The HvZ Loadout Checklist: What to Pack Before Game Day

An HvZ loadout fails at hour four, in the dark, with an empty magazine and no way to reload. Nobody finds that out in the shop, they find it out in the game. Here is the pack list in the order the day actually happens, from the one decision you make before buying anything to the check you run at the door.

Gunner here. Humans versus Zombies is the format that turns Nerf from an afternoon in the yard into an actual event. Days long, whole campuses, real strategy.

It is also the format where being unprepared is most obvious.

I have watched people show up with a beautiful blaster and lose a game to logistics. So this is the checklist: what you standardise before you buy anything, what goes in the bag, what goes on you, and what you check in the last 10 minutes.

Rule zero: one ammo type, everything

Before any of the rest of this matters, decide what your blasters eat, and then make every blaster you carry eat the same thing.

1. A primary and a secondary that take different darts is a broken loadout. You will pick up ammo off the ground all day. If half of it does not fit your sidearm, half of your pickups are dead weight.
2. Most HvZ players standardise on half length darts, also called short darts, because flywheel blasters feed them reliably and they fit far more of them in a magazine. If you are running a stock springer, standard Elite length is fine, just be consistent.
3. Mega, Rival and Ultra are all their own worlds. They do not share ammo with anything and they do not share it with each other. There is nothing wrong with running Mega, just do not run Mega and Elite in the same loadout and expect to resupply from the floor.
4. Check what the event allows before you buy. Some games run Rival only, some ban it outright, some are darts only. Ten minutes reading the rules saves a hundred dollars.

Get rule zero right and the rest of this HvZ loadout is shopping. Get it wrong and none of the rest helps.

The blasters

Two blasters, one ammo type, both inside the cap. That is the whole blaster half of an HvZ loadout.

1. A primary you can top off on the run. Magazine fed, and one you can swap a magazine into without stopping. Anything that takes 20 seconds to reload is a blaster you will drop the moment things get busy.
2. A secondary that shares the ammo. Small, holstered or slung, and it exists for the moment the primary runs dry or jams. It does not need to be impressive. It needs to be there.
3. Both blasters inside the event’s FPS cap. HvZ events commonly cap somewhere between 120 and 150 feet per second, and some run lower for indoor play. Your event’s number is the only one that counts. If your blaster is modded, assume it will be chronographed and know your number before you arrive. The joules to FPS calculator will tell you what a cap means for your dart weight.
4. Nothing that needs a wall outlet mid game. If it is battery powered, see the power section below.

Here is the part people resist. The secondary matters more than the primary.

A jam on your primary is a 30 second problem, and 30 seconds is the whole rest of your game if a zombie is closer than that.

The ammo, and how much

Ammo is where an HvZ loadout is won the night before, on the sofa, in front of the television. It is also the cheapest part of the whole list.

1. Magazines, pre loaded, the night before. This is the single biggest difference between a smooth game and a bad one. Loading magazines in the field costs you minutes at exactly the wrong moment.
2. Four to six loaded magazines minimum for a full day game. More if you are running a high rate of fire blaster, because you will empty them faster than you think.
3. A bulk dart refill in the bag. You will lose darts. Everyone loses darts. Bring more than you think is reasonable and you will still end the day with fewer than you started.
4. Sock ammo, if the event uses it. Many HvZ games arm the zombie side with socks. Bring a few, they are free, and know the rule for whether you can throw them back.

Darts are consumables, not equipment. Treat them like water and fuel rather than like a blaster, and you will pack the right amount.

On your body

Everything in this section is about keeping your hands free, which is the thing you will not appreciate until the moment you need them.

1. A sling, cross body. A blaster you cannot let go of is a blaster that stops you climbing a fence, opening a door, or carrying anything. Cross body, not single point, if you are moving all day.
2. A dart bag or a pouch on the belt. Reaching into a backpack for ammo is a reload you will not survive.
3. Eye protection. Not negotiable and most events require it. If you are running Rival it is required by common sense as well as by the rules.
4. Shoes you have already walked 10 miles in. HvZ is a walking game with sprinting in it. New shoes will end your day earlier than any zombie.
5. Your team marker, headband or armband, per the event’s rules, and a spare because they get lost.
6. Water. More than you think. Then more than that.

The shoes line is not padding. More players drop out of long games from blisters than from anything a zombie does.

Power, if anything you own has a motor

Skip this section entirely if you run springers. If not, power is the quietest failure in any HvZ loadout, because it degrades instead of breaking.

1. Fully charged batteries before you leave the house, and a fully charged spare set in the bag. The battery runtime calculator will tell you how many packs a full day actually takes.
2. Alkalines are a false economy in a flywheel blaster. They sag under load, your rate of fire drops through the day, and you will not notice it happening until your blaster is noticeably slower than it was at breakfast.
3. A LiPo pack holds its voltage far more steadily under load, which is the whole reason players switch. If you run LiPo, read the LiPo safety checklist first. Charging, storing and transporting LiPo packs has real rules and that guide is exactly that. Do not learn them in a parking lot.
4. A voltage checker in the bag if you are running anything other than fresh alkalines. It tells you in 2 seconds whether the problem is the battery or the blaster.

Your first HvZ loadout, start to finish

If you are building this from nothing, here is the order that wastes the least money. Each step is usable on its own, so you can stop at any point and still play.

1. Read the event rules. Ammo type, FPS cap, eye protection standard, marker rules. Everything downstream depends on these 4 facts.
2. Pick the ammo type, then the primary. That order, not the other one. The blaster is a delivery method for the ammo you already committed to.
3. Buy magazines before you buy a second blaster. Four magazines improve your game more than any sidearm will.
4. Add the secondary. Cheap, shares ammo, holstered.
5. Sort carry. Sling and a dart pouch. This is the step people skip and then rebuild after their first event.
6. Sort power, if applicable. Spares, charged, plus a checker.
7. Test everything a week out. Not the morning of.

An HvZ loadout built in that order is never useless at any stage. Built in the other order, you own a great blaster and no way to feed it.

If you get tagged: the zombie side

You will get tagged. In most games that is not the end of your day, it is the second half of it, and almost nobody packs for it.

Every HvZ loadout guide stops at the moment you lose, which is roughly halfway through most people’s actual experience of the game.

The zombie half of an HvZ loadout is short, cheap, and completely different in character.

• Socks, if the event uses them. Usually your only ranged option. Bring several, because a thrown sock is a sock you have to go and find.
• The other marker. Most games flip your headband or armband from one position to another. Know which before you need to.
• Somewhere to stow the blaster. You are still carrying it, you just cannot use it. A sling earns its money twice here.
• Shoes and water, unchanged. Zombies run more than humans do, not less.

Nothing on the zombie list costs anything. It is entirely a matter of having thought about it before it happened.

Pack an HvZ loadout for both sides and getting tagged stops being the moment your day gets worse.

Multi day games, and what changes

A day game and a week long campus game are different problems. Most of the list stays identical, and 4 things change.

• Charging becomes a schedule, not an event. You need a charging plan for every night, and somewhere safe to do it.
• Dart recovery becomes a habit. On a long game you will run out of what you brought, so picking up darts stops being optional.
• Maintenance enters the picture. Springs, jams and a quick clean between days. Bring the small end of the modder’s toolkit.
• Sleep and food are equipment. They are not on this list, and they decide more long games than anything on it.

Everything else in this HvZ loadout carries over unchanged.

The last ten minutes, before you walk in

Run this at the door, out loud, every single time. Ten items, 10 seconds, and it is the last chance your HvZ loadout gets to save you.

• ☐ Magazines loaded and in the pouch, not in the car.
• ☐ Primary primed and cleared, secondary in the holster.
• ☐ Eye protection on your face, not on your head.
• ☐ Batteries in, spares in the bag.
• ☐ Marker on.
• ☐ Phone charged, and a battery pack if the game runs into the night.
• ☐ You know the event’s FPS cap and you know your blaster’s number.

That last one catches more people than everything else on this page combined.

Three mistakes I see every single event

1. Mixed ammo types. Covered above, and it is still the most common one.
2. One magazine. People buy a great blaster and one magazine, then spend the game kneeling behind a wall reloading it by hand.
3. A blaster nobody has fired since last season. Springs take a set, batteries self discharge, and dried grease turns into glue. Fire 50 darts through everything you own the week before, not the morning of.

All 3 are free to fix and all 3 are still there at the next event. None of them are about the blaster, which is the point of building an HvZ loadout as a list rather than as a purchase.

Gear for this checklist

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Amazon links below are affiliate links. They cost you nothing extra and they are what keeps guides like this one being written. See our affiliate disclosure.

Where a specific model is named it is one we have handled. Everything else is a search link on purpose, because stock changes constantly and a dead link helps nobody.

Category	Item	Find it
Ammo	Elite 2.0 80 dart refill	80 dart refill
Ammo	Elite 2.0 50 dart refill	50 dart refill
Ammo	AccuStrike 12 dart refill, the accurate option	AccuStrike refill
Ammo	Half length darts	Nerf half length darts
Ammo	Rival rounds, if your event runs Rival	Rival 240 round refill
Blaster	Magazine fed primary	Nerf magazine fed blaster
Blaster	Zombie Strike Scravenger, two 12 dart clips	Scravenger
Blaster	Elite Disruptor, a good secondary	Disruptor
Blaster	Elite Strongarm, the other good secondary	Strongarm
Magazines	Spare clips and magazines	Nerf dart magazine clip
Carry	Cross body sling	Nerf blaster sling
Carry	Dart pouch or bag	Dart pouch
Safety	Eye protection	Safety glasses
Safety	Rival face mask	Rival face mask
Power	AA batteries	AA batteries bulk
Power	D batteries, for Rival motors	Amazon Basics D 12 pack
Power	Battery voltage checker	Battery voltage checker

Frequently asked questions

What is the minimum HvZ loadout for a first event?

One magazine fed primary, 4 loaded magazines, eye protection, and a sling. That is a complete HvZ loadout and it will get you through a day game.

The secondary is the next thing to add, not the first.

How many magazines do I actually need?

Four to six for a full day. Under 4 you will spend the game hand loading, over 6 you are carrying weight you never reach for.

Do I need a chronograph in my HvZ loadout?

No, the event chronographs you. What you need is to know your number before you arrive, which you can work out from your dart weight with the kinetic energy calculator.

Half length or full length darts?

Half length if you run flywheel blasters, because they feed reliably and a magazine holds far more of them.

Full length Elite is fine on a stock springer. The wrong answer is both.

Can I run Rival and Elite in the same loadout?

You can carry both, and you will regret it. They share no ammo, so every dart or round on the ground is only useful to one of the two blasters you are carrying.

Should I buy a new blaster for my first event?

No. Play one event with what you own and a bag of magazines, then buy with an opinion instead of a guess.

Almost every player I know regrets their first blaster purchase and none of them regret their first magazine purchase.

What goes wrong most often on the day itself?

Reloading. Not range, not accuracy, not the blaster. The players having a bad game are almost always the ones kneeling behind something with a handful of loose darts.

An HvZ loadout is a logistics problem wearing a blaster costume.

Is eye protection really required if the event does not check?

Yes. Assume every event requires it, wear it whether or not anybody looks, and buy the pair you will actually keep on your face for 8 hours.

What does an HvZ loadout weigh once it is packed?

Heavier than you expect, and almost all of it is water and darts rather than blasters. Pack the HvZ loadout, then walk a mile with it before game day.

Related pages: the Zombie Strike lineup, Nerf war games and how to run a battle, all the checklists, the LiPo safety checklist, the modder’s toolkit, and every Nerf gun ever made when you are picking a primary.

It’s Nerf or Nothin’!

Kitting somebody else out? Put the loadout on a free Nerf wish list instead of writing it down. The darts that fit each blaster go on with it, and the family get one link to buy from.