Hello! I live in Russia, and I am here because I was trying to google about NERF in Russian and only found kids’ YouTube channels where they unpack not-so-good guns and say “Oh, this gun is so cool!” to whatever gun they see, like Nerf Elite Rhinofire.
It tried to google in English, but most part of info was largely disorganized, so finally I am here, told by some of your beginner guides that I should only start a thread as a neonate nerfer if I have something to offer. Well, I think I have, because only 4 members out of ~15,440 have chosen Russia as their country in profile, all of them have posted 0 posts, and I am russian. Probably the western community will also have something to learn while I learn something about it. 
So, firstly, I want to give you a quick intro into russian combat games. The shortest intro would probably be “there is almost no place for NERF in here”. An a bit longer one is under spoiler.
But NERF still has it’s own place in russian Live-Action Roleplaying (LARP). Yes, this niche is mostly occupied by airsoft (like all Fallout LARP games), but NERF has it’s advantage of being very, very safe, so some games choose it instead, as it allows to use no protective glasses. Yes, it IS safe, we have tested shooting people right in the eyes from point blank distances using NERF guns and it was proved to be totally harmless. Settings that involve NERF are not so famous, like “The Dune” by Frank Herbert, or “Vampire: The Masquerade” (oddly, the only part of World of Darkness setting that has LARP community about it) by White Wolf. Given that, it is easy to get to the conclusion about rules differing severely from setting to setting. So, here they are (some of them).
1) Hitting a human in almost any setting makes him wounded. In some rulesets if you are hit in a limb it’s only a light wound and some settings allow armour. Hits in the head normally mean death.
2) In “The Dune” by Frank Herbert NERF fits very well because weapons of this setting fire very slow ammunition. Normally you would need to name the weapon you are using, so your target understands the effect which can differ from losing a health point (which is like 5 for a warrior) to instant death.
3) In games about Vampires, at least those set in “Vampire: The Masquerade”, you will need to hit vampire’s head to put him in “torpor”, from which he can stand up, but not so quickly. Humans are wounded if shot and die if don’t get medical treatment.
Modding blasters is mostly unsupported if not prohibited by game masters, but actually some people still do it as it’s kinda hard to check if it’s modded or overtune it. Most russians buy NERF from toy shops, paint them in any dark color (95% are black) and use unmodded.
Like 80% of blasters are RapidStrikes. People like the idea of being able to shoot using one hand, as lots of games involve long melee weapons, and melee is a bigger priority than shooting for in-game reasons. I personally don’t like RapidStrike, as it is very inaccurate and very quickly you will find yourself out of ammo. Also I don’t like it that you have to press a button and wait before you can shoot, I like my gun to be always ready to fire a sniped shot. But from my own experience, it very rarely jams, and if you stick two mags together, you can basically fire 36 ammo, which is often more than enough for a firefight.
Other 20% of guns are distributed in a not-so-known ratio, but I will describe why do russians choose them.
I use Nerf Retaliator with a removed air restrictor (didn’t really feel the speed increase, though, even though now it feels as more accurate). I turn it upside down so it basically becomes a pump-action gun, but I have a lot of jams because I always try to reload faster than the mag can send ammo in the barrel. It feels a lot more accurate than other guns, though, so I even aim down sights if I need to eat shit sometimes, which is possible for stationary targets from like 15m.
Rough Cut is treated as good due to no jams. I didn’t try it yet, but one of my friends likes it a lot.
Some people use Strongarm due to being able to shoot 6 darts lot, lot faster than anything can, while remaining accurate and being totally free of jams. Tried it once, the only problem I figured out is that it can’t really fire damaged darts, while other guns can.
What I plan to do in the next short period of time is to strive for a 1) compact 2) automatic 3) accurate 4) jam-free 5) carrying lots of rounds gun, so will learn what you have discovered in years of research, and will gladly answer any of your questions about russian combat games/NERF usage in LARP/just about russian LARP culture, which is different from western one.
P.S. Wait, was I really inallowed to post two emoticons?
