Max Force Shadowhawk

The Shadow Hawk is the bees knees of the Max Force line up, boasting impressive 100 feet distances in a very schmick looking package. They've become quite readily available in Australian toy stores nationwide- we take one out for some testing and I can safely say you've never seen a spit wad go so far..

The Shadow Hawk 100 is definitely the longest blaster in the Max Force range; it's even longer than the Nerf Longstrike CS-6 in terms of physical size. It's an impressive bit of kit out of the box that comes with the blaster,a detachable barrel extension, removable stock and scope, foldable bi pod and an 8 round clip as well as the must have safety eyewear and a whole lot of rounds to fire. As we mentioned in the Terrornator and Blowgun reviews, Max Force uses a compressed paper pellet that you soak prior to firing; the evolution of the humble spitwad essentially.

Given the size of the blaster, the packaging is quite compact and environmentally friendly; no unnecessary plastic ties or coverings- all cardboard inserts to hold the blaster in place.

The Shadow Hawk, like the other Max Force blasters is very well made- it's solid and durable feeling with no rattles or poor finishings. We love the colour scheme of the Max Force line- other than it being Urban Taggers colours, it's just a very good looking white grey and orange which looks fantastic- something even Nerf picked up on with their Whiteout series:)

Although the parts are all detachable, I can't see a real reason to remove them other than for storage/transportation purposes. Unfortunately, other than the scope, the attachments do not fit the other blasters in the Max Force range. A tad disappointing, but then they are very much different blasters.

That is one thing we noticed with the Max Force line- every blaster is quite different (other than perhaps the maximizer and the crossbow from the photos we've seen) - rather than with Nerf where much of the differences in blasters are aesthetic- with the Max Force range performances and firing mechanisms all differ, depending on the type of blaster it is. The Shadow Hawk is definitely marketed as a long distance 'sniper' style rifle- and it has the distances to back it up.

Load your "Splat Ammo" pellets into the 8 round cartridge, soak for 10 seconds and then insert into the side slot of the blaster and you're ready to fire. So long as the pellets are soaked sufficiently, there shouldn't be any jams.  

The Max Force line have been designed to only fire the pellets if they are wet and soft- failure to soak them will result in..well misfires. The ammo is pretty much disposable and not reusable, so stock up where you can.You can go through ammo pretty fast, and while I have managed to fire home made paper pellets with moderate success, you really need the real splat ammo real deal, so I really hope these blasters stay around because we need the refills for them to keep on a firing!

The Shadow Hawk also works with the belts from the Terrornator which is a nice plus, increasing your firing capacity to..well as many rounds as your belt accommodates:)  

The Shadow Hawk is bolt loading which is a very cool mechanism that makes it just that little bit more realistic. Once you've loaded your cartridge or belt, the bolt primes the round ready to fire.

Now, here's the part that causes us a bit of an issue. Max Force blasters do not use a trigger mechanism to fire; by having a trigger, it would reduce the power, and therefore distance the blasters can make. The Shadow Hawk uses a spring loaded grip that sits on the under carriage of the blaster- it's a matter of pulling it back and releasing to fire the round. On release, you'll fire your round with considerable power and your target will definitely know they've been hit. 

The down side is the motion tends to sacrifice a bit of accuracy, which in a way detracts from the Shadow Hawk being used for sniper purposes.  There's a foldable bipod that definitely could help with the steadying of the blaster and improve accuracy, except it's pretty flimsy and is essentially just two lengths of thin plastic and we popped ours off several times while trying to fire our shots, resulting in us just removing it and using a stack of books instead:)

The spring load is quite stiff (It sort of needs to be to get those distances) so it can slip out of your finger tips if you haven't gripped it correctly. I found this took a bit of time to get used to before I was getting the motion best suited for firing.

I can't however deny it's ability to hit some seriously far distances with ease, possibly even exceeding the claimed 100 feet out of the box. In close quarters, these splat ammo do exactly that- any poor target will definitely feel them, and they make quite the mess (My apartment walls and floor is covered in white paper residue..) as well as a nice little welt to remind them to get out of the way next time:) There's a definite reason why the blasters all come with protective eye wear in the box- even if the ammo is soft, it still wouldn't tickle to cop one in the eye.

How good is the Shadow Hawk? It definitely fires the humble spitwad further than ever possible before, and it looks fantastic to boot. We love the way it feels in hand, and it's an impressive bit of kit, both in design and aesthetics.

The lack of trigger- we understand, but in this particular blaster we really could have done with one. I just couldn't get the accuracy I wanted with the springloaded mechanism alone; with a blaster like the Terrornator I didn't really care about single shot accuracy as it's all about crazy rapid fire fun, but with a sniper styled design like the Shadow Hawk has, I really wanted to get that "one shot one kill" sort of accuracy. Instead I just ended up rapidly pulling back on the cocking mechanism and did my best to shower my target with splat ammo instead.

The Shadow Hawk has a firing mechanism that does really feel like a sniper rifle, and for ours, is not really the best for fast and furious battles with friends. We found the Terrornator easily outclassed the Shadow Hawk in crazy kitchen skirmishes, although the Shadow Hawk is much better suited from the top balcony and scaring off pigeons, as we very quickly discovered with glee:) It's really a case of "fit for purpose"- if it's a long distance sniper rifle you want, the Shadow Hawk owns it hands down. With patience and practice, you'll probably get the accuracy you need- although for mine- I'm all about the rapid fire craziness of the Terrornator:)

*note- more pics were taken at the time, but seem to have gone missing in the blogger image library- I'm looking for them now as I write this!