The Shadow Hawk was the first medium mech... and it shows. When they designed it they didn't know exactly what it needed to do, so they tried to make it do everything. The Davions looked at it and went "That could be fast enough to get close and brawl." and made the Wolverine, and Earthworks looked at it and went "That could fast enough to stay out of range of most bigger mechs." and made the Griffin, but the SHD itself never did poorly enough to get completely removed from service so it ended up backfilling units that weren't sure which of the above they were actually going to need.

I love this mech, not as it is designed, but as a platform to build a better mech out of. If it's role is focused and the tonnage it has re-allocated to fill that purpose, this mech can do whatever you need it to do at the tonnage bracket and do it well.

It is the "Jack of all Trades Master of None" that can accomplish any mission but does nothing truly well. The Shadowhawk was a popular choice for planetary militias during the Star League era. Ammunition based weapons are more easily supported by backwater planets than lasers and PPCs that require a higher Tech base. After the teething issues with the armor was resolved the Shadowhawk proved itself a very rugged design. Its widespread use ensured its survival, although only two factories producing it survived the Succession Wars era, it remained ubiquitous throughout the Inner Sphere and periphery. A cache of salvaged parts found most anywhere will usually include some parts for a Shadowhawk.

The shadow hawk always looked like what a battlebot should look like.

so many mechs are specialized torwards single roles that I think players have a hard time embracing one that can do a bit of everything. The Shadow Hawk's true ally is time. The combination of decent movement, a vast combined range bracket, endless ammunition, and lack of heat concerns gives the Shadow Hawk the ability to play the long game. Avoid the enemies specialized range brackets and hit back with whatever is their opposite. Evade and outlast, and while your enemies are overheating and still trying to pin you down, you have spent the entire fight nonstop blasting and slowly wearing them down. depending on lance composition and battle scenario this may not be an effective tactic, but that applies to virtually every mech out there. In the Shadow Hawks case, it often has to rely on it's allies to provide the time it needs to prove its value as a consistent marathon runner. Its not going to provide a awe-inspiring moment of heroism, but it is going to show up, be the first to start shooting, and the last to stop.

Truly the exemplar of the Jack of All Trades archetype. It can do a little bit of everything which makes it very versatile and fun if used right. Just never hand me any Davion variants.

Don't care if it's bad, I love all the Dougram design Battlemechs. For what it's worth, the SHD does a magnificent job of taking the Dougram's design and translating it into BT game language.

The Shadow Hawk to me, would make a lot more sense as one of the upper echelons of civilian mechs. It has great manipulators. Decent armor, mobility AND jumping. It's life-support suit is apparently one of the best on the market. It's cheaply & easily maintained. If a civilian design, it would suddenly be armed for freakin' space bear... And of course, it's such a handsome, eye-catching package. What could have been, if the Star League hadn't fallen, huh?

As you spoke about Shadow Hawk's weapons Bilbo's line from the movie "The Fellowship of The Ring" comes to mind..."Like too little butter spread over too much bread."

I swear, the RAC/5 might as well be the personal signature of Hanse Davion himself. All the best FedSuns 'mech variants slap the big spinny boi on there somewhere.

There's a quick and easy way to make a stock 3025 Shad into a good mech; pick SRMs or LRMs and commit. Dropping the SRM ammo allows you to switch the SRM-2 to an LRM-5. Or you can switch the LRM-5 for an SRM-4 because they weigh the same. Either way, it also needs more than 1 medium laser.

Playing a campaign in the 3040s, the Shadow Hawk is a weird kind of scary. The majority that you face are the stock 3025 variants, which are kind of a joke, so you just focus on them until they explode. But the refits... they HURT. And you might face the refits sometimes. So first you get this happy impulse when you see a Shadow Hawk and know you have a free kill, but then what if it's one of the variants that has real weapons instead of just the ammo for weapons?

Shadow hawk is also great for Hit and Run i gotta say, its a medium scout that can put up a mean fight if played right, thats what i like about it. Great video as always.

Honestly, i was expecting you to lambast the mech. This was a pretty fair review of her. As one of those Shadow Hawk fans, i find nothing to really gripe about. Excellent video. As an aside, i played mine on the table top during the succession wars era. As soon as 3050 hit, it became a sexy dust collector on my shelf.

My first encounter witth the shadowhawk is the Decision of thunder rift. Grasyon Death Carlyle stole one. I have a Gray Death Hero variant in MWO and have a few of them in my garage. A must have.

In the original game I thought the best version of this mech was the Kurita variant which replaced the silly AC5 with a PPC. I tinkered with it by removing all missile systems and ammo and increasing armour, heat sinks and adding another M-laser.

I'll always love this one, no matter how unoptimized it may be.

I see the Shadow Hawk as a great training mech, it has a bit of everything and will almost never overheat, but it's still underarmed. I'd fight in it if I had nothing better to choose, but I'd take almost any medium mech of its era over a Shadow Hawk. Now that said, more advanced variants are a bit better. I, for one, am a fan of the SLDF Royal variant which turns it into a brawler.

Also first mech that adding and XL engine does not actually harm it and improves mech drastically. It was already likely to explode if its sides got hit anyway, might as well give it a better engine.

The ultimate training mech. Has an AC, an energy weapon and a missile system. Even has jump capability. The SHD-2H should be relegated to training facilities. The SHD-2K is a 3025 variant that is slightly better than other 3025 Shadowhawks. It drops all the weapon system to mount a LRM-5 and a PPC. Mocked as a Griffin pretender, it inexplicitly adds 5 more heat sinks to cover a non-existent heat problem. 17 total heat sinks. If the mech fires both weapons (10+2 heat) and jumps (3 heat), it only generates 15 heat. That extra 2 tons of HS could of been used better. At least add 2 more jump jets and keep one of the 2 heat sinks to bring the total to 16. Then it could potentially gain 1 heat per turn if it jumped and fired like a mad lad. The Davion design is baffling to say the least. Calling it a suicide machine is being very kind. If Davion wasn't in love with autocannons maybe the engineers could of done something sensible with it instead of sacrificing the Shadow Hawk's only good feature. If I was allowed to introduce a new variant for the 3025 setting, like usual I'd rip out the AC 5. The LRM-5 is an underperforming weapon as well. Rip it out and put in a PPC to cover for the long range firepower the other two weapons provided. Bulk the SRM-2 to an SRM-6. Add 2 jump jets to bring this mech to a full jump 5. Add 1 heat sinks to bring the total to 13. Lastly add 1 Medium laser. This brings the total weapons package to 1 PPC, 2 Medium Lasers and 1 SMR-6 with 1 ton of ammo, on a well armored 5/8/5 mech with 13 heat sinks. It has the same long range capability as the 2H (slightly better actually), and is much more deadly at close range. This hawk can run hot, but its got enough heat sinks that a smart pilot can easily manage it.

It’s ironic that this Mech is the intro to the universe in the Colby’s Commandos short stories included in the box sets. From those, you’d definitely think the Shadow Hawk is a decent Mech. I guess Durant Carlyle was either that good or that lucky.

Thank you! Finally someone is honest about how poorly armed the Shadow Hawk is. I've never understood why so many people love this mech.

I remember getting a Shadowhawk variant in MW5 and being pretty excited for my first 55 ton mech, then I realized that it only had a PPC and an LRM 5, and its available hardpoints meant that it couldn't mount anything better. Needless to say that thing got swapped out real quick. I felt a lot better once I got behind the controls of a Kintaro^^

Yeah Red, I think there is a DEST heading your way. On other news, I think it's high time that Kurita reward the team that thought up the 2D design and actually got the Feddies to produce that travsity for its Mechwarriors.

As much as I agree with everything you said about the Shadow Hawk's shortcomings, for whatever reason I have found the 'Mech to be the luckiest I have ever piloted. Every time I take this out of the bay, I come back limping, damaged, and virtually out of ammo...but I DO come back. On one occasion, the sum total of the armor points left on the 'Mech weighed in at less than a single ton (16 points) with most of the internal structure showing. During our RPG set in the Battletech universe, the SH-D served as a solid platform for weapon testing. We tore ours apart many times, swapping new weapons in and out in a quest for the 'perfect' balance. In the end, the four of us would up with four of these in our heavy scout lance, each armed differently.

When we played in the 80s, it just didn't seem much like a threat and other necks would draw more fire while my cousin's Shadow Hawk was largely ignored.

It's the classic Jack-of-all-trades that excels at none. It can always contribute something to any operation but lacks focus.

This was my favorite mech back when I was a kid in the 80s.

What irritated me the most about the SHD is that in the original artwork from Dougram the laser on the arm looks so much more powerful than what you get in BattleTech. I like both the original design and the great modern take by Shimmering Sword, the Project Phoenix one by Chris Lewis is good too, but for this machine, the MWO/MW5 is my favorite look. The mech itself is great to play in MWO/MW5, AFTER it got some serious rework. Chassis has a lot of potential.

The 2H Shadowhawk is a mech that is well suited to being a trainer mech. Moderate speed, jets, a direct fire ballistic, a beam weapon, a direct fire missile system, an IDF missile system. I've found that at Succession War level tech, the best fix is to swap the AC5 to a PPC, and ripping out the existing missile systems for an SRM6. The freed tonnage used to max out its jump capacity, up armor the mech, and add a heat sink. Mind you, this also makes it very close in weapons profile to a Wolverine.

Mechwarrior 5 has a variant that let's you give it a big melee weapon. Shadow Hawk sprinting behind you with a mace the size of its arm can be pretty terrifying.

The Shadow Hawk provides nothing that I need out of a medium mech and that's okay. I have the all strategic acumen of a flaming brick.

Nice touch with the blooper real. Another great video

First time i heard about the shadow hawk was when i bought the second book of the gray death trilogy. That was 21 years ago at the age of 14, today i own 5 shd mechs in various configurations. Its not bad, its a fucking iconic design, and i love the "old" times, before the clans partycrashed the inner sphere. No mad cats, daishis or summoners, just good old shadow hawks, phoenix hawks and warhammers slugging it out. Just stay away from the von luckners and schrecks, you will be fine. Thank you for the upload, i love this series

As an old school Mechwarrior who learned to play with The Fox's Fangs (a company with TWO Shadow Hawks in 3025 config), been a Gray Death fanboy, and had one in the Command Lance for so long, it's always been a good Mech to me. The Shadow Hawk definitely isn't for the Heavy and Assault companies that crash into the enemy's line and go through the set defenses instead of around them. It works very nicely in companies that are made for mobile attack and defense. It's a good lance commander mech because it can shoot at various ranges, but doesn't get the commander tied up in firepower. It's a good Light Lance or Recon Lance mech that can stay with and support its fellow Light Mechs. There is a "sweet spot" where the AC 5, LRM 5, SRM 2, and medium laser all overlap, and in that range a full salvo can do some damage. And despite WIlliam H Keith's stirring prose, it's not a very hot mech, and has endurance to keep fighting well when other mech pilots are literally sweating their overload rolls. And if necessary, it can DFA its opponent. Plus the mech is easy to upgrade, and benefits greatly from it. That's why Shadow Hawks are still going strong, despite all the specialized Mediums being touted as the next best thing....until they're in a situation that doesn't let them be the best, while the Hawk is bouncing about and shooting.

Honestly, in my MW5 game, since I do love the Shadow Hawk, the first thing I did when I got a 2H was rip out its AC/5, make it a Burst-Fire AC/5, rip out the LRM-5 and its ammo, the SRM-2, to replace it with two SRM-4s with a ton of ammo feeding both systems. Not shockingly, centralizing its role down to a close-range mech killer which can jump to rapidly re-orient to shoot a volley of 8 SRMs down the gullet of even a Heavy makes for a competent close-range brawler.

Great video as always!!

Shadow hawk designer: I'm a cowboy! Bang bang!

LRMs for long range and indirect fire, AC for mid-range and anti-air Flak, SRMs for crit seeking and anti-infantry Infernos, and a ML to back it all up. Not a terrible design if unfocused, certainly useful for covering the weaknesses of other more focused designs by handling non-mech targets, but in a one-on-one engagement sorely lacking in raw firepower.

In the HBS game, the Shadow Hawk was the only 55 ton mech with a torso ballistic mount. In my attempt to create a 5/8/5 Hunchback, i ripped out everything I could, and shoved an AC/20 in there. Wasn’t always effective, but it was fun….

*Shadow Hawk the most expensive firework a man can buy.*

Absolutely loved the shadow hawk in the top down pc game, but after playing a couple games with it irl, I am sorely disappointed. Having 4 opportunities to hit and with the sinks to always fire all 4 weapons with impunity is reliable on paper, but so far mine has proven anything but reliable.

The good old Shadow Hawk. First Mech I fell in Love with and often have in my Mechwarrior 5 Lance. I only say: Descision at Thunder Rift, first Novel of the Grey Death Legion Trilogy. ;-) (Direct Translation of the German Title)

When the game was new, running 3025 mechs, we would often replace the AC5 with a Large Laser and heat sinks.

A great Mech bio as usual. When can we expect a video on my personal favorite the Black Knight???

When people talk about the draw backs of Jack of all Trades designs the Shadowhawk is what comes to mind. It can do everything a little bit but nothing particularely well, which leads to the sad situation where in pretty much any lance replacing the Shadow Hawk with a different medium mech would upgrade that lances capabilities.

This show pony took a loooong time to earn all the love it gets.

I like that they put weapons to anger opponents at all ranges, but not enough to really fight.. making it the perfect distraction on which to assign the most unwanted pilots.

Shadow hawk falls into that it can do everything but nothing well type of zone that many military airforces trying to make multi role fighters and mechanized infantry and tank design committees like the famous Bradley fighting vehicle and the pentagon wars story, they fall into trying to make the tool do everything instead of making it do one thing really well. The shadow hawk falls into that type of scenario, on paper its some general on a design boards dream machine, but in practice it falls well short of what it needs to be.

Based on conventional mech design, you'd assume The Shadowhawk a long range firing support platform, till you look into its specs and see its actually armed light and built to be fast.

what i really love about those videos are the authentic tabletop expirience where you miss all the shots XD

It's a good mech as a heavy scout and skirmisher or as a light mech hunter. It's not really suited as a front line mech. Post 3050 they usually have enough firepower and mobility to take on most threats and steer clear from those they can't beat. Sadly the 3025 version is often thrown into fights as your mainline mech.

Got the starter box, thought man this mech is cool. Looked at the datasheet and thought nope it's shit. I played a clan invasion game with the 5M after learning of and researching the variants and damn my little man was a hero. Punching 30 damage holes in the clanners after running 8... I'm in love

i think the cold running of the shadow hack work best in game like HBS cause unlike some of the medium designs it often running cold through the entire game so you get a constant barrage once you reach long range for its short range weapons. with the right pilots it can be an early workhorse for a lance till you get your heavy. The main drawback as you explain is that it depend heavily on ammo weapons. You crit one side torso and the mech is in danger of dropping, but like you i would had to drop either the SRM or the LRM completely in favor of either an upgraded version of the later.

I like the epic Mech2 music in the background, it reminds me of 30 years ago when I heard it while reading Battletech. My favorite and first book was "Wolves on the Border". One of the characters was called Dechan Fraser and wielded the mech "Shadow Hawk".

I'm sure that SHD pilots appreciate your empathy towards their rides at the end of your video.

When I played mw5 I had gotten the Davion variant of the shadowhawk easy to say I have acquired a seething hatred of the shadowhawk

I've loved the Dougram's design for as ling as I can remember way before Battletech was even a thought in my mind. I was both perplexed and happy to see it in a game all about mech combat when I first got into it this year. Though I was pretty let down at how underwhelming and functionally confused it was. Might've been the problem of heavily translating design elements from the original Dougram designs without much thought to its practicality. Alas, despite its flaws it's among my favorite Mech designs for tying itself to my already established love of the Mecha genre

this guy ended me with 1 punch in BattleTech's TUTORIAL mission, it just walked up and punched my head off XD

My first mech in the 80s playing tabletop

I'm not a huge fan of this mech, but I bet they make great NPC mechs for campaigns. They can offer a little bit of support at each range bracket without doing enough damage to overshadow the player(s). Great for militias and other backline support, these are the mechs that hold off a light attack until the real fighters arrive. They are basically an AC5 platform with enough other weapons to make an undiscliplined pirate outfit *feel* like they are getting hit. They aren't really designed to face off against other mechs one v one or lance to lance but having a company of these lets them pool their weapon fire at any range. ...and at least they can get to the fight.

Not the best performer, but I always loved that design. Props to Kunio Okawara, the original designer of the unseen design’s origin, the Combat Armor Dougram. Also the first person to ever hold the title of Mechanical Designer. Many of the unseen mechs were originally designed by him, and Shoji Kawamori

Shadow Hawk in the Grey Death Legion benefits from plot armor and convenience

The SH is a great mech with a terrible load out. In mechwarrior 5 I stripped away the JJ, the LRM. Then I loaded up an srm 2 and srm 4. Replaced the ac 5 with an ac10 burstfire and I upped the armor to max so it had something crazy like 10-11 tons of it. The a laughed my ass off as ran up to mechs and shotgunned everything to death soloing missions without any lancemates to help me. It got me though mechwarrior 5 early game with ease and was so much fun. I love the mech.

This is my favorite of the holy trinity and when properly kitted out is one of the finest medium cavalry mechs around

Back in the day I used to use the basic Shadow Hawk, and often walked an armorless but victorious mech off of the field...

The Shadowhawk is under-gunned, and under armored in some of the alternate configurations. But it looks fantastic. Probably worth dropping the LRMs entirely, and getting another ML and armor.

Seems like it needs refits to specialize in either long or short range. Versatility just isn't in the cards for this mech,so I have to give the FWL some credit with how they managed to shove a LRM 20 in that thing.

My SHD-2H has never once been killed and his assists are many. The best way to use the Shad is to park him on a hill with some cover and GO "neenerneener" at your opponent to draw them to you all the while whirling down their armor just so the Battlemaster can come around the hill and blast any scrap heap dumb enough to charge an AC/5 at max range back to the stone age.

Honestly, the best use i can think of for a SHD is as a Training mech. It's got just enough of each weapon system to get a pilot used to how it all works. Thaaaaaats about it.

I've always and still do like the Shadow Hawk. The only thing that bothered me about it was how the auto cannon sits in it's rest position. It always made me think about it snagging on low hanging stuff. I also had a 12 inch plastic model of it.

I love this mech. Friends never understand, when I love my speed and firepower in one decent package.

Once you get the giggles it’s all over from there. Some where down the road a stream and video blooper compilation may be needed😁

So aesthetically pleasing, it makes the lost palatable.

A stock shadow hawk in a big battle is actually amazing. It is not dangerous enough to destroy and it will always be able to shoot shoot and shoot.

I like to use it as a Sniper, Anti-Air, or Fire-Support platform. The standard AC/5 can use alternate munitions to help with this. The 3 jump-jets aren't enough to gain any movement bonuses on the tabletop, but they're enough to move quickly to higher ground or other better positions to function as I explained above. The medium laser and SRM-2 aren't all that threatening up close, but if you can get to point-blank range it becomes a fair brawler; especially if you're using quirks and bring its Battle Fists into play.

Ah yes the infamous SRM2 head missiles that delete the pilot when you land a critical on them.

I always enjoy running the 2k in MWO or MW5, always call it the mistress because i keep coming back to it. 3 med lasers, 3 srm4, endo, ferro and double heat sinks and all the jump jets.

I absolutely adore this mech, right after the Battlemaster. It just looks so cool, and in the Mechwarrior games I adore seeing that massive autocannon right next to my cockpit. And in the HBS Battletech game, its an amazing mech you can build lots of things with. SRM boat? Sure. Big cannon? Sure. Punchbot? Sure. It's fast, making it pretty dodgy and it can field a bunch of jumpjets, making it quite mobile. I just love the thing.

The hero shadowhawk in mw5 is probably my favorite mech... iconic design, firepower, mobility, it's got it all.

The Shadow Hawk: Battletechs very own Ugly Duckling.

The original (post-recall) models sounds like it was perfectly adequate while you had the logistics network and force projection power of the SLDF. Where a group of them working with other tonnages and roles of supporting mechs wouldn't have put them into situations where these flaws would become apparent. But once you go to the smaller scale skirmish style of conflict of the game's setting it falls behind other designs.

Staring the books with thunder rift, for me this was my first hero mech. I remember playing Mechwarrior II taking a Blackhawk, changing the loadout and asking myself what to do with the twenty tons left...

You are correct the 2H is so general purpose it is almost anemic.

In MW5 I discovers how much I actually like its basic configuration with few upgrades. My favourite IS medium, at least for the era, without doubts.

The Shadow Hawk, in later eras, really benefits from ripping out the AC/5 and replacing it with a light PPC and double heat sinks. I have a modest upgrade of my own that I need to properly test (shame that I can never get any locals to play tabletop, Warhammer 40K's dominating the local wargaming scene here) that runs two light PPCs in place of the AC/5, replaces the SRM2 with another medium laser, and replaces the LRM5 with an MML5 and a tone each of LRM and SRM ammo for it. 11 double heat sinks keep her running cold, CASE in the right torso helps mitigate the ammo explosion issues, and there's still enough mass left over for a targeting computer and an extra half ton of armor. Still a mess of a multirole machine by the time light PPCs are available, but it's an upgrade package that adds some more bite to the Shadow Hawk on the cheap; I think buying one configured like this would coat 13-15% more than buying an SHD-2H off the production line. You probably could do worse for 3072-era tech when all the upgrade parts become relatively common.

The Shadow Hawk is a mech that at base is... Subpar. Subpar in table top, subpar in sim/game. With better tech it starts to shine in both TT/Sim, as shown with the 2d2, 5m, 5d and more. It favors TT over sim/game, as all of them tend to offer much better performance per cost as stock.

Objectively speaking I can't find an argument to defend the original Shadow Hawk but I don't think I am able to dismiss it. It is essentially toothless in comparison to any peer medium mechs with the same fame but I have always found it reliable while not being the mech that has carried the day or dragged me into defeat. I don't know if it is a lucky mech for me or I have been lucky with it.

I love this mech, I play it like a tag team wrestler alongside the Wolverine. I tend to drop the srm for a second medium laser and max out the jump jets

The shadowhawk overall is my favorite Mech in the 3025 era. I understand that it has its flaws but I can't help but love it. I've never been a big fan of the AC5. In varients that I've used, I strip out the AC5 and replace it with either a PPC or large laser. I also get rid of the SRM2 which in my opinion is useless and use that saved weight for either a second medium laser and/or heat sinks.

I was forced to use this thing for a while, I was badly in need of a medium mech. To make it useful I took out the srm. Replaced the lrms with 2 lrm 5s and the ac 5 was now an ac2. It was sniper support and survived far better in deployments.

So here's what you do. Get your self a D type, throw away the AC5 and LRMs, max out on SRM6s, max out on armor, enjoy. I don't know about tabletop, but in "BattleTech" and MW5, this is my favorite way to maximize the efficiency of the Shadow Hawk. Just turn it into a Quickdraw. In the BattleTech game it can be kind of OP to just keep on stacking evasion points with jumps every turn, (maps/positioning/heatsinking allowing) then derping enemies to death with missile strikes. A well armored SRM18 platform that is very hard to hit is pretty fun while the ammo lasts.

My 100% favorite (2H)!! I feel it's a Great all-rounder/ utility mech., I've always found it's a solid machine if you know what you're doing. And it's sexy as hell. That's just me though, I guess.

The only man who ever made a stock ShadowHawk work was William H. Keith, Jr. Change my mind.

In MW5, I slapped a LRM 10 in the chest and swapped the SRM for a LRM 5, turning it into a long range support mech. I also removed the jumpjets, because eh. It's a blast, though it definitely has issues if anything gets close because that single medium laser isn't enough to ward off anything

i always think that the shadowhawk looks like a thin hunchback would look like i mean without the big cannon

I'm a fan on the younger end of the spectrum and was surprised to find out the Shadowhawk wasn't a mech designed for a videogame. Think about it for a minute - it has every kind of equipment you'd want to test out on one platform, has no heat issues, and it can be retrofitted to fill almost any role in the mechlab. It's an ideal starter mech. See what you like, lean more towards that direction. If you find you like that direction even more commit to it by getting a different mech that is better designed specifically for that role. It'll never be great at anything but you can make it good enough at most playstyles to figure out what you like and dislike with relatively minor retrofits without committing to an entirely new mech.

I love the 5M. In MW5 I run it with an ultra-5, LRM15, SRM4 and a Medium pulse laser. Then you can kill anything you want

One of my most all-time favorite designs. You can do so much with it with the right equipment.😎

Thank you Ryosuke Takahashi and Fang of the Sun Tiger Dougram, which also gave us the Battlemaster/Soltic HT-128 Bigfoot.