Bashers

Bashers are Assur's favorite style. More than half his grads are bashers and he has run bashers of every size and shape (literally). He has graduated bashers with starting stats of 3 in every stat and starting stats of 21 in every stat. This page shares some of his wisdom, thoughts, and opinions on the style. Note that some of the things written here are not agreed to by all managers, including some with extensive experience with the style, so take this for what it is, one manager's experiences, opinions, and tendencies with a single style. Assur's 59 basher graduates have a basic record of 1021-717-50.

Design

Stats
Strength: Needed for weapons, damage, endurance. Not recommended to go below 9. Most of Assur's bashers fall in the 9-13 range. 15 is very nice because it gives you access to all weapons except the HL well suited. One of Assur's best bashers started and graduated with 8 Strength. More is better, but strength is not the most important stat. Assur does believe that the damage rating is a Basher's most important attribute.
Constitution: For most bashers, only really relevant as it contributes to endurance.
Size: Needed for damage and weapons. Assur has sworn off bashers lower than size 7, with a strong preference to not make size 7 and 8 bashers. It is not that small bashers cannot succeed. Far from it. But bashers love higher sizes and damage ratings. Their best weapons require size 9. Assur uses his smaller setups to make the other 9 styles in the game.
Wit: The most important stat for a basher. Contributes to all three of the offensive skills and primary skill for future learning. Not recommended below 11.
Will: Bashers can be run with any will from 7-21 successfully. Assur typically follows good design practices for will. A great source for decise skills and making sure your basher has enough endurance.
Speed: See decisiveness skills. Assur would be more than happy to take all 10 decise skills from Wit and Will, but unfortunately RSI won't give him all 21 wit/will rollups.
Deftness: See Weapons section. Deftness is always a nice thing to have, but bashers don't need it. After reaching 11 deftness, Assur will almost always add points to speed or strength instead. That said, the occasional high deftness basher is quite fun. Attack + Accuracy! Weapon selection is much smaller as you lower your deftness. This can be a problem if you've got other weaknesses. Bashers can do just fine with 3 deftness.

Note: These stat descriptions and recommendations do not apply to Sponge/Tank Bashers.
Also, Assur has had bad experiences with bashers that have Will less than 15 AND Deftness less than 11. One of the stats can be low, but most of Assur's bashers with both low have underperformed over their careers.
Physicals
Endurance/Damage: These are the primary physical attributes that matter. It is highly recommended to run bashers that are normal endurance/good damage or better. Certainly you can increase damage and decrease endurance (poor/great, very little/tremendous). Assur has graduated each of normal/normal, poor/good, and very little/great, but these are not recommended. Assur does not recommend normal damage bashers and one thing Assur has NOT run is a little damage basher (and he has no interest). See weapons regarding damage. Damage is by far the most important physical attribute on a basher.
Carry/Hit Points: Other than for sponge bashers, these two abilities are nice, but completely unnecessary in design consideration.
Skills
Bashers naturally learn attack first, decise second and parry/init next.

Decisiveness: The most important skill on the basher. Bashers cannot be bonused so what you design for is what you'll have. Recommended to start at 10 or higher. Very much NOT RECOMMENDED below 8.
Attack: Bashers learn attack naturally first so this is usually the best choice of an offensive skill to have below average. Recommended to start at 10 or higher, but Assur has successful bashers as low as 6 and could easily see a high damage basher being successful lower than that.
Initiative: While not as important as attack or decise, do not overlook init. The more the better and at least 10 initial initiative skills is a nice place to be.
Parry/Defense/Riposte: Until much later in a bashers career, these skills are not going to play a major role in a basher's performance. Challengers is the first tourney where these skills matter (and arguably you'd rather just have more offensive skills, ignoring defensive skills all the way through Eligibles). Even for these later tourneys, many bashers mostly ignore defenses for better offensive abilities. But bashers can start making use of defensive skills as they get more experience.
Basher Types
Typical Bashers: 15-21 wit, 10+ attack, 10+ decise, 10+ init, good+ damage, normal+ endurance. Solid recipe for an arena basher. These very rarely graduate with losing records. In the toughest arenas, though, the bare minimum requirements are not a sure way to success.
High Decise/Init Bashers: Assur used to pretty much design all his 'boring' rollups into these types of bashers and then run them if they rolled with bonuses in Attack. Assur has created countless 6-7 attack/12-14 decise/13+ init bashers. He usually only runs the ones bonused in attack, but this design is solid even without the attack bonus. Combine with high damage and this becomes a dangerous warrior that can luck into almost any win.
High Strength/Size/Attack Bashers: Great for scum hunting, not as much for winning. Assur's experience with these bashers in a competitive arena is very poor. When lungers jump a basher, the results are not so good. Probably more effective if run as head hunters as well, making managers at least think twice before challenging.
Sponge Bashers: Win by soaking up damage, typically wearing heavy armor. Assur says sponge bashers should have the following requirements (possibly training into these requirements). With that in mind, Assur has seen lower strength versions and lower will versions. Every single time Assur has created high con / high wit bashers, they end up running and winning like a typical basher, not as a sponge basher. Typically run slightly over .500 and for whatever reason do well in Adepts tourneys. (not TV well, but 6-10 rounds well)

Basher Weapon Selection

Welcome to the wonderful world of basher weapons. Please check all reality at the door and come on in for a journey of delight.

All the pure bashing weapons have terrible damage. The mechanics of the game system make crushing damage ineffective. Long ago, someone said that the WH does great against plate armor. Assur says this is not true and is not sure why but this fiction has continued until today. The least terrible damage weapon available of the pure bashing weapons is the ML, followed by the QS, followed by everything else.

If you want damage, you want weapons that also have slash damage (HL/GS/GA) or even better a non-well suited weapon (BS/BA/SC/DA).
Weapons during your Basic career
Speed is essential and the best weapon available to your basher is the QS. It is fast, not as bad as most of the rest in damage, and has reasonable endurance burn. The second best weapon is the WH. Fast and light and relatively low requirements. The poor man's WH is the MA (read 3-6 deftness choice). I believe the MA is only slightly slower, but otherwise almost indistiguishable to the WH.
The only other general purpose weapon that is useable in Assur's opinion is the ML. It is surprisingly fast and does better damage than the others, but it burns endurance fast and has steeper requirements to use than WH/MA. The ML's damage is quite variable. One fight (or one hit) it might be incredible and the next it acts like a wiffle bat.
Scum hunting weapons
If you've got plenty of attack, BA and BS make fine scum hunting weapons. GS is also very nice. Assur has used ML to good effect and even QS can take down the best scum in the right hands. The only other weapon Assur will recommend for scum hunting is your fave.
Weapons in ADM
Assur recommends the following weapons in ADM (Note the change from speed based weapons to damage based weapons):
Uses for other weapons
DA-For those silly enough to run 3 strength bashers. It works.
WF-For the parry bash practitioner.
GA-Recommended by Consortium. That means it is good. Assur's experience is limited with this one. Not as fast as the weapons Assur recommends in basic.