Paintball Gear Maintenance: Reliability vs. Real Liabilities

When you step out onto the paintball field, you have a job to do.  It is your responsibility to hold your lanes, get into position, and communicate with your teammates.  If you have an issue with your marker during a practice or tournament, it effectively makes you a useless body on the field, letting down your entire team from a problem that could have been prevented.  Basic marker maintenance is key to ensuring that your gun will shoot every time you pull the trigger.

An unreliable marker makes an unreliable player.

Your marker setup is an extension of yourself, and having unreliable gear leads to you being an unreliable player, as fixing issues at the field severely cuts into your practice time or even worse, actual game time.  It sucks to be the person at a team practice who is scrambling to do maintenance on their marker, while the rest of your team is on the field practicing and learning tricks of the layout that you may miss out on in the pits.  The worst is when you're in a great position on the field with a clear shot on an enemy player, when your gun doesn't shoot when you pull the trigger: you just lost a G for your team, you're probably going to get shot out because you can no longer defend yourself, and the lanes you should be covering become open for the other team to make aggressive moves, leading to your team's entire gameplan falls apart due to your lack of preparation.  When your gear doesn't work properly, you are a liability.

Maintenance is key, be prepared.

I suggest for players to always perform basic maintenance on their gear before each time they go to play paintball to ensure that everything works as it should.  Check your gear the night before you play, that way if you find any problems, you can fix them at home so you'll be ready to play when you get to the field. Maintenance doesn't take long, with most modern markers only taking a few minutes to fully clean and lubricate the bolt system.  If you are unsure on how to care for your marker, the first place to look would be the manual, which can usually be found on the manufacturer's website, and there are many videos on YouTube that will show you step by step how to properly maintain your marker.

Game day preparations checklist:

• Your marker setup, maintained, re-lubed and ready to shoot.
• Fresh brand-name batteries for your marker and loader.
• Backup marker setups to swap out in case of any marker problems during games or Xball points.
• Filled up air tanks.
• Pods and paint ready to go for the next game.

Overall, the gear's cost does not make the player, but the player needs the gear to be reliable and functional so they can do their job on the field.  Remember to always be prepared to play, so you can spend your time at practice on the field rather that on the workbench!

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.