Board Thread:General Nerf discussion/@comment-27306930-20160106015345

I was walking through Walmart this evening and spotted an Air Warriors Snipe on the shelf next to a new RangeMaster Extreme. At $17.88 I just couldn't resist taking the Snipe home. Having just spent a few minutes with it, I am happy to report that it's not at all a bad blaster. Here are a few highlights:

1. It's very long. It's not quite the "3 feet" they tout on the box, but it's all of 35 inches from muzzle to stock (sorry metric people, do your own d@nm math).

2. The colors scheme is good. Orange barrel on gray body, black site, and yellow clip, blue details. The styling is modern, maybe a little sci-fi with tubing / circuitry molded in the relief.

3. Incorporates an 8 dart clip, which is interesting, because I'm ingrained into the Nerf heximal clip system. Everybody knows that eight darts = 1 clip, remainder 2, right ??? The Snipe comes with 10 BuzzBee suction darts, which interestingly enough is 1 clip, remainder 2 in the Snipe. Coincidence ... hmmm ?

4. The incredibly powerful 1X scope magnifies things to, um, actual size. Amazing. But as a simple substitute for iron sights, it's actually not bad. The darts go generally where you point the crosshairs. Generally. Kinda.

5. The sound of the firing mech is low and loud. It's a little reminiscent of the Centurion. Lots of noise, and a little kick. Not bad at all. I love the bolt action priming. Very satisfying, and once you've got the hang of it, pretty fast.

6. The advertised range is 72 feet. The shooting range in the bowels of my basement is only 27 feet from muzzle to target. Unfortunately Mrs. W has vetoed excavating the side yard in order to extend the basement and increase the range. My argument that it would count as a capital improvement fell on deaf ears. All I can say difinitively is that it shoots all of 27 feet with little drop in trajectory. Pretty much as good as any unmodded Nerf blaster in my arsenal.

Bottom line, I'm quite happy, especially at that price.  