The Stampede ECS – What Does It Bring? (Plus Small History) (Basic Nerf Article) (Part 1)

As the days count to down September 9, when the Nerf Stampede will be released, I’ll take this time and blog post to step back and examine some factors about this gun. I acquired one early, so let’s talk about the hardware and what this brings to Nerf games and Nerf wars everywhere! We’ll also take a look at it’s history a little bit.

Hit the jump to read more.

This isn’t the first motorized gun that Nerf has made, but it’s the one that should get the most attention. The famous 9/9/2010 is a motor operated gun that takes 6 D Batteries. Formally known as the Stampede ECS-50, rumors have it that that was the project name and then the name was scraped. A double look at an earlier post of mine can confirm this. It says Stampede ECS-50 on the gun.

It looks to be based on one of their Nerf Video game guns, the Spartan NCS-12.

Quite similar in design, expect the Spartan has a 3 dart burst, uses a 12 clip system, and uses Micro Darts instead.

The Stampede has quite the history with it being announced as the mysterious new 9/9/10 gun, it’s picture being leaked early, and the gun getting released early overseas. It’s the latest Nerf gun that has been brought to the table, and the stage has been set quite high.

This battery powered gun brings it’s three 18 Dart Clips, one 6 Dart Clip, a Bipod/Grip, and detachable shield for $50 or $55 depending on where you buy it from. 6 D batteries should cost you about $10 more. It’s not as fast as the Alpha Trooper’s rate of fire due to this gun’s lack of Slam Fire.

But instead we get a motorized system that rarely jams and should eliminates the errors that come not priming the bar back far enough or trying to fire the gun while it is not primed. Also comes with multiple rates of fire. Just pull the trigger once to fire a dart, hold it down to fire about 3 darts a second.

The gun weighs about 3.5 pounds (3.5 pounds = 1.5875733 kilograms) which is heavier then all the Nerf guns I have. I must say I was not used to the weight when I got the gun. Also this blaster/gun is about 30 inches long. Thats 2 inches long then an Alpha Trooper with a fully extended Raider stock on it. I keep thinking to myself that it’s ok though, since this gun is about as long as an M4 and weighs twice as less. I think the M4 has better weight distribution though, but thats besides the point.

Unless everyone your playing with has this gun or a better one, this is gonna command attention. I’m not sure if you can call this “game breaking” since I haven’t gotten into any wars or games with it, but it seems like it’s able to do that. It’s almost like bringing a more portable and easier to manage Vulcan around. Some say this even fires faster then the Vulcan.

It’s clip system fed so expect people to buy clips and drums to feed this thing and it’s dart consumption. One thing I can expect for certain is whoever wants to be successful with this needs to bring a good amount of clips and have some sort of system strap to hold this big gun.

For the people who modify, theres potential in this gun. It’s direct plunger-ed like the Long Shot which is said to be stronger then the reverse plunger guns like the Recon, Deploy, Raider, Alpha Trooper, ETC. Also theres possibilities of increasing the voltage to make it fire faster, but that might need better gears or/and a stronger spring in order for the insides to hold up the increased power. Theres also the standard Air Restrictor removal.
It’ll require careful touch and patience to get past it’s 36 screws though.

In part 2 of this article we’ll talk about it’s pros, like its rate of fire, and cons, like it’s size. Stay tuned for more!