forward regardless of injury or futile odds on their master command. Nevertheless, the tempestuousness of the Winds of Magic that blow across world’s oceans means that despite their apparent mindlessness, some vicious spark of personality resides deep within the Deckhands’ rotten souls, making them all the more formidable in combat.

Strategy
While their melee stats do not suggest this is a very good unit, it is amazingly cost effective. It has a lot of health and high armor piercing which means it can deal a surprising amount of damage to most things because they take so long to kill. While the Zombie Pirate Deckhands Mob should be used in your frontlines, the polearm variant should be kept in reserves generally. They can be placed on top of artillery crews to fend off cavalry, or kept behind the front line to ward off armored threats or just generally provide armor piercing damage. Make sure to mix in higher tier units to make your battle line more durable and threatening.

stat wise, polearms do better than the regular version at basically everything, they have defense vs large, armor piercing, and better melee defense. they preform the same vs trash infantry but infinitely better vs anything armored or large.