Until Sunday.
A friend of mine, who in addition to being a worship (music) pastor at a local church, does Youth ministry. He called me a couple days ahead and asked if he could do a "Nerf Party" (he knows about my addiction) at our place.
I panicked. Most of my rental fleet (6 NiteFinders, 4 AT2ks) were working, but I had very few Stefans. A friend had brought two bags of 1/2" FBR on his last visit, and I had cut about 60 foam cores, but hadn't glued them up.
He said, "No worry, brah. My assistant is in Honolulu, and we're pickin' up some arsenal. What you recommend?"
My eyes lit up.
DART TAG!But their budget wouldn't allow 5 complete DT sets. So...I said, "anything that shoots darts should be fine, but try to find NiteFinders or EX-3s. I can modify those for ya."
So then, Sunday came, I had the hall all cleaned up and ready. They arrived....at first my jaw dropped.
Their new arsenal consisted of:
6 Mavericks
4 Reactors (yes, ball blasters).
"This'll work", I said. I brought out my Nite Finder fleet and we had enough for an 8 on 8. 20 kids total, all highschoolers, kissing the summer goodbye in one foamy afternoon. I had a foosball machine and air hockey set up for those who couldn't Nerf at the time.
Of course, we always, ALWAYS start with a briefing, house rules, game rules, and a prayer.
Here's the arsenal. That NF with red marker on it? It was trashed by a kid who came to summer camp. He heard that I fix up Nerf "guns", so he brought it just for me! How nice. I'll write up later how I fixed it (there were some parts missing, and some common items brought it back to life...with some sting!)
It was fun watching the girls picking weapons like they were picking out jeans at the clothing store or something. They were both frightened and pumped up to do some shootin'.
My buddy donned the familiar yellow vest, and the teams split up. It later became the "shoot the guy in the yellow vest" kind of game.
It took but a couple of minutes before everyone knew how to work whatever weapons they chose, and it was off to the races!
The setup worked pretty good; I took every other row of chairs, and flipped them over the previous row, making nice wide aisles to shoot from and across. The upside-down chair legs helped to deflect many shots, while causing ricochets to hit other people unintentionally. It was hilarious.
The way we play, standoffs are almost nonexistent, and to play with church kids meant that the honor system was a no-brainer. Most of the skirmishes took less than 5 minutes each to complete.
I didn't even have to ask if anyone was having fun.
They were going to hold me hostage unless I scheduled another day of Nerfing, probably around Halloween (as an alternative to acting like a spook).
We then had a pool party, but there's no photos of that. Sorry. Trust me, we had fun. The CLEAN KIND. Geeze, my wife and kids were there too.
Some observations;
1) I noticed that everyone gravitated to the Mavericks first, the Reactors second. Even though the NiteFinder could throw stock darts 45-50 feet, the new Nerfers preferred firepower over Magnum power. One girl kept her NF the whole time and picked people off from the corner...until she got "balled" by the Reactor squad.
2) I have a new respect for ball blasters in wars. It is absolutely HILARIOUS to hear four Reactors going off like there was no tomorrow; all balls in the air in less than three seconds. They bounce all over the place and kill randomly. The honor system works well with ball blasters.
3) Stock blasters work well for indoor war. I should have known that, but hey, I'm a modder, so that's a given.
4) Cool pool water after 10-12 rounds of Nerfing is refreshing. Especially during our hot season here.
I think I'm going to pick up some Dart Tag sets, my kids have all their money saved for two Magstrikes (I still didn't get the one I ordered online), and to One Man Clan...sorry! I still want the "you know whats" if you didn't sell them yet. I'll PM you about something else you might have also. I just spent $500 bucks on a replacement motor for my golf cart (my lifesaver at work), so I'll crank up the "disposable income" machine again.
Yeah, but a good day that Sunday was.
-Piney-
