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[Krewl]

Armok approves of military miners.

[Skullsploder]

Krewl knows what's up. For a miner militia, just put all your miners in a squad, assign them some decent armour, make sure they're set to NOT wear their uniform when off-duty, and then just leave them unactivated. Trouble rolls around and you have to wait a bit while they gather their things, but a handful of master+ miners will make short work of pretty much everything up to and including Forgotten Beasts. The only issue is that they won't be so good with the dodging or the blocking, so make sure that armour is thick, or assign them some training time every couple of months.

[Max™]

I had a candy pick artifact wielded by a stupidly strong agile dorf who wasn't initially a miner, but was the militia commander and loaded up with various legendary+ defensive skills, I think I turned mining off on everyone, left the candy pick sitting there and gave her a pile of ordinary ones then had her dig out some soil until she was legendary+5 at mining.

The worst part was tracking down all of the random goblin giblets... (goblets are already a thing, damn it all) I had to cut down several trees to properly gather the body parts into a sorted pile.

Normally I'll have several  gobs with two or three entries in the list of their bodyparts... she tended to leave nothing more intact than a mangled body half+a billion completely dismantled body parts.

Max likes picks for the way they lack any useless "flat of the blade" or "pommel strike" attacks.

[Tacomagic]

Of note:  An obsidian casting and reclamation program is great for training up pick squads in a way that also provides useful materials.

Cast a decent sized slab (or better yet, block) of obsidian, mine-out up-stairs in a level, remove the up-stairs, carve down stairs in the ceiling, and then channel out the down stairs.  Boom, 40xp per cast square.

That's also a useful leveling method for dirt when you want to make the most use of the limited amount.

[SlyStalker]

Personally, my miners are always the first ones to get drafted in an emergency. I have a feeling that they'd be better off wielding crossbows than picks, although the last time I drafted them one of the miners cleaved off a FB's arm with his pick. 

[Aslandus]

One of the main benefits of having only a few military dwarves is that you have more dwarves you can use for production, rather than keeping a third of your populace training constantly. If you can have a lot of well trained, armed dwarves than most fights will be almost trivial, but a few will often suffice.

That said, if you're having trouble, it's better to roll the RNG by conscripting as many workers as you can into the military, even unarmed, than to simply let your fortress fall into ruin. Sometimes even a naked, untrained civvie can kill a legendary armored soldier if the number generator fall in the right way, but it's rare and not something you should be counting on as a long term military solution

[StagnantSoul]

Yeah, I had a stray hunter one shot a legendary weapon master riding an elk bird. He'd just decapitated both my axe lords.

[Max™]

One of my favorite stories from my games was an engraver/miner who caught and defeated with a pick and no armor an awful forgotten beast as it broke in through an opening I had missed.

I only discovered this when I found miasma in the wagon entrance tunnel, tracked it down to him.

*check his z status*

*sees his EVERYTHING is rotten*

*checks his kills*

*realizes this heroic bastard singlehandedly kept the fort from getting violated by a beast with blood and spit that rots dorfflesh*

*builds a room for him with fortifications to vent the miasma*

*builds a tomb with a channeled opening  to the surface 40 z up so he can get some light after losing his sight and life to save everyone*

*mantears as it gets covered in goblin blood and guts inevitably*

[SlyStalker]

One of my favorite stories from my games was an engraver/miner who caught and defeated with a pick and no armor an awful forgotten beast as it broke in through an opening I had missed.

Lest we forget out miner heroes 

[Max™]

One of my favorite stories from my games was an engraver/miner who caught and defeated with a pick and no armor an awful forgotten beast as it broke in through an opening I had missed.

Lest we forget out miner heroes 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's to you, Atir Cobaltthrows.

[Beast Tamer]

A good standard is to have ten professional soldiers for every fifty dwarves, and to be sure to put them in the proper places. For instance, in one of my best above ground forts I had a thirty dwarf (10 marksmen, 10 swordsmen, 10 spear-men) response team and a separate military quarter where they were all housed (right next to the entrance of my fort). Down in my caverns I had two permanent garrisons in the 1st and 3rd Cavern levels. Both were composed of swordsmen for the versatility, and they all had first dibs on the Candy Armaments since they were my first line against FB's. For sake of mobilization they had their own emergency response staircase going through all the caverns.

Conscripts had to survive the danger room first. And by danger room I don't mean one filled with pansy ass wooden spears, I used metal. Let only the strong survive in that initiation of blood.

[Mushroo]

Don't underestimate the value of Hunters in the early/mid game. Not only do they keep the map clear of pesky wildlife, but they are also good early-warning against invaders. They will reach Legendary status in a couple of years, and then they can retire from civilian life (be sure to turn off hunting labor) and join the military.