I am generally not a fan of the Nerf Melee weapons. In a NIC setting, you will get shot by a competent player long before you ever get into swinging range. In our wars, we allow melee to be thrown, but most of the foam melee is not weighted to be thrown well. With the exception of carrying something for stylistic barrel taps, melee doesn't work well in the primary rounds. However, there is one melee weapon I've found a use for; the Nerf Thor Hammer:
The hammer isn't very large, which ends up being an advantage when you carry it as a secondary. Its head is completely made of foam, so it's weighted well enough on one end to be thrown reliably. With a strong toss, the Nerf Thor Hammer will easily go 70-80'. Plus, it provides something different to break up the rounds with. It's just a lot of fun.
If you want a cheap melee weapon to play with, the Nerf Thor Hammer is a good choice at $9.99. It's hardy construction allows it to last through the abuse of being thrown cross-field for several uses. And there's nothing like getting a kill with a foam hammer while screaming, "I am Thor, God of Thunder!"
When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to have anything that even sort of resembled a gun, with two exceptions. The first was one of the old pullback Vortex Ring shooters, although I cannot remember which one. The second was a Vortex Tornado X/2. As a kid who loved toy blasters yet couldn't have them, I treasured my Vortex blasters, but over the years and over two movings, they were lost. So I was overjoyed when I found a Vortex X/2 in a grab bag at my local Goodwill for $4.
The Vortex Tornado X/2 was released in 1998, along with the original Vortex series. It was priced at $19.99, and was created as a replacement to the larger Vortex Tornado. Although it lacked a stock and got less range than it's predecessor, it had several ergonomic improvements which made it much easier to load and fire. As with all of the Vortex series, the Koosh ring ammunition gave it a superior range over most Nerf blasters and it had great accuracy in the absence of wind.
The most exciting part about the purchase is that it came with 8 original Koosh Vortex rings. Koosh rings are no longer in production, so they are very difficult to find. To have gotten just the two that the Tornado X/2 came with would have been great, but to get 8 total was excellent.
One of the goals of this site is to encourage community interaction. I believe the continually active chat has aided us greatly in the pursuit of that goal. However, I have plenty of things that I want to try in the future.
One of those things is a Question of the Week. This is how it will work:
Every Wednesday, I will post an answer to a question from a member of the community in as detailed a fashion as I can manage. This question can be about anything, so long as it's Nerf-related. To submit a question, send me an email at miredthoughts@gmail.com. Make sure that you put something about the Question of the Week in the title. I will choose the most interesting/ often asked question each week to answer. The first question will be answered and posted starting next Wednesday, 4/4/12.
Hey guys, I just completed the serenity and OMW has completed another really nice kit, so I created a really nice blaster to put it inside and the results created a very cool zombie slaying machine. High res pics to follow.
While I generally don't like to paint blasters I plan on using, I do occasionally paint show pieces. For whatever reason, Mavericks are a highly donated item, and so I had a few that I had picked up while thrifting. This is what I did to one of them:
The paint scheme is a Military theme; flat green and a metallic hammered finish. All the parts move smoothly and it works well. Just showing that I do sometimes paint.
The Spectre is the spiritual successor to the Maverick. Released in 2010, it has been praised for improving on many of the Maverick's flaws, most notably rotating on the prime rather than the trigger pull. It also got excellent stock ranges, making it one of the most desirable Nerf pistols.
Unfortunately, the Spectre was a Walmart exclusive, which meant that for some reason it had to be priced the same as Target's Alphatrooper and Toys R Us' Barrel Break. As such, it was marketed as a rifle, complete with a folding stock and faux barrel attachment. Neither attachment was particularly useful, so the Spectre's improvements over the Maverick are often overshadowed by the double price.
Despite it's stupidly high price, the Spectre is still one of the most effective blasters for its size. The only thing that kept the Spectre from beating out the Recon for the title of the best pistol was the lack of Orange Mod Works kit for it. However, Orange Mod Works recently released a spring for both the Maverick and the Spectre, so this has been rectified.
Opening the Spectre is relatively easy. Once you take unscrew the 14 body screws, you get your first look at the internals:
Replacing the spring is pretty self-explanatory. Keep in mind that you will need to provide your own replacement catch spring. I recommend the Home Depot Assorted Springs pack, which costs a couple of bucks.
Removing the Air Restrictors is more difficult, but only slightly. You need to unscrew the back of the turret and then pry the connecting bar out. This will likely be the most difficult part of the mod, so be careful. Once you get the turret open, you can remove all Air Restrictor-related parts and put the turret back together.
Put your Spectre back together and test it. If you upgraded the catch correctly, you should now have a 5 shot pistol that gets 45-50' ranges with any kind of dart.
So below you will find my review of the supa-splat ss-10 paintball blaster, which is awful and has little to no nerf application. At first it looks good with 65 foot claimed ranges and a trigger to boot, but both of these things are lies. the trigger is not a firing mechanism and the ranges are about 20 feet with a 10 mph tailwind. If you decide to watch the video, note how I start off excited about unboxing a new toy, then become confused by its awfulness and eventually resign in defeat because I know I've been cheated out of 10 bones.
As of a couple days ago, the Australian Nerf blog, Urban Taggers, switched from being a public blog to a private blog. Their facebook states that this was a result of being contacted by a Hasbro lawyer team. No one is quite sure what the reason is, since Urban Taggers isn't a mod site, but the general consensus is that it has something to do with the early pictures of the Elite series.
While I doubt that we will receive a similar email, we will let you know if it looks like this phenomenon is spreading to any other site besides Urban Taggers.
Since you guys seem to like the Buzz Bee Hawk so much, I went and picked up its younger brother, the Buzz Bee Hunter:
The Hunter is a breached blaster that operates on a bolt system. You open the bolt, insert a dart, and push the bolt forward and down. Just like the Hawk, the trigger locks unless the bolt is down. Two darts can be stored on the side and an additional 4 can fit in the buttstock.
It's essentially a Hawk that doesn't use a clip or shells. Theoretically, this would make this the superior option in terms of usability, but that unfortunately doesn't mean much. It is slightly more reliable than the Hawk, but only slightly, and it still features the same 5-15' ranges. If your only interested in the tacticoolness, the Hawk is probably still the superior option.
Of all my videos, excluding the original mod guide for the Swarmfire, the Buzz Bee Hawk seems to be by far the most popular. I have no idea why, but I'm sure someone will let me know. So here it is, the Buzz Bee Hawk:
As far as I know, this is the only clip-fed bolt-action blaster ever produced and one of the few bolt-action blasters in general. If I had to guess, I'd say the bolt action is what makes it so popular. It also features shells and a shell ejection system. It comes packed with a 4-shell clip but it will accept any of the Buzz Bee shell clips; it is showcased here with the 6-shell clip from the Rapid Fire Rifle.
Despite being a clip-fed blaster, there is storage for 4 shells in the buttstock, much in the same way there is storage for darts in the handles of the Raider, Recon, and Alphatrooper. This storage doesn't serve any real purpose, but it is a feature.
Even though it has a lot of tacticool features, as a blaster the Hawk is pretty bad. It gets ranges of anywhere from 5-15' depending on the dart and shell, and misfires are common. Even with its rather lackluster performance, people still love it, so I'd hazard a guess that it won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
Some of you might have noticed that my Youtube wasn't cooperating with me. That has been fixed, so the Big Blast, Switch Shot, and Mforcer now have videos embedded. Go check out the posts.
The Marshmallow Mforcer is a marshmallow blaster released by the Marshmallow Fun Company. It is a 15 shot semi-auto air blaster made to fire mini-marshmallows. Despite being shaped and sized like a small football, it works very well.
The concept of this blaster is very cool. It's essentially a pocket Magstrike and it fires as fast as you can pull the trigger. Unlike the Barricade, there isn't a complicated mechanism to operate, so I can fire off all 15 shots in about 3 seconds. This would make the Mforcer a great holdout blaster for a game like HvZ.
The major issue for this blaster is that the black piece on the front prevents darts from being loaded. It's a simple matter to take it off though and replace it with a chunk of 3/4" PVC. I beat mine with a hammer, but it probably would have been better to boil it off.
With the black piece gone, I can now shoot darts about 10-20'. The first few shots go the furthest, and then they average out to about 10-15'. While the ranges are nothing spectacular, the RoF is, and with actual barrels I think this could be a great blaster. I will definitely be revisiting it down the road.
The Nerf Switch Shot EX-3 was a gimmick blaster released in 2008 in conjunction with the Nerf N-Strike and Nerf Elite video games. It is essentially a Nitefinder with a removable firing system which could be replace with a Wii mote in order to play the games. They came in yellow for the N-Strike game and Blue for the Elite game.
The internals are nearly identical to a Nitefinder's, with the exception being that they can all be removed in one small package. The fact that the entire firing system is easily removable and is held together by only four screws makes this blaster easier to mod than a Nitefinder as long as you don't plan on rebarreling it. The small size of the firing system also means that it could easily be integrated onto something.
In comparison to a Nitefinder, the front is bulkier but more rectangular, making it easier to make a holster for, the handle is smaller, and it has its tac rail on the bottom instead of on the top. This means that most attachments are useless, but the Stampede Bipod does fit well and is fairly comfortable.
This Switch Shot is modified with no AR, a seal improvement and a spring addition. It hits 45-50', which is about what I would have expected out of a Nitefinder with similar mods. If you are interested in finding a Switch Shot, you might be able to find one at GameStop for a good price.
This line is interesting at this point. Id love some ideas for different ways to modify each of these different blasters. As is, they do not seem very practical for either nerf or paintball but theyre definitely worth a look.
Most of you probably saw the AT2k when you watched Drac's video announcing this blog, but you probably don't know much about it. Well here it is:
The 2k is a popular Nerf blaster from 2002. People like to take the tank out to integrate into other things because it's small and can hit 100'. Most people don't keep the original 2k shell, specifically the turret.
The reason is that the 2k turret is so masterfully designed by Nerf, there is almost zero error margin for re-barreling. Some people do still rebarrel their turret, but making the turret rearloading is stupidly complex. I decided that it couldn't be anywhere near as difficult as people claimed and set out to make my own rearloading 2k.
The hardest part of making a rearloading 2k is making sure all the barrels seal without ruining the rotation mech, a feat that I accomplished. However, it also requires the extra space to be filled, and I used hot glue. Which was stupid, but I wanted my 2k. So no perfect seals for the barrels. They do, however, seal well enough.
With a plugged pump and 12" PETG barrels, the 2k hits consistent 90's with slugs. With good domes, it could probably hit 100's. It does rearload, but the 2k is so small that it's usually faster just to muzzle load each barrel.
All in all it's a cool primary, but making it rearloading is more of a status symbol than anything else. It is however, the smallest primary I own, so it will probably come with me should I ever travel cross-country for a Nerf war.
Only a few years ago, the Buzz Bee Big Blast was the blaster to mod for the NIC. It got excellent ranges and was extremely easy to mod, assuming you dealt with its weak trigger. They were cheap and plentiful and everyone had one.
Then a guy by the name of Broken_SVT took the 4B a step further. You see, if the 4B had a flaw, it was that it was a little too powerful. The problem was that if someone wanted to replace the pump, they effectively had to plug the tank, which would make it reach unsafe pressures. This resulted in a lot of controversy over the use of 4Bs as well as a lot of broken triggers. Plugged 4Bs were generally considered to be too dangerous to be war legal, but the stock pump left much to be desired.
Broken_SVT however developed a method that allowed the pump to be replaced without removing the critical component of an over pressure release valve. His method was incredibly simple and effective, and it changed the way 4Bs could be used in a war. The pressure could even be tweaked to account for the range loss in the new RSCB and hopper systems.
Unfortunately, Broken_SVT eventually faded out of the Nerf scene along with his beloved 4B. He took with him most of the knowledge and skill to create one of his legendaary blasters, and at the present, there are few who still follow his methods.
I am proud to say that I am one of the few. A SVT_4B is a blaster that is still unmatched in terms of power and range in today's NIC. If done correctly, they are one of the most enjoyable blasters to play with, and today, I will share mine with you.
This particular 4B came into my possession in an unusable condition. The pump shaft had snapped at the pump head and it lacked every single one of its body screws. Nevertheless, it had all of its important internals, so I decided that it could and would be saved.
Having never done the mod on an old-style 4B before, I can say that Broken_SVT had it down to an art. Every single piece fits together perfectly. With the exception of the pump, this 4B is an exact replica of his MK II write-up. The front bushing is particularly ingenious; it supports the barrel perfectly and ensures that it is 100% level.
The 4B shell is also one of the most comfortable shells available, and without the stock pump to get in the way it shoulders comfortably. The natural way your face lies on the barrel ensures that you are looking straight down the barrel, making aiming a breeze. The replaced pump also provides a convenient and comfortable grip, ensuring that you are always ready to re-prime the blaster.
Included below is a link to Broken_SVT's original write-up. There is nothing to improve upon for his methods; it is perfection.
The Air Zone Quickfire 12 is best described as an off-brand Maverick which someone has taken the liberty of improving. Superficially, the two are very similar, with the Quickfire having a shorter turret and a hand guard. However, that is where the similarities end.
The biggest difference is that the Quickfire 12 comes with two turrets which are interchangeable. Drop clip Mavericks have been popular for a while, so the designers apparently thought that it was a good idea. The turrets are swapped by depressing a button on top and swinging the front half downward. As far as I can tell, the turrets are fairly stable.
The second improvement over the Maverick comes from the Spectre; rotating on the prime rather than the trigger pull. This means a better and more consistent seal which means better ranges and fewer misfires.
The Quickfire 12 is capable of 30' ranges with the darts it includes. The darts have solid and flat rubber heads and fly fairly well. Unlike most Air Zone blasters, the Quickfire 12 can also fire Nerf darts with no modifications.
The only problem with this blasters is how to mod it. The Quickfire 12 has no air restrictors whatsoever, and it already has a decent turret seal. The only way to mod it would be to find a suitable spring replacement, which, if it's anything like the Maverick, will be tough. For a stock blaster though, it's excellent.
The Supa Splat Matrix SS-10 is a small caliber paintball gun made by the same company that produces the Pistol Splat and its variants. Since I enjoy the power of the Pistol Splat, I was eager to try out this new blaster, even though it lacked the cool lever-action prime. It claimed 65' out of the box, which was more than enough for me.
Unfortunately, this blaster is a dirty, dirty lie. There is no catch in the blaster at all; the trigger is used solely to reload to load paintballs and to ruin the dreams of children. To fire the blaster, you first load one of the tubular clips into the top. You then pull and release the trigger to load one paintball. After the paintball is loaded, you pull back the plunger rod and then, release it, firing your paintball an amazing 20'. The paintballs are also of an inferior quality; they burst fine against hard surfaces, but against softer targets (like a person wearing a shirt), they completely fail to splat.
Even though the blaster was a complete failure, it still had a trigger and a decent draw, so I figured I would mod it and build myself a catch if I had to. To get the thing open, you have to remove 6 screws and cut through the silver piece that holds the clips, the orange front piece that guides the barrel, and two stickers. I finally got it open to find my worst fears had been realized:
This blaster is powered entirely by an elastic bungee. There is literally zero way to increase the power or build a catch to utilize the tacticool trigger. However, it did have a decent seal, so I figured I'd at least try and coupler the thing. I've seen similar bungee blasters hit 70'-80', so it was worth a shot. A small stub of 1/2" thinwall PVC fit snugly over the small plastic stub of the plunger tube, and a 1/2" coupler fit onto that.
With some dremeling to fit the coupler inside the shell and allow the barrel to slid in and out easily, the blaster was modded and ready to go. It can now fire darts an amazing 30'-40'. With some luck, a dart may even go 50'.
In summary, don't buy this blaster for any reason. It was a complete waste of money.
I've been reading the comments on what you guys want to see guides for. Unfortunately, I don't have access to many of the suggestions right now. So while I work on getting them, here is a mod guide for the Nerf Dart Tag Strikefire pistol.
There are 14 screws in the body, most of which are the same size. There are two smaller screws, both of which go into the main body right below the dart holder. There are also two screws hidden under the priming slide. Remove all 14 to take the Strikefire apart.
This mod guide will deal with removing the Air Restrictors and adding some compression to the spring. The AR is located in the barrel at the front. Simply remove the piece and drill/hammer through the AR.
If the back part of the barrel with the O-ring on it popped off like mine did, glue it back on to the barrel. Get out your pennies and check your compression. Two pennies gave me full compression, but the blaster wouldn't prime, so I had to go back down to one. If the Strikefire is anything like Mavericks, the number of pennies you need will change from blaster to blaster, so make sure you check what works best for you.
After that, your Strikefire should be ready to go back together. Make sure you feed the metal bar on the priming handle back through the return spring at the top and make sure you screw in the screws under the priming slide before you put it back together. After everything is screwed back together, your done.
I saw a 5-10' range increase by performing these mods, which is normal for an AR removal. A complementary video tutorial for this guide should be up soon. Feel free to ask questions.
As you may have noticed, Foam Nation now has a chat box. It's powered by Chat Roll and is very easy to use.
Now that it's up, I'm going to lay down a few ground rules to ensure that we all have a good time.
No Flaming - I know the line between teasing/trolling and flaming. Don't cross it.
No Foul Language - Everyone slips up once in a while, but frequent offenders will be banned.
No Trolling - I understand the occasional troll comments, but people who log on exclusively to troll will be banned.
If you think you'll be away for more than two hours, log out of the chat - As far as I know, there is a 10 person limit in the chat. If you aren't using it, try to keep it clear.
More rules may be added later, but for now, try to follow these four. You may use the chat for whatever you wish, as long as it doesn't violate any of these rules.
So now that Foam Nation has been officially launched, it's time to start working towards accomplishing some of the goals we laid out. The first order of business for me is to start making some in depth mod guides in written form. Although I have a few specific guides planned, it's time for some questions.
Are there any blasters you guys want written (or video) guides of specifically. The more recent and common the blaster the better, but if there is something a lot of people really want to see, we can work on finding one.
I'd also like to know if there are any things that you guys would like to see on the site itself. I know chats are popular, and there are probably more things that I don't yet know about.
In either case, let me know what you guys want to see in the future.
As I announced in my latest video, this will be my new blog home. The co-author here, EOCDragon or Miredthoughts depending upon if you know him form the forums or his youtube, is a nerfer of rare caliber, in that he both competes in the top tier at events we attend together and he makes some of the finest blasters around.
I will be establishing a repor with the readers here in a way that I can no longer manage with those on my channel. So go ahead, make an account, drop me a comment and lets set this new hub of nerfy knowledge off in grand fashion. I sincerely look forward to all of your awesome tips, insight, and opinions over the lifetime of the foam nation.
