What a time to be a longtime paintball player!
Everything old is becoming new again and the
things many of us fell in love with about paintball
are back in a big way! Wooded tournament fields,
Hyperball and mounds are what’s being talked
about, new ten-man tournaments with mechanical
marker rules are popping up all over the nation
and mechanical guns are not only coming back
out of gear bags, closets and garages, but out of
manufacturers’ front doors as well! If playing ten-
man, playing competitive woods, hyperball or
mounds, or if playing paintball with a marker that
doesn’t need batteries are things that sound great
to you, this is a great time and the options on the
table are better than ever!
The times best-remembered in tournament
paintball aren’t always remembered for the type
of paintball guns used by the players and teams
that made those times great and those memories
treasured, but nostalgia certainly seeps through the
skin and into the heart when a player picks up an
Autococker or an Automag, depending on which
camp you might have belonged to in those days. It
may even be something older, like a Tippmann 68
Special, VM-68, a Bushmaster, Piranha or Phantom
pump, or even a Splatmaster or NelSpot 007 pistol.
With me it was a Splatmaster, a 68 Special and then
Automags, and later Autocockers before things
went fully electronic. I still own several Automags
and Autocockers to this day. However, as popular
as rebuilt retro models like Autocockers and
Automags are, new markers have risen to make
mechanical paintball more accessible as players
return to their competitive roots, with companies
like Planet Eclipse, GOG, Empire and Inception
stepping up to the plate to offer players new school
and old a battery-free engine for putting paint on
people.
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