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Cube Warfare: Accessorizing your gun

You might have noticed that most Nerf N-Strike guns have the same strange rails on their barrels. They aren't there for style; they're for mounting after-market accessories. Yes, Nerf makes an entire line of N-Strike accessories for your guns, and they range from totally useless to... slightly less useless.

Let's get one thing out of the way: scopes are pointless on a Nerf gun. They're too weak and unreliable to get any accurate performance. Still, they're fun to play with, and that's the entire point of playing with Nerf guns.

Like we mentioned before in the rifle round-up, the Longshot and Longstrike come with their own sights. The Longshot includes a comically large, entirely pointless tube scope, and the Longstrike features a flip-up iron sight. The scope looks best on the Longstrike, giving it even more of a sniper-rifle aesthetic than it does out of the box.

You can pick up a smaller scope as part of the N-Strike Mission Kit line of accessories. Like the larger scope, the Tactical Scope is just a plastic tube with two flat, clear "lenses" and a sight painted on one end. This version features a flip-on filter that makes the scope look slightly orange, which is a neat-but-useless effect.

The Pinpoint Sight is another member of the N-Strike Mission Kit family, and while it's just as useless as the scope, it's much cooler. A laser-like LED projects a bright red dot on a clear panel, giving the effect of a holographic sight. The sight is also much smaller than either scope and stays very securely on N-Strike rails, making it one of the few accessories to work well on a Maverick.

The Nerf Recon comes with a red dot/tactical light that borders on the useful. For after-market parts, Nerf offers the green Tactical Light Mission Kit, a plain green light that snaps onto one of your accessory rails. If you're planning to fight in low light, it can be a fairly handy accessory. Of course, if you're planning to fight in low light, you should prepare to never see most of your darts again.

Finally, there's the least flashy and most useful N-Strike accessory, the Flip Clip. It isn't part of the Mission Kit line and doesn't work with the N-Strike accessory rails, but it's still an incredibly handy accessory to anyone who uses magazine-loading Nerf guns. It's a gray plastic clip that lets you join two magazines together so you can just flip them over to reload. The kit also comes with two fresh magazines and enough darts to fill them, so you can keep on firing without buying separate ammo.

If you really want the scope and/or a tactical light, pick up the Nerf Element EX-6. It includes the tactical scope, the dual-mode light that comes with the Recon, and a nice little single-shot pistol that can serve as a handy backup. It's easily a better deal than getting both accessories individually. Otherwise, the only accessories you really need are more darts, and the only accessory that's actually useful is the Flip Clip.