Hello im new to Age of Sigmar, i really like the seraphon and especially the look of saurus units. So far i have the start collecting box and another box of 20 saurus warriors. so im willing to bet this question has been asked on here before but after an hour of scanning through the forum i cant for the life of me find it, which is better for a saurus warrior based army, celestite clubs or celestite spears? does the extra range on the spears heavily outweigh the 3+ wound on the clubs? aesthetically i think the clubs look nicer but my local store is very competitive.
That's because they are both good. Though I suspect spears are better for large units, and clubs are better for smaller units.
What n810 said, think of it this way, you essentially double the amount of attacks you can do with spears as the line behind the front can also attack, so if you surround a monster with 10 dudes and have another 10 dudes behind them, you've got 20 attacks with the spear, on average you'll do 20*(4/6)*(3/6) wounds (nearly 7 wounds), whereas in the same scenario with clubs, you've got 10 attacks, on average you'll do 10*(4/6)*(4/6) wounds (about 4 wounds).
Complex geometry time; if you stack up 32mm bases up against a straight line then the ones in the 2nd row will be 27.7mm away from the straight line and hence outside 1" range. On the other hand if you stack them up against a line made up also of 32mm bases the second row will actually be 23.4mm away and so within 1" range. The usual case is that the second row of clubs do get to attack if you correctly stack everyone in as close as they can get but for some sufficiently large base size of target this stops working. If fighting against infantry your second line can strike so your Saurus warriors are better off with clubs unless you run extremely large units needing to hit from the 3rd rank or you expect them to have to tackle enemy big monsters. The quoted maths above holds for big monsterson big bases but not for enemy infantry sized models. Against infantry you would be getting nearly 7 wounds with spears but hitting with clubs would give 20*(4/6)*4/6) for nearly 9 wounds. My conclusion would be that spears are better for big units going after monsters, clubs better for the same unit vs infantry. If you are in an environment that does not use the common house rule about measuring from bases then none of this is so precise. How you and your opponent actually modeled the figure on the base will alter the outcome (but you can and should overlap bases which is precisely why this gets house-ruled so often). NOTE : awkward mix of measuring systems in this post because the bases are 32mm but the game distances are in inches.
The question is even more complex. Because it’s true that a unit of 30 warriors w spears is better than 30 clubs, but they are also slow and it's difficult to have the initiative. You will be easily charged and if a solid monster attacks you. .. you could remain with only 7 warriors to counterattack. So yes, spears are better for hordes... maybe. We are not skeleton warriors that replenish their losses and so can almost always swarm their target.
Thank you all for your comments, iv decided to go with spears for now considering the amount of saurus im planning to use for this army.
How about place the clubs I front as a long line (only first rank, to use old termes ) and the spears directly behind? Something like that...