After filming “Most Dangerous Game,” everyone involved went back to our place, ate some Sour Patch Kids, and fought in the Great Nerf War of 2010*.
Now, Nerf warfare is one of the few truly pure things in life: you don’t need anyone telling you how to enjoy the act of shooting your loved ones in the face with foam darts. You get some Nerf guns, split them up amongst your friends, and start shooting at each other. Fun ensues. Simple.
But if you’re interested in playing, as the kids say, for keeps — if you have any interest at all in how the Hey Ash crew modifies the time-tested “grab guns and shoot each other until you’re tired or run out of ammo” scenario to turn it into something slightly more involved and (in my mind) considerably more fun, then you might wanna hit the jump.
*Feel free to write a science-fiction novel with this title.
The set-up.
My personal Nerf arsenal consists of two half-broken Maverick pistols, a Vulcan machine gun, a rapid-fire CS35 blaster, Nerf-knockoff Winchester-rifle-esque thing with a clip coming out the bottom, a Nerf-knockoff double-barrelled shotgun, and two rubber-band pistols. We divide up the teams based on quantity and assumed skill of the players, then dole out guns to everyone except me, because I always get the fucking rapid-fire blaster, because fuck yes.
The two teams start at opposite sides of the house. The microwave timer is set for thirty seconds. When it goes off, the round begins.
Death and resurrection.
Every player has four HP. Body shots deal one point of damage; headshots deal two. If you lose all your HP, you get incapped, and your weapons are forfeit. Another player can revive you, but only by putting one hand on your body and counting to seven-Mississippi loud enough so that the other team can hear. This is meant to put the reviving team on the defensive, and give the other team a possible incentive to rush forward and take the other bastards out.
If you’re revived, you come back with one less point of overall HP (if you die once, you come back with 3 HP, if you die twice, you come back with 2 HP, and so on).
A note: though you aren’t allowed to pass weapons to your teammates once you’re already down, you may still “pull a Captain Price” and slide your weapon to someone as you die.
The ammo dump.
Every player is given as many bullets as they can carry at the start of the match. All excess bullets are dumped in very middle of the house, equidistant from both team starting points. The dump is meant to give both teams an incentive to move forward, rather than just camping and waiting.
The Vulcan is shit.
Yeah, it looks impressive, but that thing jams more often than something something toast metaphor. If you can get it to work, you’re fucking unstoppable with it; if you can’t, it’s literally useless. A gun for gambling men.
The rubber-band guns.
My two rubber-band guns are incredibly useful given their rate of fire and ammo count, but at a cost: you can’t possibly go for headshots with them (because unlike Nerf darts, rubber bands fucking hurt). If you score a headshot with a rubber-band gun, you lose one HP. But you still feel some pretty intense satisfaction, so it’s cool.
“Do them execution-style.”
We more or less subscribe to the Penny Arcade philosophies of Nerf warfare. Given the fact that we allow people to pick up ammo from the ground and re-use it, however, executions only come into effect when someone is cornered and is too afraid of being shot to continue playing the game. Should the final member of the other team surrender, one or all members of the other team are allowed to execute them in as dramatic a manner as they see fit.
Granted, one time Ulisses (from the Smash episode) had gotten Ash to surrender to him. He spent about five minutes with a gun to the back of her head, trying to come up with a cool catchphrase to say before blowing her away. While he mentally debated what to say, I subtly dropped a rubberband gun in front of Ash. As he opened his mouth to speak, Ash turned around and blew him away.
That, and one time Papa Burch was irritated at Justin for continuously slamming doors for cover when he was trying to get to sleep, so Justin had Papa Burch perform an execution on him.
While Papa Burch was still in bed.
Shirtless.
Holding a crime novel in his other hand.
The problems.
The ammo dump isn’t big or useful enough. We need to buy way more fucking bullets to make that thing as vital an area as it should be.
The respawn system means that there’s almost no way for one person to be permanently out of a match. This is a good way of reducing frustration, but it also means that you have absolutely no chance of killing the entire team if they stay relatively close to one another, unless you kill them all simultaneously.
The limited HP system means that every game eventually turns into a protracted (if tense and strategic) standoff, rather than a jumping-dueling-Matrixy bit of nonsense that it could be. It’s more Counterstrike than Team Fortress 2.
Nobody has any incentive to move anywhere (again, the ammo dump isn’t as useful as it thinks it is), so everyone just sort of stands around taking potshots until we arbitrarily decide to start moving around. We need to create some sort of impetus to get players moving around, but I’m not quite sure how to do it. Do you have any ideas?
There’s gotta be some way to harmonize the required strategy of our current gameplay mode with more wackyshit antics.
That said, though:
Whatever problems we may have with our methods, we’ve still had some pretty incredible stuff happen under those rulesets. At one point, both of my team members were dead. I only had the winchester left, and someone had forgotten the clip somewhere. As a result, I had to manually reload every single shot by shoving the shells in through the ejection chamber.
Not yet knowing that I was the only living soul, the opposite team (Grant, Christina, her boyfriend) sent one member out as a scout. I aimed carefully, and somehow got off a headshot. He went down. Christina went in to save him. Hurriedly loading another shot into the winchester, I aimed again — headshot. She went down. Now alone with absolutely no bullets left, I ran, took Christina’s rubberband gun and Nerf pistol, and ran to revive Ashly.
As I shouted out the revive countdown, grant ran in with the Vulcan blazing — somehow, he has a knack for unjamming it. I aimed the Maverick pistol at him and fired.
Nothing.
I dropped it to the side and pulled my rubberband gun out of my wasteband as he began to strafe, his Vulcan darts impacting the ground and furniture all around me.
Just as a dart hit me in the shoulder, I let off a volley of rubber bands at his torso and killed the fuck out of him.
Shit was beautiful.
I’m at full mast
That’s damn awesome. Maybe what you can do is after the timer goes you can’t go back to your spawn area for at least a minute thus forcing both teams to move to the center.
We generally do that anyway, unfortunately. The timer beeps, everyone runs and covers the middle room and nobody goes in. Or if someone does, then there’s just a standoff surrounding that room.
Here’s something you might like:
My university had a Halloween Nerf war – Left 4 Dead style. It started with a shitload of humans armed with Nerf guns and about 10 Alpha Zombies. Some of the humans had like battery-powered miniguns. Shit was BANANAS.
So the zombies went around tagging motherfuckers who then dropped their guns and became zombies themselves until everyone was zombified. You could use swimming pool foam noodles as melee weapons, and you can make up rules for what kind of damage foam darts do (headshot for zombie = instant kill, obviously).
Some fucking cunts just taped noodles all over themselves, so you have to play with people who aren’t cunts.
To scale it down to less than the like 300 people we had at the university, you could just have 2 alpha zombies and everyone else humans, so if one alpha zombie gets shot there’s still a chance of the game progressing.
Seeing as you were so awesomely elaborate with the rules in your Nerf war game, I’d say you could fill in the “Nerf 4 Dead” blanks with whatever rules you see fit.
Tell me what you think. I thought it was CRAZY.
Oh, and humans wore cool sunglasses, zombies wore red bandannas. You may not need that for small-scale, though, since the zombies wouldn’t be carrying guns anyways.
anthony, maybe you should make a video out of this? I would definately watch it!
What the hell? You can’t think of any way at all to provide reason for advancement? How about flags? Flags would work.
Funny enough, my friends and I have had a Nerf war planned for this weekend for a while now, and these rules would be pretty awesome to put into practice, among others. I had dibs on the Vulcan, but after reading that I might choose another, and let someone else deal with the jamming.
So, which team really DID win?
HAHAHAHA Brilliant. Though I have an Idea. Instead of just Team death match, you could try different match types (Free for all, Capture the flag, ect.). Varying up the stages (places you play) could also help. Go to different people’s houses, outdoors, set up rooms.
You mentioned Counter strike and I thought “What about doing counter strike”. Set one team as the terrorists, and have them plant a timer. They have to count to 5 to dissarm the “bomb” while holding it. Set up stuff-ed animals(or somthing) as hostages and set up a hostage rescue point.
That sounds awesome. Unfortunately most of my mates aren’t sad enough to have a nerf war let alone make rules like that.
God dammit.
And this is why I <3 airsoft. All the craziness and impromptuness of nerf, with *ACTUALLY* nice looking guns.
And that much more chance of actually getting hurt. I’ve taken an airsoft pellet in the eye. It was unpleasant, to say the least. Hospital trip unpleasant.
On the upside, the eyepatch I had to wear for a bit was moderately badass.
I haven’t had a good Nerf war in so long; my aresnal’s going to waste, just chilling in storage. A bit more partial to ball-type ammo, but I got into Nerf just before darts started being introduced.
I like the ruleset, though, especially the ammo dump. Given enough space and ammo, I’d have several throughout the house rather than just one big one, as it lends itself to less camping and could prove a surprise should someone be running for one, only to find it looted already.
You should also try putting something -in- the microwave during the timer countdown, which can be used as a full health restore by someone down to one health point. But I could just be saying that out of fattydom.
Do any water wars out there? You’d think the weather would be conducive.
…aaaaaaaaand I just realized that was a stupid question to end on, judging by the number of water guns that have appeared in HAWP episodes.
This is awesome.
You guys just keep getting more awesome, don’t you?
Excerpt from “Great Nerf War of 2010″
By A Young 16 Year old Canadian
As I held the maverick in my hand I knew that I was screwed. Anthony’s body lied on the ground just feet away, but when I had my back turned a pop had just revealed itself. I ducked just in time to see the foam cylinder fly past my head. I turned to see none other than Anthony wearing a grin larger than his ego holding another maverick in his hand, with his other hand cocking it. My brain commanded me to sprint to cover, but I still stood there stuck in a standoff with Luke. But the thing he doesn’t know is that behind him, Grant has a Vulcan aimed directly at his head.
Note: some artistic liberty has been added to make this story more awesome.
You could do some form of territory control. Establish safe areas where the revive countdown isn’t needed, or is halved, BUT they only work if no living members of the opposing teams are in the immediate vicinity.
Flags is also good, or some form of assault/defense scenario. The only drawback to those is that the objectives become the focus, instead of just KILLING THE FUCK OUT OF THE OTHER TEAM.
FIRST OFF: Price isn’t dead, he magically telephorted to a Russian Gulag because he’s just that awesome /Rolls eyes
SECONDLY: Pretty badass. I approve.
As a proud owner of a substantial Nerf warfare suite. I feel obligated to give you a new game mode.
For reference, my arsenal includes three Maverick pistols, two Night Finders, one Scout pistol (get your hands on one of those if you can, its stupid accurate and has the most deceptively long range of any nerf gun I have), two air-pump guns, one with six shots but poor range, one that takes a long time to prime but can fire a single dart a good fifty feet with accuracy. One Nerf Firefly as well.
My personal weapon is a modified Longshot rifle with a Raider-style drum magazine. Jams up from time to time but I sawed off the scope mount so the breech can be cleared with ease. Also: two of the new Nerf swords that look like the Master Sword from Zelda.
First you have the Control Point mode. Remove the central ammo dump and split it into three or four control points. To capture a point you have to kneel beside it and count to eight Mississippi. Ammo fired from your guns can be retrieved but reloading beyond your standard armament is verboten unless you’re at a control point which your team holds. You can bring ammo back to friendly ammo stores and attempt raids on enemy ammo stores. To keep it from turning into “run and steal everyone else’s ammo” you add swords. You can only raid ammo caches when you’re only wielding a melee weapon.
Bump the HP total to eight, with melee strikes dealing one HP, crotchbat-style tactics invoking a two HP penalty. “Rogue Strikes” wherein you catch your opponent unaware with a melee weapon, or a melee-distance execution, instantly incapacitate. Headshots do four damage, other shots at range do two damage.
Only two weapons allowed at any time, one melee one ranged. If lacking in swords, Sonic and Laser Screwdrivers should be employed judiciously.
You can respawn indefinitely but you have to go back to a control point to do it: and leave your gun where you dropped. This encourages sneaking around, stabbing your friends and family in the backs with foam weapons, and adds weapon swaps! Also, when you respawn you have to decide whether to try and stealth your way into enemy territory to get a weapon by pickup or execution, or whether you call for backup to escort you to a weapon.
Seems like it’d be fun to me.
This seemed the most elaborate of all of the ideas presented, and I really liked the Battlefield style progression. The one problem, however, is that it still doesn’t do enough to provide disincentives for those that would run in standing with their gun or just rush the objectives. When playing a videogame deathmatch like Battlefield, rushing is ineffective because the ease with which you are killed will make you surely die. One of the only ways to recreate this effect in Nerf warfare is to reduce the HP count to one, making all shots instant death. Given the speed with which one can revive oneself in this scenario, the idea of instant kill doesn’t slow it down, and, like in most shooters, it makes death more acceptable, which encourages rushing but also makes it less effective. In addition, this method will also increase the number of troops that are resupplied into the fray, making for a more intense defense experience. Another problem I can think of is that having too many objectives would leave most unguarded and would reduce the number of encounters as people run from point to point, but overall it seems very fun.
To get the game moving add some “grenades” (hand sized nerf balls or those squishy stress balls work best. Place two at the center in the ammo dump or scale up for larger group. Grenades should work like this for your rules direct hit from a grenade 4 HP (instakill) or 2 HP if it bounces off another surface (only one bounce counts 2 is oHP). This will encourage the teams to try for the center and give a way to clear out those pesky standoffs. Grenades should be reusable.
If you want players to move around more, allow them to use their darts as melee weapons. That way, they’ll likely go out in the open to try and stealth someone to death. Not sure how much damage it should do, so experiment with that.
You could also have locations with minimal cover grant certain bonuses, like increased headshot damage (three health?), slow health regeneration, a dart that does double damage, and so on.
Oh! Mark one nerf dart in the ammo dump with a piece of tape, Golden Gun round, one-hit kill anywhere on the body.
You should use the microwave as a bomb.
That way both teams will be at a constant race to the ‘bomb’ where they must set the timer (2 mins?), and it has be be disarmed before going off etc…
Or if your microwave is like mine – which doesn’t stop beeping till it’s opened – your team can aim to turn it off first when it’s set’s off as the round starter. But I think this on will only work if each person has 1 life other wiseit’s too easy.
So…all these ideas are pretty bad ass. Do i have anything to add?? Not really, anything I had was already said. But why not infuse all this together and just do that. I mean…my friend and I want to start doing these over the summer… and i really want to do this while im up at college. All this is pretty epic! The only thing else i could think of would to have an actual place to do this. Like a small-ish warehouse and just build your own map…hell make some of the stuff movable for different floor maps. Though this is kinda going out there, and no one really has the money or the spot to do this… it’d still be pretty effing awesome!
Beard tag…? Just tossin’ that in there (One shot to the chops and its over. Except Anthony is the only one with a beard….damn…..well sucks for him)
You guys should do 2 things
1. Make a hey ash watcha playing about this, And 2. Buy some nerf swords for meele weapons. That would be sooooooooooooooooooooooooo epic
You could use the ‘Halo’ way of thinking; Impliment power ups/power weapons and have them scattered through the map.
Knowing that somewhere there’s a funky hat that nulifies a headshot or a jacket that doubles your hit points might inspire forward progression nicely.
If you got your hands on one of the nerf swords that could be a power weapon worth racing the enemy for; instant incap but rendered useless after taking down 2 people (might add an extra level of strategy/panic too but that’d involve buying one which instantly discredits the idea).
In closing; “Power-ups, always Power-ups”
You could always pull a team Fortress 2. Set up two easy to identify objects. One for each team. First one to take the other teams object back to their side wins. Turns the whole game into a Capture the Flag Scenario. This will force others to move and try to take the objective. If that still doesn’t get people moving, and you continue to have the camping people, put a timer on at the beginning of the match. When that counts down, it’s sudden death. One shot kills and no respawns.
May I just say HAWP rocks my socks. fave moment ever is where ash slams the table loudly, dressed as sniper aiming a gun at you an shouts “WANKAH!” hehe.
I procrastinate, I think you guys should give them each stop watches, so every five minuets they have to move to a different location, works for us when we play paintball, capture the flag style, usualy peoplecamp out an pick off people as they walk by but the allarm goes off an they get outed, theres a setting on the ones we got that you cant change them till the five minuets are over. Usualy by then mos tof us are shot or being revived, we have a five shoot polisy, face shots count as two. So yeah, add a flag and timers, kicks peoples asses if they go off cos you can hear them moving, gives you a chance to snipe the shit out of them.
going to Toy R us now to buy nerf guns.
well i like the idea of the microwave bomb idea. but what about having an one team (draw straws, roll dice, rock paper scissors lizard spock, ect.) to figure out who it is. but one team is home base kinda the other team is trying to take their spot within some time limit. that might speed things up i did that with my brothers when we played.
(though laying on the stairs with the nerf longshot aimed up them wasnt to nice on them. only my sister survived by head shoting me from the top with the revolver pistol.)
Saw this epic Nerf battle on a random site and was reminded of this post.
http://vimeo.com/1193942
you should add some ttraps
pa,m