2016 was a busy year for mask manufacturers as well, releasing 4 new masks, with at least 3 more announced that didn’t make it to market before years end. Well 3, as 2 are differentiations of an existing mask. Let’s take a look.

Virtue

Virtue’s VIO Contour mask is one of the best I’ve ever worn on the field, but as with anything, no one mask is for everyone. Virtue, as a result, has taken their Contour mask and made some changes to target different segments of the market.

XS Crystal

The XS Crystal is the same pattern as the contour, but it is built a little smaller to accommodate players with smaller heads. To help [...]

2016 was a busy year for manufacturers, releasing a combined 18 markers, 4 new masks, 6 new loaders and 2 new high tech systems to enhance your paintball experience (or drain your wallet, jury’s still out). In a series of posts we will take a look back at the new gear that came out in 2016, starting with markers!

Markers that just received only cosmetic changes such as colors or minor milling were excluded.

Tippmann

Tippmann was busy this year, releasing 3 new markers in 2016 alone, squeaking out the third one of their new lineup just around Christmas.

Stryker

A new mid-range scenario marker released in conjunction with the Rip Clip 2.0, this [...]

American football is approximately an hour and a half long affair, broken into half’s and quarters, Basketball, Hockey and Lacrosse are all similarly timed competitions. Soccer (or proper Football as the rest of the world knows it) is two 45 minute half’s; rugby is the same, just 5 minutes shorter each half. Baseball is 9 innings. What do these sports have in common? They’re team based sports that clock in at around 60-90 minutes in duration per match (except baseball, because baseball is just weird). Tournament, professional level paintball events, however, last 5-10 minutes at a time. Then the teams are swapped around based on a ladder bracket and how they did [...]

As a lot of you know I spent nearly a decade and a half serving in the Armed Forces in a maintainer career field. One thing that was beat into my head on a near constant basis was that the best way to fix things is to prevent them from breaking in the first place. This applies to your paintball gear as well.

Some players obsessively disassemble, clean and maintenance their markers after every game they play. Most of us often don’t have that luxury, so we perform maintenance once every month, or couple of months….once a year, never, or only when there’s a problem.

I fall into the category of about once every month I disassemble, clean and maintenance my [...]