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Axes are Seaxes

Are you ever bothered by the fact that axe units use the same exact combat animations as their sword counterparts? Left in utter shock after witnessing a viking shove his tree-murdering instrument straight through some poor fellows’ stomach? Well do I have the solution for you… maybe.

Introducing Axes are Seaxes, a mod that seeks to remedy this barbaric misuse of axes by simply replacing all of their models with a wide selection of seaxes. Now I know what you’re probably thinking:

Why that seems to be an excellent solution to all of our axe-related woes, but aren’t vikings typically judged solely by the axe they carry? If a viking doesn’t have one in his arsenal, then can he truly refer to himself as such? Are you sure that this mod is a good idea?

Now that is a good argument (as well as exceptionally expressed you handsome devil, you). I agree, it is difficult to imagine an army of vikings without a single hand-axe to be seen; although I’d argue that the same thing can also be said about an axe being used to stab some bloke's shoulder blade. Now you may disagree, but I for one would much rather that combat remains somewhat realistic until separated animations for swords and axes are finally introduced. Maybe we’ll see this in the next instalment of Total War - maybe we won’t - but the point is that the time for living is right now, my friends. Escape the clutches of mishandlement and replace YOUR axe with a seax today.

- WHAT THIS MOD DOES
- CHANGE NOTES
- SHAMELESS PLUGGING

Alright, let’s ease up with the advertisement shtick and provide some actual information instead. This mod primarily does 4 things:

- Replaces all in-game hand-axe models with seaxes and daggers.

- Modifies the unit-cards for all axe units to properly reflect their newfound weapon of choice.

- Alters the name for all axe units containing the word ’axe’ and replacing it with ’seax’.

- And finally, seperates the affected units into their own category, meaning they will actually be referred to as 'Seax Infantry' instead of 'Axe Infantry'.

There is a couple more changes under the hood, but most of these are purely window-dressing meant to erase all references to their previous line of work. You can check out the change notes if you're interested in seeing what these things are. In any case, rest assured that this mod is ENTIRELY cosmetic; all the units that now brandish seaxes will still retain their axe stats.


Welcome one, welcome all, come hither so that you may bask in awe at the latest of improvements, brought forth by yours truly.

- Further improved the unit-cards by giving them their very own background colour, as opposed to the standard purple one that came with the axe units. Now they no longer have to share the same colour as the greataxes. Hurrah for individuality!

This is something that's been on my to-do list since pretty much the beginning, but I could never figure out how to approach it without dedicating an entire afternoon to it. I mean crikey, there's almost 40 of these bastards in total that I have to manually edit in GIMP, one after another; it's quite a laborious process, let me tell you. Luckily, I figured out a painless solution. Took about 25 minutes, a cup of green-tea, and the comforting voice of John Bain as he's sharing is well-versed opinion on the latest gossip concerning the video-game industry.

May you rest in peace, you absolute inspiration of a man.


What's up party people, your friendly neighbourhood seax connoisseur is coming at you once again with another wonderful update.

- Updated all melee unit technologies to include references to Seax infantry. Note that this doesn't mean that Seax infantry weren't previously getting bonuses from technologies, it just means that the descriptions weren't very clear in what units they actually affected. Confusion successfully averted.

- Altered the seax-to-dagger ratio, so seax units will now roughly contain a 3:5 seax ratio instead of the 2:5 like they did before.

I had to remove one of the dagger models to make this possible, due to mesh files having a limit of 5 distinct variants of any given mesh. However, the dagger I removed looked very weird, and was way too short to realistically clash with a sword anyway, so I believe you'll find the end result to look a lot better.


Alright folks, got another minor update for y'all:

- Cleaned up the unit-cards as they were admittedly a bit hastenly thrown together.

- Removed an English greataxe unit from the Seax category that I accidentally added and didn't realize until now. I never play as the English, m'kay?

- Updated the screenshots and added some new ones. Probably wasn't all that necessary seeing how you don't need pictures to understand what the mod does - but still - some nice things to look at wouldn't hurt.


Alright, got a small update for all you lovely people.

- Modified the voiceovers for all the affected units so they will no longer shout 'AXE MEN' when you highlight them. Instead they will now use generic voiceovers from their respective factions.

- Changed unit priority so Seax Infantry should now be listed before Axe Infantry in the army panel, instead of being mixed up randomly.


You like what you see? Why not drop a like to solidify your appreciation. Not only does it make me feel better about myself, but if the mod manages to achieve enough ratings it could eventually spring up on the more popular modding boards, which in turn means more eyes will see it.

Help me, help you, make the ToB experience better for more people, eh?