Hey, it's Luke.
Today on Out of Darts: I am just back from NerfBall!
Before we get started, know that this is a sponsored video.
Hasbro reached out over a year ago to involve me
in both the NerfBall competition and the launch of the Stryfe X.
This doesn't seem right…
That's better!
Let's get going!
Before we go any further if you have not watched the full NerfBall video --
It's 17 18 minutes --
Go watch that before you watch this video; otherwise, so much context is missing.
I have known about NerfBall for some time.
Before the NerfBall announcement, Hasbro reached out to ask if I
wanted to be involved in The Stryfe X launch and involved with NerfBall.
After a lot of deliberation and hearing more about the backstory of the game, the blaster,
and the people involved, I enthusiastically said yes.
Moving up to November of last year in 2022, we had the NerfBall teaser,
and that made the community go a little crazy.
I have signed hundreds and hundreds of NDAs in my professional filmmaking career,
and none of them was as excruciatingly painful to keep under wraps as this one.
Watching our community dissect the teaser down to every little frame, freeze-framing things,
and finding the exact moments that gave us some inkling of what was going on was really
hilarious and painful because I really just wanted to tell everybody about it.
That said, we kept it completely under wraps,
so my involvement was a surprise to many when the event finally went up.
I had the pleasure this past year of getting to go out to Hasbro HQ.
I got to play-test the blaster and play-test NerfBall itself and get a feel for what the
game was like and what the balance was like, and I immediately was hooked.
I got to meet with a variety of people at Hasbro, including some of the actual
Engineers on the product and marketing team, and it was really insightful to get to see a
little bit behind the scenes and ask questions about the blaster and about the game itself.
Hasbro has spent the last four years working on the development of this game,
from working with paintball players to Airsoft players,
professional athletes, and a wide range of different skill levels.
They really seem to have dialed in the actual gameplay mechanic,
and I think it showed in the final game that we actually played.
On this whirlwind of a trip, I got to play test the NerfBall game with a bunch
of really nice folks over at Hasbro who were kind enough to come out and
play against us the day to get us kind of a scrimmage match at a local field.
I also got to see my buddy Philip Sweeting,
who was one of the engineers involved in making The Stryfe X, which I thought was really cool.
Philip had a long history in the Hobby and is literally the guy who said let's put the
flywheels closer together to make the darts shoot further and then our hobby took it up.
I love it!
My daughters were also especially excited that I got to meet Peppa Pig.
And when I showed them a photo of Mr Potato Head,
they didn't have a clue who Mr Potato Head was, which was also equally funny.
I spent months thinking about training and preparing for the NerfBall game.
I took this as seriously as I could with the time allotted.
I even went so far as to take their field layout here --
They had this nice playboard here for me –
and I actually put it into CAD and extruded it up so I could just
look around and get a general feel for what the sightlines would be.
I also measured the field and the ranges of the blasters at effective distances and got
a good feel for what bunkers could fire at which players when you're out on the field.
I also trained harder than I’ve trained for just about anything
other than when I was training for a triathlon.
I worked out seven days a week.
I swam, I ran, I hiked, I cycled, and I worked on my blaster skills as well,
just making sure that I felt really comfortable with this blaster.
Fortunately for me, Stryfe X is still a Stryfe:
It all feels very familiar.
In preparation for the event, I actually put together a blaster basics and play basics
that I sent out to my team because while they are talented athletes,
they hadn't spent as much time with a blaster as I have.
I also spent a good deal of time putting together various plays and thinking through strategy.
I even put down my players and thought through what positions
they might be good in, and It ultimately paid off.
Moving on to the NerfBall competition weekend, it was a two-day event.
On the first day, I spent the entire day training with my team, meeting my six players.
Each team consisted of seven players but played five on a field at a time.
I had a really incredible group of young athletes to work with
Hannah White
Dontavius Hill
Lyric Swan
Maya Brady
Meechie Johnson
And Mitchell Pehlke
These players were absolutely incredible,
and it's one of the reasons I trained so hard myself leading up to this event.
They're all in their very early 20s.
They're all around 21-22 years old, and they were extremely fit,
extremely talented athletes, and I can't wait to see where their careers go next!
The NerfBall Championship took place at IMG Academy,
which was this incredible Sports Complex in Florida.
I was really Blown Away by the facilities and this amazing bubble that we actually competed in
The entire first day, we ran drills, we practiced shooting both the ball and working on the blaster,
and then we really focused on communication between the various team members.
The game is incredibly fast-paced, so communication is really key.
Personally, I am an abysmal shot when it comes to throwing balls -- I always have been.
But I told my team, “My skills revolve around the blaster.”
“If I'm up in the front throwing that ball, something has gone very, very wrong.”
One of the more interesting parts of NerfBall for this competition
is that they brought multiple disciplines in sports together.
You had myself there representing the blaster sport…
Some of my players were basketball players, some were volleyball players,
we had a lacrosse player, and they each had their own strengths and weaknesses.
Right off the bat, the basketball players were definitely our stars
when it came to handling and throwing that ball.
Though initially, one of the things I noticed was that we
were a little too heavily focused on the ball.
We would score actual goals but then lose so many points from
getting tagged out in the process that it didn't even out very well.
The most helpful part of the practice day itself, in addition to getting the field
layout, was getting to actually scrimmage against another team.
And the team we got to play with were all judges and refs, and these players had all
played the games multiple times before during the development process with Donald Driver.
While we're talking about Donald Driver, he was my opponent coach.
We both went in there wanting to really have a good time, and he was a pleasure to work with.
Super, super nice guy.
It was really fascinating watching the two different coaching styles.
Mine was really focused on tactics and the blaster play side along with the ball.
Whereas Donald's was definitely more hard-driven traditional sports athlete and coach.
At the end of the day, we were all completely beat, but it was a really beneficial day.
I found my biggest takeaway was that we needed to work on our communication and our planning.
It's one thing to say you're going to have communication when you get out there.
But when you start hearing shouts from the sideline and the rev of the blaster right in
your face, it can be very difficult to hear your team and to effectively communicate on the field.
Moving on to the next day, it was time for the big game.
We had a number of tests, and fittings, and interviews, and things in the morning,
along with more additional practice time, which we utilized every moment of
Then we moved on to the game.
We started off a little more conservative learning
from day one, but we were ready to push the advantage when we saw it.
At halftime, we were up, and we knew we had the advantage,
but we had a ton of energy left, so I was really confident that my team was
going to push hard and push through the remaining two quarters and take it home.
For the respawns themselves, they are technically elective,
meaning you can send whoever you want in.
But, we tended to actually just respawn in order because it was easier to manage
overall as far as keeping track of who was going in, with occasional substitutions on
someone that's just gassed from running around and just exhausted from play.
My personal position and role on the field,
since I did play just as much as any other player, was my classical position:
It's aggressive, it's push hard, it's fire a lot of ammo, and it's generally playing the right
side of the field because I'm just a better shot coming around the right side of bunkers.
The only downside to this was that I was constantly out of darts!
Playing with a nonshared pool of darts
You only get 60 darts per quarter.
This is really easy to go through when you know you have the opportunity to tag someone out.
One of the things you'll notice in the video is you might not see me a lot,
and there's two reasons for that.
One is I'm on the far side of the field, and typically, I'm not touching the ball --
The cameras tend to follow the ball because that's where the action is,
and that's where the most points are.
But my role over and over was to push one side really hard and take as many people out.
And my count at the end of the day was that I was +7.
I got out ten times myself, and I counted 17 tags throughout the event.
So, I figured that was a pretty good number overall, and it played to my skill set.
Coaching a team was an entirely new experience for me.
However, playing and being coached and playing
competitively throughout my paintball years was not new.
When it came to the coaching, I focused on my strengths:
I taught them how to use the blasters effectively,
how to move on the field, how to come around bunkers, and how to communicate
with each other and take advantage and push the momentum when they've got it.
At the end of the day, it was my team's athleticism and talent that brought home the win.
The final quarter was absolutely insane.
The level of play with actual athletes versus your
average Nerf event on a weekend is a completely different game type.
These athletes are incredibly competitive,
they are extremely fast, they're extremely fit, and trying to keep up with them as
someone that is 15-20 years older than them was a very interesting experience.
And down to the final second, we won! Let's go!
I was almost unaware we won.
It took me 20 or 30 seconds to realize that we had actually won the game.
Because my strategy each round had been so similar
It's push hard, tag as many people out as I can, and then run back.
Our MVP, Hannah, ran the ball up twice in a row and got two six-point scores
at the end of the last quarter, and at the end, we took it home.
I had everybody sign this.
It's a 3D-printed ball up top, and then this is made of magazines.
I love it because the engineers at Hasbro put this together, so it was a little extra special for me.
It's like an extra piece of their love and attention to detail in this game.
I, for one, cannot wait to play NerfBall again.
We've got the game type and the rules.
I would love to try to host something here locally to test and play more.
The ruleset is officially out there, so you can download them and play with your friends.
I am very excited for the future of NerfBall,
and I can't wait to see what they do in the next couple of years.
Thank you so much for watching!
Let me know down in the comments what you'd
like to see from NerfBall and any other questions you have.
If it's something we can answer, I certainly will.
Until next time, I'm out of darts…
…but I have a trophy.