I don't want any ice-cream fantasy weapons! And I know the texture isn't perfect but I don't know much about making nice materials. I don't want to use the crome that comes with max all the time. What's the point of making a weapon over-decoroative when it's going to be scratched in war?
What makes so many polygons is that every round part is a chamfer cylinder with 18 sides and 3 fillet segments, that gives 288 polygons per thing. Everything else is chamfer boxes with 3 fillet segments. The at the beginning of the shaft is a half sphere with 18 segments. The blade has 30 length segments.
Btw the polygon cound was actually around 18000.
Here are some real life battle axes. Not very decorative.