14 replies to this topic

[Zack the Mack]

On behalf of the UMD Nerf Activity Society, I'm proud to invite you to the king of all indoor wars, Dart of War IV: Home is Where the Dart Is! It's an all-day all-out nerf war in the craziest building at UMD. Bring your blasters, bring your friends and get ready for the most amazing day of your life.

The guys running this war are not NH members. In addition to RSVP'ing here, please do the same at the Facebook event: http://www.facebook....23008168&ref=ts

IN A NUTSHELL: An intense indoor war in the sprawling Art/Soc building at UMD. Venue features 4+ stories of narrow corridors, wide halls, doors to barricade, a working freight elevator, ambush-ready stairs, and enough chest-high walls to get Marcus Fenix hard.

DATE AND TIME: Sunday, July 10, 9:30 AM - 7:30 PM.

LOCATION: University of Maryland Art-Sociology (Art/Soc) Building. GPS [38.985250, -76.947588]. Travel north on Adelphi and take a right onto Campus Drive. Free parking available.

ATTENDENCE:

• 50+ UMD students
• Dizzy
• Split
• bpso (mebbe)
• DX (mebbe)

GAMES:

• 2-Team 3:15
• 4-Man-Team 3:15
• Flash HvZ
• VIP and Double VIP
• CTF

BRING:

• At least one blaster (READ THE RULES FIRST!)
• Streamlines, Slugs, or missiles. Leave the slingshot darts at home.
• A BuzzBee sword or soft boffer for melee
• Lunch and dinner. Restaurants on campus are far from the building.
• Eye protection. If you're thinking sunglasses, remember this is an indoor war.
• Flagging tape and/or bandanna if you have them
• Deodorant

RULES:

• Blasters MUST be eye-rapingly colored or have an orange tip. This is strictly enforced srs bsns.
• Sign the waiver when you get there. Again, srs bsns.
• Barrel tapping is not permitted.
• Melee may not be used on staircases.
• Non-padded darts are not permitted. Gumdrop darts will be tested on site if you have them.
• Koosh balls and balled-up CLEAN socks are legal projectiles.
• Trash cans, doors, and other objects may not be moved without express permission from the organizers!
• Participate in dart sweeps! Return darts to the pit in the atrium.
• Do not enter classrooms or offices. These are off-limits to all players at all times.
• Flashlights are allowed, but don't shine them in people's eyes.

BLASTER GUIDELINES:

• Range limit is 100ft. If you feel you're being hit too hard, tell a moderator.
• Anything over 65ft is overkill.
• High-ROF blasters and blowguns are highly recommended - you'll clean house with an AR-removed Recon.
• Melee weapons and sheaths are HIGHLY recommended, especially for HvZ.
• The majority of darts are salvaged. If you mark yours, you'll get many of them back.

BANNED EQUIPMENT:

• Fists, feet, elbows, knees, or any other part of your body used as a means of attack
• Unpadded swords
• Paintball blasters and airsoft blasters
• Bayonets (any kind of foam melee taped to a blaster)
• Foam swords fixed to one's arm or body (for example, no Wolverine claws)
• Armor and shields of any kind
• Darts designed or modified to inflict pain (complaints will be investigated)
• The Nerf Big Bad Titan, and unmodified Nerf swords, such as the Nerf N-Strike Sword, the Nerf Axe, or the Nerf Longsword.
• Unwashed socks (we're serious)
• Any blaster without a bright orange tip
• Dark or metallic painted blasters
• Artificial propulsion - Skateboards, heelys, horses, jetpacks, etc.

Edited by Zack the Mack, 05 July 2011 - 10:59 AM.

[T dog]

Unless this war already happened, I think the date is supposed to be July 10th.

A few warnings based off of previous darts of war: most of the UMD players are casual nerfers and aren't used to modded weapons. This lead to some tense situations last year which was stupid. Also be prepared for some serious downtime between rounds.

All that being said, the arena is by far and away the one of the best indoor arenas you are going to find and I am sad I won't be able to make it.

[Zack the Mack]

Date corrected.

T Dog is right, be careful with your blasters. No standard blasters are banned outright, but you might want to pack a Longshot or something for game balance.

As for the ridiculous waiting times, the UMD guys are trying to cut them down this year. The main problem was that they had to make sure no one was still playing the finished game. More efficient match-ending, combined with a stopwatch, should increase the nerfing-to-bullshitting ratio.

[VACC]

I'm not going to make this, but I feel that I should provide a warning to anyone from the NIC thinking of going. The majority of the UMD nerfers are accustomed to stock weapons for HVZ purposes. I've been twice, and both times 100 ft has been considered too dangerous and even disallowed. In fact, they pretty much complained about anything breaking 80 feet.

The building is very cool, but if you want to use it, free from whining, I'd recommend packing a tuned down primary just in case.

[dizzyduck]

I definitely agree with VACC on this one. Something that hits around 75' with a good RoF should serve well without causing too much bitching.

If you've never been to the Art-Soc building at U of MD, it's probably the best indoor nerfing area in the mid-Atlantic. Lots of staircases, plenty of winding corridors and a two-story atrium. There's usually a big turnout, but the majority use stock or minimally modded (think basic AR removal) blasters.

[bpso86]

Hmmm... I may want to attend. Anyone wanna carpool?

[Split]

Not sure how I ended up on that attendance list, as the first I've heard of it was a few minutes ago, but I'm coincidentally pretty likely to go. Carpool with teh bspo! Maybe Darkshrimp or Gears is interested?

[DX-Robert]

I would definitely go if I can get a carpool from the CT/NYC/Northern NJ area.

[Zack the Mack]

Not sure how I ended up on that attendance list, as the first I've heard of it was a few minutes ago, but I'm coincidentally pretty likely to go. Carpool with teh bspo! Maybe Darkshrimp or Gears is interested?

Whoops, I saw a name on the Facebook attendance list that I thought was yours.

Just a quick bump. I actually need to pull out of attending due to a friend's wedding, but I'm still tracking the thread to field any questions.
The FB event is getting huge, this is going to be an exciting war.

[Muttonchops]

I'll be in attendance, and have already RSVP'ed to the facebook group

[Doom]

Overall this was great fun, but there were a lot of problems. I'll list these out for those who might want to know. Later I'll email the president of the group at UMD to see if they can improve the war next year.

A lot of time was wasted between rounds. The organizers need to reduce time between rounds in some way. I believe in past years they had some people assigned to different parts of the building letting everyone know that the round is over. Then, either after they returned to the main room or before, everyone'd do a dart speed.

Also, they need a megaphone because people won't be quiet in there. People talking wasted a lot of time.

Team organization was completely random. Last year there was a draft to ensure the teams are even. This time around it was "form your own group". This doesn't often lead to even sized teams.

It again was unclear which blasters and darts are okay. One moderator complained to some NIC Nerfers and me about the blasters we were using. I started using a modified Maverick. The guy apologized to me later, and I tried to explain to him that he doesn't seem to understand safety (I don't think anything there was inherently unsafe), but he then said it was about "comfort" and not safety. That's inherently subjective. And when something is uncomfortable is hard to know in these settings. Also, in my experience that excuse is used when people actually mean "I'm angry that I don't have that blaster".</rant>

They count headshots. This strikes me as odd. I don't recall this being the case last year, and I find it to be hypocritical given how anal they are about other things for safety reasons.

Last year stairs were okay, but this year they had some weird rules about shooting on the stairs. These rules and why they were added never were completely clear to me. I'm assuming they added this rule to improve safety at the event. These rules should be tweaked. The platforms of the stairwells were legal for being zombified but the actual stairs were not. Once I was zombified while jumping back onto the stairs. I thought I was on the stairs; whoever zombified me disagreed (if you're on NH, sorry if I seemed angry; I just honestly thought I was on the stairs as that was my intention). I'm not sure now, but that's beside the point. If the stairs are bad, then I think the platforms should be too.

If I'm in the area, I'll attend next year, but I'm not as happy as I was about Dart of War 2010.

And to reiterate, it's not all bad. I greatly enjoyed most of the round and liked meeting some NIC Nerfers I hadn't met before. It's just that this war could use some improvement.

Edited by Doom, 10 July 2011 - 10:00 PM.

[dizzyduck]

MANO-style +/-, since I'm too lazy to organize coherent paragraphs:

+ Great venue, as always
+ Lots of folks
+ Chops, Split, bpso and Ted made it down
- Wasted time between rounds
- Unclear sets of rules for most game types
- Lack of consistency between moderators on what was and wasn't allowed

There was at least one instance of someone complaining about every blaster I used. That went for the Lanard 8-shot, the pullback PAS, and even the Expand-a-Blast. I had multiple complaints about the darts I was using too - slugs with #6 washers and craft foam heads. Pretty standard stuff when it comes to the NIC, but someone started bitching about them after I scored a hit on them from about 25 feet away. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it either; There were two people with singled Big Blasts and one with a singled Ultimate Missile Blast who were using them the entire day.

The game types were poorly implemented and the rules for the venue seemed pretty arbitrary (One discussion went along the lines of "No shooting on stairs... wait, but the top stair doesn't count as a stair, does it? Never mind, we're allowing shooting on stairs, just no melee/thrown weapons on stairs... but is the top stair a stair or not?"). The game types themselves were also just as confusing. I spent as much time trying to figure out what the hell was going on as I spent actually nerfing.

Every year I attend this event, the organization seems to be more and more lacking. Overall it was a fun day but I felt disappointed that it couldn't have been run more smoothly, especially after saying the exact same thing to the folks who ran DoW last year.

[Keo]

I was there! I'm the dude with long red hair, snow painted recon and Black fedora with american flag bandana. Had fun, wish I had my good guns ready.... and able to attend it all, and already had more friends there and clearer rules. There should also be a max group size for HvZ and even teams for CTF/other stuff. My HvZ squad, had only me, my friend on a stock(but painted) Alpha trooper, his little sister on my AR removed/band placed/better sealed NF, and the only well equipped person my new friend Ifzalul who had the only melees of our "squad" and got zombified by a confusing stair ruling. I only got zombified cause my 18 dart drum jammed from some modded stream line dart I found on the ground I tried to use.

[TED]

War sucked. Never going back.

Biggest problem- Someone dressed in steampunk not nerfing and being really really creepy and douchy.

Other problem- Pussies.

[Keo]

War sucked. Never going back.

Biggest problem- Someone dressed in steampunk not nerfing and being really really creepy and douchy.

Other problem- Pussies.

Are you talking about the dude that didn't have a single gun/weapon and played on a macbook in the atrium during CTF ?

I'm trying to get a semi smalltime war somewhere around Bowie or Burtonsville, mostly of friends, hit me up if you'd be interested.