SHADOW ICS-6
MODULUS (GHOST OPS)
So it turns out I’m not dead and I’m still on this site. Sorry. But speaking of dead things, ghosts, like the Modulus Ghost Ops line of blasters, and yes it is a line now. You only need 2 points to make a line and we now have the second point. Also apparently not dead is the old style of giving Nerf blasters alphanumeric designations along with their name, so today I’ll be looking at the Shadow ICS-6.
THE BLASTER ITSELF
The Shadow was released in 2019 as the second only blaster entry into the Ghost Ops subset of the Modulus line. It uses the internal magazine system we’ve seen on blasters like the Magnus and Rey/Han blasters. Functionally, however, it has a slightly different loading system which allows the magazine to be loaded when the blaster is unprimed. Additionally, other external features like copious accessory rails, a barrel attachment point and stock attachment point separate the Shadow from other internal magazine type blasters. Perhaps most notable about the Shadow, somewhat counterintuitively, is its light up feature, much like the Evader that came before it. The secondary trigger on the grip activates the lights, which create a pretty cool effect especially in low light. I don’t know if it’s just my blaster, but one of the lights is placed in just the right position to shine right into my face when I try to aim the blaster with the lights on, so that’s a little irksome but by no means a deal breaker. Like the Evader, the Shadow has a tiny little switch on the front end that activates one more light inside the barrel when an extension is put on. This won’t affect 95% of barrels out there, but any of the Ghost Ops barrels light up like fiber optics. Performance-wise, the Shadow does more or less how you’d expect a modern Nerf blaster. Shots fly 
reasonably far and hit equally as hard, maybe not as much as a full-sized blaster, but it is a pistol, kind of. Now we come to my main complaint about the Shadow. When you take into account that it is a 6 shot pistol, it’s huge, a detail not helped by the entirely clear body. This means you can see all of the dead space inside the blaster, which makes the size all the more baffling. I guess it’s not a huge issue, but it bugs me. I guess the extra size does make it just that little bit more intimidating when you bust into your younger sibling’s room and double tap them in the head like a Nerf hitman. The Shadow ICS-6 comes packaged with a barrel attachment and 6 Modulus Elite darts. The light up feature requires 3 AAA batteries but is not needed to operate the blaster otherwise.
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
I want to be clear on one thing, no pun intended. I really like the Shadow as a blaster. That being said, my knack for picking out blasters that not many other people like seems to be in effect again. From what I’ve been able to find, not many people are really thrilled with the Shadow and I can’t quite understand why. It’s a decent blaster with just a few things that are less than optimal.
What’s this?
If you hadn’t yet read the title of this post, I am indeed reviewing the Modulus Ghost Ops Evader.
A couple things recently came to my attention.
“How can a stock warrant its own review?” I hear you say.
Sometimes Nerf will announce or unveil a blaster with a particular gimmick to it and all you can do is nod in acknowledgment and hope it at least shoots well. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it really doesn’t. Not to give anything away prematurely, but this week’s blaster is the latter of the two. I’m talking about the Modulus Battlescout. Let’s scope it out.
The Battlescout ICS-10 was released in 2016 under the Modulus line and was intended to bring 2 cool new features to the brand. The first was the use of a new horizontally-feeding clip as opposed to the more traditional Nerf magazines (despite Nerf themselves referring to them as “clip systems”). The clip holds 10 rounds and automatically advances one position when the blaster is primed via the angled front grip. This means the clip starts by sticking out the right side of the blaster and eventually ends up sticking out the right side or potentially even just fully ejecting from the blaster itself if you’re a little too vigorous with the pump action. I was reasonably interested in having a Nerf blaster with this style of feeding mechanism when I first heard about it, and I still think it has potential, it just seems like the execution left a little to be desired. The clip is just too bulky for only holding 10 rounds, and the ratcheting mechanism in the blaster doesn’t hold onto the clip very securely so it’s possible for it to get bumped out of position. The second feature the Battlescout was meant to showcase was the included attachable Nerf “action cam” that could clip onto a Nerf accessory rail. I’m pretty sure no one was excited about this. After the Elite Cam ECS-12 blaster, everyone was familiar with the quality of cameras Nerf was working with and they weren’t great. At least the Cam blaster had a screen so you could pretend the camera was just a scope instead of a dedicated recording device. Not so with the Battlescout. I only took a couple test videos just to see what it was like, but the picture quality was dark and grainy, the sound was tinny and sounded like it was being recorded through several blankets, that is, until you tried shooting the blaster while recording upon which you were treated to one of the most 
horrific sounds I’ve experienced as the noise from all the blaster’s mechanical parts moving was transferred through the plastic to the mic. There also seemed to be some discrepancy between the video and audio recording, as every time I played back a recording on the computer, the longer the video went on, the further and further out of sync the audio got. Long story short, the camera was just bad. What was worse, though, was the fact that its inclusion jacked up the price of the Battlescout to almost $70. Yikes, indeed. “But does it shoot well, at least?” I hear you ask. Well, dear reader, no. No it doesn’t. I can’t quite tell where the problem is, but it’s one of the weakest shooting blasters I can recall from recently. Flaccid is a generous term. More than once, I’ve had shots just tumble out of the barrel followed by the slab of orange plastic getting spat out the side of the blaster, sometimes travelling further than the dart. Not great. I can’t say I’d recommend this one for attacking your siblings unless you’ve got enough of a presence that you don’t have to actually shoot to get your point across, because at the very least, the Battlescout looks cool, and with places to attach a barrel, a stock and anything else besides that camera onto the top rail, you can really dress it up. The Battlescout ICS-10 comes packaged with the Camera, a 10-round clip, and 10 Elite Modulus darts.
Sometimes a really good idea isn’t something entirely brand new, but rather, a refinement of something that already exists. Up till this point, we’ve had the Raider CS-35, the Alpha Trooper CS-18, the Rampage, Elite Alpha Trooper, and Stormtrooper Deluxe blaster (the first one) that all fill the role of pump-action magazine fed blasters. Well, with Nerf’s latest wave of products, we have yet another to check off those boxes and then some. Let’s have a look at the Modulus Mediator.
First things first, I have no idea why they went with “Mediator” for the name of a blaster. It doesn’t have quite the same sort of imposing punchy quality as something like the Rampage or Retaliator. Even in the context of a conflict, a mediator is supposed to be a neutral third party that gets two opposing sides to agree on something. I don’t know, just feels like a weird choice, but that’s what it’s called so I guess let’s just roll with it. The Mediator was released in 2018 as part of the Modulus line of products, Like I said, the Mediator operates much like other pump mag blasters but with 2 major differences. I would say they’re improvements, but I’m sure there are people who aren’t fans. Probably the same weirdos that thought The Last Jedi was the worst thing ever, but that’s neither here nor there. The shell of the Mediator is all new work apart from the standard Nerf barrel and stock attachment points. That actually brings us to the first big improvement, that being customizability. While you could expect to find a stock attachment and a rail on pretty much all other pump mag blasters, what you never found was a second rail (I’m counting the Raider/Rampage’s rails as one big one, fight me) or a barrel attachment lug, both of which the Mediator provides quite handily. The extra rail on the right 
side obviously grants you greater potential for decking out your blaster with tactics. That’s all well and good, but the inclusion of the barrel lug is really what’s new. Given blasters like the Rampage and Alpha Trooper needed already pretty lengthy front ends to accommodate the pump action, extending the barrel further doesn’t make much sense as it would only work to slow the dart after being fired. As such, they never had barrel extension lugs, but the Mediator pulls it off thanks to it’s second major improvement over previous blasters. The whole thing is super compact with just a short little barrel. This means adding extra barrels doesn’t drastically reduce performance, which in turn means even more customization. The ergonomics of the Mediator are pretty great. I’d say it’s probably the best we’ve seen from the Modulus line so far. The pistol grip is a good size and has a really nice grippy texture to it that I haven’t seen before but certainly hope to see again. The same texture is also on the pump grip, which is a little short, but not enough to hinder, and I can understand the desire to not have it protrude too far from the body of the blaster. Everything feels nice and solid, though I wish the ratcheting on the pump grip was a little quieter when cycling the bolt. Nothing a little light modification can’t fix, though. My last gripe is purely aesthetic. I wish the blaster had a raised front sight parallel to the very prominent rear one. While this would have looked better in my opinion, it turns out the little stubby nub at the front end IS a front sight and is even relatively well calibrated to give slightly arced shots for a subtle boost to the range. On that note, the performance of the Mediator is decent. Shots fly and impact right on par with those of other comparable blasters. The ability to slam-fire is also a plus when busting into your younger sibling’s room and laying down heavy fire. The Mediator comes packaged with the magazine well detached (needs to be installed to operate the blaster), a 6 round magazine, and 6 white Modulus styled Elite darts.
The Figure In Question 