SA-80 Style Single Point Sling - Elite Colourway

 Materials arrived this morning so another quick blog post on my developing 130FPS public friendly equipment. I always opt for a single point rifle sling at my shoulder when I'm wearing a vest in order to be able to hang my blaster from it's stock on the on shoulder. I felt that given I'm going to the effort of making a completely orange, blue and grey/white pouches then I should go all in. Orange Velcro and some buckles later and this is the result.

The black side release buckle is still essential since the orange buckles I could find don't interchange with my other buckles so I can't put a mount on my blaster stocks and swap them about. The next steps will be to sew the panels I've cut for my pouches and order the tactical vest itself. I've got a few days off so I'll sit and do that with some Netflix. I just need to acquire more edging tape since the order I placed got return due to a stock error - cotton just doesn't cut it. Expect more updates as things get done.

Colourway Test: Nerf Elite Blue & Orange

 

This is a quick samle of what I'm thinking for my new 130FPS public games load out. I discussed it previously when planning the load out itself. I thought a test piece to check the colourway's effectiveness at breaking up black would be a good start. The test edging tape is cotton and will need to be replaced with polypropylene edging tape to bring it up to the same standards of durability and water resistance as the rest of my kit. I think the white tabs are a bit much so I'll swap them for a mid grey. That will also darken up the royal blue fabric just a smidge to bring it closer over all in tone with the earlier Elite blasters. The orange contrast thread is also pretty striking. I think for aesthetic reasons, I'm going to have to go with a full cross in the box stitch to mount the tabs since it looks a bit derpy at the moment. There's no reason to, really, structurally but I think it'll look better.

More to come over the next week as I ramp up production as games start to be announced here in the UK

Reflections on new high capacity mag pouches

My 'new' high capacity mag pouches have sold better than I thought they would. I say 'new' because the original Talon shingle pouch design was always designed to be scalable. I've done large capacity pouches as a one off in the past but never fleshed the full Etsy listing out until now.

 

 

 

The above pouches are three deep for a total of 12 and 9 magazines respectively. I got buried in orders pretty quickly for them which is nice but it did cause me to pause for reflection for a moment.

I've been in this business nearly 15 years in various shapes and roles. I still have my 18 dart magazines from the great Tesco 50p per mag and 18 darts fire sale back in 2013 as it was the only way to get a decent amount of magazines. The fact there is demand for high capacity mag holders tells us how far we've come. To have that supply chain for our own magazines available seperately and have them available in four continents with that sustained demand is a good thing.

 

 

 

The above represents how silly things can get if you load up a tac vest properly. Take the two pouches on the floor to represent the player's drop-leg mounted panels, you've got the potential for 102 Talon magazines and a sidearm on that pictured rig. And this was just orders placed in red fabric over 3 days. That's 1530 potential darts in those magazines. Each 12 dart pouch weighs 1.2kg so that's 9.6kg of pure mag and pouch before darts which, at 1g each, would represent another 1.5kg. Truly a mobile ammo depot!

 

These magazine holders also represent the upper end of magazine carriage that you'd realistically need for in game. Heck, you could even go as far as argue that you could put one of these on the outside of your day bag to carry all the mags you need for a day's play. Most BritNerfers I speak to cap out at 12+1 for a magazine load. You start adding multiples of these and you're into heavy and super heavy carriage territory which isn't really common. I've already advised one user that, actually, more smaller pouches is better since it gives load out flexibility that you wouldn't otherwise have with a single, large, fixed pouch.

However, there is always that note of caution. The risk of evolution in hobbies to cater to the deep, hard core nerds risks new entrants. Events have struggled UK side since COVID with lots of good venues being lost and good game organisers stepping away for a variety of personal reasons. Both are life blood resources to the community. In seeing the demand for these pouches sounded a bit of a warning bell for me, personally as a reminder to ensure that we don't lose sight of that entry level. There's not a great deal I can do from a tactical gear manufacturing perspective since gear is always the last thing a person buys. I know a couple of GOs that have started gathering loaner tac gear but they're in the minority. Instead, we need to remember to hug our GOs and keep one eye out for good venues and be good guests when we're there. I was out of the playing side of the hobby for a while and have dearly missed it.

There will be more 'new' products for 2024. I need to finally get my friction fit magazine pouches out and probably a few other things, too. I've cut all the fabric for my personal 130FPS freshed load out and ordered the remainder of the materials this evening. There will be more on that next week after I've had my Warhammer 40k weekend and next day job shift block.

Planned Equipment Load: 130FPS Public Games

I drafted a post about my gear specification for 2024 now that I'm starting to get back into playing properly. It was a terribly dull affair and didn't get very far. Instead, I figured I'd just list the outcomes here so I can come back and refer to it later.

Colours:

 

First of all, colours. I want this gear to be as easy to clean and maintain as possible but also bright and to stand out so that it's not too 'tactical'. That's most of what BoffTac is about: producing bright coloured gear that folks can use in an open space without arousing too many worried folks. I figured that since, ostensibily, we're a Nerf hobby then I'd opt for a traditional Nerf Elite colourway. I've got a ready supply of Royal Blue fabric that I can edge with orange tape and use either light grey or white webbing for pull tabs. With enough white and orange on there, it should break most things up. I realise now, writing this, that a Nerf N-Strike or even Vortex colourway would be possible. It's something I suppose I could explore as a future option for the store. I'll have a look and see if I can get stuff within my regular supply chain to mitigate any price increases from my usual colour and black combo.

Skirmish Belt: 

SpectreN7 over on BritNerf said a thing that stuck with me and that will forever articulate what I've been trying to articulate for years far more succinctly than I ever could: your skirmish load out is what you need for an engagement right now (well, words to that effect). I've written about skirmish belts in the past and will build an Elite colourway variant. I've got a few ideas on how to make it easier to get on and off compared to my current set up that sits entirely around my trouser belt but I'll document those experiments closer to the time. I need a lightweight belt rig for work and it feeds into some ideas I have for that.

Skirmish belt load will likely consist of the following:

• 4 x Talon Mags
• 1 x Dump Pouch
• 1 x Sidearm Holster
• 1-2 Spare 40MAX cylinders
• Water bottle carrier
  

Vest:

 

This is where things will be a little more challenging. I can't be bothered to sew a full MOLLE vest from scratch because there are so many off the shelf variants that do the job better than I could for less time and money investment. Of course, the difficulty there is that off the shelf gear makers don't have a colour swatch for "Nerf Elite Blue, Orange and White". To make equipment palatable for public use, it's going to need to be covered in blue, white and orange. Fortunately, I can make gear to do that! The vest pictured above is the Condor Operator Plate Carrier Gen II (link not affiliate). I've had lots of cheap vests and rigs over the years and a sturdy, quality plate carrier can't be beaten. With the skirmish belt option, I can build up and down as needed on the day. Essentially, something with a fair bit of coverage that's easy to get on and off is what I need. I'll need to add some cable channel sheaths in orange or blue to the shoulders because the channels on this vest might struggle with radio and water lines but, again, it's adding more colour over the black so that's not an issue. The back can be padded out with a custom coloured hydration bladder to break up the black. Obviously, lots of patches and stuff to break things up, too.

Current vest load out thinking:

• 1 x Large footprint Talon pouch, triple depth (essentially as large as the front panel will allow me to go
• 1 x 4 x 40MAX grenade holder
• 1 x Auxillary dump pouch (small zip dump pouch sized) for keys, phone and what not
• 1 x Auxillary Talon pouch, likely underarm to take whatever mags don't fit front and centre
• 1 x Hydration bladder with bright coloured pipe cover and mounting clip at front

Auxillary Equipment:

With a black vest, I'm still going to need bright colours to break up around it. Things like lighter coloured t-shirts are obviously a good shout. I've got black cargo trousers but I'm wondering if it might be worth looking into something brighter. There are some properly lurid welder's trousers in bright orange on eBay that might do the trick. Either way, I will need to source new knee pads and those will only come in black. I swear by shemaghs and having a royal blue or orange one of those around my neck tucked under the vest ought to help. 

Need to make me a blue and orange one of these...

I think I might pattern a water bottle holder off my current Maxpedition version and make it in blue and orange to fit with the theme. That way, I can stop having to rob the pouch off my DPM kit and move it around which invariably leads me to forgetting it for events! I don't get much use out of radio comms for 130FPS games but if things come back around in a big way again then I'll have a gander at it and see if I need to commission some upgrades.

Blasters

I always leave blasters to the end because they're practically incidental at this point. I know that that's the other way around to most folk's approach to the hobby but if I'm playing, I need to keep my blaster fed to stay in the game.

The Protean from Flygonial is currently in BETA testing

I'm looking forward to the Protean from Flygoinal being published in a few weeks. My Gryphon is an amazing platform and a 130FPS variant in blue, orange and grey will be right up my street. Likely configuration will be Out of Darts Valkyrie with Bulldog wheels on 3S in a 43mm cage. Hopefully that'll mean I can put a 2S pack in there and have a blaster for 100FPS games as well as 130FPS.

Sidearm wise, I'm sticking to the doctrine of "It needs to do something your primary doesn't". To that end, I'm very closely eyeing the 40MAX system and the open source May Day blaster. It uses compressed gas to fire a variety of ammo types through a bunch of printed shells. Not only do the shells look pretty 'operator' when on your rig, it gives a degree of flexibility that I like. Shields aren't as much of an issue as I would expect in games but having the option to bust them where needed is handy. And if I'm on the field with younger players running MEGA then I can swap the shells for shotgun/scatter shot variants so they youngsters can still get their shield tags in. I don't attend any games at the moment that don't permit compressed gas so I'll cross that particular bridge when I get to it.

Now I need to go an inventory my materials to see where I'm at in terms of needing to order things. I certainly need orange edging tape in a big reel. I know I've got white Velcro kicking about but I'll see if I can find some light grey webbing to make cleaning easier on me rather than using straight white for all this!

I guess I'll do a high FPS load out version of this post at some point soon, too. I think there's an event sometime at the start of February I might be able to get to so I'll look at things closer to the time.