My Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk Review

By: Jeremy Alden

We have a really big bad boy on our hands. Introducing the Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk.

Power?  It's got it. 

Range? It's got it. 

Accuracy? It's got that too.

A sniper rifle that also performs well at close range. With this, you will totally dominate the Nerf battlefield.

Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk Review

Features:

The Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk is another beautiful product from Hasbro, a gleaming gift that will make the day of any young boy and all who are young at heart. It is one of the longest Nerf gun ever.

It uses Accustrike darts which are very accurate and can help you score a hit on your opponent from a great distance away.

For greater long-range accuracy, it has an extendable barrel, but if you're going for a more close-range action, you can keep the barrel compact.

Darts are not able to ricochet like balls and discs so they may not have that visual wow factor.

But after a long afternoon of play, you will be able to retrieve darts more easily than balls or discs because they will most likely remain around where you fired them. This might probably save you a few bucks in replacing lost ammo.

A standard battle tactic I'd recommend for the Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk is to stay far and hit the opponents as fast as you can. If they come in close, you can compact the barrel and continue blasting or you can switch to a sidearm blaster.

So, let's take a look at what makes the Thunderhawk tick, part by part. By the end of this tour, you should have enough information to decide whether it is a good buy or not.

Components:

Contained within the package of the Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk are the blaster itself, an ammo clip, two-bolt handles, a number of darts for ammo, and the instruction manual.

Stock: The stock of the Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk is quite aesthetic at first look. It has this appearance of future-oriented design and it helps improve the stability of the Thunderhawk.

On the flip side, It has this way of digging into your chest while you are firing and you may want to be careful of this during extended periods of play.

Barrel: The barrel is a major selling point of the Thunderhawk. A little bit top-heavy but it does the job. On multiple trial fires, I did not experience any of my darts hitting the sidewalls of the barrel which would have reduced their speed, or even aborted the shot.

Due to the configuration of the barrel, you won't be able to use any barrel attachments, but with this type of nerf gun, I really doubt you will need them.

The barrel can also be extended, if you want to go for a more sniper-like kind of nerf gun, and retracted if you are going for a more close combat kind. When extended, friction locks it in place and it does not slide down even when you hold the blaster facing upwards. This is a novel feature and it is not shared by many other nerf guns. The barrel has a tactical rail on top of it.

Tactical rail: What could be more important to a sniper type nerf gun than a tactical rail? The rail allows you to slide on your accessories (which you need to buy separately) such as scopes for increased accuracy.

There is a slight problem as the tactical rail is located on the side of the barrel that slides outwards, so when you are in sniper mode, your attached scope (for example) may be too far from your eye to be of much use to you. It might have been preferable if the rail was attached to the non-sliding part of the barrel so it could always remain a constant distance from your eye.

Bipod: The Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk has a built-in bipod just on the underside of the blaster. It has no hooking or locking mechanisms or anything of that nature. To use, just pull the bipod down and balance it on the floor. It greatly improves the stability of the blaster while shooting and this in turn will improve your accuracy.

Grip: I'm not a very big fan of the grip of the Thunderhawk. It pretty okay, but on extended usage, the weight of the blaster comes to rest on your middle finger and it could become quite uncomfortable. You might want to wrap some padding around that finger.

On the plus side, the handle looks really cool. And you can use it for extra stability, kinda like an extra leg to turn the bipod stand into a tripod. Pretty neat.

Trigger: The trigger of the Thunderhawk is pretty smooth to the touch, and if you can ignore the discomfort from the grip, you can use if for hours of play without any soreness. The trigger does not slam fire so you have to pull it for every shot that you make.

Clip: The Thunderhawk uses a clip and not a magazine. When you buy it, the clip is separate from the rest of the blaster, but when you couple them, it is not meant to be detached again. The clip can contain about ten darts which you load into it from the front.

Loading the clip into the blaster makes it protrude from either side of the blaster and may cause space difficulties in storing the blaster since you can't detach the clip when you want to store.

On the flip side, there are also advantages to not being able to remove the clip. It makes reloading faster as you no longer have to contend with ejection buttons and can just load the clip directly while it is still attached to the blaster.

Bolt handles: The Thunderhawk has bolt handles which (after you have fixed them in) are located on both sides of the blaster. The bolt handles are needed to prime the spring mechanism of the blaster and to shift the loaded clip one dart to the right as you fire.

I find it very nice that you can removethe bolt handles when you are not using the blaster. It makes storage much easier

How to use this Blaster:

First, we have to properly assemble the blaster. Insert the clip into the hole on the side of the blaster and then slam it in. For the bolt handles, slide one through its attachment on the blaster. Then screw in the other one on the other side of the blaster.

The next step is to load the clip. About ten Accustrike darts are needed for this. First move the clip until it is entirely on the left side of the blaster, then feed the darts one at a time into the holes in the clip.

Hold your blaster in the most comfortable position and aim at your target. Move the bolt handle back and forth to prime the blaster, then pull the trigger to unleash the dart. There is no slam-fire here so you need to prime the blaster for every shot you take.

The  push on the bolt handle serves to prime the spring mechanism of the blaster while the forward push serves to move the clip one step to the right. The more you shoot, the more the clip moves to the right. When it's empty, the clip will be entirely on the right without any protrusion to the left.

Slam the clip back to the left position and reload it with darts. You may also want to extend the bipod for greater stability or extend the barrel. Prime once again using the bolt handle and continue blasting. For video details on how to assemble and use the Thunderhawk, see here.

Special Features:

Dry fire: You can fire the Thunderhawk even when the clip is not loading. Prime and fire and the clip will move step by step from the left to the right.

Flag attachment mount: You can attach your team flag to the end of your stock. Rep your colors proudly!

Conclusion: Nerf Accustrike Thunderhawk Review

Not so much ammo, but when you shoot, you can be sure that it will pack a punch, and your punch will actually hit what you're aiming for.

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