Well, let's start with the caboose of the hype train and work our way forwards.
This is the Zombie Strike Dreadbolt. If you think it looks familiar, it is. Essentially, it's a reshelled Rebelle Courage Crossbow, with room for extra arrows, a built-in stock, and a new rail attachment. Of course, its bow arms are there just to provide room for the elastic cord to stretch. Hascorp could really do away with them and have a compression spring pushing the arrows from behind. Also, the scope is even worse than the Modulus' "scope", with little tabs of plastic pretending to be a reticle. The Dreadbolt continues the trend of having Zombiestrike blasters looking like they were assembled out of parts scavenged from a scrapyard.
For some strange reason, Hascorp is asking $50 USD for this. If it's a better arrow-lobbing engine than the maligned Courage bow, it might be a worthwhile grenade launcher for games with special rules for exotic ammunition. Otherwise, it's a shell donor for integrations. Titan inside?
Next is the smallest entry on the list.
This is the Alien Menace Voidcaster. According to them, it "mechanically is a pretty standard dart-firing Nerf gun. It can fire four darts without reloading, but it doesn’t otherwise have a gimmick." Although, it could be interesting. First off, there is no conventional trigger, but the triangular orange chunk at the front of the grip could be a multi-finger trigger. Second, where is the priming mech? LordDraconical thinks it is semi-auto like the Snapfire 8 in that the trigger pull also primes the blaster, but I disagree. In my opinion, the piece that looks like a dorsal fin is probably the priming handle, a la Tek 6. It could be slamfire, but probably not. One nice feature of this blaster is the space for 4 (Or possibly 8) darts to be stored in the ventral region.
It looks like a good little pistol, but a bit pricey at $20 USD.
However, most of you aren't all that hyped about pistols or blasters that fire exotic munitions. Let's look at the long-awaited Elite Longstrike!
This is the N-Strike Elite Accustrike Raptorstrike. At first glance, it looks like a loser rifle, almost as if Hascorp wanted to grant loser status to everybody. Without needing to open it up, I can assure you that it is a glorified Retaliator reshell. If you look closely, the slot for the bolt handle is the same size as the width of the magazine. Speaking of which, the Raptorstrike comes with a pair of 6-round Micro-calibre magazines made from translucent grey plastic with angled bottoms.
The shell is reasonably sized and might be wide enough to accommodate a Longshot plunger tube, but I doubt it. This looks like the Centurion 2.0. The only reason I might try finding one is for a comfy grip/stock on my Elite Alpha Trooper, or maybe on a Rainbowpump.
In other words, a loser rifle for $50 USD.
Enough with springers for now, let's satisfy the appetites of the #flywheelmasterrace crowd.
Alright, this is the N-Strike Modulus Regulator. It's a magazine-fed flywheel blaster with out of the box select-fire capability and some new accessories. Firstly, it presents an alternative magazine-holding stock to the pile of poo that came with the Modulus ECS. Second, it's got a shield that mounts directly onto N-Strike barrel attachment points. That's right, you can turn your Ionfire into a massive shield without having to deviate from the white colour scheme! And third, it comes with two accessories that make me think of the '95 Sawtooth. And, it comes with what look like a pair of 12-round magazines.
Being select-fire, it would need somewhere for the batteries to go, and I think that's what the massive blob between the fire-control unit and the magazine well is. Also, the jam door looks fairly large, like that of the NSE Hyperfire, so it's probably got a belt-style pusher. With all due respect, that's what I had expected the Rapidstrike to be, back in early '13. Crikey, I've been doing this for four years now.
Anywho, it'll be more expensive due to the onboard computer, but probably worth looking for on Amazon. As far as I'm considered, Amazon really capitalized upon the pick & choose option for the Modulus blasters and attachments. Unfortunately, no price is known right now.
Onto the last two blasters.
This is the MEGA Twinshock. This powerhouse is expected to retail at $40 USD, which is not too bad when you consider its modding potential. First, let's look at the slot for the pump grip. It's about 7 or 8 inches, which, if the plunger motion is similar, means that this could possibly handle a pair of K26 springs. Yeah, two K26's! That's 70 lb of draw! Unfortunately, it has no stock built in to brace it against your shoulder for compressing beefy springs. Personally, I'd get a Centurion (Universal stock donor) and use it for this purpose.
You see, if you were to ditch the smart-AR assemblies and connect the two plungers to a single coupler and upgrade your spring load, you'd have the most powerful springer this side of a Plusbow! How powerful could this get? At least 5 times as poweful if you rechamber this to Micro darts!
And finally, the mysterious blaster that we've known about for a long time.
This is the Doomlands 2169 blaster, The Judge. It's a ten-shot shotgun that fires three-dart clusters. That's right, you've got 30 darts ready to send downrange! If you look past the ludicrous appearances, this fiend looks like one of the NIC's good old friends, the Lanard/Air Zone Triple Shot.
Like the Triple Shot, The Judge is a shotgun. Hopefully, it's got a similarly sized plunger tube. As it is, if you singled The Judge, you'd have a 10-shot high-power blaster. This mod, when performed on the Triple Shot, was dubbed the Quadshot due to you getting a 4-shot NIC-grade blaster.
Unfortunately, the Judge has no stock, either. It's supposedly a pistol. Or, really, a pistol-grip shotgun.
All told, this Leak Week looks like 2017 will be a bunch of fun for us. We've got a select-fire rifle, some high-power blasters, and the long-awaited Elite Longstrike! What do the N-Strike Elite and Rebelle lines have in store? A Magstrike reshell? A reshelled Xbow? A Rebelle Alpha Trooper?
See you next time!
Maniacal Coyote
Nothin' Foam
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