NERF Rival Kronos Review – Our Full Test Of The XVIII-500

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Factsheet

Rival Kronos XVIII-500 Phantom Corps Edition Review

The Rival Kronos XVIII-500 is named after was the leader, and youngest, of the first generation of Titans and the father of Zeus – it has a lot to live up to with that name! So where does the Kronos fit?

Until now, the Apollo was the entry point to the NERF Rival range. The problem was that it did not have enough oomph to be your main blaster, but it was too unwieldy to use as a sidearm.

The Kronos aims to fill this gap as it is small enough to stick in a holster but still featuring Rival power and accuracy. So let’s get started and see if it lives up to this early promise.

Unboxing and getting started

Once you’ve opened the box, inside you will find:

Rival Kronos Box Contents

• The Rival Kronos XVIII-500 blaster
• 5 Rival ammo balls
• Red and blue team flags
• and of course, the manual!

Typical for the Phantom Corps range, the Rival Kronos XVIII-500 comes with its white paint job. It should be noted that since the Phantom Korps range comes in white, they give you a red and a blue ribbon to attach to the butt to denote your team. I’m not sure I would bother, but it is there if you feel the need.

The blaster itself And since this is a rival blaster, it does not have an N-Strike attachment lug, which means no barrel attachments. It does feature a Rival tactical rail, which is not strictly N-Strike compatible (at least not without a lot of er persuasion!)

Along with the tactical rail you will also find a set of iron sights and the loading door, which leads us nicely on to…

Design & Ergonomics

I am over 6 foot tall and I found the grip comfortable and well-shaped. It is larger than the standard NERF guns, but not so large that a teenager could not use it (and possibly younger, although I could never condone such a thing for a blaster aimed at the 14+ market obviously…).

At the bottom of the butt, you have a team flag mount. Being the Phantom Cors Edition is white, it comes with two flags to choose from – that is team red or team blue. So if you are playing with people that really insist on knowing what team you are on you can hook the flags on the blaster so your competition knows who you are.

With its compact design and nice feel, the Kronos XVIII-500 is without a doubt the blaster-of-choice for a Rival powered sidearm. So let’s see how it actually performs

Loading & Firing

The Phantom Corps is a spring action five-round loaded through a little orange door on the top. To open it, you need to pull back the priming handle. This then allows you to open up the access door so you can push in five rival rounds.

After you’re fully loaded you shut the flap and close the slide and boom, you can fire. It is not slam-fire capable but the priming action is pretty light and very slick and smooth to use.

There are these little grips on the back of the slide, that allow you to hold it a lot easier. This is a great addition of the Kronos as you don’t spend time trying to hold down, it can just push back. It’s not a major wow factor but it makes it a lot more user-friendly. As usual, after you primed the blaster once and once you prime it you cannot do it again.

At the back of the slide, there is a priming indicator which shows up blank it’s unprimed. That makes sense. When you prime it back it turns a bright orange color, to tell you that you’re primed up and ready to go. While nothing new, this is a lot clearer than many other NERF guns out there.

As usual, there is a safety catch. Now you may be thinking to yourself do I really need a safety catch on a NERF blaster but it’s no harm to it. Once the switch is down it is in safe mode and once raised up you can use the trigger. You can do this pretty easily with one hand. so no complaints there

This blaster doesn’t have a slam fire. It’s just a pretty standard spring trigger.

There may be a time when the blaster may jam and you can’t pull the trigger then you can’t prime it back so it just seizes. On this NERF Rival Kronos, you have an unjam, exit release button.

If there is jam in the blaster, what you can do is rack up the slide again. Then you can get in there and sort out the jam so you can get back to firing the Phantom Edition. You can also shotgun load to fire two or three loads at once.

Firing

I have found the spring-powered Rival blasters fire a little softer than their battery-powered cousins and this is no different. The battery-powered blasters generally hit the 100fps mark, whereas this clocks around 90fps (approximately 27mps) just like it says on the box.

This is still significantly more than the N-Strike range’s 75fps and it is a decent enough for a sidearm

Accuracy

Rival rounds are more accurate than their N-Strike counterparts and this is no exception. However, this is a pistol, so there is no stock and only iron sights.

Usually one of the issues with spring-powered blasters is that you cannot recalibrate your aim as each time you prime it you have to lower your aim. The way the priming handle is mounted means that this is less of an issue than something like the Apollo.

So overall, the accuracy is about as good as you can get from a spring-powered pistol, but it will not bother your Nemesis wielding opponent!

Range

While this does shoot harder than the N-Strike range, the extra 15fps doesn’t really make that much difference to the range. The aerodynamics of these are obviously not as good. However, the additional accuracy of the rival ammo means that the effective range is significantly more. With an N-Strike blaster, hitting a human at 10m is very hit or miss, whereas these are much truer.

Verdict

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Right, so this Kronos Phantom Corps Edition, in general, is one fine blaster.

Yes, it’s five-round capacity is pretty low in comparison to your other blasters out there, it is perfect for a sidearm.

Everything works well, from the use of the blaster to the priming, loading, and safety mechanism. It definitely looks and feels top-notch.

While some might want a removable magazine, this is more akin to a Strongarm or Disrupter in the N-Strike range and you cannot say the Rival range did not need one of those!

This Kronos is also very keenly priced, especially compared to the Deadpool version, so unless you want the fancy packaging (or you just have to have a red one!) I would go with the Phantom Corps version of the Kronos.

You won’t be disappointed!