Zombie Pirate Deckhands Mob

Zombie Pirate Deckhands Mob is a Vampire Coast melee infantry unit in Total War: Warhammer II. These Undead mariners are competent crewmen and relentless fighters, making them ideal pirates.

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 masters 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
Meat shield/tarpit unit but with much better melee stats compared to the Vampire Counts zombies making skeleton warriors a better comparison. Use them to pin the enemy line so than your ranged units and artillery can blast away and keep your Depth Guards and monsters from being mobs and overwhelmed. They can remain relevant into the late game due to their high model count being useful for filling out a battle line.

this unit is outperformed by the polearms variant massively except in the very early game. All polearms lose is some attack speed and melee attack but gain charge defense vs large, better melee defense, and armor piercing. Any one of those would be enough to make them better than the regular version but all 3 make it not even a contest. Don’t get the regular version unless it’s all you can get from raise dead in a pinch.