There’s a huge choice of Airsoft guns out there. Some good, some bad, some ugly. How do you know which one is the best, and which one is going to bring you the most success in a game? There’s a whole heap of options out there, but is it possible to put all the best bits into one complete package? Hell yeah, of course any player wants that. Let’s jump into the world of upgrades…

Going back 30 years in Airsoft…

We had much less of a choice. A few basic AEG’s, some spring shotguns, early spring sniper rifles, and that was about it. There were no upgrades, so you had to rely on your skills. Sniping was much more an art form and the few who did it were really capable of having a big effect on the bearing of a game, and I did have a lot of admiration for the AEG guys who practised their drills and could stack up properly; you had to really because the range on the AEG’s was so poor. It was a much simpler time.

I think with the growth of the Internet came the growth of Airsoft, as it was able to reach whole new audiences. Suddenly, there were numbers. And money. Upgrades started to appear. AEG’s weren’t just a cosmetic to add to your loadout, they became measured in their performances. Through new parts, it became possible to eradicate weaknesses. Airsoft was no longer about the experience of turning up and playing, being out with your mates in the woods on a Sunday; we had a new breed of player – competitive, needing to be the best, have the best, and for everyone to know they were the best.

But they needed better equipment to be the best. The first demand, from pretty much all parties, was range. The snipers had more range, which wasn’t a fair fight, so there needed to be improvements in barrels and buckings to allow the AEG’s to compete, without having a minimum engagement distance, and while still being 150fps short. The improvements in internals, and the growth both of aftermarket parts and the specialist companies that made them, spawned a whole new industry – teching. Making your gun better than your competitors. These upgrade parts have certainly allowed some players to push above and beyond the rules. The power was still a limitation though if you were comparing an M4 to a bolt action. And that just creates an uneven playing field.

And so came the advent of the DMR – an AEG with more power, not quite on a par with the bolt action snipers but still an advantage over the standard AEG. These were bumped up in power halfway between the AEG (usually 350fps in the UK) and the bolt action (usually 500fps). The catch was, the DMR had to be locked to semi, so you couldn’t full auto people, and they were subject to the same minimum engagement distance as the bolt action. It was a decent trade off, but the semi-only meant that rate of fire was slow. The solution is a binary trigger, delicate and sensitive to any input, which fires both on the trigger pull and the release. With this in your DMR, without having the fastest of trigger fingers you can still spam enough to make it seem like full auto fire, without technically breaking the rules because it is technically a semi automatic only weapon, but used in the same way as a fully automatic. Most marshals won’t measure MED anyway, so you can likely get away with it, and if it looks like an AEG, there won’t be many complaints in a firefight.

Fully automatic makes it much easier to score hits, and if your site knows what a DMR is then perhaps that route isn’t the best. More bb’s in the air at the same time means that even if you can’t hit the back of a van at ten metres, spraying enough in the general direction will guarantee a hit. The way to do it is to fit a higher speed motor, higher powered battery and high speed gears, to get up to 60rps (rounds per second) which is half a mag in the air very quickly, and should hose your opponent down pretty quickly. It is a bit noisy though, and all that auto-electric noise can give your position away.

Enter HPA. Look like a paintballer, feel like a paintballer. No more wires, motors and noise – a simple shot of air from a compressed tank fires the bb forward, and as long as you can fit an air tank somewhere, and refill it, you’re all good. HPA has become something of a major revolution for Airsoft – it shoots just the same, but its whisper quiet. It can also be adjusted as well, so you can simply turn the power up when you need it, as long as nobody is watching.

Which is starting to see snipers adopt high speed, fully automatic but silent weapons. Although, there’s also the advantage of being able to hook your sniper rifle up to an HPA line too. Which helps some players…

Yup, you now don’t have to worry about pulling the spring back with an HPA sniper, as the weapon can be cocked using only one finger. In life, easier is always better.

There are lots of accessories you can add too, to make life even easier. Chief among those are optics; using iron sights or holding the gun up straight can be tough for a lot of players, so a good optic makes it much easier to put a dot on a target, and you can even add a laser in there too to draw a line to straight to the enemy player!. More recently, we’ve seen the adoption of NVG’s for night time, and thermal sights. Thermals are potentially the biggest, most game-changing Airsoft component of them all, although they’re still quite expensive. Instead of looking for your opponent, a thermal sight will show you their heat signature so that you don’t even need to bother looking, just point and shoot. It’s almost like the use of aimbots in gaming, you really will struggle to be beaten.

Use quality parts on your guns, real steel components if possible. Make sure its secured safely and comfortable as well – get the most expensive sling you can lay your hands on, like the Ascension Research Goliath sling so that you can carry your weapon better. It does make a difference when you’re out in the field. Accessories improve your game no end. There are a lot of different grips out there as well so you can hold the gun exactly as you want to, rather than using the handguard itself.

So, with everything above in mind, how do you put that all together into one, world-beating platform? Does it exist already? Or is it a build with an extensive and expensive parts list?

The Best Airsoft Weapon…

No, of course it isn’t. The best Airsoft weapon you can invest in is yourself. All of that shit above makes absolutely no difference out in the field, no matter how much you might think it does. And before you start replying underneath otherwise, I’ve seen rental players jump on the field and absolutely destroy experienced players with expensive builds using only some cheap stock plastic thing the site gave them. Airsoft isn’t won by kit, it’s won by clever moves and good players. Knowing how to move and use cover to surprise your opponents. Understanding what the objective is (listen during briefings) and how best to achieve it. Understanding tactics and fieldcraft. Being coordinated as a team.

A drum-fed, HPA, triple barrel DMR with a binary trigger can still be hit by a bb from a spring pistol. The gun is just a component in a system; the system is you and it’s all controlled from that grey squishy thing in your head.

Invest in yourself. Read, learn and develop. Be open to new ideas. Go buy some books or manuals to improve your knowledge.

Otherwise you too will still be shit. Just a lot poorer at the same time.