OPINION: I hate the Nerf Stampede

Don't get me wrong I love the 18round stick clips, and with a voltage mods the stampede can be kinda cool. What I hate is the raw out-of-the-box stampede with standard D-cell batteries. First off just watch this stampede test fire, (skip to 1:30)

skip to 1:30

Notice how there is a delay from when the motors kick in to the dart actually shooting, that delay is the reason why I hate the nerf stampede. It may not seem like much but it makes a world of difference. Imagine if you had announce that you were shooting right by yelling a word right before you pulled the trigger on a nerf raider, that's a pretty serious disadvantage. It would provide your targets with time to react and try to evade your shots. In general the slow stochastic shooting of the stampede is a very inefficient way of shooting zombie, I've seen it in thunderdome games where players with stampedes always preform worse than players with raiders, alpha troopers, recons and quick16s not including blaster malfunctions.

Anyone who has played HvZ for a while knows that many tags are "close calls" where the human will shoot the zombie almost at the same time as the zombie tags them. So clearly if being able to shoot first is pretty dam important, why would you tolerate a blaster that delays your shots. I've even witnessed people with stampedes get tagged this way in games. I don't see why anyone would still see the stampede as effective after that. Just calculate it, a person runs at over 10mph which is about 15feet per second, the stampede delay is about a third of a second, the attacking zombie will move 5 feet before your blaster even shoots, and remember many tags are close calls, but when your using a stampede the zombie will have a five foot advantage.