Howdy everyone and welcome back to Mech Overview! This week we are taking a look at a long time favorite of mine, the Hunchback. The Hunchback is one of the earliest mechs in BattleTech, coming from TRO 3025. Much like the majority of mechs in that book, this means that there are about 6000 variants of the thing. It is a big ugly slab of a medium mech, and tends to be a very love it or hate it type design. I personally love it because it has some real personality as a barrel-chested brawler of a mech that looks like it is coming to beat you to death, but I have known a decent amount of people who think it is ugly as sin. It is a lot like a mini-Banshee in that aspect.

Jack: I think the louvered cockpit is dumb as shit.

This mech badly wants to punch you and shoot you with its danger rectangle. It thirsts for the blood of enemy heavy mechs.

Chassis

The Hunchback is a 50 ton medium mech that is in most ways built like a pocket heavy mech. Firepower is the core identity of the Hunchback, with most variants packing hilarious amounts of damage for their weight. The Hunchback tends to have very thick armor for a 50 tonner, with nearly maxed out armor on the base model and most variants having the same or better armor. There are a lot of heavy mechs that lose the durability race to the Hunchback, and it is fully capable of 1v1ing things well above its tonnage when applied well. Most variants are pretty slow, though not all of them, and the mech has such a wide range of variants and weapon loads that there is basically no role you can’t fill with a Hunchback. That includes Scout, the Hunchback has a massive range of variants. This is one of the most varied variant lists in the entire game, but it never loses track of its core identity as a brick shithouse that is here to eat enemy heavy mechs alive.

Variants

These mechs have all been reviewed based on a standard F through S scale, which you can find described on our landing page here (along with all of our other ‘mech reviews, the name of the box you can buy to get any of the mechs we have covered, and our general methodology).

4G

The 4G base model of the Hunchback is a pretty good start and is very representative of the mech on the whole. For a very reasonable 1041 BV you get near max armor on a 4/6/0 chassis, with two medium lasers, a small laser, and an AC/20. It has enough heat sinks to only build movement heat, which is great, but only has AC/20 ammo in the left torso, meaning that any crit to the left torso will instantly kill the mech. With two tons of ammo on an AC/20 there is a chance you can drain one or both of those bins by the time you would be taking a crit to the left torso, but this is still a giant risk that makes the 4G a rather unattractive mech, unfortunately. The theory here is decent, but the ammo bomb combined with the low speed makes it a bit hard to apply in anything other than ambushes.

RATING: D

4H

Already we are seeing a substantial improvement. When I take a 3025 era Hunchback, it is nearly always a 4H. For 1067, functionally the same as the 4G, you trade the AC/20 out for an AC/10 and two extra Medium Lasers. The 4H is really well set up, building 4 heat with a running alpha and losing literally no overall DPS up close while gaining a significantly longer range on its primary weapon. In addition, it has two tons of AC/10 ammo, so it can easily load precision and still have enough shots for a standard length game. It also moves all of the spare heat sinks to the left torso, so the ammo bins are nice and padded with 5 crits worth of heat sink. This is straight up a good medium mech for the price, it has acceptable mid-range firepower with a decent up close alpha strike, all for a very reasonable price. A key part of the “3025 Trash Wall” lists that I like to run sometimes.

RATING: B+

4J

Another good improvement over the 4G, the 4J comes in at 1143 BV and trades the weapons out for two LRM-10s, five medium lasers, and the small laser. It builds 3 heat at a run when firing the medium lasers and sinks a fair bit of heat when firing the LRMs. You lose 5 points of point blank DPS compared to the 4G but gain a significant amount of long range damage output from the LRMs. This mech makes a really fantastic multi-role piece, and is very capable of defending itself compared to most other LRM mechs in its price range. I really do not use this mech enough due to my rampaging love of precision ammunition, but in lower BV games this might be one of the best value for BV LRM mechs that you could get.

RATING: B+

4N

At 1087 BV the 4N is another weird variation on the 4G, trading the weapons out for an AC/5, 2 LRM-5s, four medium lasers, and the small laser for emotional support. This is a decent compromise between the 4H and the 4J, but either of those mechs will do the job better than this one. If you are playing with Smoke rules, this mech might have a niche for dropping a couple hexes of smoke down to cover itself, but otherwise it is outcompeted by the 4H and 4J.

RATING: C-

4P

The 4P, also called the Partyback, is one of the funniest single mechs to take in a 3025 game, or in any game to be honest. It trades the weaponry of the 4G out for eight medium lasers and the small laser. It even has enough heat sinks to only heat up by 3 when running and firing all of those medium lasers, so you have seven heat neutral medium lasers for only 1138 BV. This is genuinely hilarious, and the only thing holding this mech back is its 4/6/0 movement profile. If it was faster it would be a fucking terror, but as is it is merely really good if allowed to get in range. The lack of range is as big of a problem here as it is on the 4G, but the lack of an ammo bomb and 100% uptime do a lot to make up for it. It is still weaker than the 4H and 4J, but nothing in the game wants to end up three hexes away from a Partyback.

RATING: C

4SP

Another variant I take a decent amount, the 4SP comes in at 1043 and trades the guns out for two SRM-6s, four medium lasers, and the small laser for some fucking reason. It does carry both tons of SRM-6 ammo in the center torso, which sucks quite a lot but honestly once crits start rolling in on the center torso a mech is usually already more or less dead. This mech only builds 3 heat when running and firing everything but the small laser, and with 2 tons of SRM ammo you have room to run both Inferno and normal SRMs, which gives you some good flexibility. I am a huge fan of cheap SRM mechs, and this is a bit expensive compared to a Javelin or Baboon, but you get some pretty solid armor for that upcharge. The 4H and 4J are significantly better, but the 4SP can do a pretty good job of things if you really like SRMs. The low mobility and short range still do hold this mech back, but it is still better than the 4G due to not having the ammo bomb.

RATING: C

5H

The 5H is a deeply funny mech. For 1097 BV we lose some armor but trade the weapons out for an AC/20, two medium lasers, and three rocket launcher 20s. That is 60 potential points of damage once per game, which is incredible. It does only have 10 single heat sinks so heat issues are significant, and there are better rocket launcher mechs in the game, but all rocket launcher mechs are fucking hilarious and this is no exception. This is probably the best Hunchback when it comes to ambushing someone, but there are better Hunchbacks for basically every single other purpose. I have a friend who uses the hell out of these because they are on the Fronc Reaches availability list, and they serve him OK, but most other hunchback variants are more functional.

RATING: D+

5M

The first advanced tech Hunchback, the 5M is pretty fucking bad. Compared to the 4G for 1056 BV you get double heat sinks, CASE for the Autocannon ammo, and upgrade the small laser to a small pulse laser. This comes at the cost of cutting your AC/20 ammo down to a single ton, which is fucking horrible. It is no faster, and it is hilariously oversinked, building at most 17 heat while being capable of sinking 26. The fact that this mech doesn’t drop 3 heat sinks to get an extra ton of AC/20 ammo and an upgrade from medium lasers to medium pulse lasers is fucking bizzare. This is one of the single worst “Upgrades” in the entire game. The 4G is pretty bad but the 5M manages to fix literally none of its problems while also creating entirely new ones. I want to have a very serious conversation with whoever designed this so I can ask them what the actual fuck they were trying to fix about the base design. It is funny, however, that this is noted to be a pretty mediocre upgrade in universe, and a few other variants exist more or less just to fix the glaring problems with this one.

RATING: F

5N

Seriously who the hell was in charge of making Hunchback variants? This is an attempt to fix the 5M that technically does but also goes about it in the worst fashion I could think of. Instead of dropping one of the three extraneous heat sinks that this thing does not fucking need to add the second ton of ammo, the 5N instead downgrades the small pulse laser back to a small laser and drops the CASE. Why the actual fuck would you get rid of the CASE here, it was one of the very few things that the 5M actually fixed about the base design. I don’t even care how much this thing costs, it is bizarre that this is how they decided to fix this thing. Good god.

RATING: F+

5P

A variant of the Partyback that aims to fix some of its problems, the 5P costs 1138 BV and carries six ER medium lasers, two medium pulse lasers, an ECM, and a C3 slave. It also actually has enough heat sinks, being capable of firing all six ERML and one of the MPLs without overheating. Once you are within two hexes, you should swap to 5 ERMLs and both MPLs though. This is a fucking incredible mech and I have no clue how I missed it every time I looked at the chassis before right now. It does have slightly less armor than the Hunchback Standard, but this mech does a frightening amount of damage out to a pretty ok range. The low speed is still an issue and the range isn’t long, just adequate, but I actually really want to use this now.

The C3 slave plus ECM combo is also fantastic, as this means that the 5P can use ECCM to cancel out enemy ECM, meaning that it can protect its C3 connection and counter what is otherwise a hard counter to C3 forces. This is a fantastic little mech, it has no explosive components, great heat management, great damage, adequate range, and a really fantastic role as a durable rock to sit in the middle of a C3 lance to keep ECM from countering you. Fantastic mech.

RATING: B+

5S

Carrying the same lighter armor load as the 5P, the 5S comes in at 1350 BV and significantly upgrades the weaponry compared to the 5M and 4G. It carries two MPLs, an LBX-20 autocannon, and a small laser to keep the demons at bay. It moves 4/6/4, really helping to mitigate the poor movement speed with the added flexibility of jump jets. It also carries a genuinely hilarious amount of ammo, four tons, in a CASE protected bin in the left torso. There is a 66% chance that a crit to the left torso hits it with two engine hits and a loss of AC/20 firepower, which sucks, but you could easily dump two of the ammo bins at the start of a game and still have enough ammo to get through a game. LBX-20s are pretty good weapons, they have better range than normal AC/20s and the cluster shot is a really effective source of crits on mechs and motive hits on tanks and helicopters. I don’t love this variant due to the thinner armor and ammo bomb, but you can do a lot worse with a Hunchback. The JJs in particular are a huge help, as it lets it play around rough terrain and LARP as a Victor, and you know how much I love the Victor. It actually would be a great thing to pair with a Victor, as its main weakness, a vulnerable side torso, is really mitigated by the enemy having more pressing concerns from the fucking assault mech standing next to it. Great little mech, but it is a bit outcompeted by other Hunchbacks.

RATING: B-

5SG

A deeply weird prototype variant, the 5SG costs 1577 BV and makes a lot of changes to the base formula. For one, instead of having lower arms and hands, the 5SG has flippable arms with only upper arm actuators. It moves 4/6/4 and carries Stealth Armor, so it can be deeply annoying to kill at range. For guns, we have a gauss rifle in the torso, a medium pulse laser in each arm, and an ECM unit to make the Stealth Armor work. Stealth Armor mechs with Gauss Rifles are fucking disgusting and there are very few of them in the game for a reason. It is very easy to make use of the Stealth Armor bonus when you have such long ranges, and the 5SG is perfectly happy sitting 10+ hexes behind your battle line and blasting away with its gauss rifle.

Another bit of trivia, this is one of very few mechs in the game with asymmetrical jump jets. It mounts them in the center torso and left torso, rather than the left and right torso. There is no rule against this and technically you could mount all of your jump jets in one location, but it just feels viscerally wrong in a way that is hard to describe.

RATING: B+

5SS

The 5SS is a very interesting little mech. Built on top of a 5S, the 5SS costs 1342 BV and trades the guns out for two MML-9s with Artemis IV, three ER medium lasers, and an ER small laser for some fucking reason. This makes it a hybrid between the 4J and the 4SP, and honestly far more capable of a mech than either of those. As it has three tons of missile ammo, it also can load LRMs, SRMs, and Inferno SRMs. The Inferno missiles wouldn’t get the cluster hits bonus that Art IV provides, but having that amount of flexibility is really nice. The thinner armor sucks but the jump jets are great, and on the whole this is a very effective MML mech. Eighteen ART IV SRMs coming at you up close is terrifying, the LRM damage is adequate if unimpressive, and the ERMLs have exactly enough range to be significant. I have no clue why I am not using this mech more often; it is one of the best MML boats in the game and I am the MML’s strongest soldier.

RATING: A

6N

I swear to god whoever made this specific run of advanced tech upgrades to the Hunchback is a traitor to the Free Worlds League and should be held accountable for their crimes. To fix the shitty 5M variant, the 6N drops three of the double heat sinks to add three extra tons of AC/20 ammo. This would be an incredibly good upgrade as the 6N now has enough ammo to safely load precision AC/20 ammo, which is probably the single most terrifying ammo type in the game, but they fucked it up by removing the DHS that was in the fucking torso with the AC/20 ammo, so it now has an ammo bomb in the left torso again. Every fucking time someone tries to fix the 5M they just create a new fucking problem. This is much less bad because with a precision AC/20 load you have a decent chance of emptying 2-3 ammo bins by the time you start taking crits to the side torso, but loading this with regular ammo would just get you killed. Load precision and try not to draw attention to yourself. At least it has CASE so it won’t instantly die when it takes a crit, but it really might as well seeing as it will lose almost all of its firepower when that crit comes in.

Oh and it costs 1130 BV, forgot to mention it. It isn’t bad and it resembles my beloved Banshee 3Q, so I can’t dock it too many points but like, there is an incredibly obvious way to make this mech much better by just shifting the two arm DHS into the left torso.

RATING: C-

6P

I want whatever the person who made this was smoking. The 6P costs 1374 BV and has the slightly thinner armor load that a lot of Hunchbacks do. As the name implies, this is another Partyback, but this is easily the most demented out of all of them. The mech uses a light engine to free up room for six light PPCs and two medium lasers. Six LPPCs is a hilarious amount of LPPC, and as a big fan of LPPCs in general for their BV cost I am completely on board with this. The 6P does lack heat sinks, only having 11 DHS, but it carries a Radical Heat Sinking System, a hilariously named piece of equipment that functions almost like MASC but for your heat sinks. It adds 1 extra heat sinking capacity to each heat sink, but has a chance every turn to blow up, with the same scaling and cooldown system as MASC. RHSS’s are fucking hilarious and I really like them on almost every mech that has them, and you can just drop two of the LPPCs every other turn to keep the RHSS check at the lowest level you can.

I don’t think this is the best Hunchback, but it is one of the funnier ones. LPPCs in general are really fun weapons for the BV and this makes okay use of them.

RATING: C+

6S

This is more fucking like it! At 1380 BV the 6S carries the same armor load as the 4G, but is internally a completely different animal. It uses an XL engine to move 6/9/0, which is incredible, and carries two ER medium lasers, an LBX-20 AC, and an SRM-6. This is a fantastic weapon load, and it has more than enough ammo. It lacks CASE which kinda sucks, but as it has an XL engine this only matters for campaign play. For regular play you have one of the fastest AC/20s in the entire game with enough ammo and decent backup weapons. This mech is death on legs to any 5/8/0 or slower mechs on the enemy side, and can pretty consistently get a +3 TMM if you plan your turns out right. Having a Hunchback that can move like an Adder or Stormcrow is just a lot for your enemy to deal with. This is in general one of the game’s best medium mechs. I cannot recommend this mech highly enough, it is cheap, incredibly dangerous, and no opponent you will ever have will expect a Hunchback to move this fast.

Fun fact if you are playing with hidden record sheets, you are allowed to spend running MP but only move the 6 hexes you can walk. This can trick an opponent into thinking you have one of the slower Hunchbacks, and is potentially a neat trick. Record sheets are usually public information, but this can be a fun trick to pull on your players if you are running a campaign.

RATING: A-

7X-4

Oh god a weird experimental one. At 1208 BV the 7X-4 does some weird shit to the internals. To get the easy stuff out of the way, it trades the weaponry out for an Ultra AC/10 with a CASE II protected ammo bin, two ERMLs, and an ER small laser for some fucking reason. For the more complex stuff, it uses a reinforced structure to take half as much damage once the armor is breached, and it uses a torso cockpit. Torso cockpits have a huge amount of rules but basically it means that the mech will technically walk off a headshot. The reinforced structure is the big thing here, as it is probably the single best way to increase your durability in the entire game. If you have never used one, a mech with reinforced structure is way harder to take down than you would think due to effectively having double the internal HP, but it also gives your opponent a penalty to rolls to generate critical hits, which means in practice that it is very difficult to actually kill a reinforced structure mech with critical hits. Considering that in my experience mechs tend to either die from crits or become worthless from crits long before they lose all health in a torso location, this is a huge deal.

The UAC/10 also has much better range than the standard AC/20s that come in most hunchbacks, so you have a much better capacity to harass people as they make their way towards you. The 7X-4 also has an armored gyro, so it takes two crits to each gyro location before you actually take the gyro hit. These things just will not die from crits, it doesn’t matter what you try to do to it.

RATING: B+

7R

The production model of the 7X-4, the 7R costs 1248 and simply gets rid of the armored gyro and the torso mounted cockpit. In exchange it gains an ECM, a TAG, and loses the ER small laser. Honestly I like this one slightly better as it has more crit-padding on the ammo and is much more likely to be allowed by whatever ruleset you are using. ECM is very important to have in a force in case you run in to C3. This mech still has nearly all of the positive features of the 7X-4 and will still refuse to die while doing ok enough damage on the way out. Whether you want one or the other will depend entirely on how much you like torso cockpits.

RATING: B+

7S

Another variation on the 4SP, the 7S is a completely nuts version of the Hunchie. Costing 1628 BV, the 7S moves 6/9(12)/0 by mounting a supercharger, and carries two SRM-6s, four ERMLs, an Angel ECM, Bloodhound active probe, and a TAG for fun. It has enough heat sinks to only build movement heat while alpha striking, and has two tons of SRM-6 ammo so it can easily load both regular and inferno ammo. The Angel ECM is a fantastic piece of equipment that counters enemy streak, Artemis, and C3 really easily, and can even continue to counter C3 while also countering any basic enemy ECM that is trying to protect the enemy C3 network. This is a fantastic scout/striker mech, which is a really bizarre thing to say about the fucking Hunchback, but the platform is just insanely varied and cool. 1628 is a lot of BV, but I think that sending a mech with this much armor 12 hexes is easily worth the cost, and there are few mechs that really want something with four ERMLs and two SRM-6s in their back arc. This thing can run like a fucking Locust when it activates the Supercharger, and that is fucking incredible.

RATING: A-

C

The Hunchback C is without exaggeration one of the single best medium mechs I have used in this game. I have watched a Hunchback C 1v1 Clan Grade assault mechs and win, many times. It is so much more powerful than its weight would imply, and is insanely fun to use on top of that. For 1893 BV the C is a complete Clan-tech rebuild of the Hunchback, moving 6/9/0 with completely Clan internals. For weapons, we have a Clan Ultra-AC/20 (!), two Clan MPLs, and a Clan ER small laser for fun. It has four tons of UAC/20 ammo, meaning it has enough for any reasonably sized game, and this thing just does so much fucking damage with that big gun. 1893 BV is very expensive, but anything slower than the Hunchie C is going to get fucking murdered by that gun. The Clan UAC/20 is one of the best weapons in the game, and something moving with a +3 TMM, great armor, Clan pulse for backup, and that insane main gun is incredibly hard to deal with. There is basically nothing wrong with this mech, and it is easily one of the single best mechs to come out of the Rec Guides. I have used this Hunchback a lot, and it makes a fantastic addition to a Striker Star, probably slotting in for the mediocre Conjurer.

I cannot recommend using this mech enough, it is goofy powerful and there is nothing fancy in here, just good design and a well thought out game plan.

RATING: A+

4G “Gauss Prototype”

The first one off variant, this is a 4G upgraded with a Gauss rifle. It has no canon BV and as far as I know no canon record sheet, but it is an obvious idea and I do think it is weird we never got a Gauss Rifle equipped standard Hunchback. The experimental stealth one doesn’t count.

4G “Shakir”

At 968 BV the Shakir is the cheapest of the Hunchbacks, being functionally a 4H with the medium lasers replaced with two prototype MPLs and literally nothing in the left torso. You never want to have an empty torso, as that allows crits to transfer from the side torso to the center torso, which is a bad thing. Also prototype MPLs can randomly generate more heat. I have forgotten exactly how that works because I think two mechs in the whole game actually mount them, but that still sucks.

RATING: D+; at least it is cheap

4G “Hohiro”

An upgrade of the Shakir, the Hohiro costs 1126 BV and carries the thinner armor profile, two standard MPLs, a UAC/10, an ER small laser for some fucking reason, and a C3 slave. It also has a mighty one single heat sink in the left torso to keep crits from transferring, which is still bad but is slightly less bad. Overall this is a decent mech but there are better Hunchbacks.

RATING: C, its ok

Conclusion

Good lord there are a lot of Hunchbacks. Like just a fuck ton of Hunchbacks. The Hunchback has some of the most dogshit variants of any mech but it also has some of the best medium mech variants in the entire game. As long as you stick to the good ones the Hunchback will serve you incredibly well. The 6S, 7S, and C in particular are just incredible little mechs. No one will ever expect a 6/9/0 AC/20 to come running at them, and it causes panic in a way that is honestly hilarious. The Jumpy Hunchbacks also pair really well with the Victor, which is great considering that it comes in the same box as the Victor.

Mech good. Cheers.

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