Elite Colourway Load Out Progress - Hydration Bladder

Long games require the squishy meat sack operating the blaster to be replenished. With a large equipment load and running about all day, you're going to need a lot of water. The back of a vest is usually a large spot that's left empty since it's harder to reach behind you to grab stuff that's placed there. Sure, you could pop spare mags for team mates there but it's not always guaranteed you'll get them back or have folks to share them with. Sure, you could cover it in Velcro and then patches but surely you could manage do both and make use of the space.

Enter my MOLLE mounted hydration bladder. Containing a full 3L water bladder and hose, between this and the 1L bottle that will sit on my skirmish belt, it should give me enough water for a full day's play. The MOLLE tape is entirely loop tape so there's plenty of footprint for patches to be mounted.

The bladder itself is hung from the Velcro closing loop sewn into the area just below the closure flap.

The pouch then contains two pathces of MOLLE mounting to secure the pouch to the MOLLE panel. Considering that 3L of water is 3kg and it has a liquid inside, that's a lot of shifting mass that needs to be properly secured. It's unusual that I won't just let a thing hang off a single MOLLE mounting panel but this is unique in terms of equipment hence the unusually secure attachment.

Next steps on this one will be to find a hook to clip the pipe hose into on the front of the vest so I can access the hose when the vest is worn. They're available via eBay usually and pretty handy for securing ready access to water. I might also create a hose cover for the pipe itself using some orange waterproof nylon. The clear blue of the bare hose looks a little weird over the fabric of everything else. Pipe covers tend to break things up by having a bit more of a wrinkled surface texture while bringing a splash of bright colour over what will be the black of the vest.

Elite Colourway Load Out Progress - Skirmish Belt and a lot of pouches!

 With uni finishing, I've gotten a better work/life balance and more time for hobby things. I've been spreading my personal project stuff between sewing shop orders. While that does mean more sewing thread changes for the orange and white thread on my project, it does break the monotony of sewing black all the time. The shop has basically paid for all the materials for this project at this point and is going a good long way to securing the blasters that I'm going to eventually pair with this lot, soon, too.

Skirmish Belt

First, the Skirmish Belt. With the friction fit Talon holder positioned so that my knee doesn't occlude it when kneeling, it sits next to my zip dump pouch. You can see why I don't do the zip pouches as a line item in the photo as they're an arse to get to sit square and the corners are always inconsistently shaped. However, this will do the job. I'll add a nice little bit of white shock cord to the zip to bring out the theme colours.

 

Just a few demo shots of the skirmish belt set up. You can see some of the threads where I had to take it down to replace the internal hook tape on the padded spacer mesh panel. The idea is that loop tape is going to be sewn to my duty belt and then the skirmish belt will only have to attach to that and the front two loops of my trousers to remain in place under load. We shall see. The belt itself is my old Viper belt, holding everything together for the moment. I might invest in a new one or even see if I can find amore appropriate colour match.

 

This is a better shot of the friction fit mag holder. It's probably the first time I've said that a friction pouch is safely rated to be used in the inverted position. Sadly, getting colour matched flat elastic remains very tricky in the UK and the options were either white or black. I opted for black since white would have dommiated the panel if it went out to the full 100mm. Between the grey tabs and the black, I think it breaks it up nicely. Then the edging tape offers a solid Elite style tie in.

Magazine Pouches:

Now for pouches. Lots and lots of pouches.

There's not much new here. There are 2 Talon hex stacks (2 wide, 3 deep) and 1 high capacity Talon pouch with 12 mags in. They're presented on an olive green vest while I wait for the black tactical vest I've ordered to arrive.

Not pictured is the prototype 40MAX shell holder that's sitting under the arm bit here. It occured to me that I'm going to need some sort of administration pouch with a Velcro loop tape fronting to hold my mag flaps open during use. I'll have a think on what I need out of that pouch. It'll likely just be a slot panel for my SD card holder, maybe a slot for some snap grenades or similar. Nothing too bulky since it'll be right up under my chin and no-one wants a snap grenade to the face.

IKEA SKADIS Pegboards - Command Strips are Fickle Beasts!

 Never let it be said that I don't put my equipment on the line to test new things. I wrote in this post about how I'd used Command Strips to mount my peg boards to the wall in an effort to avoid putting holes in the plaster board. It worked well for a few weeks and then this:

 

Bugger.

 

Everything else was fine but the Gryphon caught the worst of it. The top board which was carrying the most load had come away from the wall and went down with an almighty crash.

Repairs:

 

I tested the Command Strips and hoped they would be enough. They were not. That means I needed to go to rawlplugs and screws. Your specifics will vary based on your walls but this is internal plasterboard wall so a rawlplug and screw is more than enough.

 

Yellow rawlplugs and a No 4 screw into each spot fixes it in place and then it's possible to remount the boards securely. I've secured both blaster boards using this method now. The Command Strips holding the LARP weapon displays to the wall on the other side of the hall are holding fine. I suspect that's because they're much lighter than blasters.

Now to work out what to do with the Gryphon...

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.