Everything you want for an axe throwing venue, but better!

Review of El Hachazo, Murcia, Spain

What I liked about El Hachazo, Murcia (and I really liked El Hachazo, Murcia) was that they have all the ingredients for a perfectly ‘good enough” axe throwing experience and then they managed to make it even better.

The supreme example of this were the boards. They were the standard vertical plank design you get in plenty of places. However, they were such a good quality and thickness it was almost like throwing at end-grain targets. Having thrown at some rock hard and/or obliterated planks the month before, I would have settled for some half decent boards. As it was, the boards turned a fun evening into one of the best axe throwing experiences I’ve had, away from home.

Similarly, the initial house axes were good, and perfectly sufficient for an hours throwing. Then we were inundated with a plethora of other throwing implements. We got warmed up with a pretty standard kindling hatchet and a slightly longer, heavier throwing hatchet. As the hour progressed, our axe coach brought out various shuriken type throwers, more axes and even a utility spade. (It may be that as we were the only ones there, our axe coach spoiled us a bit, but the website indicates you usually have a choice of 4 items for a 1 hour session, or 8 for 2 hours.)

Our axe coach realised quickly we had thrown before and largely left us to it. Even so, she was enthusiastic and attentive throughout, dropping in on us regularly to make encouraging comments – or bring another thrower.

The initial brief was fine, although the El Hachazo axe throwing instruction is worth noting, as it is slightly bizarre. The throw was taught as a large over the shoulder one-handed throw, “using all the body”, and shifting your weight onto your front leg by ending with your trailing leg in the air. I think the idea was to get more power that way. On occasions, I have reflexively lifted my trailing leg to keep balance, but it did seem slightly strange to teach this “flamingo” style as the primary throwing method 🙂 It worked ok and was enough to demonstrate the basic chopping throwing action though. To be fair, our axe coach didn’t press it once we started throwing in our normal style.

There was an excellent projector system with plenty of games. We controlled the games ourselves from a tablet mounted on a unit behind our lane. It was pretty straightforward, once we got our heads around the scoring (manually, by tapping on the tablet).

If you wanted to spend all evening with a simple target tournament, you could, or you could dip into all the games as you like. We had a go at the targets, but also darts and noughts and crosses, which were great fun.

El Hachazo is located in an unassuming small street near Murcia centre. We arrived early, so the shutters were down, but, once open, it had a pleasant bar atmosphere (with a good selection of beer too). We threw on one of two single-target lanes in the middle of the room and then there were a few more lanes at the back. There was plenty of space behind the lanes for spectators, although I imagine it could get crowded if all the lanes had four players.

El Hachazo is a small Spanish chain with 3 other venues, but we really appreciated the Murcia venue wasn’t just regurgitating an axe-throwing-by-numbers chain experience and went the extra mile to treat us to a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Disclaimer: “The Axe Inspector” receives no payment or benefit of any kind from either TheAxeThrower.com or from the venue, for this review. The review is the subjective opinion of one person (albeit as objective as possible) and we encourage throwers to try out the venue to make their own mind up.