First, I want to say that playing pump paintball can be one of the funnest ways to play paintball, especially for beginners. Why would pump paintball be so much fun? Well, consider the following experience: I recently took out a group of beginning paintballers, each of them using a tippmann 98 (not the Custom). Good gun, nothing fancy. But they still could shoot to their heart’s content since the gun is semi-auto and not a pump paintball gun.

Pump Paintball

So, what happened? I had to ultimately limit them to 20 rounds of paint each game because they all just hid behind things and shot a million rounds of paint at another person who also was standing behind something. Was that fun? Not really.

However, as soon as I limited the amount of paint they could use and made it a little harder to shoot (similar to what you would have with a pump paintball gun), then they had to come out into the open and start really playing paintball.

And that is why I think a pump paintball gun is great for beginners, or for people who really want to hone their paintball skills (or should I say pump paintball skills). Pump paintball is much more difficult to play, which forces you to improve your paintballing skills in a way you will never do with a fully automatic marker. A pump paintball marker may not be as sexy or cool, but it can be just as effective, so combine a not so sexy pump paintball marker with the very cool skills you will learning playing pump paintball, and you will be very happy with the result—and I will bet that your games will be some of the funnest you will play, period.

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