Sunday 12 June 2011

Nerf Vulcan EBF-25 Review

The Vulcan EBF-25 is Nerf's belt fed machinegun. It was released in (I think) 2008 (correct me if I'm wrong) and upon release, it was one of the most awesome Nerf blasters ever. (Raiders, AT's, Barricades and the like didn't exist). It comes with a 25 dart belt using whistlers/sonic micros, a large ammo box, a tripod, and a snap-on carry handle. Older versions included a very short barrel extension (as displayed in the pic) which IMHO makes it look a little cooler than it already did. At the time of release, the Vulcan had the largest capacity ever released, so that gave it a massive advantage in the Nerf wars of those days.
Firstly, the Vulcan fills in the role of 'massive awesome belt fed machine gun' that people liked. It looks extremely awesome, with its belts feeding through, the massive barrel, the large ammo box and all the things which give a machine gun its awesomeness.

Working the Vulcan is easy. There's an on/off switch. And the Vulcan's full auto, meaning it's as simple as point and pull the trigger. Alternatively you can manually fire it. Pull back the cocking handle, let go (it should spring forward) and pull the trigger. Either way appears to yield similar ranges.

One important aspect to note is the presence of a priming handle. Unlike say the Stampede which requires batteries to run, the Vulcan can actually be used without any batteries. This effectively turns the Vulcan into a bolt action belt fed blaster, which is kind of ridiculous. However, the manual prime also helps the Vulcan in one key aspect - unlike the Stampede, the Vulcan has no fire delay when firing full auto. Because you can manually prime the Vulcan, you can load up the belt and then prime the Vulcan, and when you switch it on and unleash full-auto mayhem, the first loaded dart will immediately fire.

Now onto to weight. Because the Vulcan uses D cell batteries, it's darn heavy, and that's annoying. Luckily, it includes a tripod, so the Vulcan becomes more of a defence weapon than an offensive weapon. Thankfully, you can get AA-D cell converters which allow the use of AA batteries which are much lighter than D batteries.
Due to it's weight, the Vulcan is unwieldy and it's design is not ideal for the weight distribution.
Usage tips here.

Onto the belt fed system. Sure, it's awesome, and it's a great capacity. However, it's a pain in the butt to reload, and that can be the difference between victory and defeat. It can use all types of darts (although I haven't tried Streamlines). It can be modded to be longer, but doing that has the risk of damaging the Vulcan's motor and gear system.

The ammo box is almost an essential. It reduces the stress on the Vulcan's motor as it holds the belt, as oppose to the belt dangling and increasing stress on the motor to pull up the belt. Besides, attaching it makes it look pretty awesome.

The Vulcan gets approx 8m ranges slightly angled from waist, consistently with Whistlers. This equals about 10m from shoulder height (according to maths). With fresh D batteries it gets about 3 dps which is decent, but outshot by slamfire, semi autos and air powered full autos. Accuracy is fairly good because it uses Whistlers, but the design reduces accuracy slightly.

The Vulcan's decent, but I don't like it. It's too heavy and too unwieldy, and the belts are too difficult to reload on the move. I'd take a Stampede over it any day primarily because it's clip (mag) system.
The Vulcan ranges from $40 to around $120 depending on where you get it from. Also, extra belts cost between $10 and $20, making obtaining more ammo quite cheap.

Pros:
Extremely high capacity, ROF is decent on recommended batteries, ROF is easy to increase with higher voltage batteries, spammability is extreme, looks epic, tripod is easily capable of supporting its weight, has carry handle, has manual function (unlike Stampede)
Cons:
Super heavy, handle is at very back for very bad weight balance when single handing, belts are difficult to reload, accuracy is not the best

Power: 3.5/7
Accuracy: 4/5
Value for Money: 4/5
Usefulness: 3.5/5
Rate of fire: 4/5
Overall: 3.6/5

Personal Rating: 2.5/5 - don't really like such big bulky blasters.

Great looks, decent performance, uber heavy.

3 comments:

  1. because the titan as-v has a reverse tactical rail, put this on it and you have a room clearer

    ReplyDelete
  2. But dude u would never find a decent autatic firing gun as cheap and cool looking as this the stampede look like grabge

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1) Your spelling is appalling. Please please please fix it.
      2) The Vulcan is not 'cheap'. It's the most expensive blaster for retail, along with the Stampede and Nitron.
      3) 'Cool looking' is subjective, and thus varies between people. I personally believe the Rayven looks better than the Vulcan or Stampede.
      4) There are several good automatic blasters available, most of which are cheaper and better than the Vulcan: Rayven, Magstrike, Stampede, Rapid Fire, Barricade, Nitron.
      All but the Stampede perform better, and the Stampede has far higher capacity, not to mention much faster reloading.

      So in reply to your comment, yes I would. The Vulcan is surpassed by all of its automatic competitors, as well as a number of manual fire blasters (e.g. AT, Longshot, NF).

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