Monday, August 11, 2014

Swarmfire'd

Swarmfire... from The Dahmer to The Fenrir, using this Dart Tagging beast as an add-on to already awesome blasters seems to be the way to go with it.  The internal layout and design of the Swarmfire lends itself well to being freed from it's plastic prison and being hooked up to something else to make for an awesome combo!  However, I haven't really seen this blaster optimized for use on it's own.  It always seems to be an accessory to something else.  I've personally used the Swarmfire in games before with great results and, for whatever reason, I didn't continue to pursue that.

There are obvious mods for performance that can wring better results out of this blaster.  Remove all the dart pegs, Up the power, and BOOM.  Instant success!  But maybe there were other things we could do with the Swarmfire to really make it a fantastic standalone blaster.  Give it some optics to help with aiming (there's really no way to sight this), lengthen the stock a bit, add some external ammo storage, maybe something I haven't thought of yet.

With the Laser Tag season winding down, I thought it'd be something fun to work on.  I had planned on doing an outdoor game at my new home awhile ago but just got too busy with other stuff and it kinda fell by the wayside.  I've traditionally been an Outdoor Laser Tag and Indoor Nerf guy, but it's fun to blur the lines and change things up!  I've had good luck with the Swarmfire indoors before.  Maybe it'll translate well as an outdoor primary!

3 comments:

  1. Hi Bazookafied!!
    While I was getting my Magnus, guess what I saw at Walmart?
    A DOUBLESTRIKE!!!
    Actually, three of them. Just wanted to let you know.

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  2. I must admit, my Swarmfire has been sitting in the project pile for a while now. I keep looking at it thinking there must be a use for it.

    The truth is I bought it thinking that a muzzle loading electronic blaster would be the way forward, especially for HvZ. You wouldn't have to worry about mags or jams, you could simply load a dump pouch full of darts and have at it. The more I think about this, the more it makes sense. I'm not a huge fan of clips because I hate having to refill them but with a 'Swarmy' you can reload on the fly and scavenge if need be. It'll even fire pretty much any dart.

    Sadly I have never really used it in 'anger'. It just sits there waiting for some love, Could the Swarmfire be one of the unsung heroes of the recent lines?

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  3. The Swarmfire does in fact get quite a bit of use as a standalone system. It's called a Swarmpistol. Minimalistic, ugly, brutal, and yet elegant, it is the MAC-10 of nerf. It will win no awards and capture no imagination, and indeed the gun itself seems to evade notice, but it does its job exceedingly well.

    You don't see Swarmfires set up with cleaner externals, nice stocks, or the like because the Swarmfire's most suited role is following in the footsteps of the RF20 and Magstrike. Being a revolver, there are both ergonomic and capacity problems with setting one up to fill the shoes of a real primary. That leads the configurations toward either underslung mounting on a rifle, or a subcompact machine pistol.

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