Hammer Hilt

The Mordhau or "murder stroke". Do not do this unless you seriously want to kill the MF. Or unless if you're wearing gloves.

In a sword fight, it is generally expected that the blades are the primary weapons. However, sometimes, a duelist will flip things up by using the part meant for gripping: the hilt (or in the case of a staff or axe, the shaft).

In fiction, swordfighting often involves Artistic License for the sake of drama, like Flynning, Reverse Grip, Dual Wielding, and Blade Locks. But in this case, these kinds of techniques are actually Truth in Television. In traditional German swordfighting as recorded in fechtbucher ("fightbook") manuscripts, there were many "half-swording" attacks described. Essentially, half-swording involved gripping the blade of a sword in some way to inflict damage on opponents, and some did not involve using the actual hilt. One technique seen across most of Medieval Europe involved gripping the middle of the blade with one hand and the hilt with the other so that a soldier could accurately impale an armoured soldier through the gaps of his armour, and with greater force. This technique is so famous that it's almost synonymous with half-swording as a whole, even though it was just one technique. For more detail on that, check out Historical European Martial Arts. However, for this trope, the only half-swording techniques that qualify are those that involve using the hilt or pommel as a striking weapon in some way.

If the example involves a sword (even a Laser Sword), then the attack has to involve either:

• The pommel (a usually round piece at the bottom of the hilt, so that the sword can be used with two hands even if the grip isn't long enough)
• The crossguard (the part closest to the blade, which helps protect the hands)
• The grip (the part meant for gripping, between the pommel and crossguard)

In the case of a long weapon (spear, polearm, or axe), then the attack has to involve either:

• The shaft/pole, or
• The butt (blunt end).

This trope comes in two forms. The first is the Non-Lethal form intended to incapacitate or stagger an opponent, and the second is the more pragmatic Lethal Clubbing.

Compare with Sheath Strike and Improbable Use of a Weapon. Also compare and contrast with Pistol-Whipping. For actual hammers, you may want Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon or Humongous-Headed Hammer.

As the second variety is a Death Trope, spoilers below may be unmarked. You have been warned.

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Examples:

Non-Lethal:

Anime & Manga

• Cowboy Bebop: In the final battle, Vicious strikes Spike in the back with a sheathed sword's hilt.
• Goblin Slayer: The third episode of season 2 briefly depicts Female Knight beating on a porcelain-ranked adventurer's shield with the hilt of her sword while training her. She gets a little too into it and knocks the poor girl on her ass.
• The Legend of Zelda (Akira Himekawa):
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1999): Ganondorf strikes young Link with the pommel of his sword. He uses the same move in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016).
  • In the adaptation of Oracle of Ages, Link gives an opponent a pommel strike to the groin. His ancestor Raven uses a similar technique aimed at the stomach.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2004): Vio wins his fight with Green by switching his forward grip to reverse and striking with the pommel.
• One Piece: During the Thriller Bark arc, Zoro tries to save Luffy by offering himself as a prisoner to Kuma, but Sanji intervenes and demands to be the one to be taken prisoner instead. Zoro stops him by hitting him in the stomach with the pommel of his katana, knocking him out.
• In Tales of Wedding Rings, Granart effortlessly defeats Satou when they first meet by ramming the pommel of her sword into his diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him.

Films — Live-Action

• Crocodile Dundee II: Mick flips his knife and grips it by the blade before throwing it at a guard in the Big Bad's mansion. Because he reversed his grip, when he throws it, the guard is hit by the hilt, which knocks him cold without killing him.
• The Dragon Family ends with a lengthy shootout which devolves into a Sword Fight, because the Lung brothers have exhausted all their ammunition to take down Big Bad Tsui's mooks. Tsui is similarly unarmed, grabs an ornamental sword from a wall and tries slicing the brothers up; at one point the second brother (played by Andy Lau) managed to restrain Tsui with a choke-hold leading to Tsui bashing the sword's hilt on the brother's head.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail: During his duel with the Black Knight, King Arthur at one point hits the Knight on the top of the head with the pommel of his sword.
• The Phantom Menace: Darth Maul wins his duel against Qui-Gon by hitting him in the face with the hilt of his double-bladed lightsaber, stunning him long enough for Maul to impale him.
• The Princess Bride:
  • After he subdues Inigo in their sword fight near the start of the film, Wesley whacks the Spaniard across the head with the grip of his sword to knock him out.
    Wesley: I'd sooner destroy a stained-glass window than an artist such as yourself. But since I can't have you following me either... [Whack!]
  • When Wesley is taken prisoner by Count Rugen's men Rugen bops Wesley on the head with the pommel of his sword. See this here.

Literature

• In 100 Cupboards, Coradin uses the hilt of his sword to knock Henrietta and Zeke unconscious after kidnapping them, and later clubs Monmouth with it during a fight. All three are affected differently: Henrietta suffers no ill effects on waking, Monmouth is unconscious long enough for other characters to worry but recovers with nothing more than a headache, and Zeke develops a severe concussion.
• For Special Services: James Bond uses throwing knives to take down a couple of thugs. But he doesn't want to kill them, only knock them cold, so he deliberately mistimes his throws so that the knife hilt is what hits the target. Both thugs go down, out cold but with no permanent damage.
• Island of the Lizard King: You infiltrate the mines of the hostile Lizard Folk halfway into the adventure, where you come across two patrolling lizardmen mooks upriver. You'll need to do a LUCK test to knock one unconscious for interrogation using the hilt of your sword and fight another to the death — fail the LUCK test, you get spotted and must fight both at once, killing one while inflicting at least two injuries on the other until it surrenders.

Live-Action TV

• Firefly: At the climax of "Shindig". Atherton Wing has broken Mal's sword and is holding him at swordpoint, when Inara suddenly tells Atherton she'll accept his earlier offer to become his mistress if he spares Mal's life. The second Atherton looks away, Mal jumps up and counterattacks Atherton using the broken-off basket hilt of his sword as a makeshift knuckle-duster.
• Highlander: Most Immortals are extreme Combat Pragmatists, so this happened more than once. A few examples:
  • In the pilot episode, "The Gathering", Slan smashes a window with the hilt of his broadsword. Later, during their big fight, Duncan knocks Slan backwards with the pommel of his katana.
  • In "Mountain Men", in the big fight at the end Duncan uses a bearded battleaxe with a four-foot-long shaft. At one point he drives the butt into the bad guy's ribs, and a moment later he uses the shaft to smash the bad guy across the face.
  • In "The Samurai", Duncan is using a sailor's cutlass with a large brass knucklebow. After blocking an enemy stroke, he punches his opponent in the face with his sword hand, using the knucklebow like brass knuckles. Truth in Television: the naval cutlass was often made with a solid metal knucklebow precisely to facilitate this kind of attack, because fighting aboard a ship is often in such close quarters that full swings were impractical.
  • In "Brothers in Arms", the Villain of the Week uses a cavalry saber with a large knucklebow, and at one point he punches MacLeod in the face with the hilt.

Video Games

• The Glaive hero weapon in Conqueror's Blade features a move called Breaker of Shields, where you reverse your glaive and stab with the butt end.
  • A variation appears in the Push Back skill for Poleaxe heroes—you use the length of the shaft, not the butt, to shove enemies backward and knock them over.
• Dragon Age: Two-handed warriors have an ability called Pommel Strike, which stuns the target by striking them with the pommel (grip) of the weapon.
• Kingdom of Loathing allows the Seal Clubber to learn the skill "Swordbutt," which stuns the opponent by, well, clubbing the enemy with the pommel.
• Telltale's Game of Thrones: Rodrick learns a half-swording technique from Royland that involves tripping his opponent with the crossguard of a sword. The player has the option to use the technique later in the game.
• Super Smash Bros.: Every playable character in the games beginning with Melee has a pummel, a weak attack used after grabbing an opponent. As of Ultimate, every incarnation of Link, the Hero from Dragon Quest, Shulk, and Sora use the pommels of their weapons to club opponents they grab.

Web Animation

• In RWBY, Adam Taurus is a vicious close range fighter who frequently smashes enemies with the pommel of his sword or the scabbard, often to knock them down before going for a finishing blow while they're down.

Western Animation

• Star Wars Rebels: Maul attempts to use the hilt of his double-bladed lightsaber to hit Obi-Wan in the face to stun him the same way he did to Qui-Gon years ago. But Obi-Wan sees through this and instead bisects Maul's lightsaber with a vertical swing, inflicting a lethal blow on Maul in the process.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): The turtles will almost always use the grips of their bladed weapons against living opponents. Since it's a show for children, this makes sense.

Real Life

• During the filming of the above-mentioned scene from The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes insisted that Christopher Guest actually hit him with the pommel of his real sword. When Guest did the pommel strike, it actually knocked out Elwes, and he had to be sent to the emergency room. He didn't even hit him that hard, which helps illustrate just how dangerous this move was.

Lethal Clubbing:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk: During a boyhood flashback arc late in the story, Guts is only given a blunt sword to fight against a big and fully-armored noble. He turns the tables by pulling a move from the fechtbucher and landing a mordschlag (a move where the swordsman grips the sword by the blade and then uses the weapon like a warhammer with the crossguard acting as the head) right into the guy's eye.
• Maria the Virgin Witch: In a Trial by Combat, one fighter uses a pretty accurate mordhau attack to gain the upper hand in the fight. It leaves his opponent brain-damaged, if not dead.

Fan Fiction

• The Mountain and the Wolf:
  • During his "fight" against Ramsay, the Wolf smashes the pommel of his sword into Ramsay's head, ending the fight until Ramsay tries to sneakily shoot an arrow at the Wolf, at which point the Wolf flays him alive.
  • When fighting the Mountain for the second time, the Wolf half-swords the hilt of his weapon into the Mountain's face, sending teeth flying.
  • While fighting a Dark Elf corsair, Akkarulf is too close to properly use his sword, so he lands a hit with the pommel instead.

Films — Live-Action

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: When Aragorn faces down the entire horde of Uruk-Hai, he starts off the fight by following his first sword swing by smashing the crossguard of his sword into one Uruk's face. There are also other points in the trilogy where Aragorn uses his pommel as a close-quarters weapon.
• The Force Awakens: A rather extreme version. Kylo Ren can use the crossguard of his lightsaber as a stabbing weapon during a Blade Lock since the crossguard is just a smaller lightsaber blade.

Literature

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: In The Battle of the Labyrinth, one of the campers, Castor, is killed when an attacker strikes him on the head with the hilt of his sword.
• Word Bearers: One Chaos Marine has his sword specially built to be an effective weapon no matter how he holds it, to the point (pun not intended but welcome) that even its pommel and handguards are lethally sharp.

Live-Action TV

• Obi-Wan Kenobi: When Obi-Wan gets his Heroic Second Wind in his duel against Vader, he destroys Vader's life-support by first hitting him in the face with the hilt of his lightsaber, and then using the pommel to smash the life-support box on his chest. Although it's debatable whether he was using lethal force, the level of damage Obi-Wan causes speaks for itself.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: Quarterstaffs are considered Double Weapons, which means that, when you attack with one, you can take a penalty on your attack rolls to be allowed to hit the enemy with the other end of the staff as an off-hand attack. Given that they're the only double weapons classified as Simple weapons instead of Exotic weapons, this makes them a fairly practical choice for characters who want to focus on two-weapon fighting style.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: The Polearm Master feat lets a character who's armed with a spear, quarterstaff, pike, glaive, or halberd make an extra attack with the opposite end of their weapon as a bonus action when they take the attack action, dealing 1d4 bludgeoning damage.
• Pathfinder: The First Edition feats Weapon Trick (polearms) and Spear Dancing Style both allow a character wielding a two-handed polearm to club opponents with the shaft of the weapon rather than striking with the head. In the former case, the "Haft Bash" trick removes the brace and reach qualities and treats the weapon as a club; in the latter, the spear is treated as a Double Weapon with the shaft functioning as a light mace.

Video Games

• Chivalry 2:
  • Jabbing with any two-handed weapon will strike with the hilt or haft. All jabs do little damage, but are fast and can interrupt the opponent's attack.
  • The longsword's special attack is a haymaker-like mordhau swung with wild force, dealing more damage than any of the longsword's other possible strikes if it lands.
  • Stabbing attacks with the two largest swords (greatsword & highlander sword) are performed with half-swording due to the blades' extreme size. If the Footman class performs a sprint attack with any two-handed sword (longsword, kriegsmesser, greatsword, highlander sword), he will half-sword it for the sprint.
• Darkest Dungeon: The Crusader's "Stunning Blow" skill depicts him bashing the enemy with the end of his sword. It deals only half as much damage as the proper sword strike "Smite", but is slightly more accurate and has a significant chance to stun the target.
• Dwarf Fortress: Some weapons are highly versatile this way, even if the "how" is not visualized. Swords can do pommel strikes for penetrating blunt force (very useful against armor), and polearm shafts can be smashed into the enemy, which isn't as powerful but has its uses. Of course, this is fairly normal for a game that lets you slap people around with the flat side of an axe.
• Dynasty Warriors: A variety of pre-6 movesets involve non-blade strikes — Cao Cao's dashing attack is a pommel strike, and almost all spear and polearm users have at least one move involving a stroke with the butt-cap of their weapon, such as Lu Meng's Spin Attack.
• For Honor: The game plays with this a bit, mainly seeing use in executions. The Warden plays it mostly straight, using the point of their guard to stab his enemy to death and even uses a mordhau as a primer by stabbing them in the eye. The Black Prior wields an arming sword too small to be lethal, but uses the fact that they're now violently impaled on the guard to throw them over their shoulders before stabbing them again with the guard. The Highlander flips this on its head by ramming their massive claymore into their opponents first before impaling them on the guard.
• Golden Axe:
  • In the original arcade version, all three main characters slash opponents across the front twice and then, if close enough, hit them over the head twice with the hilt of their sword or axe, ending the combo with a kick.
  • In the arcade game Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, Stern Blade could hit an opponent over the head with the hilt of his sword four times in a row.
• Kingdom of Loathing: The Seal Clubber skill Iron Palm Technique, which lets swords be counted as clubs for the purpose of club-specific skills, is explained by the user holding the sword by the blade and hitting people with the hilt.
• MORDHAU includes both halfswording and the eponymous Mordhau, as alternate wielding for many of the game's swords.
  • Half-swording can be done with Greatswords and Zweihänders to make stabbing and blocking easier and make sure swings don't get caught in a corridor's walls.
  • The Mordhau's done with Longswords and Estocs, and as usual involves grabbing the sword by the blade and smashing people's faces in with the pommel and crossguard — practically mandatory when fighting someone with tier-3 heavy armor that'll shrug off a blade.
• Soul Series: Siegfried has a few attacks that involve using the pommel of his sword instead of the blade. Since he wields a large two-handed sword, they still hit pretty hard. Astaroth sometimes can bash foes with the shaft of his axe, but it's not as big a part of his moveset.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Each of Jet's swords has a small dagger set into the handle, allowing him to use them for stabbing attacks.

Real Life

• As stated in the description, utilizing the hilt of a sword as a weapon is Older Than Feudalism. But, very rarely was it used as a "less lethal" alternative. Most of these kinds of attacks were very deadly. The point when these techniques were firmly established across European Martial Arts was around the High Middle Ages and Renaissance. There were multiple half-swording techniques that utilized different parts of the hilt as a weapon.
  • In early modern German swordfighting, hitting somebody with the pommel or hilt of the sword was known as the "Mordhau" or "Mordschlag" ("murder stroke") because of how lethal it was. This usually involved grabbing the sword by the blade with both hands and using the hilt as a warhammer. It was especially effective against armoured opponents, as while the blade could not do damage to the plates, the force of the hilt could cause a serious dent while causing internal damage at the same time.
  • The other way of doing this (especially in close quarters) was keeping one or both hands on the grip while using the pommel or crossguard to strike the opponent.

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