PSP Paintball World Cup 2012 this week!

This upcoming week marks the most exciting time of year for the paintball industry.  The 2012 PSP World Cup is taking place in Florida this week and will be a time for new product launches, fierce competition and new chapters in many paintball team franchises.  In addition to bringing back 10-man to the many divisions of speedball play, PSP has joined with the UWL to bring woodsball back to national paintball competition scene.

World Cup Product Launches & Vendors

PSP's World Cup has always been an important launching point for creating market buzz in the paintball industry and releasing new products for the next year's season.  It is arguably the largest paintball event in the world, with the most players(over 300 teams), the most fields, and the most vendors attending.

List of Event Sponsors,Vendors and Rumours:

Athletes Joined Against Spondylitis

BLAST

Bud Light
Carmatech Engineering:Their new SAR12 Tactical marker is an exciting looking First Strike compatible milsim rifle that is sure to draw a lot of attention.

Circus Spectacular
Contract Killer

Custom Products
Derder

Dye: Dye's new D.A.M. Tactical marker is expected to be released at Cup, as well as the new DM13 to continue the Matrix legacy.

Empire: A new mystery Empire marker has been spotted in the hands of a couple of Infamous players over the past weekend.  Appearing wrapped up in tape to hide the looks of the marker's design, not much is know about the marker, but rumours on PBNation suggest that it is a brand new high-end marker that will be released at Cup.  Hopefully we'll get more details this week.

Exalt Paintball
Fat Sam’s Concessions

GI Sportz

GOG

HK Army

Hungry Howies Pizza
JT
KM Straps
MacDev

Ninja Paintball: Ninja's air system's have been top-quality since their introduction to the market.  Their new Pro Regulator has the useful feature of having a rotating collar, which allows the user to rotate their tank reg to change placement of the gauge and fill nipple.  With this regulator, you'll never have the fill nipple in the way of your wrist again!
NXe
Paintball Media Group and Social Paintball
PBLife.com
PbRack Clothing

Planet Eclipse

Procaps Paint Trucks

Raza: Raza has plans to release new products at cup this year including a new line of polo shirts, jerseys, gloves, shorts and headbands.

RPS Paint Trucks

Sup’AirBall Bunkers
Tiberius Arms

Trade My Gun
Ultimate Paintball
Understood
UWL - Ultimate Woodsball League
Valken

Virtue

Canadians Playing World Cup

I want to take this opportunity to wish good luck to all of the Canadians from Ontario traveling down to Florida to play World Cup.  New Canadian teams of note include:

• Toronto Force D1:  Force is a brand new PSP team that is made up of veteran Canadian superstar players from the CXBL. Take a look at this Outside the Mesh Article for more info regarding this new powerhouse team.
• Alliance D3:  This is a new camp that will be making its premiere at PSP World Cup this week.  Made up of players from the Cambridge/Kitchener area including many from the CXBL and MXL divisions.  Alliance is planning on creating a camp for next season which will have teams ranging across most of the divisional games.

Alliance's World Cup jerseys, printed by Ntensity Customs

• SportsAgressor Moscow D3:  Although this is a Russian team, there are Canadian players on the roster and it is possibly the most exciting team in the division.  Coming together at the previous PSP Mid Atlantic Open event, two of my Canadian Express teammates joined up with the Russians to take on the American paintball scene.  After narrowly missing making the Sunday cut for finals, SportsAgressor Moscow is returning to shoot for the top this event and will definitely be a team to watch in D3 at this event.

SportsAgressor Moscow at PSP MAO, pic from PaintballPhotography.com

PSP Paintball World Cup 2012 Webcast From PaintballAccess

Continuing their great series of live webcasts for the 2012 PSP season, PaintballAccess.com will be returning for World Cup to bring live paintball to the online digital world. 

The live webcast is starting off this Wednesday with a World Cup Pre-Show.  This will feature paintball legends Matty Marshall, Todd Martinez and Chris Lasoya to get the latest behind-the-scenes news on teams, roster changes and player injuries.  You'll also get some analysis of the past PSP season to see what teams are expected to be on top and who to watch out for during the games this weekend.

Coverage for the rest of the event will include commentary from professional paintball players, interviews with players and of course intense paintball action during the event.  Webcast coverage will begin on Thursday and continue through Sunday's finals.  Pro team coverage will take up most of the webcast time, but we may get a chance to see divisional teams' games being broadcasted as well.  Be sure to watch the webcast this weekend if you've got some free time at home, wishing you were playing paintball in Florida!

Using the simple taglines, "Watch it. Love it.  Live it." 

Paintball Access is the place to be for everything paintball this week.

Load me up another clip! A new age in milsim markers.

Tactical, milsim and scenario paintball has never really been something that interested me, as I love the pure competition of the speedball format, but recent news has definitely been grabbing my interest.  There has been some big product news the past week or so that may really excite tactical and scenario players: Magazine fed markers are finally coming into the mainstream.  Both Dye and Spyder have released photos and information regarding new magazine-fed paintball markers which should be released around World Cup.  These markers seem like perfect execution of a design feature that has always been asked for by groups of players, but never really effectively put into action on affordable, reliable, high quality markers.  We'll start it off with the high-end luxury marker, then cover the new affordable markers which are really catching my eye.

Dye's D.A.M. - Dye Assault Matrix

 Here's the promo video from Dye promoting their new tactical marker, take a look:



With a reputation for quality high quality markers, Dye has really outdone themselves here.  Rather than taking their regular speedball designed markers and adding tactical rails and rear stocks, then re-releasing it as a "new, tactical marker" (similar to the tactical Etha and G6r's).  The D.A.M. is designed from the ground-up as a tactical marker with a lot of basic ideas that are really refined to be done right: the stock is lowered which actually allows you to line up to use the sight rails, the loader is offset so your feedneck doesn't block the sight rails either.  It has an ergonomic single trigger frame combined with a button for select-fire to quickly change between firing modes from semi auto, to three round burst to full auto.

The hybrid magazine/hopper feed system seems to have the perfect simplicity needed for switching in quick situations.  The magazines hold 10 rounds on each side, using a "dual mag" design and are compatible with First Strike paintball rounds, which can offer a significant improvement in shot stability and range.  Combine these with the ability to also use a standard hopper on top and quickly switch between the two, and you have a real winner here. 

Spyder's new MR series and Hammer 7 Pump

Here's the other cool news in tactical magazine-fed markers: Spyder.  Although the MR series has been around for a few years now, this year's line also includes a magazine feed option on their mechanical and electronic markers.  The MR5 and E-MR5 are equipped with a rear stock and sight rails, and is available as either a mechanical or electronic marker. 

The one that really excited me here is the new Hammer 7 pump marker.  This is a re-design of the old Kingman Hammer pump markers that were around in the past, but an exciting new look.  The idea of a magazine fed pump is great, it's similar to stock class in that you have limited ammo, but I could see it being much easier to switch between magazines than to fumble with 10-round tubes trying to reload.  Once again, with the option of switching back and forth between hopper feed and magazine feed, these new markers add a whole new level of versatility to the game of paintball.  I've always been interested in pump paintball play as a fun way to add a challenge to the game or for playing rec ball while keeping paint costs down, and the new Hammer 7 looks like it will be a real winner in this area.