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Sunday, September 11, 2011

N-Strike vs Vortex

Alright, Nerf fans.  You've officially made it through 24 hours of Vortex's scheduled release.  For some of us, it's been a little longer than that, depending on how true your retailers were to 9/10/11.  While I'm not sure that thinking about pitting Vortex versus N-Strike on the 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks may be a good thing, I AM scheduling a Nerf/Laser Tag game this coming Saturday which will likely include a game of Vortex Blasters versus N-Strike Blasters.

Things I expect from this match up?  It's tough to say.  I've tested the two systems side-by-side a little bit... but testing doesn't reveal how they'll do in battle.  Still, there are a few obvious things I foresee happening.

  1. Ammo availability issues.  With both sides using different types of ammo, the ability to reload utilizing your opponent's ammunition against them (aka, picking up darts and loading them into your blaster as you go along) won't be happening.  The battle will soon shift from hitting the players to getting to your spent ammunition.
  2. User Error(Vortex side mainly).  These Vortex Blasters have a lot of safeties and locking mechanisms and our players aren't as familiar with them.  I expect some confusion, even after a briefing on how the blasters work, to make for a few easy kills on the N-Strike Side of things.
  3. Defined Ranges.  I expect the N-Strike side to note the obvious range gap they face against Team Vortex and vice versa.  This means we'll be seeing N-Strike players making use of short-ranged attacks and guerrilla warfare whereas Vortex players will be lining up for those long-distance shots.  The trick will be who can make better use of their blaster's abilities.
Things I don't know?  I'm not certain how the blaster's obvious strengths and weaknesses will balance out.  I'm hoping for a well-balanced game that makes people think more about strategies that will work for their specific blaster's abilities and less about the mindless "Yeah, point and shoot!" methodology.  There's an obvious ammo-spamming difference between the two types as well.  N-Strike blasters in general can dish out and carry much more ammunition than Vortex Blasters do.  However, with the range and precision of the XLR disk, will Vortex players even have a need to use as much ammunition as the other side?  

Feel free to leave a comment with your predictions of this match up.

3 comments:

  1. so far, having used a praxis and a proton, I'd say comparing vortex to n-strike out of the box, I prefer vortex, but then again, like you say, having tons of ammo and clips AND slamfire makes the traditional dart blasters hard to pass up once modded.

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  2. i somewhat agree, but after having used the praxis and vigilon, and being disapointed after getting a dud praxis, i found the power to be incredible, but the speed and accuracy is really lacking. also the disks are easily lost. and it takes about 5 secs for the disk to reach something a distance away. so if ur in the back yard its better than n-strike

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  3. but when you mod all vortex guns it will not shoot far but when its nerf longshot when you mod it it shoots 50-100,ft but nerf praxis and nitron the close range is 49 ft n strike rules!

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