Paintball Markers 101

There are a three basic types of paintball markers electropneumatic, pneumatic or semi-automatic, and pump. Your pump markers are called so because you have to manually pump or cock the marker before each shot. This is the origin of the sport. Pump markers really died down with the introduction of the pneumatic markers, but have been steadily making a come back with die hard players and people looking to get out of the speed ball direction that the sport is taking. The pneumatic guns came out in the early 90's and took over pretty much every aspect of the sport. The pneumatics automatically re-cocked the marker after each shot creating a semi-automatic effect. Automag and AutoCocker pioneered this field and where the leaders int he sport until the introduction of the electropneumatic later in the decade. There are ways to upgrade to a partial-electropneumatic through kits and upgrades like the e Blade keeping them competitive, but the day that you will never see a pneumatic in speed ball play is fast approaching. With casual players they are still very popular, but as electropneumatics are becoming cheaper and more available it is generally out of preference than necessity. What most people are using today are going to be the electropneumatic markers. With this style an electric trigger tells a solenoid to release your CO2 or HPA into the bolt driving it forward and firing the paintball. These are most common now, especially in tournament play as they can produce a very high rate of fire (upwards of 30 BPM).