Happy Nerf Year!

Last night, a buncha friends put together a "Happy Nerf Year" indoor game that closed out 2013 in a blaze of foam-dart glory!  Lots of familiar faces with some new folks to meet, lots of blasters to choose from, and a few different gametypes that made things interesting.  We had 12 folks total (11 pictured) that played from 6pm until about 10, so it was a full night of Nerf!!

We did our basic team elimination games for a few rounds.  Upstairs vs downstairs, with a no-mans-land around the entrance of the home and a choke-point at the staircase.  I kept forgetting that the fireplace in one of the rooms actually is open to the other side, so a few folks got caught off-guard when they were tagged out through that.  The last full-house team elimination game we did ended in a bit of a landslide, as my team cleverly utilized the staircase to the basement to our advantage.  The other games were only separated by a couple of points, so it was fairly even otherwise.  We cut off the basement for the last couple of games and shortened the field of play.  Games were a little more fast paced with quicker respawns and closer-ranged combat in general made things quite interesting.

I personally started off the night with a RapidStrike CS-18, but ended up switching to a HammerShot and a Snapfire 8 with a pouch fulla darts for the rest of the evening.  In the close-quarters situations we were in, burning through ammo with a RapidStrike just wasn't working well.  Plus the flywheel lag bugged me in a couple of situations where I needed a quick trigger pull instead of waiting for those wheels to get up to speed.  The HammerShot delivered and was probably the most solid blaster I used all night.  The Snapfire 8 proved to be a good secondary when I needed to lay down more firepower.  Both were much easier to load than the clip-fed RapidStrike and seemed much more accurate, too.

One of my friends brought his two MagStrikes and I always forget about how awesome these blasters are.  For Hallway-to-hallway situations, the sheer volume of darts they can sling out in a quick second is amazingly terrifying.  The look on this guy's face reads the pure satisfaction you get after burning through that 10-round Magazine.  These blasters ended up getting used in those do-or-die situations (or when you were tired of missing with your single shots), but because they took so long to reload and pump up, they never really remained anyone's main weapon.  One MagStrike was given to each side to help even things out and it was fun to see them utilized every now and then to turn the tides in some nitty-gritty standoff situations.

If it weren't for the breakdown it had midway through the night, I think the modded Stampede would still take the cake.  It's powerful direct-plunger system with an upgraded spring and suped-up rechargeable battery pack made it almost as fearsome as the MagStrike.  We decided not to count blaster-hits, so of course he loaded up that iconic shield and made the house rules eat their words.  Around corners, if you were up against the Stampede, you were probably losing that battle real quick.

The last set of games we did, we had a bit of a competition built in.  There was a large empty room in the center of the field with a small wooden Christmas Tree cutout on a round pedestal.  The first team to knock it over with a dart would win the match.  Unlimited Respawns, the room itself was off-limits, so you had to nail the Christmas Tree at a distance of at least 20 feet.  We'd fight for position to take shots at the tree, miss, get hit, and have to run back to respawn, reload, and retry hitting that darned little tree.  It was fun trying to knock that fella over with pistols, but the last couple of games, guys would just clear out the area and then unload 18 round mags they had in their pockets and vests until it got knocked over.  I kinda liked keeping it to single shooters or small pistols, as it tested your accuracy a little more as opposed to the spray-and-pray methodology that was used to win the last few games.

Overall, GREAT night of NERF and a fantastic way to close out 2013!  We've got an outdoor Laser Tag game planned for "The Base" next week, so a lot of these guys here are stoked to join in with that game, too.  From indoor Nerf to outdoor Laser Tag, we're covering both my bases in two weekends!