Shield

A shield is a blaster accessory. Shields can help to block water, discs, missiles or darts.

Details
Nerf and Super Soaker shields are typically plastic pieces that can be attached to the blaster through the usage of a tactical rail. This gives shields the ability to be used on a wide variety of blasters, although their size may prevent them from working on certain blasters. This problem most notably affects the Lightningstorm shield, which has part of it hanging down to the sides, which causes some wide blasters to not be compatible with it.

Depending on the rules set, shields may or may not be allowed to be used during Nerf wars. To avoid problems, ask the host of the war whether shields are allowed or not.

History
The first Nerf tactical shield was the N-Strike Blast Shield, which was released with the Stampede ECS in 2010.

Smart Stick Shields
Smart Stick Shields are only compatible with Mattel BOOMco. blasters. Compatible with Smart Stick Darts, they allow BOOMco. ammunition (the aforementioned darts and Smart Stick Rounds) to stick to their surfaces.

Trivia

 * The Manta Ray is large enough to act as a shield; it is the only Nerf blaster advertised as being able to be used as a shield.
 * Original packaging for the Vortex Pyragon showed off a Nitron with a shield instead of a Centerfire Tech Electronic Scope. Unfortunately, the re-release and shield were cancelled.
 * The cancelled Tek Strike series featured its own special shield that would have tracked the amount of times it was hit with special darts.