Contest Winners & November Plans

Hope you all had a fun Halloween!  It's time to announce the winners for the Halloween Giveaway!  Yes, "winners" is plural because, despite the lower-than-I-had-hoped-for number of entries, I still have a few blasters I want to award.  I've come up with three categories for the 17 Entries we had.

I've made awards for Top Nerf entry, Top Laser Tag entry, and Almost Top Nerf entry.

Top Nerf: Steampunk Bane

Top Laser Tag: Satyr the Man-Goat-Thing

Almost Top Nerf: Sterling Archer

Thanks to everyone who participated!  It was really fun seeing everyone's costumes and what they came up with for their blasters, too!

If you're one of those winners, leave a comment with either your contact info or an e-mail I can reach you at so we can get your blaster to you!  I won't publish the comment for all to see!

Alrighty then!  With October's costume fun out of the way, it's time to look ahead at what we have coming next.  November looks to be an interesting month for Nerf releases.  Many of those blasters that were leaked a month or so ago are starting to pop up.  The new MEGA blasters like the Big Shock and the Cyclone are making their way through, so reviews and info on those are inbound.  As we approach the holiday season, more blasters will likely hit store shelves in time for gifting.

There's also more Laser Tag stuff from the MLTA coming up.  Fall Game #1 and the Halloween game (Fall Game #2) are out of the way, so a Mod Night and some more in-game testing are inbound!  We'll probably do another Black Friday game with Nerf or Laser Tag (or both!), so it should be fun keeping warm as winter approaches!

Happy Halloween!

Why on earth are there small children running around the streets at night dressed up like Superheroes, Monsters, and Disney Characters?  Why are they taking their neighbors candy?  Why are there a bunch of pumpkins missing their insides?  Oh yeah... it's Halloween!

Whether you're going to a party with some friends or scouring the streets with a troupe of friends, have a great time!  Don't forget, today is the last chance you have to submit your pictures for Tactical Tag's Halloween Giveaway!  We've had a bunch of last-day submissions, so you still have a chance to get a photo with your Nerf or Laser Tag blaster and enter it to win!

Hammershots, LTARs, Firestrikes, LTXs, the number of prizes depends on how many entries we get!  I'll review all the entries TONIGHT and announce the winners on November 1st!

Enter your submission on the blog or Tactical Tag's Facebook!  Hope you all have a fun night of tricking, treating, and everything in-between!

Another great Halloween Game!!

It's no secret.  I love Halloween!  So, when the Laser Tag group I run here has a costumed game, I get pretty excited about it.  This year we even added some fun with post-game s'mores and other delicious foods as we laughed, told stories, and caught up with our friends.  I broke out my latest Captain America costume again (as it was actually quite warm) and tagged it up with my comrades in the park.

When we started, there were three guys in the park shooting cans with Airsoft guns.  After explaining what we were up to, they joined up, grabbed some gear, and tagged alongside our Trick-or-Treat warriors.  Then my next-door neighbors brought three cousins along, too!  It was a great surprise to pick up 6 more players for the games that boosted our count for the night to 23!  We did three team games and one Zombie game until retiring to the fire pit on the patio to share food and stories.

Not everyone was in costume, but it was still fun to tag it up with the crunchy leaves of fall!  I enjoyed running around with my shield chasing down Vampires and Pirates and Transformers.  What a great evening!

Van Helsing-Inspired Slingfire

I know Van Helsing (at least in the movie) uses a crossbow most of the time... and I had fully intended to add some bow-arms to the ZombieStrike Slingfire that I was planning to use to build one... but that darned RELOAD was too much fun, so I just ended up repainting it to look like something the Monster Hunter would've used.  I was happy to find out that the black N-Strike Tactical Rail wasn't solvent-welded in (as I had seen in reviews before), but the trickiest part of this repaint was re-assembling the gearbox correctly.  I hadn't found any guides out on the 'net to help, so a lot of it was trial and error... with emphasis on the "error" side.  Once I got it working again, it was time to suit up and lay waste to some monsters!

This is my Van Helsing-Inspired Slingfire!  I used hammered-metal effect paint, lightly modified the internals (simple stuff), and was slaying vampires and zombies left and right at a recent Halloween party!  It didn't take me long to paint, either so I was happy with how it turned out.  Halfway through the night I swapped out my 6-Round Mag for a Firefly Tech mag for some glow-in-the-dark action.

A friend of mine also showed up as a Zombie Hunter, which looked pretty similar to my Van Helsing geddup.  We teamed up for the night, but not before battling it out a bit!  My wife went as a Vampire, who was consistently trying to kill me when I wasn't paying attention.  Subsequently, his girlfriend came as a Zombie trying to end him just as easily.  Being the only two humans at the Monster Mash meant two things: we were constantly on guard and consistently running out of darts!  Haha

There's only a couple days left of Tactical Tag's Halloween Contest, so get your entries in before it's too late!  Contest ends October 31st!

Halloween Contest: 10 More Days!!

There's just 10 days left until Halloween, which means time is running out for you to win a Nerf or Laser Tag blaster from Tactical Tag!  While I'm not entirely certain why there are only 4 entries thus far, I figured an extra plug for this contest was in order.

Blasters that are up for grabs may include the following:

NERF HammerShot

Lazer Tag Phoenix LTX

NERF Firestrike (Orange Version)

Lazer Tag Augmented Reality

NERF RoughCut 2x4 (White Version)

NERF Titan AS-V1 (Red Version)

...maybe more?

So get those entries in!  

Click >>HERE<< for Contest Details!

XD Blasters getting Local

Unlike previous recolors, Nerf has been rolling out some of their latest blasters with more than just shiny new colors.  Those "XD" blasters are toting better ranges than the 75 Ft Staple that used to adorn every Elite blaster.  Recently, I found a white XD Triad at a local Target store and a XD Stockade that was labeled as a "Wal-Mart Exclusive".  At first, I thought "XD" would be a stamp for a certain range, but the Triad's XD range is listed at 80 with the Stockade XD range listed at 85.

At this point, printing XD on a box is essentially saying "more than 75 Feet" or "more range than the blaster you already have".  Think of it as the Blue Trigger blasters in the short-lived Dart Tag lineup.  It's likely that the springs are slightly stronger.  In the case of blasters like the Triad, which uses that Smart AR system, it might actually be worth getting since spring upgrades are about the only way to crank more power out of blasters like that.  The flywheel blasters, like the Stockade, could be interesting too.  It probably means a motor upgrade.  And, of course, a better stock blaster means a stronger modded blaster (to a certain point) so these might work well for folks like me who generally just do simple mods like ARs and Volt Mods.

I can't tell if I'm annoyed by the fact that XD blasters will have all sorts of different ranges or if I'm happy to see more a variety instead of "EVERYTHING IS 75 FEET" like they started out with.  However, it at least looks like they'll be keeping a few of the upgraded blasters in my favorite Blue n White scheme!  It'll be interesting to see how the Elite lineup pans out from here.

Nerf SlingFire Magazine / Clip Size Testing

So the NERF ZombieStrike SlingFire has been out for awhile.  I neglected to pick one up at first because I just wasn't sold on the design.  After watching more videos and seeing the conflicting opinions out there for it, I was even more leery to nab one.  However, between the fun-looking reload and a potential idea for a prop weapon for Halloween (insert shameless contest plug here), I took the plunge and brought one home.

I can see all the praise and criticism with this blaster, but I still find myself walking around the house reloading and dry-firing this blaster out of sheer fun!  Then I got to thinking how the SlingFire might work with different size magazines or "clips" for that Nerf nomenclature.  In this video, I test everything from a 6-Round Quick Reload Clip to the massive 35-Round Drum the N-Strike Raider CS-35 came with.  The video below shows my findings.