We tried out a couple of new things at todays event, namely small shields, a reworked Mega Zombie, and some altered PvP rules.
You can find all rules here.
Blasters:
While I try to cover all important blasters, it’s possible that some are missing or not included. Also note that I primarily cover/detail mods that affect functionality and performance.
Regular/Recurring:
Elite Rapidstrike (various interior setups) full-auto mag-fed flywheeler. It is extremely effective in groups and close quarters. Also capable of accuracy-by-volume at longer ranges. Goes through ammo quite quickly if not handled with discipline.
Elite Stryfe (various interior setups), semi-auto, mag fed flywheeler. Excellent all-rounder, leaning towards ROF. Excellent in most HvZ encounters. This is a great starter blaster.
Rival Kronos internal mag-fed springer, slide-action This springer is quite powerful and can reach up to 15m. Top-ups are easy with the internal mag. Quite large for a sidearm-type blaster.
Rival Nemesis full-auto, hopper-fed flywheeler. It is exceptional for area denial, accuracy by volume, and against groups. If not treated with discipline, it will quickly go through all of the ammo.
Can be topped up reasonably quickly. Although it is bulky, it has a high capacity.
Elite Retaliator/Modulus Recon MkII (various configurations) slide/pump action, mag-fed springer. Solid all-round, leaning towards power and accuracy. Effective at longer ranges, however low ROF leaves it more vulnerable to groups.
ZS sledgefire (single) single-shot, break-action springer. Quite powerful and accurate, effective at picking off zombies from longer range. It is highly susceptible to being attacked by groups at close quarters.
NStrike Vulcan fully-auto, belt fed springer. Stock form, with stock belts. Good only for style points. It is very large, bulky and unwieldy, with rather poor performance.
Nerf Stampede full auto, mag-fed springer. Outclassed by many other blasters in all aspects except cool factor, its firing sound is still one of the most distinct and coolest sounds you can get from a Nerf blaster.
X-Shot Turbo Advance pump-action, revolver springer. Solid ROF and high capacity make this a great choice for run-and-gun or scavenger play.
Dart Zone Magnum Superdrum slide action, revolver springer. Very high capacity, good ROF. It is notable for its out-of-the-box power.
Mega Doublebreach pump-action, 2-Smart-AR springer. This is a Smart-AR blaster with two shots. It’s incredibly large and exaggerated.
Badly outclassed by just about every other Mega blaster.
Infrequent/New:
Doomlands The Judge pump-action, multishot revolver springer. It is huge, bulky, and heavy. Its only draw is style factor, as it is incredibly impractical and outclassed in all respects by many blasters.
Rival Apollo (with and without pump grip), bolt/pump action, mag-fed springer. Excellent out-of-box performance. Relatively low ROF and capacity hinder it against groups.
Nerf Dog Ball Launcher slide-action, single shot slingshot. Maximum range is approximately 12m. Completely and utterly terrible at any kind of Nerf combat.
Rival Artemis pump-action, internal mag-fed springer. This blaster is a solid, run-and-gun type, with good power and ROF. It can be easily topped up.
Rival Hera (rewired) semi-auto, mag-fed flywheeler. Decent Rival all-rounder, limited primarily by the largest compatible Rival mag having only 12-ball capacity. Surprisingly heavy, but not too big.
Mega Centurion bolt-action, mag-fed springer. Used only because it was a Sonic Ice, which as far as Im aware did not retail in Australia. Surprisingly powerful as it was an orange trigger model, but still nothing exceptional. Very large with a ridiculously long and awkward bolt action.
N-Strike Longstrike bolt-action, mag-fed springer.
It was badly outclassed and not worth the effort by any other blasters in this list. This is purely for aesthetics.
We had a rather low player count today, peaking at about 25 but typically around 20 for most games. This months event seemed like there were a lot more newer, less experienced and less well equipped players relative to typically well armed veterans. It was also quite cool, with temperatures peaking at 15C.
For this event, we had a number of new Lightake/NFstrike AccuMegas available, to coincide with the re-introduction of the Mega zombie (which Ill discuss later). AccuMegas, as I mentioned in my review, are more consistent and accurate than Nerf Megas. They have a lower muzzle velocity, range, and a greater impact. Given that they are also a lot cheaper to acquire than Nerf Megas, AccuMegas serve pretty well as a community Mega pool.
As always, we started with a Survival. The first round saw the zombies start with melee and small shields. Large shields and Husk were made available after 5 minutes. This warm-up period offers newbies in particular an opportunity to learn the game and get warmed up without having them face the most threatening zombies (large Tank and Husk) straight up.
I avoided human groups for the majority of the round and remained alone in many corners. This tactic worked very well, as I was able to largely avoid combat with zombies until the closing stages of the game, as the human numbers dwindled into single digits. A combination of firepower and speed allowed me to end up as the last survivor, whereupon I staged a final stand in the north-east corner, and allowed myself to be overwhelmed.
For the second round of Survival, zombies started with all mutations are per normal. This round, I decided to stick closer to the humans and thus the action. Although tags were more common in this event than usual the group that I stayed with was able to survive until the end of the game. Our group split up during a zombie engagement south of the tambark. I ran north alone. I neared a pair of players, the second who I found out too late had just been tagged, failing to bring my blaster up to stun the first, who was a zombie. Having been tagged in my poor judgement, I joined the horde in cornering and tagging the remaining humans, who were mostly separated and easy to finish off.
We then played a round of Space Pope.
We decided to remove the Traitor because of the low player count and the relative absence of veterans. The grenade was found by me early in the round. As soon as Tanks were released at 5 minutes, I chose one Tank to focus on. I followed them around the tambark making sure they didn’t charge in. I relied on other humans to fight off the zombies and Tanks. Throughout the game however, the zombies were able to get a few tags here and there, slowly whittling down the human group. I was eventually hit in the neck by the Husk as I chased the Tank. Now a zombie, I participated in several charges against the weakened human group, though made little progress myself. We were able to tag the General with a few minutes remaining. With human numbers rapidly decreasing, one of our zombies was able eventually to tag the Space Pope in 5 seconds. This was an incredible zombie victory.
After a lunch break, we played another round of Space Pope. We re-implemented Traitor this round due to a slight increase of players and more experienced players. We also modified the rules for human-to-human combat. If a human is hit by a dart, they are stunned for 15 seconds. Stunned people cannot move or shoot while they are stunned.
Right from the beginning, one of the humans opened fire on the rest of the human group, however they were quickly stunned and then grenaded. It turned out that this human wasn’t the Traitor. He was simply a player trying to cause some chaos in the game. The General was tagged by the Traitor shortly after the Traitor emerged. The Space Pope was now known, and the zombies could focus their efforts. Repeated zombie charges were able to whittle down the human group, and with around 5 minutes remaining, the zombies were able to tag the Space Pope.
Next up was a round of VIP Survival.
Each VIP was assigned a particular blaster. The Tank VIP was given a Doublebreach, while the Husk VIP was given the ball launcher. The zombies began with small shields and melee. I was selected as the starter zombie.
Within a couple of minutes, the zombies had managed to tag several straggler humans, and had already begun to push the human groups around. The VIPs largely remained well protected and on the move, however the zombies were relentless and were able to whittle down the human group surprisingly fast. With zombie numbers steadily growing, the human groups were quickly reduced to a couple of survivors. The VIPs were actually two of the four remaining humans. However, the zombies were able clean up the remainder of the human population without additional upgrades.
Then we played Survival and introduced the Mega Zombie. This iteration of the Mega is unable to tag humans, however can revive zombies with a 3 second revive, and a 10 second cooldown. They can only be stunned with Mega darts, as their name suggests.
In early game, the Mega zombie allowed the fledgling horde to push forward much more frequently, in particular allowing the Tanks to advance more regularly. This extra pressure did seem to speed up early game a little, since it was also much easier to catch humans off guard. I was able to survive until the end of the game by joining the human group where necessary, but breaking off when convenient. Eventually, I became too tired to run, and allowed myself to be tagged by the ball launcher Husk.
The typical tactic for dealing with the Mega Zombie was to stun all regular zombies, quickly re-stun the zombie that the Mega revives, then stun the Mega and quickly retreat. While this worked well earlier in the game, as the game went on and the zombie horde grew, it became increasingly difficult to stop the Mega zombie. On top of being stunnable only by Mega darts, the Mega zombie is typically found in the middle of a horde, out of the line of fire but close enough to revive front line zombies.
With a large zombie horde, without a particularly well armed and coordinated group, stunning every nearby zombie is practically impossible, especially with Tanks, the Husk and the Mega in play. Not to mention the necessity to switch to a Mega blaster just for the Mega zombie, since most players run dart-firing or Rival blasters.
As such, the Mega is practically free to run rampant in late game. Even though one revive per 13 seconds isn’t a big deal in late-game, the inconvenience of having to deal with an extra Tank charge when you are already tired, low in ammo, and low on allies is somewhat annoying and unnecessary. I think allowing the Mega zombie to be stunned by regular darts (along with an appropriate rename), perhaps also with cooldown tweaks, would be much more fun to play against without impacting human-zombie balance significantly.
We ended the day with another Space Pope round. We began with more zombies than usual and a surprisingly low human count. This round I didn’t participate in because I was too exhausted from the other games.
The Traitor revealed themselves early in this game, quickly moving back and opening fire on the human group. Due to a rules misunderstanding however, they left themselves vulnerable to human counterattack and were quickly stunned and grenaded. Nonetheless, due to the higher-than-usual starting ratio, and relative lack of humans, the zombies were able to make significant inroads into the human defences even from early on. A quick tag here and there made much more of an impact than with larger human groups. Tags became even more frequent once Tanks were released, at which point it became a bit of a slaughter. The Space Pope became the last human remaining and was tagged around the 10 minute mark.
With fewer, less experienced and less well equipped players, the Traitor is much less of a necessity in Space Pope. The zombies can achieve just a few tags and reduce the human population without the usual level of experience and firepower. A zombie victory is possible with a higher attrition rate. The Traitor does not have to grant zombies any reasonable chance. It is risky to try to conceal the identity of the Space Popes to humans, as any human who is tagged can give the information to the zombies.
We made small shields for small Tanks in every gamemode. They were akin to melee. These shields were not much larger than a Stryfe and offered zombies some protection that was far greater than any melee but less than the shields provided by large Tanks. The small shields are large enough to cover most of the torso of a teenager/small adult, but little else.
These shields had no significant impact on the game’s balance.
They could be used to effectively block most upper body shots, however the head, lower torso and limbs of the zombie are typically all left exposed. In close quarters, they offered zombies an advantage over lone humans with slower firing blasters, however groups of humans, or humans with high ROF blasters, could easily mow down these small Tanks. They allow zombies to move further away from the enemy, but at this distance they pose no threat. These shields are much easier to use than large shields.
For some rounds, the ball launcher was used as a second or replacement Husk. With a maximum range of around 12m, but an effective range of maybe 6m due to low projectile speed, it was a bit useless and didnt remotely compare to the standard Mega Vortex Howler Husk.
The same post can be found on my blog, Outback Nerf
