So, my birthday happened recently and to celebrate, I got some buddies together and we had ourselves a Nerf War!
That's right, we hit the park and turned it into a flurry of flying foam darts, running, hiding, dodging and shooting like a real-life game of Call of Duty with less weed and jerks.
While I did have a kickass time with my friends, I did notice that we made some rookie mistakes that took a little bit of the enjoyment out of the game. Here's a few tips so you can avoid some of the pitfalls we encountered.
1. Stay Hydrated! - Common sense dictates that if you're gonna do a physical activity for an extended period of time, you wanna drink plenty of water and this is especially true when you're out in the hot sun! Bring a cooler with ice cold drinks and call it neutral ground! Also, while not necessary, maybe finagle a water-bottle holster or so you can drink and mow down chumps and drink water, staying Tacticool all the while.
2. Do some research - While you don't need to obsessively look up various Nerf guns and compare them all (though you can!), you want to at least look up any blasters you're interested in to see any issues it may have. Showing up with anything that looks interesting could backfire as jams, misfires and general lack of performance can abound if you pick the wrong weapon.
3. Test your gear - Looking up your stuff isn't always good enough! Don't buy your guns and hour before the event and hope it will all turn out alright. There's a distinct chance that you're setting yourself up to be pelted by a foam firing squad when you find out about a quirk in your Nerf gun in the worst time. In a particularly bad case, two players (both on my team!) had issues with their blaster, a highly recommended one at that, jammed throughout the day. They eventually found how to deal with it, but it was too little too late.
4. Know your limits - If you plan on going to the nines and dressing like a Nerf operator, with all the Tacticool slings, holsters, vests, pouches and many blasters, try to keep in mind how much all that stuff weighs. I'm personally at fault for finding this one, thinking I could keep my mobility with three blasters, a spare clip as well as some pouches and clips. The stuff seems light going on and even walking around in, but I was not prepared to do full sprints while holding the flag and it cost us. As a corollary to the above, try putting on the gear you're gonna have the night before, maybe jog around a little. Better to learn the night before than the day of.
5. Plan a break - If its your event, make sure to plan a break! Even if you have boundless energy, everyone else might not. You're doing a lot of running, shooting and dodging, after all. Breaks between rounds are ideal, since one side can ride the high as they get ready for the next round and the losing side can regroup and figure out what to do next. If it's not your event, well, hope that they have breaks planned. If they do not, then you need to take care of yourself and just try to find ideal times to take a break. They might lose you for a few minutes, but it beats losing you for the whole game due to exhaustion.
Bonus tip!
Bring a lot of darts - Seriously, you go through them quick, even indoors. You can recover your darts from the ground, to be sure, but it's much easier to have a pouch of ammo ready. Outdoors, extra darts become even more important, since you'll be losing darts left and right.
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