]Weirdly, I recall a cartoon in a very old wargames magazine where the commander of a tabletop phalanx continues to explain an arcane point of the rules, impervious to the fact that his opponent has just impaled his hand on the phalanx!

Also somewhat weirdly (and more seriously), I purchased some 15mm metal figures from a well-known manufacturer a couple of years back where the pikes came as stiff metal (steel?) wire, flattened and sharpened (and that means needle-sharp) to form pikes. Good figures, but properly dangerous miniature pikes. Should have come with a health warning.