>>96224285
>Veterans with fists and hammers are all fine and dandy until you run into some proper melee unit with lightning claws...
Not really. If Thunder Hammers forced the space marine in power armour to ditch the shield, then it would.
Then again, hammers are the more expensive weapon; they *should* win. The balance of power weapons is that they don't lose that hard before hammers-
Except swords omg. Notice how you could totally give them +1A and they'd tie power axes as the worst performer...but at least axes have AP going for them; swords don't.
Spears would also do the least damage, but they are the high speed low drag option, so that's entirely acceptable.