Paintball is one of favorite sports in the world. Playing the game is two fold, your game play and your gear. This article will be covering information regarding your gear and what you need and what you don’t. This article is mostly written for people beginning the game and getting their first gun. After that players will expand on what gear they want to use and what they don’t want. But every player had to start at the bottom of the chain, and learn their way up.
The start of playing is your gun. Everything begins here. A new player does not need to buy the most expensive gun on the market. A good player will work his way up the line of guns. A more expensive gun has many things that can fail or break. A new player has a very high chance of causing damage to their gun early on in their career because of a lack of experience. Your first gun should be something less expensive and reliable. Tippman, Ion, and Kingman guns are great first markers. Paintball guns are now called markers in the stores and fields, so for the rest of the article they will be addressed as markers. The three companies have many different models and prices for their guns. Their guns are reliable on the field and have proved their name time and time again. I would say in order of price from low to high goes like this: Kingman, Tippman, Ion. Each gun has a different model and body type, but they are under the $300 mark. The Ion is the most expensive of the three and yet most customizable. The Ion is built by a company called Smart Parts. They also have many professional grade markers for upgrades when you are ready to move up. Tippman has been used at paintball fields as the rental gun everywhere. This shows how reliable their gun can be. They also have an upgrade to their base guns for a decent price. Kingman builds the Spyder line of markers. Their new line of markers ranges from low cost to professional grade speed and technology.
There are a few things you will want your gun to have when you buy it. Speed and anti chop eyes. When you play on the fields you will become accustomed to speed. Your gun has to be accurate and fast. Your speed is measured in BPS, Balls Per Second. Most fields will have a limit of 30 BPS, since this is the national limit. You may be thinking that’s insane, 30 paintballs each second. The main reasoning for such high speeds is cheating, but we won’t cover that in this article. Your fist gun should be able to handle 15-25 BPS with no problem. And you as a player should be able to shoot 8-10 BPS your first game. Eventually with some practice you should be able to shoot 12-15 BPS no problem. But do remember that speed is not everything. Being accurate is more important than just spraying paint down the field. The good players usually shoot at 10-12 BPS. This a very slow speed compared to other players. The difference is the slower shooters are more patient and accurate. That’s something a good player wants to do, be accurate and not waste paint.
The technology in your gun is also important. Mostly for your first gun if you can afford it you will want anti-chop eyes. This is a laser inside where the paintballs drop. This laser tells the gun there is paint ready to be fired in the chamber. This little piece of equipment can save your life in a game and keep your gun from being jammed. So make sure your gun has this anti-chop eye and your game will definitely improve.
