And that was the idea, not to turn nerf into paintball or airsoft but to borrow concepts and create a large scalle game. skirmish's I.O.N. game this summer attracted almost 4500 players from all over the world, im not asking for anywhere near that many nerfers, that would just be chaos. But if we could get around 100 people together...
That's good.
I wrote
this article a while back about keeping each of the shooting sports separate. I too, am an anti-mainstream ex-PBer (age and relocation, more than loss of interest is why I'm "semi-retired") who enjoyed my Stock-class Phantom and Tunnel Rat as much as I did a good Nerf war.
The reason why you won't see huge scale Nerf wars anytime soon is because modified Nerf warring is a tiny NICHE market; that is, we are quite underground when you line them up with paintball, airsoft, or even SuperSoakers. Despite the fact that we have three or four NerfHaven members/admins who have
carte blanche at Hasbro's Nerf division, and the fact that Hasbro representatives have gone to scheduled Nerf wars (and brought the participants goodies; Nerf blasters!); despite all that,
we are still a heavy minority in the hobby shooting world. No sponsors, no media coverage, no hype.
And in some ways, I believe we like it that way.
The biggest wars you will see that are coordinated within the Nerf Internet Community are Apocalypse, affectionately known as Apoc, and Armageddon, nicknamed 'geddon. Do a quick search on the "Nerf Wars" forum and you cannot miss it. Sure, there are assassination games with Nerf blasters on many college campuses, with possibly hundreds of participants, but often those come with financial incentives (prizes) for survival, as well as a lot of fun to play. Nerfers play, they travel long distances (coast to coast), for the sheer love of the game. Ask One Man Clan, Groove, Kuhlschrank, or any of the guys who've flown and driven many 100s, even 1000s of miles to attend other's Nerf wars.
I believe that Nerf is a transitional kind of shooting hobby; kids too young or poor to get a paintball marker or airsoft gun of reasonable quality can enjoy the same kinds of weaponry as seasoned Nerfers by going to the store, hitting up eBay, or shopping from fellow Nerfers on NH (of which many like One Man Clan and Forsaken Angel24 are glad to help interested people get good blasters). As the Nerfer gets older, more confident, and attains more financial resources, they purchase the said PB or AS weapon of choice, and then sell off all their Nerf gear, some even going as far as saying "I've grown out of Nerf". We see it all.
That said, it'll be difficult at best to get even 100 Nerfers on the same playing field for a good skirmish. Because the roundabout average of a Nerfer appears to be about 13-20, many young'uns won't have parental permission to travel long distances to shoot plastic toy guns. Add to that the obvious immaturity of younger kids, communication and coordination challenges, and no reliable way of confirming hits other than the honesty system (which is even a problem in paintball nowadays), and you can see that it would be all uphill trying to get a successful mass-Nerf experience.
You don't say much about where you live, but if you're on either coast, you have access to some pretty good Nerfing. You ought to try attending a war published on NerfHaven first, then consider what having a giant Nerf war would be like.
-Piney-
