I just ordered the Praxis. That looks tempting too though.
no sale until it comes with a machine that picks up all the ammo
That is the dream, my friend. Robot dream.
Although having a small bit of internal foam encased metal in the balls/darts (a bb-sized bit?) and then using a powerful magnet to pick them up would be sweet as all hell.
I got some of the ekind waffle head darts on a lark, and damn if they aren’t noticeably more accurate!
Nerf mega
Pretty typical really, see
Nerf elite vs ekind waffle. Note that the guy said in the video this was a freakishly good result for the elites, in real world you can expect something more like the mega dart distribution, above.
I did not expect such a difference to really matter in my quick real world testing, but it is absolutely noticeable! I wish I had only bought this kind of dart now…
(Technically the official nerf accustrike darts are comparable but many times the price.)
Note, however, that the waffle darts have a lower velocity, thus shorter range and more of a ballistic arc.
I’ve got the DL-44 one.
That’s it, this fancy stuff you speak of is foreign to me. But I’ve got a 3 year old son, perhaps in a few years…
Good news! There’s gonna be a Rival (aka foam balls) pistol in 2018, the Kronos. Even better news: it’s coming in a pretty dang cool Deadpool themed two blaster set in “Spring 2018”, I guess to coincide with the Deadpool 2 movie?
Word on the street the Kronos will be an internal 5 shot magazine like the Mega Magnus, which is probably super easy for balls, compared to freakin’ giant mega darts.
They also did this fancy theming once before in the Rivals line with Boba Fett and SW Battlefront II, which is pre-orderable this November.
These are both Best Buy / GameStop exclusives.
@wumpus you’ve got to be the most awesome Dad ever. You’re enthusiasm for nerf fun is awesome and wish I want to come to your house and play LOL.
I got the Artemis blaster (because I hate batteries), and it is awesome! Those balls are a game-changer. I was taking aim at objects 40 feet away and hitting them consistently. The muzzle velocity is astounding. The drawback, as noted up thread, the ammo disappears in a hurry.
Yeah I also got an Artemis to mess with and it is fun. Not needing clips plus 30 rounds capacity in that compact form factor is nice!
I also ordered a 3D printed stock attachment point for the rear of the Artemis from Etsy. Stocks are nice on spring blasters because of all the motion when priming.
I continue to be curious why the waffle darts do so well. Per this comparison …
These [waffle] darts are awesome. I am confident in saying that these darts are better than koosh darts. Yeah, that is a pretty big statement. The specific ones I bought were from Little Valentine. The boxes they came in was cool, and each box came with stickers (bonus cool). Comparing these side-by-side with Men-Gun, Koosh, and FVJs; I would put them in order of best to lesser: FVJs, Waffle tip, Koosh, and then Men-Gun. These did well at velocities between 70-120 fps. It gets iffy at velocities above 130 fps, but it is still not bad. Compared to FVJs, there is no contest; FVJs are much better at velocities above 130 fps. Also, the foam on these darts were more on the thinner side. It is noticeable on many of my cylinder loading blasters. For comparison, my springer fired Elites at about 88.07 fps on average and then fired these at 74.87 fps on average.
| total weight | tip weight | tip ratio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| standard elite dart | 1.03g | 0.76g | 74% |
| standard elite suction dart | 1.00g | 0.69g | 69% |
| waffle dart | 1.37g | 1.02g | 79% |
Maybe it’s just the additional weight? 1.37g is a good 30% heavier. Let’s see, he also said the FVJ (full vinyl jacket, lol) darts were good, right?
| total weight | tip weight | tip ratio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Vinyl Jacket | 1.30g | 1.00g | 81% |
Definitely seems to be a weight thing going on here? But:
- that doesn’t explain why elite suction darts are also doing so much better than elite darts at the same weight
- there are other darts in his comparison which are heavier (1.2g, 1.3g, etc) and don’t magically do well just because they’re heavy
So it has to be at least partially some property of the dart head, which also explains the suction dart.
RIP Vortex, 2011-2016! The line is definitively dead, sadly, but their legacy lives on!
If you want to play with Vortex, I recommend the Vigilon, which is a 5 round built into the blaster mag. Or for single shot of course the classic Proton, or the Zombie Strike Vortex series (both pistol and single shot) is solid.
I dunno if I would go the whole clip route with Vortex, you can barely get the 20 round clips anyways since they only shipped with the battery based Nitron, and the common 10 or 6 round clips… meh. Yeah there is the crazy Pyragon with its complex 40 round rotating canister, and the Revonix360 with the internal 30 round drum mag but that thing is so weird to prime and fire.
I feel like the beauty of Vortex is its simplicity, it reminds me of these, from my childhood:
If you do dip your feet in the world of Vortex, one big caveat: beware the cheap chinese clone Vortex disc ammo. It’s really … not good. I ordered some to test and I immediately regretted it except as throwaway ammo to give away with blasters I no longer want. Don’t get me wrong, they work, they shoot out of the blasters, but are worse in every other possible way: range, basic flight, accuracy (ok lol just kidding on that last part).
At the risk of geeking out even further, you can see why in the photos on Amazon:
Biggest problem, IMO: there is no gentle curve at the bottom of the discs, they just go straight down into a sloppy, rough hewn square edge. You can also see the top part of the disc isn’t flush, either.
On top of that you have the usual cheap chinese clone workmanship issues, bad gluing on some, bad foam cuts or misfit alignment on others.
Plus it has a weird obnoxious dimple on the top logo side from the plastic injection process, that also pokes up unnecessarily. It isn’t a problem by itself but overall the whole thing, which is basically a mini-frisbee, has so much working against it in clone form that it’s just… crappy.
I picked up the “cheap” spring-loaded XV-700 and a spare clip. The balls shoot at 100 FPS and they sting when they hit you. It’s pretty accurate, but lacks a site or guide of any kind. And yeah, the balls ricochet pretty hard to expect to lose a bunch. Still, pretty cool.
It will be interesting to see if the upcoming Kronos rival pistols (I linked above) also shoot 100fps. It’s kinda required because the rivals line defines itself that way, but we’ll see! Hoping those are released this year in time for xmas.
Some of the Rivals I saw were 80 FPS.
Pretty sure all Rivals are 100fps, that’s part of the brand.
One caveat: at range, Rivals rounds lose velocity much faster than darts. But they’re far more accurate in the first place!
This one is 80 FPS.
Hmm, the shotgun. Maybe because it fires two rounds at once?
Heh, Nerf “shotguns.” I didn’t even notice it fired two rounds.
That’s the one I have, and I hate the fact that it fires 2 rounds. Out of a 10 or 12 round clip. :(