[HoneyBadger]

Well-and this may surprise you-the greatest advantage that an axe has over all those other weapons is it's ability to be used fluidly. A properly shaped axe, of a good weight, can not only be thrown accurately, but it can also be used in melee to strike much faster than most other weapons, if the wielder is well-trained.

The axe curves down to strike, but that downward chop can be completed into a circle, by rotating it in the hands, which allows the head of the axe to swing back up, carried by the weight of the head (like a pendulum do), which by the way gave the axe-fighter a bit of a break, since the axe would at that point be carried along via momentum; and causing the blade of the axe to function a bit like a rotary saw-albeit in slow motion. It's quite impressive, even when the axe in question is the size of a hatchet-when it's an English Long-axe, it's frankly awe-inspiring.

Imagine a martial-arts movie wherein two fighters are squaring off with staves, and watch as one combatant rotates her staff in a circular motion-now imagine that the staff itself is "only" 5 feet long, but 2 inches thicker, and that one end of that staff is topped by a 4lb axe blade. It takes a lot more strength in various muscle groups, ofcourse-the axe would be swung more from the shoulders and back than the arms and waist, but the idea is much the same.

You can't do the same with a sword, because the sword has too much blade, and you can't do it as well, with a mace/hammer/etc. because of the bulkiness of the head.

It's one of the reasons why the "moon-shaped" head was so popular, though, because it allowed the axe to easily slice both into, and then out of, a given wound, shearing off with less risk of the blade getting stuck in a bone. Which also gave the axe-fighter a chance to engage more than one enemy at a time, since a long enough axe could "cleave" into and out of one wound, only to be carried-again, via momentum-into and out of another wound, on another combatant.