Wooden Pin Pilum: Is It Pointless?

Back looking at the Roman plum with the breakable peg. Apparently the great military reformer Marius cam up with the idea and this is described by Plutarch. The idea is simple - throw the javelin and part of the head breaks on impact rendering it useless.

Michael and I got it to work quite well, but not very well, so here I look at the original source and look at making some changes, but is the whole thing worth the effort? Lets find out!