Would you take Maces or Axes?

Why?

Drum wouldn't be all that great for the wood-elf. With the maledicts of the dagger, boneshatter or whirl is just icing. Personally, axe would be more likely for me, but if I had more choice than just those two, I'd go h2h.

For h2h, you get crushing blow instead of pincer, pummel instead of drum, vital area (which is a good extra -str skill), and stun instead of cranial. Its like a mixture of both weapons you might have used and you don't have to carry around extra weapons.

Pincer is better than crushing blow on several levels and drum can give you much more damage than pummel. Also note that if you use weapons, you can exploit vulns much better than if you use hands, which are one damage type only (blunt physical). Also, stronger weapons equal more damage, which is not true of hand-to-hand combat, where damroll and hitroll is what primarily affects your damage output. Hand-to-hand users are limited in damage by their +dam gear and +dam legacies, whereas non hand-to-hand users can find and use potentially much stronger weapons. Also, hand to hand users will always deal reduced damage to giants, because they only have physical attacks. Maces and axes and such can be elemental or divine or such and go straight through giant resist.

Whirl and boneshatter are both superior to vital, because they both have strong -dex maledicts in addition to the strength maledict. I believe boneshatter maledicts are affected by how much strength you have, though, and vital is only one round of lag (though sometimes it misses a lot)

On the other hand, with weak w-elf strength hand-to-hand will cover you if you get maledicted to hell and drop all your weapons. At three strength you won't be able to hold onto most daggers. Stun is also very useful against some classes, and cranial is much less reliable as a knock-out ability.

Also note that a wood-elf will not be able to use several good maces/axes due to their low strength.

You won't be able to exploit very many vulnerabilities with hands.

Maces on the other hand, you'll be able to exploit every vulnerability under the sun possible.

There are more lightweight maces than there are axes. Maces is a good choice. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, Pro.