What was going on in my fort, "was" because after that it is a question of a time the fortress is devastated entirely.
Long time ago i formed my military, i forged several battle axes using all the copper i extracted from a vein when digging.
But as they were all recruits, i needed some training axes, and so i cut down trees and got lots of wooden (mostly chesnut) training axes.
And to be sure my new troops would actually use them, i removed for each dwarf individually the "weapon of his choice" and replaced it by specific weapon : training axes.
So far so good, though they spent a year in training and progressed very very slowly. But most of them moved from recuit to become axedwarves.
I was happy of their progress.
Immigrations waves, i decided to build a second full squad, though these ones being rather new were always at recruit level, but they were training with even more training axes i manufactured.
One day the horrible unthinkable event started all :
Goblins proved this day they were indeed the worst of the creatures.
But they sent me the message that soon ambush parties will be roaming the country.
It was good i built a 2nd military squad, with enough troops and battle axes we should teach those goblins a lesson about blood and severed limbs.
And indeed ambush party attacked, a poor dwarf was assaulted and quickly killed, but it gave me time to get my 2 squads running to location.
Battle was fierce and ... dwarves were dying left and right ?
What in HFS is that !
Looking at a battle report i understood the horrible reason
Oops, i totally forgot to remodify each dwarf equipment individually.
indeed, we have a small problem
Hmm, not that small, it is more a massive problem :
And this was the first big battle that occured in this 1 year old fortress ... and the last.
Note for later : do not forget to check what the dwarves are individually using before sending them to battle, always remember they are a bunch of idiots unable to understand that training axes are only for training and the deadly copper axes are for axemurdering goblins !
The goblins have sure been laughing a lot when they saw dozen of dwarves rushing to them with mighty axes and noticing that those mighty axes were just harmless wooden toys.