Summary of Recent Happenings

Thought you guys would like to know some of the stuff that's been going on recently.
There's a couple of things, including a game report of a small game on 30/7/14, a look at some of my recent acquisitions, and just general news on what's happening.

First things first, a game report. This game was hosted by the Tag Recon group.

The game was only one hour long (since a lot of the guys had things to do), which is much shorter than usual. We played a game of Team Deathmatch to get people warmed up, followed by a mini Humans vs Zombies game, and then to finish off a mini Capture the Flag game.
I used my dual Sweet Revenges throughout the games, while other blasters available were Strongarms, Roughcuts, Furyfires and Magstrikes. The Strongarms saw the most use as they were the most numerous.
The play area was a tambarked area with a couple of trees for cover, but quite flat and small, and besides the trees there was basically no cover. Any more than around 10 people and you'd need a bigger area.

The TDM was pretty simple, one-shot-respawn, and you had 3 respawns. Once out of respawns, you're out, and the team with surviving people wins obviously.
Mini HvZ works as you'd expect a small scale HvZ to work. The zombies simply have to touch the humans to convert them into zombies. If a zombie gets tagged by a blaster, he/she is stunned for 5 seconds. This results in relatively short games that work with as little as 6-7 people. The winner is the last surviving human, although the game continues until he/she gets tagged by a zombie.
CTF again works just as you'd expect from a Nerf-based CTF, respawn at a point away from the flag (designated in this case by Magstrike clips), drop the flag if tagged, one-shot-respawn, pretty simple.

The Strongarms performed as you'd expect, decent range and accuracy, easy to run around with, reliable, easy to use, etc. They're basically the blaster to which everything else is compared to, and they're the most numerous blaster in the public armoury, for very good reason.
My dual Sweet Revenges performed well, as they provided a near instant follow-up shot if the first missed, as well as allowing me to threaten two opponents at once. In the mini HvZ, I was able to stave off two zombies without firing a shot, and managed to be the last survivor. The open turret was also useful when reloading. Though I did lose 2 shots compared to dual wielding Strongarms, I feel that the easier one-hand prime and easier reload made up for it.

The Roughcuts were quite interesting. The dual-firing made it much harder to dodge both darts, where dodging a Strongarm's single shots would be fairly easy at mid range. However, as we were using Whistlers and Sonic Micros which fitted a little loose in the Roughcut's barrels, on occasion the Roughcut would fire one good dart from one side, and splutter out two darts from the other side. This would often leave the user a little confused, in a vulnerable position, and their opponent untagged. While the double-fire was a lot harder to dodge than single fire, and particularly deadly at close range, it effectively halved the number of shots the user had to 4. This usually left Roughcut users out of ammo faster than any other players (except Magstrikers of course), often forcing them to fall back to reload, or just switch out for Strongarms and not use the Roughcuts at all. I don't remember anyone using the Roughcut in the last round at all.

The Furyfires worked more as support blasters compared to the Strongarms. While they didn't fire as far, the extra capacity and superior rate of fire (Strongarm slam fire was pretty much never used) allowed the user to more effectively suppress opponents. Compared to Strongarms, Furyfires are a fair bit bulkier and larger, making them less effective in tree-to-tree combat. The open turret was also helpful for reloading, though getting access to all 10 barrels is a bit of a chore. One issue we encountered was that it was difficult to get jams cleared. Because the darts were relatively old and squishy, they would often dribble out when fired. In the case of all the other blasters, this was ok because there was basically no barrel to get in the way. On the Furyfire however, there is a fairly long barrel, and the dribbled out darts would often get stuck in the barrel. This would result in the next shot not firing out properly, resulting in a jam, and the Furyfire being rendered unusable. Also dual wielding Furyfires is not recommended.

The Magstrikes were used as you would expect, a one-use instant-tag blaster that would usually be dumped once emptied. Because of how long the pump-up time is, and the nature of the games we played as well as the terrain of the play area, Magstrikes weren't particularly viable as a primary blaster. They would be great for taking out an opponent who was being just too good, for some suppressive fire, or for rushing an opponent, but Magstrikes aren't suited to tree-to-tree combat. Of course, all it would take to make the Magstrikes devastatingly effective would be a little bit more cover, or maybe just a few more people.

It was of course a lot of fun, and although short, I did learn things about how the blasters perform in certain conditions with certain darts.


And now to the second part of this post, just some things on my recent acquisitions.
I've managed to obtain a number of things, all of it second hand.

In this picture:

• Longshot with attachments (AR was removed by previous owner)
• Broken Hyperfire
• Broken Elite Spectre with all attachments (repaired, works fine now)

Not in this picture, a formerly broken Clear Mav which I fixed using my already gutted spare Mav. It was returned to its owner. Also not featured, a broken Mav which I gutted for parts.

And in this picture:

• Blue Longshot with attachments and clips (mags)
• Elite Rayven
• 2 18 dart clips (mags)

And just for the heck of it, my two complete and stock(ish) Longshots, side-by-side.

Finally, a look at some of the things I've been doing recently.

First up is one of my more ridiculous and amusing mods, an integration of a tank expanded Supermaxx 1500 into a cut off Raider barrel with a Scout handle.

Here's the before:

And after:

It performs very well, just as well as an SM1500 with a plugged pump. It works fantastic as an underbarrel backup shotgun because of the quick pump up time (just two pumps), and the tac rail grooves make it easy to Slydev on.
Like this:

 Or this:

 Or even this:

 and this:

Underbarrel integration is one of the reasons I chose to use the Raider barrel as the shell. The Raider barrel and all its tac rail grooves is easy to fit underbarrel of another blaster.

Secondly, a quick look at a modded X-Shot Angle Fire Bow.
While the stock bow includes useless untensioned bow arms, the base blaster is actually very small, being not much bigger than a Sweet Revenge. And yet when modded it packs a monstrous punch. Why? Just take a look at this:

Though the picture doesn't show the whole thing, the X-Shot Bow is a plunger blaster with a stock spring nearly twice the strength of any stock Nerf spring, and with a perfect plunger seal and a 10cm draw, nearly 4 times that of a Nitefinder.

 With just a 10cm long 16mm UPVC barrel and removing all the air blockage, I'm flinging Elites 25m flat. I am outshooting my Elite Alpha Trooper with a 10 minute mod of a $13 blaster.

Finally, some awesome tacticool from my newly acquired Elite Spectre. Check the Blaster Tacticool page for all of the pics.

I'll be making an Elite Spectre review in the future, but I'll delay it to see if anything else breaks or malfunctions, since a lot of people have had their Elite Spectres break or malfunction. In fact, I got this Elite Spectre only because it broke.

That's it for this post, next post should be a review or comparison or something.