Paintball Gear Essentials: What you need to play paintball!

Maybe you’ve played paintball for the first time with a birthday party, church outing, team-building event with the company or summer camp, rented the gear you need and now you’re hooked, or maybe you don’t want to rent paintball equipment for your paintball experience, you want to own! Perhaps you’re researching paintball before your first time playing the game and want to know what paintball gear you need to have fun and play safe! Or maybe you’ve played a few times at the local field and now you’re ready to build your own paintball gear package. When it's time to gear up, Valken has what you need to play paintball!

Safe Paintball Goggles

Were you expecting a paintball gun to be the first thing you need to play paintball? Paintball guns get all the love and get every player’s heart pumping, but the most important piece of paintball equipment any player will ever own is a safe, comfortable, pair of paintball goggles! Paintball remains one of the safest games a person can play due to the constant dedication to safety of each and every paintball player, staff at every paintball field and the paintball industry that designs, builds and rigorously tests paintball goggles to ensure players are safe while the paintballs are flying! Paintball goggles are specifically designed and tested to protect a player’s eyes, ears, nose, mouth and face from the impact of a paintball, and only paintball-specific paintball goggles should ever be worn to play paintball! From inexpensive paintball goggles to the most comfortable, feature-packed fog-free paintball goggles worn by the best professional players in the game, Valken has the best paintball goggles in the world, in a wide variety of colors and camo patterns!

Paintball Gun

Now that we have safety taken care of, we can talk paintball guns! Valken offers paintball guns to suit every budget, from affordable paintball guns for new paintball players or the budget-conscious to the best paintball guns in the world! While a player can spend hundreds and even thousands on a paintball gun, don’t worry: just because a paintball gun CAN cost thousands, doesn’t mean a player has to spend that much on a paintball gun to shoot straight, play well and win! Most modern paintball guns are semi-automatic, meaning they’ll fire one paintball each time the trigger is pulled, and many affordable paintball guns can be upgraded with performance accessories and parts to grow with a new player as they fall in love with the game! Whether a new player aspires to play paintball for big money in front of stands packed with fans in tournament paintball or creep through the woods as a paintball sniper in a military-style scenario, Valken has the best paintball guns from top brands to fit any budget or style of play in the game!

Paintball Air Tank

So you’ve picked out your safe, comfortable paintball goggles in the color or camo pattern you like, and you’ve gone all-in on the best paintball gun for you – but now you need to make that paintball gun go bang when you pull the trigger and that means a paintball air tank! While some paintball guns like the Valken Blackhawk, the Tippmann 98 Custom or the GOG eNMEy will function and deliver solid performance using a paintball CO2 tank, most modern paintball guns perform much better, or even require, a paintball compressed air tank to provide consistent air power for each shot and to re-cock the paintball gun to fire again! Compressed air also helps any paintball gun perform better in cold weather and is regulated to ensure consistent, safe air pressure is sent to the paintball gun shot after shot! Modern paintball air tanks, whether an affordable 20oz CO2 tank or a bright blue compressed air tank with a precision-machined adjustable regulator, simply screw into a paintball gun’s air source adapter or ASA, generally located at the bottom of the gun’s grip frame.

Paintball Loader

Feeding paintballs into a paintball gun for firing has come a long way since the game was invented! Most modern paintball guns are now fed by a paintball loader or paintball hopper holding approximately 200 paintballs that presses onto the top of a paintball gun, into its feed neck. Paintballs are then fed by gravity, and in some cases with the help of electronics, down into the paintball gun one at a time, where they can be fired downrange to make splats happen. Basic paintball hoppers are simply a plastic shell with a flip lid, relying on gravity and the occasional shake when paintballs jam, to feed. More expensive, high-tech electronic paintball loaders utilize battery power to ensure paintballs feed faster and more reliably, without jams, to allow paintball guns to fire faster without breaking or chopping paintballs, and are a great upgrade for players who intend to play more competitively, or who simply love shooting fast! For the fast-firing electronic paintball guns used in competitive speedball, a high-end, electronic paintball loader is a necessity and Valken offers the best paintball loaders for any player’s paintball gear setup!

Paintballs

Paintballs are literally the name of the game! It may seem obvious that paintballs are necessary to play the game of paintball, but it goes a little deeper than that. Quality paintballs can make a day of paintball more enjoyable by helping players shoot straighter and get paintball breaks on target, rather than bounces, while avoiding the annoying frustration of broken or chopped paintballs in a paintball gun or barrel that can ruin a game. Paintball players looking to truly enjoy everything the amazing world of paintball has to offer should take their paintball shopping seriously and select a high quality paintball, rather than simply buying cheap paintballs for the best price they can find. Paintballs are truly an example where the customer will truly get what they pay for, and Valken offers the best paintballs in the world that are biodegradable, non-staining, straight-shooting, bright-marking and consistent shot after shot, bag after bag, case after case!