Eagle Agent review: knockoff Rival Edge?

So this is a weird thing. This blaster popped up on Nerf Modder's Welcome, r/nerf, and a few other places, and it immediately caught my eye. It was clearly styled after the Rival Edge line, but it was also a weird Chinese knock-off that doesn't seem to be based off any particular product. I loved the aesthetics, and after jumping through some weird hoops and paying far too much money for it, I managed to get my hands on what could be the first one in all of North America. But was it worth all the trouble?

Contents

The box the blaster comes in is tiny. Like, when I saw it wrapped up at my door I was worried they had sent the wrong product tiny. Here's a rocket for scale. 

Inside the box, you get the blaster body, stock, barrel, detached priming handle, sight, bipod, magazine, and 12 rounds of ammo. There's no instructions or any packing material of any kind besides the bag the ammo is in. 

Overview

Because this is a blaster that probably no one else has their hands on, I'm going to be really thorough in this section and run through every part one by one. 

Main Blaster

The main body of the blaster seems to be based off the Rival Edge Mercury. At the top of the blaster there's a tactical rail for the included sight. In front of the rail is a weird little jam door that slides forwards to reveal a relatively tiny hole that I can't imagine being that useful, but its a nice inclusion. 

The muzzle has no hop-up, and the attachment point for the barrel is nearly N-Strike compatible, but unfortunately not quite. Underneath the blaster is a magwell, which is about the length of a standard full length magwell, but it obviously only takes the included magazine. 

Behind the magwell is the mag release, and then behind that is the safety and trigger. The safety is really loose, its easy to switch between safe and fire by accident if you're not careful. At the very back of the blaster is another rail, which is used to attach the stock. 

And finally, on both sides of the blaster is a hole to attach the priming handle depending on which side you want it on. Without the attachments on it, the whole thing is very similar in size to a Kronos. 

Stock

The stock slides onto the rail at the back of the blaster, and the bottom piece pivots around the round part to clip into the bottom of the grip. The orange parts on both sides of the stock pull back a locking mechanism so that the stock can lock on but also be easily removed. Interestingly, the parts that go into the handle of the blaster have clips on them, so it seems to be both designed to be removable but also not removable at the same time. I simply cut down the clips to keep it fully removable. 

Barrel

The barrel is a simple piece, it has a single tactical rail on the bottom for the bipod to attach to, and no moving parts. The attachment system is so close to being N-Strike compatible, but its set at a different angle. I was actually able to slide it on to an N-Strike barrel attachment, but when you twist it to lock it in it ends up at an angle and not aligned to the rest of the blaster, which is a shame. If you wanted to make it work on an N-Strike blaster though, I think it would be doable with some modding. 

Magazine

The magazine holds six rounds, but if you noticed in the photo of the magwell, only half of it can actually be fed into the blaster at once. The mag is fully symmetrical front to back, so effectively you have two three round magazines attached together. Unfortunately there's no way to reload the part that isn't actively feeding while its loaded or anything, so its just sort of a strange system. 

Bipod

The bipod has a somewhat interesting mechanism on it, the legs are locked in the vertical position and held closed by the part that attaches to the rail, and to open it or fold it forward you have to pull the legs down to disengage them from the little locking tab. 

It works alright in practice but I don't know why you'd ever want your bipod locked vertically but with the legs together? There's no other moving parts, the legs don't extend or retract and it only opens as much as shown in the above photo. Note that there's also no mechanism to keep the attachment locked on the rail, but it slides on tight enough that I don't think it'll ever be a problem.

Sight

The sight is about as simple as you can get, much like all the other Nerf sights. Like the bipod there's nothing to actually keep it on the rail, but it fits tight enough. It has a clear piece of plastic for the sight picture, with a few lines on it to make a crosshairs. 

Priming Handle

Not much to mention about this, other than the fact that it screws in, so it's removable and can be installed on either side or swapped between them as you please. 

Rounds

The rounds themselves seem to be nearly the same as authentic rounds, a similar level of squish, and similar sized and shaped dimples. They have an M on them instead of an N, but I have no idea what that stands for. 

Build Quality

I was honestly a bit surprised by the build quality of this blaster. Many of the knock-offs that I have are very thin, creaky plastic, but that luckily isn't the case with this one. The bipod feels a bit cheap and flimsy, but the rest of the blaster for the most part actually feels very very nice. Easily better than Buzz Bee plastic, I'd say maybe even better than X-Shot and Dart Zone plastic and only a bit worse than Nerf. There's a good weight to it, nothing feels like it might break, and the overall feel is very close to the premium Rival feel. The magazine has very little wobble in the magwell but still gravity drops easily, the barrel attachment doesn't have the little locking nub but still locks in snugly somehow, it all just feels great. Even the prime stroke is fairly smooth. The only build quality complaints I have are that the jam door doesn't always stay closed, and the safety switch is very loose. 

Build Quality Grade: A-

Aesthetics

Oh man, this is the main reason why I wanted this blaster so much. I just absolutely adore the look of it. The Rival Edge line was cool looking in general, but in my opinion this looks better than all of them.

The only thing I don't like the look of as much is the bipod, and I would prefer if the top rail extended further forward and the little jam door wasn't there at all, but overall I just think it looks great. Plus its painted on both sides, which puts it ahead of anything Hasbro is making.

Aesthetics Grade: A+

Performance

And here's where we get to the downside. Out of the box, I was only averaging about 61 FPS. That went slightly down with the barrel on, and slightly up with it off. The box claims "27 M/S Speed" which is equivalent to about 88.5 FPS, but unfortunately I had no shots get even close to that. The lack of power combined with the lack of hop-up means that this thing shoots like, really poorly. Ranges stock are about Jolt level. Not exactly the performance you want out of sniper-styled blaster with a 3 round magazine. 

Performance Grade: C-

Usability

I sadly don't think this blaster is usable for much in games. It has a tiny capacity with bad performance, and its a very large shell, so it won't be a great secondary either. Here's a size comparison with my old HvZ Rampage:

If you really want to use it in a game, the best way to run it would be with no stock and no barrel, but then you might as well  just get a Mercury that looks very similar, holds more rounds, hits harder, and can be reloaded more easily. Only coming with one proprietary magazine makes it a pain to reload quickly, as you can't even just swap to another mag. Now, if you're like me and you like to run dumb things in games, then I highly recommend this. I guarantee I'll be using it in games as soon as we can have games again, but if you're looking for a performance blaster, this isn't it. 

Usability Grade: D

Mod Potential

The internals of this blaster are quite interesting. The internal layout is fairly similar to a Mercury, Kronos, or any similar Rival pistol, including a rather massive plunger tube. I expected worse, considering the performance, but the plunger definitely has potential. Like in a Kronos, the spring goes into the guide at the back, and the catch is at the back. The air seal is alright, but could likely be improved, and the spring is really weird. Its incredibly long. Like, almost as long as the blaster long. Here's a size comparison. 

Its a decent strength spring, and its under a LOT of pre-compression. This is where the plunger sits without compressing the spring at all. 

Its a very weird design, but I'm certain it has a lot of mod potential. I don't have any loose springs lying around that will just fit in, but I'm definitely going to be trying to find a Kronos upgrade spring or something similar to see if I can get it up to par. The internals feel sturdy and well made, so I'm not really worried about breaking anything, and the priming handle screws directly into the plunger tube itself, so there should be enough strength to prime a heavier spring without anything breaking. Hopefully with a bit of work I can get this thing performing as good as it looks. I'd also love to see a short dart conversion, but thats definitely more work than I intend to put in personally.

Mod Potential Grade: A?

Value For Money

This... is a hard category to write about. As of right now, this blaster is only available on Alibaba, and nowhere else that I could find. Because Alibaba is a wholesale site, and not a direct retailer, you technically can't buy just one unit, you have to buy in bulk. Now, it is possible to request and pay for a sample unit from the seller, which is what I did, but you have to pay the price per unit, plus a rather... silly shipping fee. I paid $8.49 for the blaster, which is obviously a crazy low price, but the shipping fee was $110, obviously a crazy high price. I can't recommend that any sane person spend $118.49 for this blaster like I did, as that is clearly a stupidly high price. According to some people who have had more conversation with the seller, they intend to bring these to US retailers at some point in the future, so if they become available that way, or at least on Aliexpress, I think the price might be something that is more doable. I think I would realistically pay at least $40 for this blaster considering all the things that are included and the build quality, but for right now with going through Alibaba, I would not recommend spending the money. 

Value For Money Grade: F... for now

Extra Notes

I couldn't find a good spot to mention all of these things in the main review, but here's a few other interesting things. 

Color

The color is like, spot on Rival Edge. The piece below in the photo is from my Jupiter, and the color matches pretty much perfectly. I truly don't have any whole Edge blasters to photograph it with at the moment, but it would fit in perfectly with the color and overall aesthetic. 

Tactical Rails

They're not picatinny, but also not quite identical to the standard Rival rails. 

The rail on the right there is an authentic Rival rail from my Jupiter, and the width seems to be about the same, just a tiny tiny bit wider on this blaster. However, the spacing is different between the raised parts. The sight from this blaster fits very tightly onto the Jupiter rail, but I don't have any Rival rail attachments to test the other way around. 

Final Grades

Its certainly a unique blaster, and I think there might be a lot more in the future for this blaster and maybe for the company that made it depending on what else they have in store.