Hardly Ideal

Since r/Nerf is indefinitely borked, maybe I should inflict my weird builds on older message boards instead?

SO. Did you know you can make some minor cuts to a Five Below water blaster and make it shoot Nerf darts at alarming speeds?


Did you know that said blaster can also work with a cheap fiberglass longbow you got in like 2013?



Did you know you can just sort of tie it all together and make a toy weapon that feels tantalizingly useable?

Hey! I know this place has been a ghost town for a while, but I was thinking about the Reddit blackout.

 

Some folks are worried about it, like about how some smaller forums over there might go dark permanently and where people could go after. I wouldn't call r/Nerf "smaller," but the idea still bothers me.

 

Someone over on Bird Site even half joked that we never should've abandoned phpBB. I thought "hey, I think I know a few of those." But what are the chances of everyone really going back to that?

(cross-posting from Reddit to cover my bases)

 

It's a pretty safe bet that there won't be many wars this year thanks to quarantine from You-Know-What. But I wonder... can we still play games together? Like by remote?

 

So, we have to stay at home unless we must go out for essential services and no groups larger than 5 people. That rules out most conventional games. Plenty of small games to play in the house, but... I dunno, those feel like they get stale quick.

 

But I what about more league-based games? Like something you can play with very small teams in small rounds over a long time? That way it might at least feel like playing with a larger group, or at least add some exciting weight to smaller games.

• Gametype(s) that can be played in something as small and asymmetrical as a house or courtyard.
  • Hey, this old thread has some good ideas
  • Attack the Core (Assault). Think TF2's Dustbowl or Gravel pit, i.e. take turns attacking and defending the same course
  • Last Man Standing. Deathmatch with limited respawns
  • Ninja Hunt. One person with a melee weapon vs blaster-armed team, all in the dark
• The results of the game are posted online, with the winners scoring points for at least two collective teams and victory going to the team with the most points after a period of time.
• The thing that's tripping me up is how to handle teams. I haven't come up with a good and fair way to do that yet.
  • Pick a team at the start of the league period, and that's what you stick with. Straightforward, but I worry it could be abused by someone wanting to throw a game for the other team.
  • I thought about teams being randomly assigned after a game is finished. Like, draw lots to determine which team the winner scored for. But the more I think about it, the less fair that sounds.

Thanks for hearing me out.

I like my little MavTitan. It can fire both darts and missiles, all in a comparatively tiny package. Not the prettiest package, but I can always fix that up later.

 

What I don't like is how between my brother and I, we only have two missiles, which is a lot less than I'd like. I know darts perform way better; they fly farther, faster, and with less pumps. But I like the novelty and we occasionally use special rules for different ammo types, so it'd be better if we had more.

 

Plenty of people have come up with homemade missiles, and most of them are pretty good. The problem I keep running into is that they seem to require a different barrel size than the stock Titan. That's also fine, but I'd rather make something that won't need an adapter; if I'm going to make such a goofy fun thing as a missile, I'd like to share it with anyone else who happens to have a Titan.

 

To that end, I've gotten a little creative. As usual, maybe a little too creative.

 

 

I had some 3mm craft foam whose original purpose has been lost, like you can find at Michael's. After pacing the plumbing aisle of the hardware store for too long, I thought "Why not just wrap a sheet of that stuff around the stock barrel and seal it up? Granted, I did use the ol' pipe insulation foam in the end, but only to weight the end.

 

-To keep the finished product from being too tight, I first wrapped the barrel with a couple sheets of printer paper, then I wrapped the foam to measure. That added thickness should allow for a good fit.

-The material sheet width came out to about 5 9/32in, but I had to trim it to get a more exact fit; I chiefly didn't want to have an overlapping seam that might leak during firing. Length-wise, I kept it about the same length as the stock missile.

-To hold it all together, I carefully wrapped it in some nice blue duct tape. It's not the most attractive finish, but it works for prototypes. The final version will probably involve a second wrap of foam for a smoother finish.

-The last three or four inches were stuffed with insulation foam for weight and stability.

-The fins are pretty straightforward for now, but I'd like to try at least one with box or tube fins like you see in model rockets sometimes. It might make loading and storage easier, and I'm always looking to try something different and interesting.

-Just for fun, numbered stripes on the nose to see which ones work well and which ones stink.

 

So far, they seem to perform about as well as the stock missile, which I'm kind of surprised by. They're nowhere near as heavy, so I'm thinking they might be too tight. But that might not be a problem from a consistency standpoint.

 

At the moment, it looks like I have enough material on hand for five of these, for a total of six. Which is great, but I've now run into another problem: how the heck am I going to carry these during a real game? Even though these are smaller than a stock missile, they're still pretty bulky; I'd need something the size of a small messenger bag at this rate.

 

More updates as they come.

I found an unwanted Rebelle Flipside a little while ago. I never planned on getting one, but someone was just throwing it away and I was curious. It seems to work well enough. Pull back the string to prime, let it go to shoot, mash the trigger to flip to a fresh cylinder.

 

Of course I wonder how we can improve it, so I start looking it up and immediately hit a problem: there doesn’t seem to be much about modding the Flipside. I can’t even find a shot of the internals. I’d probably be able to wing it, but I’d rather not. It’s a perfectly good blaster and I’d rather not mess it up.

 

Does anyone else have any experience with this goofy thing?