This is our review of the NERF Rival Nemesis. Like the NERF Rival Khaos it is fully automatic and flywheel powered, but this one is hopper fed with a hundred round capacity!
All this and it fires NERF Rival high impact rounds which fire faster, around 100FPS rather than the usual 70FPS for Elite blasters and much more accuracy than NERF Elite darts. In the words of a wise man “Aye Karumba!”
As with all the NERF Rival blasters, it comes in 2 colors, red or blue, so take your pick (or see which one is cheaper and buy that!)
Factsheet
Pros
- Fires at over 100 FPS (Elite average is around 70 FPS)
- Features an absurd 100 round hopper
- Quick and easy to reload
- Full auto fire of around 4 rounds per second
- Much more accurate than Elite N-Strike blasters
- Good ergonomic design makes it nice to hold and shoot
Cons
- It requires 6 D batteries, which are not included and do not last long either. We advise buying the NERF Rechargeable Battery Packs, which is lighter, gives better power and cheaper in the long term
- Slight delay between pulling the trigger and firing
- That is about it!
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8/10
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9/10
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10/10
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10/10
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9/10
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6/10
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7/10
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10/10
Summary
This is not only the best blaster in the NERF Rival range, it is simply the best unmodified blaster, full stop!
100 rounds, fully auto and RIVAL power and accuracy.
Just get one!
Key Features
- Awesome firepower – full auto 4 rounds per second at up to 100 fps (feet per second) / 30 mps
- NERF Rival High Impact rounds are far more accurate, but not interchangeable with, other types of NERF ammo
- Its ammo capacity of 100 rounds dwarfs anything else currently available
- Can be loaded or partially reloaded from a dump pouch making it incredibly practical too
- It is simply the best NERF gun – get one if you can!!
NERF Rival Nemesis MXVII-10K Review
The Rival Nemesis MXVII-10K has taken over from the Khaos as the big hitter in the Rival range. Essentially it is a Khaos, but rather than have the incredibly complex 40 round magazine, the engineers at NERF have turned it upside-down and left gravity to feed the ammo into the chamber rather than the springs in the Khaos magazine.
This has allowed them to create a hopper that holds 2.5 times more ammo than the Khaos and be more practical to load.
So has this been a piece of brilliance or is the Khaos still the NERF machine gun of choice?
Unboxing & Getting Started
Once you get the box opened and the cables off, you will find
- The Nemesis blaster itself
- and 100 Rival High Impact Rounds
- and yes, the manual!
Design & Ergonomics
The first thing that surprised me when I picked this blaster up, was that it is noticeably lighter than the Khaos. Don’t get me wrong, it still weighs in around 5 lbs, but I was expecting it to be heavier. First tick in the box in my book!
The grip is roughly the same as the Khaos, so as you would expect it is nice and comfortable. Pulling the Nemesis up to your shoulder and it all feels good. I mentioned in my review that the Khaos stock was a little short – the Nemesis is slightly longer and this really helped. The front grip under the barrel is also nice and comfortable too.
The Rival blasters target the 14+ market and since I am over 6′ tall, I find they fit me better than most N-Strike Elite blasters, but the grips also seem to be fine for kids down to about 11 years old.
Before you can do anything you need to insert the 6 “D” batteries or Rechargeable Battery Pack. The cover for this is on the top, secured by one screw. Remove and you can take off the plate and slide in your power supply.
The D batteries are heavier and don’t spin the flywheels up as fast and so does not fire as hard as the rechargeable pack, which we talk about later. So for the cost of a few changes of D batteries, the Rechargeable Battery Pack is a bit of a bargain in my eyes.
Looking over the rest of the Nemesis, there is a set of iron sights on the top and a tactical rail on the hopper in front of the loading door. This is not an N-Strike compatible rail, although you can get them to stick, it is not ideal.
The next is that it also features sling points. If you are involved in a day-long NERF war, being able to sling your blaster during “breaks” is so much more convenient. So that is two things I like more than the Khaos already and we haven’t even mentioned the ammo capacity yet…
Loading
So, let’s get on to that hopper. The opening to the hopper is on the top of the hopper towards the rear, behind the tactical rail. To load ammo into the hopper and you simply slide open up the top door and drop in a hundred balls (I still find that awesome….100 high impact rounds!!) You will need to shake the blaster around a bit as you load so the rounds nestle down into the hopper, but it is so much less fiddly than trying to load a magazine.
After your hopper is loaded you have to shut the door otherwise the lock will stop you revving up the blaster.
Since you load the Nemesis in this way you would possibly expect the hopper to be fixed, but you can actually remove it. The rear sight on the top doubles as the catch, so you flip this over and then you can remove the hopper.
The reason for this is to allow you to clear jams as there is now access door. So if your blaster jams you have to pop the hopper off, and then you can get your finger in there to clear any jams.
Yes you could set yourself up with fully loaded hoppers and load your Nemesis like this, but I don’t think this will be popular. I complained about the size of Khaos mags, so carrying these would be even worse, plus you can already load it quickly from dump pouches which mean you can carry much more ammo with you anyway.
Firing
This is a flywheel blaster, so there is a second trigger on the grip to power up the flywheels. As with all flywheelers you have to rev the blaster for a moment to spin up the flywheels before pulling the trigger or you get a very weak shot.
If you find your Nemesis will not spin up, the first thing to check is whether the hopper door is shut. Yes, this caught me out! There is also an ambidextrous safety catch that stops it revving, so check both of these if nothing happens.
The firing mechanism is similar to the Khaos and Hyperfire in that it uses a conveyor belt system to deliver the darts to the flywheels rather than the pusher arm used in earlier NERF blasters like the RapidStrike.
So, when you pull the trigger the conveyor belt hooks up the rounds at the bottom of the hopper and moves them towards the flywheel. The spinning flywheels then grab and spew the darts out.
The way the rounds drop onto the conveyor belt is not always even. This means that the time to fire the first round after pulling the trigger can vary. There is always a short delay until the first round is fired, but this is more than injection style autos like the RapidStrike, and far larger than a semi-auto like the Stryfe for example. This is not a huge deal but it is worth noting you don’t have that really crisp response time you get with a Stryfe or spring powered blasters.
Also this blaster is full auto, which means that you can only get a single shot with a short pull on the trigger. The problem is that sometimes it does not fire with a short jab to the trigger, so it is usually better to just let fly and stop once you have obliterated your target…did I mention, 100 rounds?!
Unlike the Hyperfire, I found it did not jam as much (neither did the Khaos) so it appears the conveyor belt system is not as fussy with the spherical high impact rounds. Apart from the slight delay between trigger pull and firing, it feels like pretty much any other full-auto blaster – short squeeze and you fire one or two rounds, hold it down and you get a string of darts.
I did find that if you were stationary for too long, the Nemesis didn’t load up properly and you had to shake the balls down to the conveyor. Most of the time this was no problem as running around shakes them up plenty, but if you are on sentry duty, keep an eye open for this.
Lastly, the Nemesis did jam on me a few times when two balls got lodged in the conveyor. I managed to clear several of them with a hefty shake, but one did require me to remove the hopper and fish the offending round out.
Overall this is pretty rare, but it must be said that it does jam slightly more than the Khaos, but nowhere near as often as the HyperFire.
Accuracy
The accuracy of the Rival range is a world apart from the Elite Darts. With Elite darts, you cannot hit a human-sized target at 20m with any sort of regularity. The aerodynamics and inconsistent muzzle velocities ensure too much erratic behavior from your shots. =On the other hand, the spherical Rival rounds have golf-ball like pimples on them. This is a trick blatantly stolen from golf ball manufacturers who have been doing this for years.
Range
As mentioned before, even though RIVAL blasters fire about 50% faster that Elite blasters. However, the reality is that they don’t have any more range than Elite blasters. The high Impact rounds are smaller and lighter than the N-Strike darts, so they just seem to run out of steam, it’s weird!
As for the muzzle velocity, I tested the Nemesis with both D batteries and the rechargeable power pack from NERF. As you would expect, the results were almost identical to the Khaos, which essentially shares the same flywheel mechanism.
With D batteries I managed an average of 94 FPS, which is pretty good, but the rechargeable pack chalked up an average muzzle velocity of 101FPS. The other flywheel Rival, the Zeus, cannot use the rechargeable pack and so was really down compared to its big brothers, only managing 93 FPS. I am still amazed that the best performance I have got from the Rival range is the baby Appollo’s 102 FPS!
So, if the extra velocity does not help with the range, why do I like it so much? Quite simply, the faster your darts leave the barrel, the harder it is to dodge….they still do try mind you
Like the Khaos, I was also very impressed with the way the muzzle velocity held up in auto-fire with the rechargeable unit. Usually, when you hold down the trigger in full-auto the range and speed drops as the flywheel cannot keep up. It did have a few stutters when the conveyor belt did not deliver a round to the flywheels in time, but it kept up a pretty consistent, and high, rate of fire.
Verdict
So, just in case you have not figured it out yet, I love this blaster! It is the most fun blaster I’ve ever used. It is also practical as it takes out the grunt work of reloading mags and carrying dump pouches with a load of ammo is so much easier than mags.
I know this is already an expensive blaster, but I would also definitely recommend the rechargeable battery.
Both the Nemesis and Khaos are pretty tough on batteries, so those big, expensive D batteries will not last that long and it only costs about as much 3/4 sets and believe me, you will be firing this a lot!
Finally, the rechargeable pack is noticeably lighter, plus it gives you even better firepower.
So, to recap, this is a fantastic blaster and if you can afford it…get one!!