Two-handed axe build

Use this Battle Forged frontliner for one strong single-target attack each turn, with a two-tile backup attack. Greataxe and Longaxe share Axe Mastery.

Recruit and equipment

Greataxe Longaxe

Level Melee Skill and Melee Defense most; keep Health and Resolve healthy. Long-term targets: 85+ Melee Skill, 30–35+ Melee Defense before gear/morale, about 90 Health after Colossus, and 50–60 Resolve. Equip heavy armor near 300/300 body/helmet durability, Greataxe and pocket Longaxe; both use Axe Mastery. Usable Fatigue is the pool left after armor and all weapon penalties, including pocket weapons; 25–30 gives a buffer. On ordinary terrain, a Pathfinder step plus mastered strike costs about 14–15 Fatigue versus 15 recovered. Difficult terrain, injuries and emergencies break that neutral turn. Orc Mansplitter needs more. Split Man hits both body and head; its weaker secondary hit has no normal headshot modifier and cannot injure. Split Man itself has no accuracy bonus; shield defense still applies.

Perk order

Immediate combat

Level	Perk
2	Colossus
3	Gifted
4	Steel Brow
5	Axe Mastery
6	Underdog
7	Battle Forged
8	Pathfinder
9	Quick Hands
10	Fearsome
11	Fortified Mind

For a recruit protected while leveling, use these changes. Keep other levels unchanged; at 11, spend the normal and returned points. Student and Gifted.

Student route	Perk
2	Student
3	Colossus
11	Fortified Mind + Gifted

After Axe Mastery and Pathfinder, the usual neutral turn is one step and one attack. Fearsome can make a second morale check only when Split Man’s secondary hit deals at least 15 HP damage. Round Swing costs 27 Fatigue with mastery and can hit allies; it is usually a poor trade for this low-Fatigue build.

Play it

Before Battle Forged, give him the best armor available and avoid making him first into a surrounded fight. At level 8, move one tile and use Split Man; at level 9, Quick Hands lets you switch to Longaxe when an enemy is two tiles away. Keep an escape tile or nearby ally. The main weakness is low burst flexibility: this build normally attacks once and does not chain kills.

For the wider roster, see weapon builds, weapon reference and combat.

Sources

Weapon and perk values use the 1.5.2.3 game-data manifest. See the In-Depth Perks Guide by turtle225 and Abel, CarveaHole’s fatigue-neutral build video, the community weapon-choice discussion, and this Split Man 1.5.1 mechanics explanation.