Recently, a teammate of mine purchased a gear bag deal that came with multiple markers, one being a well-loved Spyder MR1. But well-loved in this case didn’t translate to well taken care of; this Spyder has seen some things.

When my teammate, Eric (not his real name) attached a tank to it, air leaked down the barrel. He and another teammate did some basic maintenance by replacing the bolt and hammer o-rings, as well as re-lubing parts.

Having started with an MR1 way back when, I am pretty familiar with this marker. I still have mine lurking somewhere in my garage, in fact. When I mentioned that I used to run an MR1 to Eric, he handed me the [...]

On Friday I grabbed my gear, loaded my truck and drove 8 hours to Nighthawk Paintball outside of Spokane, WA for their annual Mortar Wars game. I ended up having a great time there, and will provide a more in depth review of the weekend in another post. I camped out Friday and Saturday night, and because I’m used to getting up at 5 am for work during the week, I found that sleeping in for me meant I was awake at 6am, with the event not starting until much later in the morning.

All year I’ve been fighting with my TiPX to get it to work properly – I kept venting CO2 out of the velocity adjustment screw and emptying a cartridge in seconds. I’ve [...]

Introduction

In 2009 Tippmann unleashed their supremely popular TPX pistol. Within a few years an after-market parts economy sprung up to satiate players desire to fit the platform into different roles and needs. As shown in our TiPX Guide, some of these mods included SMG style body kits ranging from composite to aluminum bodies. Tippmann, seeing players burning desires for such a platform, took it upon themselves to provide an off the shelf SMG paintball marker, thus giving the world the Tactical Compact Rifle, or TCR.

The TCR is designed and built around the TiPX internals, but featuring several key differences. First, the TCR is First Strike compatible straight out [...]

There were 18 new markers that came out in 2016, thankfully the manufacturers saw fit to release a combined 5 new loaders to feed those hungry beasts.

As with the markers, loaders that received simple cosmetic updates were not included in this post.

GI Sportz

LVL

Featuring 3 speeds, stock speed feed with rain lid and tool-less disassembly the LVL loader is priced at entry level prices.

  Virtue

Spire III

Continuing the advanced technology theme that 2016 seems to have followed, the Spire III has a basic computer on board that can sync with your smart phone. Right now the tech is limited to firmware [...]