Setups: Gear Up Recon

Before I get back in to the action here on this blog, I'll need to do an announcement. The reason why I've been away from this blog lately is a very special reason; on the 7th of November 2012, my long time partner and I became first time parents to a beautiful baby girl. I know that most of my readership probably aren't parents, but those who are will definitely understand that Nerfing becomes a back seat project when you become a parent, but you do learn to balance all aspects of your life eventually. Perhaps one day we'll share the same interests (my dad and I are both motor racing fans and well in to bicycles) but for now, her priorities are firmly set on eating, sleeping and burping (tough life much?).

But don't fear! For I am still here. Today I bring a setup to the floor, my personal Gear Up Recon. Over time, this has seen a few different changes but with Slydev 3D products starting to gather steam, the options are ever expanding and it's now possible to have enough accessories on a Recon to sink a ship.

For this set up I have here, I've used a Slydev triple Nerf rail adapter on the lower rail of the Longstrike barrel to be able to mount both a light and a foregrip, as well as anything else I want on the other side (Jolt connector perhaps?). Top side I've got a Slydev phone mount on the slide rail. This piece can be bought with an Iphone 4 case already glued on, or bought separately to glue your own phone case on. You can then record footage from your phone as a gun mounted camera, or if you're really keen, use it for communication between team mates (send a photo of the opponent's base back to your team?). Moving back, You'll notice the duct tape mag pouch, an adaptation of HDingo's YouTube tutorial. Top all that off with an N-Strike bandolier and a 12 dart elite mag in the blaster, and that is how you load the Nerf Recon like a pack-horse. hope you enjoy! -Rolley

Links updated

I have finally updated the links page, adding an Australian based Nerf blog, Outback Nerf, Skurl's lazer tag page, The Hive Mind, Lasagna678's mod blog, and finally added the forum and group I'm a member of, Oz Nerf and Brisbane Nerf Group. Head on over and check out the blogs and groups, as well as the Slydev store.

Speed Foam Warfare: 23/9/12

If you know me personally, you'll know that I'm always struggling to get to or organise private wars, let alone  make it to a public war held on a set date. However, I did manage to finally make it to my first public foam warfare event held on the 23rd of last month.

This war was organised through Brisbane Nerf Group and was a speed foam warfare event, so high powered air blasters were not allowed. For $15, you got the use of aftermarket darts (informer snap cap darts) and a raffle ticket for a prize to be drawn during the day. To be honest, I had no idea what to expect, nor what to bring, so I just threw in a Rampage and Retaliator in to my bag, along with a bandolier strap and a hell of a lot of clips. As it turned out, that was a pretty good choice but I still had a lot to learn.

The event field was set up in parklands at Spring Hill, near Brisbane. When I arrived I helped set up under the direction of Thahn and Clem, who were well prepared. The field came together as an array of markers and flags for objectives and spawn points, cardboard boxes as semi destructible cover and tarps strung between trees. Every effort was made to provide an even field for both teams and to create interesting flanking pathways and places to hold down in. All this allowed for a bunch of awesome game types and some pretty intense shoot outs.

The back half of the field

When I got in to the action, I quickly found out that you don't want to be rocking up with a stock blaster. these guys were serious, with blasters that well out-ranged my elite gear and with aftermarket darts, were also incredibly accurate. That said, the limitations on air blasters did allow for anyone with an under powered blaster to still be competitive, it just took a little more careful planning and tactics. The games moved very fast and I did find myself using the Rampage to rush hard, but quite often my attempts were thwarted early on by being sniped by someone well out of my range, and when that happens to be from someone's heavily modded Longshot or Triple Shot, you certainly know about it! So, this is when I learned to play smarter. If I didn't have range, I would have to rely on flanking and the element of surprise. So I resorted to sprinting to cover as soon as the game started, wait for a gap, then move up to cover closer to my target, and hold it down. The slamfire goodness of the Rampage made it difficult for anyone to get past me and allowed me to get a few tags on people who would normally have nailed me with their sniper cannons from way off.

That damn maniac with that Retaliator pistol! Oh, wait, that's me.

This didn't work for every game mode, however, and I couldn't use a Rampage in pistol rounds, which were good fun as well. That's where the Retaliator made it's mark. A clip fed pistol in a pistol round is almost as great as a volt modded stampede in an ordinary round. The high refire rate is handy when you're facing 3v1.

The whole day was well run, and the use of referees helped keep everything fair. Getting an opportunity to meet the Brisbane nerfing community was awesome, and taught me things I didn't even know about yet. It's safe to say that the community is very friendly and welcoming, which gives me a great deal of faith in this young and developing sport of foam warfare. Anyone interested in future events around Brisbane should join Brisbane Nerf Group and start getting involved with the community and keep an eye out for upcoming events. Get into it!

Back in the Day: Nerf Secret Shot II

Annnd I'm back. And I'm coming back with something a little different too. I recently picked up a Nerf Secret Shot II, which was originally released in 1999. This pre-dates N-Strike by 4 years, so I wasn't really sure what to expect from a 14 year old blaster that was second hand.

When I got it, this Secret Shot II was in pretty mint condition, with the exception of a small leak coming through the barrel (most likely a valve sealing issue). It's got a brilliant red, black and yellow colour scheme and is a mega-dart firing air blaster. It's manual loaded via the barrel, and takes 5 or 6 pumps via the handle to fire. But the real kicker, is that the scope on ton is not actually a scope, press the button under the trigger and it flips down to act as a barrel for a second dart. Pretty cool! It is definitely not the tacticool style Nerf blasters of today have become, and it has a kind of top heavy beefy feel, like it's a hand held cannon or something,

Range on this unit was something I was surprised at, even with the leak, it manages to hit 50 feet most times with pretty good accuracy. Even by today's standards, that's respectable for a stock blaster. I have seen a couple of mod guides for it, which involve a barrel replacements and plugging the over pressure valve, which claims to get over 100 feet. The problem is, I'm not really sure I want to mod this unique piece. This would make for a pretty awesome sidearm if modded to take streamline size darts, but on the other hand it's still got it's mint looks.

What do you think? Should I leave it stock? Or do I do a barrel replacement and try to fix that leak? Leave a comment below! September Speed Foam Warfare event coverage next post!

Update!

Just in case anyone was wondering why there's been a lack of posts lately, it's because I'm still currently waiting on internet to get connected at my new place. In the meantime, I've still been active with Nerfing and I have a ton of content coming soon.

Being limited to a smartphone to do blogging on makes it pretty difficult to upload high quality photos, but I can tell you I have a couple of reviews coming up, some battle testing and some local nerf war coverage plus more.

Until then, here's a photo of a guy weilding way too many blasters.

Tactical Tag and the Nerf Hailfire

Image courtesy of Tactical Tag

One of the blasters from the new Nerf N-Strike Elite line that I won't be reviewing is the Hailfire blaster. This is not to say that I don't want to review it, but basically due to cost and the impracticality for the wars I go to, it's not really a wise investment for my already tight budget. However, I can point you in the direction of a nice hands-on style write up of the Hailfire blaster, along with a pretty amusing test video.

Both are by Bazookafied of the Tactical Tag blog (and also writer for Nerf Mods and Reviews). The write-up can be found in this magical coloured text, while the video of 'Zook going to town with 144 darts can be found in the land of link text also.

I would also like to take this quick opportunity to thank Bazookafied for the support of this blog recently, his links back to this blog have helped the readership grow and also helped this blog to finally crack the 40,000 views mark this month. While at the moment I haven't had a whole lot of time to work on this blog thanks to my job sucking up all my free time, I do still have a few things planned for next month, so do check in from time to time. -Rolley

Iron sights and more by SlyDev

Not too long ago I reviewed a 3D printed part from SlyDev that allowed you to attach your Nerf Jolt to any Nerf tactical rail, and I thought it was pretty good, so when Joey announced that the iron sights that he'd been working on for a while were now available in the SlyDev store, I went straight on over and ordered a set. Joey also threw in some other parts to review with my order, so I'll cover those in this post as well.

In the package, I received a full iron sight kit, which includes one back piece and three front pieces for different ranges, a glue on 4cm Nerf style rail, a glue on double dart holder, a glue on an 8cm picatinny rail and a second back piece for my iron sights (I liked the idea of a black rear sight and orange front sight). All of these parts of of great quality, especially for the low price you can get them for on the store, but I'll start with the glue on rails.

Both rails can be attached to any flat surface (or rounded, if you've got some skill in glueing things) and have fantastic tolerances. The 4cm Nerf rail is ideal for tight places and holds attachments very well. I stuck mine on to the side of my rampage at an angle that the supersoaker shield would sit nicely. I tried shaking the blaster as hard as I could and neither the shield nor tactical light would fall off, so I'd say that it actually holds on to attachments better than a lot of Nerf rails. The 4cm Nerf is available for $3 +$2 shipping and an 8cm version is available for $6 +$2 postage. I haven't mounted the picatinny rail to anything yet but I did mount my red dot sight to it and it fits on there perfectly. In the past, I've played around with designing BMX parts and I know that getting tolerances right requires lots of careful measurements, and seeing this rail fit picatinny parts so well impresses me. Perhaps it might look good on my Xplorer grip Longshot... These sell for $5 +$2 postage, or a 4cm version is $3 +$2postage.

Wish the Rampage had a shield? Problem solved.

Next, the double dart holder. I think this would go right at home on any manually loaded pistol type blaster or perhaps a double barrel shotgun blaster. As with the rails, the quality is great and darts hold firmly without being crushed. This can be glued to any flt surface, just like the rails and is available for $2 +$2 postage.

Top: Rear sights.
Bottom: Front sights.

Finally, one of the sweetest aftermarket attachments available is the iron sights. Available separately or as a set, there are 3 front pieces and one back piece to chose from currently. Each of the pieces attach to a Nerf rail via a side screw. The front pieces are all a different height, no drop for high powered air blasters, medium drop for modified blasters, and high drop for stock and lightly modded blasters. The different drops mean that you automatically angle your blaster up to compensate for the fall of the dart as it travels, but you can also mount the pieces closer together to get more angle or further apart to get less, depending on what you prefer. Mine found their home on my Rampage and they look pretty mean. Individual iron sight pieces are $3 +$1 postage, or $10 for the set with $2 postage.

I can't lie, I love these sights!

These little parts are starting to shape up as some of the most innovative small parts that the scene has been needing for some time, and at prices that won't destroy your wallet too. Good news is, SlyDev now ships to the U.S for a flat rate of $13 too, so our northern buddies can get a hold of these as well. I'll bet that a few HvZ players will snap up iron sight sets and at $10 + postage, I can't see why not. For more info or to purchase any of these products and others, head to the SlyDev Store. Thanks again to Joey and SlyDev for sending my these parts for review!