Do we know if the Kronos pistols will only be available as those Deadpool branded versions, or if they will offer regular versions?
Also not sure I need a two-pack since it looks like you’ll still need two hands to cock and fire one gun.
Kronos rival blasters looking pretty sweeeet
Browsing through the videos I found this one:
So… on top of the actual gun, the barrel can be used as its own gun and there’s a gun hidden inside the shoulder stock. That must be a good thing, right? Triple the guns, that’s tactical, innit?
I broke down and bought a Nemesis yesterday (with rechargeable battery, obviously). Yup. It’s huge. I don’t know why I own this, I don’t have any kids, I’m just going to shoot it at random stuff around my house, but whatever. It’s amazing.
The only tiny complaint I’d add to wumpus’s impressions is that if you’re not going full auto—when you’re trying to just fire a single shot or quick burst—occasionally the balls aren’t exactly where they need to be in the hopper to shoot immediately on trigger pull. This is really a gun designed to go full auto all the time, so if you were trying to pick off a target with a few quick precision shots, you risk occasionally pulling the trigger and nothing happening for a couple seconds.
I also picked up the clone gun wumpus mentioned above, the Dart Zone Powerball, and I love it. I have the Rival Apollo, which is the closest thing the Rivals line has to an entry level gun. Fires one ball at a time, you have to cock it after every shot, no batteries needed, cheapest in the lineup. The Dart Zone Powerball is superior in every way. As mentioned, it can use the clips from the Rivals line, so it’s compatible with the two clips I already had. But it’s half the price of the Apollo, and cocking it is so much easier with the shotgun style grip (while not actually being a shotgun like the two-ball-at-once, only 80 fps Atlas). You keep both hands on the gun, pump, fire, repeat. With the Apollo you have to keep grabbing the thing on the top of the barrel to cock it between shots, which is unwieldy and doesn’t feel nearly as smooth.
If you want to shoot some balls at something and you live near a target, pick up the Dart Zone Powerball.
The new Apollo moves the priming mechanism to the side, for what it is worth. You shoulda gotten the Artemis originally, no pesky clips and better priming!
Yeah, the Artemis would’ve been the smarter move.
Reminds me of a (tangentially related) story.
This is one of my earliest memories in life:
I was about 5 years old (so around 1965), and after a lot of begging, my parents finally bought me a really good squirt gun to replace all of my cheap ones that I had broken. This baby was big, made of heavy plastic, and accurate and powerful to boot. It was modeled after an Army .45 handgun.
One fine day, I was out in our yard, shooting random things with it, when this guy walked by, maybe 30 feet away from me on the sidewalk, early 20’s maybe. He saw me eyeballing him, and said, “You’d better not shoot me with that thing.”
Now honestly, until he said that, I had no intention of shooting him. But the way he was smirking at me made it irresistible. So I shot him.
He stopped, knelt down, and gave me a big smile. “Hey, that’s a real nice gun you’ve got there. Can I take a look at it? I’ve never seen such a nice one before. Is that a .45?”
He seemed really cool and all that, so I went over to him and handed him my gun.
He promptly stood up and threw it on top of our carport roof.
I shall never forget his laughter as he walked away.
Without a proper warning that’s just sadistic, had you done the same if he’d told you he’d throw it on the roof?
The Nemesis, the 100-ball, hopper-fed, full-auto, motorized gun the size of a small child, has dropped from $99 to $78 at Walmart for the holidays, which is probably the reason it’s also ~$71–$77 on Amazon. Just FYI if anyone was tempted.
And I picked up the Nerf Rival Hera, which is apparently a Target exclusive. $60, 12 ball clip, uses batteries or the big charger, semi-auto. If you want a motorized Rival gun, technically the Zeus is the entry level option at $50 and the same capacity, but it’s not compatible with the rechargeable battery which I consider essential. So this is probably the sweet-spot for motorized Rival blasters. Get the Nemesis if you want something insane, get the Hera if you want something reasonable—to the extent any of these can be considered “reasonable”. The Zeus needs real batteries, the Khaos (40-round full auto) looks like a pain to load and for only about $20 more you get to the Nemesis with the 100 round hopper for greater capacity and ease of loading.
Why would you want a clip based blaster here though in the Rivals world? Artemis and Nemesis all the way, or go home.
I don’t have an Artemis, but that looks like a pain to load too. Obviously the Nemesis is amazing, but behind that, clips seem like the best way to go because you can do all your loading ahead of time; you’re not limited by the capacity of the blaster.
And this doesn’t have anything to do with clips, but I meant to point out the Hera has got to be the best Rival blaster you can fire one handed. It’s not a tiny gun, but you can easily hip-fire it without a strap, or from your shoulder or with arm extended for a little while.
And if you can fire one gun with one hand…
Pff whatever you need to dual wield the mega mastodon like a real man
edit: I joke but the mega mastodon is a crazy fun thing to own. It really is.
Hey could we satisfy the 2nd amendment requirements with these things? Just imagine… the next drive-by shooting is 40 nerf darts stuck to the side of your car and driver’s side window.
If this is your bag, baby, the special edition Rivals are available at Gamestop now (they are a GS exclusive):
I did order the Deadpool Kronos set because it’s the only way to get the Rivals pistol early; the regular model won’t hit until 2018, apparently.
I think I’ll probably pick up the Kronos too. Shame the Boba Fett is the Apollo, that’s my least favorite of the models I have. Wouldn’t buy another one of those.
Yeah plus the Apollo v2 looks a lot better and will be out in 2018. Still a clip based rivals blaster so you shouldn’t buy it anyhow.
You never really directly answered above—obviously the Nemesis trumps everything, but what is it about the Artemis that makes you prefer it to the clips?
Clips are, overall, just more crap you have to deal with, and take with you for things to work. The blasters won’t even operate without them, right? The rival balls are already so easy to carry and load (particularly on the Nemesis) – just have a bag o’ balls literally anywhere – that clips undermine the purity of the whole Rivals concept.
The Artemis has a capacity of 30 in an incredibly compact form factor (damn near sidearm class), which is a very high capacity for any kind of blaster, and unprecedented at that size, because… balls. For example, show me the 30 round nerf dart blaster that isn’t a beast to use and load?
Here’s the doominator, which has 6 x 4 = 24 rounds, for example…
Or the dart zone magnum which has 40 rounds…
I guess TL;DR clips are kind of a necessary evil for dart blasters, but it shouldn’t be that way in the brave new world of ball blasters!
Alright, that makes sense, I can see your logic on that.