Nerf N-Force Weapons: Vantage, Battlemaster Mace, Vendetta, Stonewall, and Klaw

The first wave of N-Force was four blades and that was it. The wave that followed turned a couple of foam swords into a proper armoury. A two-handed blade, a mace, a four-foot polestaff, a shield with a matching blade, and a hatchet built for carrying two at once. This page covers all 5 of them, ranked by how useful each one is to the most players, and it says where a figure was never published rather than filling the gap.

The quick picks

Sort the N-Force picks by the job you need filled, not by which one looks best in the photo.

• Belt carry alongside a primary blaster: the Klaw Hatchet, no contest.
• Keeping people off you at distance: the Vendetta, outdoors only.
• Leading a push: the Stonewall Shield and Dagger, with somebody behind you.
• Ending exchanges: the Battlemaster Mace.
• Blocking and general purpose: the Vantage.

If you came here for the original swords, the Warlock, Marauder, Thunder Fury and Shadow Fury are covered in our full Nerf sword guide, which has the stated lengths and weights side by side.

What makes these different from the swords

The first wave answered one question: what do you swing when the darts run out. This wave answers a harder one, which is what a whole squad does when everybody is swinging at once.

You cannot run a melee fight where five people all carry the same 32-inch sword. It turns into a hedge trimmer contest.

Give one person reach, one person a shield, and one person something short and fast. Now it is a real fight with roles in it. That is the design idea behind this whole N-Force wave, and it is why the 5 pieces are worth writing up as a set rather than separately.

Build quality is the same story across the line. Moulded grips that suit a range of hand sizes. Foam over a flexible core. Enough toughness to survive parries and blocks, not just clean swings.

That flexible core is what makes the difference. A rigid foam weapon splits at the first hard block. Every N-Force piece here is built to be hit, not just to hit.

1. The Vantage

The Vantage is the big two-handed blade of the group, the one you bring when you want every swing to move people.

The sheer surface area of the blade is the underrated part. It is the best blocker in the line. A wide flat blade catches incoming weapons that a thin one lets slip past.

One honest note before you buy. Hasbro’s naming on this piece was loose, and it has been described both as a two-handed claymore and sold under short sword phrasing. Those are not the same weapon.

Look at the listing photos and the stated length before you commit. The whole point of a two-hander is reach, and you do not want to open the box and find a short blade.

Best for: the player who wants one weapon that does everything reasonably rather than one thing brilliantly.

Nerf N-Force Vantage on Amazon

2. The Battlemaster Mace

The Battlemaster is the power piece. It trades speed for mass, and the trade is real in both directions.

It sends lighter weapons flying when somebody tries to block it. It is also slow enough that a fast opponent with a Fury gets inside your swing if you telegraph it.

This is the one to hand the player who keeps charging the middle. It rewards commitment and punishes hesitation. Which is a polite way of saying it is not a defensive weapon.

Best for: ending an exchange rather than trading through one. If you want quick back and forth, look at the Klaw instead.

Nerf N-Force Battlemaster Mace on Amazon

3. The Vendetta

A double-bladed polestaff running over 4 feet end to end, which makes it the longest thing N-Force ever produced. Nothing else in the line touches its reach.

Reach is the whole reason to run it. You can throw quick swipes from outside where anybody with a sword can answer. And because it is bladed at both ends, you threaten on the backswing instead of resetting.

A player who has actually practised with it can spin the thing through their fingers like a baton, which looks ridiculous and works, because a moving blade is hard to close on and it knocks weapons out of hands.

The catch is indoors. Four feet of polestaff does not swing in a hallway or a living room. You will hit a lampshade long before you hit a person.

Best for: open ground and keeping people at a distance. This is a backyard and open-field weapon, full stop.

Nerf N-Force Vendetta on Amazon

4. The Stonewall Shield and Dagger

The only defensive setup Nerf ever built for this line, and the most interesting piece in it. You get the Stonewall shield plus a short blade, so the pairing is already solved for you. Absorb with one hand, poke with the other.

One naming note before you go shopping. This site calls the short blade a dagger. Amazon lists the set as the “Stonewall Shield and Sword”, so search that phrasing or you will think it does not exist. Same product, two names.

What it actually does on the field is change who leads. A shield holder can walk straight into a Battlemaster or a Vantage and take the hit, which nobody carrying a sword alone can do.

That makes the Stonewall player the one who opens the door while everybody else comes through it. They take quick swipes with the short blade on the way in.

It is also the most team-dependent piece here. On your own, a shield and a short blade is a bad matchup against 4 feet of Vendetta.

Best for: leading a push with somebody behind you. With support it is the best opening move in the line.

Nerf N-Force Stonewall Shield and Sword on Amazon, which is how Amazon lists it.

5. The Klaw Hatchet

A short axe, and the most practical piece in the whole range for anyone who is primarily running a blaster.

It is built for usefulness rather than drama. Short enough to parry with. Short enough to carry two. Short enough to hang off a belt without fouling your hands while you carry a primary.

That last part is why it matters. Every other weapon here demands a hand full time. The Klaw does not.

It sits on your hip until the exact moment you need it, which is the moment your clip runs dry and somebody is already inside 10 feet.

Best for: anybody whose main weapon is a blaster. If you only buy one thing from this page, buy this.

Nerf N-Force Klaw on Amazon

Running melee alongside blasters

The best use of any of these is as a sidearm in a mixed fight, not as a replacement for a blaster.

Instead of a second pistol for the close-range slot, carry a hatchet or a short blade. When you run dry you are still in the game, not crawling around hunting darts while somebody tags you.

The practical question is what you can hold. A primary blaster takes both hands most of the time. So anything that is not belt-carried is effectively a second trip.

That is why the Klaw sits at the top of the quick picks and the Vendetta near the bottom for mixed play. The Vendetta is the more impressive object. It is not the more useful one.

The rest of the loadout is covered in the accessories hub, and if you are still choosing the blaster half, the full blaster list is the place to start.

For game formats that make melee worth carrying rather than a novelty, our Nerf war game modes page has rule sets where a close-range weapon earns its place.

Playing safely with foam melee

This section replaces a line this page used to carry, which said you could bash, parry and block without worrying about hurting somebody. That is not quite true and it is worth correcting rather than deleting quietly.

Foam over a flexible core is genuinely forgiving, and it is far safer than any rigid prop. It is not the same as harmless.

Eyes are the real risk. The tip of a Vendetta moving at speed, or a short blade thrust in a scrum, reaches an eye long before anyone intends it to. Eye protection is the rule for melee, exactly as it is for darts.

Two more rules worth setting before anybody swings anything:

• No head shots and no thrusts to the face. Blocked swings are fine. A straight thrust with a pointed foam blade is where injuries come from.
• Agree the space first. A 4-foot polestaff needs a clear arc. Most melee accidents are somebody catching a bystander who wandered into the swing.

None of this makes N-Force dangerous. It makes it a contact game, which is what it was designed to be, and contact games have rules.

Indoors against outdoors

This is the split that decides which of the 5 you should actually own, and it gets almost no attention anywhere else.

Outdoors, length wins. Open ground rewards reach, because you can threaten somebody before they can threaten you and there is nothing to catch the swing on. The polestaff and the two-handed blade are both at their best here.

Indoors, length turns from an asset into a problem, fast. A hallway is narrower than a full swing. A living room has a ceiling. A doorway stops a 4-foot weapon dead. Reach you cannot use is just weight.

So the ranking flips completely once you go through a door. The hatchet and the short blade become the strong picks. The shield stays useful, because blocking needs no swing arc. And the mace turns into something you cannot fully commit to without hitting a wall.

The shield is the interesting case. It is the only piece here that works identically in both settings, because blocking needs no room. That is a real argument for it beyond the team-play case.

The practical advice for most people: buy short first. A short weapon works everywhere. A long one works in about half the places you will actually play. Let the second weapon you buy be the one that specialises.

One more thing about indoor play, worth saying out loud. Foam does not scratch a wall. But a full swing with a heavy foam head will absolutely take an ornament off a shelf, and it is not the weapon that gets blamed.

How we picked

Everything on this page is one of the 5 pieces from the second N-Force wave. It is a complete list rather than a selection, so nothing was excluded for being bad.

The ordering is by how useful each piece is to the largest number of players, which is why a short hatchet outranks a 4-foot polestaff.

We have deliberately quoted no weights, no lengths beyond the Vendetta’s stated 4 feet, and no performance figures. Our archive carries stated sizes for the original N-Force swords and not for this wave. We do not publish numbers we did not take.

Where a figure was never published, this page says so rather than filling the gap. The comparison card above does the same thing.

Buying N-Force secondhand

N-Force is long out of production and none of these 5 are current products. You are shopping the secondhand market, where prices bounce around and condition varies enormously.

The Stonewall in particular goes for more than people expect. A shield is bulky, it got thrown around, and fewer clean ones survived.

Check the foam at the tips and around the grip, since that is where a used piece goes soft. A compressed tip on a thrusting weapon is the one to walk away from.

Ask about storage as well as use. Foam that has spent a decade squashed under something heavy takes a permanent set. A bent Vendetta stays bent.

Be patient about price. These come up regularly and the first listing is rarely the best one.

What Nerf still makes for melee in 2026

N-Force is long gone. Every one of the 5 pieces above is a used purchase now.

But here is the part almost nobody knows. N-Force ended years ago, and Nerf never actually stopped making swords. Blaster Hub’s coverage of the 2026 Toy Fair press releases lists a Shadowspeed Knight Sword and a set of Shadowstrike Warrior Daggers, both from January 2026.

The catch is finding them. Neither one shows up on Amazon at all, so we are not going to hand you a buy link that goes nowhere. Treat those two as proof the line is alive, not as something you can put in a basket today.

What you can actually buy right now is this. The NERF Fencing Duel Swords Set is two soft-tip blades with light-up targets, built for 2 players going head to head. It is the closest thing on shelves to what N-Force was: foam you swing at somebody, not foam that fires. The light-up targets are new, though. N-Force never had those.

Nerf publishes no mechanism detail and no age rating for that set, so this page prints neither. Read the listing yourself before buying for a younger player.

Now the trap, because it looks exactly like the Klaw’s replacement and it is not.

• The Nerf Minecraft Firebrand Axe is shaped like a hatchet and it is a dart blaster. The front of the axe holds 3 darts and fires them one after another. It ships with 6. Hasbro rates it 8+.
• So it is an axe you shoot, not an axe you swing. If you loved the N-Force Klaw because it hung off a belt and ended arguments at 10 feet, this is a different toy wearing the same shape.

Three things, three different jobs. A press release you cannot buy, a fencing set you can, and a dart blaster shaped like an axe. Mixing them up is the easiest mistake on this whole page.

Where to buy

As an Amazon Associate and eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Every N-Force piece here is discontinued, so these point at the used and third-party market, not a current shelf item. Prices move constantly. Treat anything you see as a snapshot.

• Nerf N-Force Vantage on Amazon, the one piece of the 5 that still has a live buy box.
• Nerf N-Force Battlemaster Mace on Amazon, the power piece.
• Nerf N-Force Stonewall Shield and Sword on Amazon, listed under “Sword” rather than “Dagger”.
• The whole N-Force range on Amazon
• Used N-Force listings on eBay, usually the better hunting ground for foam melee that left shelves years ago, and where complete Stonewall sets turn up.

If you would rather buy something current instead, our guide to the new Nerf guns covers what is on shelves now.

Frequently asked questions

How many weapons are in this N-Force wave?

5: the Vantage, the Battlemaster Mace, the Vendetta, the Stonewall Shield and Dagger, and the Klaw Hatchet. The four original swords are a separate earlier wave.

Which N-Force weapon should I buy first?

The Klaw Hatchet, if you also carry a blaster. It is the only piece here that hangs off a belt and leaves both hands free, which makes it the one that actually gets used.

How long is the Vendetta?

Over 4 feet end to end, which makes it the longest N-Force weapon. That reach is the reason to own it and the reason it does not work indoors.

Are these safe to hit people with?

They are foam over a flexible core and they are built to be blocked and parried, which makes them far safer than any rigid prop. They are not harmless. Wear eye protection, ban head shots and face thrusts, and clear the space before anybody swings a polestaff.

Can you block a swing with these?

Yes, and that is the design intent. The flexible core survives parries and blocks rather than just clean swings, which is what separates N-Force from a foam prop that splits on the first hard block.

Is the Stonewall shield worth the premium?

Only if somebody is playing behind you. Alone, a shield and a short dagger loses to reach. In a team it is the best opening move in the line, and that is what people are paying for.

Do any of these fire darts?

No. Every N-Force piece is a melee weapon with no firing mechanism at all. They are built as companions to a blaster, not replacements for one.

Can two people share one of these sets?

The Stonewall is the only piece that ships as a pair, with the shield and its matching dagger, and splitting it between two players works well: one leads with the shield, one takes the dagger as a backup. Everything else here is a single weapon.

Do these hold up to hard use?

Better than most foam props, because the flexible core is designed to be struck rather than just to strike. The wear point is always the same: the foam at the tip and around the grip goes soft first, and a compressed tip never comes back.

Does Nerf still make swords in 2026?

Yes, though they are hard to find. Blaster Hub’s 2026 Toy Fair coverage lists a Shadowspeed Knight Sword and Shadowstrike Warrior Daggers from January 2026, and neither appears on Amazon. For something in the N-Force spirit that you can actually buy today, there is the NERF Fencing Duel Swords Set, which is two soft-tip blades with light-up targets for 2 players. Watch out for the Minecraft Firebrand Axe: it is shaped like a hatchet but it is a dart blaster, not a melee weapon.

Where are the N-Force swords?

In our full Nerf sword guide, which covers the Warlock, Marauder, Thunder Fury and Shadow Fury with the stated lengths and weights side by side.

It’s Nerf or Nothin’!