N-Strike vs Vortex Game

On September 17th, I held a Vortex vs N-Strike game at our college campus with a few friends and permission from the building manager.  We split up 5-player teams, each outfitted with their respective blasters.  On the Vortex Side, we had a Nitron, two Vigilons, two Protons, and a Praxis with 70 disks on their side.  The N-Strike side had a few more options to choose from, but mainly used Clip-System blasters like the Raider, Longstrike, and Longshot.  They had access to 70 Streamline Darts.  The limited number of ammo on each side to split up between 5 players caused an interesting change of tactics.  Most N-Strike players who were planning on high-capacity magazines to use couldn't do so.  For instance: when a 35 Round drum was being used, it pretty much axed half of the ammo that the other 4 could use.  This meant that the high RoF of some of the N-Strike blasters was lessened since conservation of ammo was an important key in these games.  We held 10 minute games and we played with 1-hit kills.  When you were out, you'd return to your "spawn point" and mark a tally sheet.  The team with the least amount of tallies at the end of the round would be the winner.  Ammunition could be picked up regardless of whether you were out or not.

In the beginning games, the Vortex Team made use of their longer range to keep the N-Strike Team at bay while advancing and pushing them into a corner of the building, suppressing them for much of the match.  It got them the first win of the evening of what would end up being a pretty close set of matches to come.  Ironically enough, in the last match, the Vortex Team found themselves pinned up against the N-Strike Team who managed to get an early lead.  There weren't many blaster malfunctions either, though my Praxis got really badly jammed near the end of one of the matches.

As we played  through the matches, we swapped sides and blasters several times so each person could check out all the blasters.  Some of them were seasoned veterans while others had hardly handled a blaster in their life.  It was a good mix though and we had a lot of fun with this matchup of Disks versus Darts.  The ammunition factor helped balance things as when one side would run out of darts, they would be forced to stop their attack to retrieve their ammo.  This allowed the other side to advance from their position.  However, with 10 minute matches, it meant that the team with the best start generally ended up winning overall.  In the time it would take the other team to recover and regroup, there simply wasn't enough time left in the match to regain control.

We DID see a big difference between stock and modded N-Strike blasters though.  Unless they belonged to me and one other guy, the rest of the N-Strike blasters were stock.  They got pretty dismal ranges compared to the Vortex stuff.  However, even lightly modded N-Strike gear held up against Vortex a bit better.  I had performed Torsion Spring mods to all the Vortex gear except the Nitron, which obviously wouldn't work.

Gold Team FTW!

We made it a FULL night of Tagging with Nerf, so I busted out my LTXs and we had indoor laser tag in the building too.  We started with N-Strike vs Vortex and then about 2 hours in switched to the LTXs for some longer-ranged battles.  Both were pretty fun and I polled our players what they liked better.  It was pretty split.  While folks liked the projectile-nature of Nerf, they also enjoyed the precision and range of Laser Tag.  Some folks liked the Vortex's range, others preffered the speed of N-Strike.  Some folks liked to sit and wait out their enemies while others charged in with their Shields up to frap the hell out of the other side, engulfing them in a satisfying bath of Infrared death!

All in all, it was an awesome evening and we're planning on holding another one soon!  To view more photos of the Nerf War, check out my Flickr Account set.