The king of paintball has been dethroned...or has it. For years now new ballers and veteran ballers alike have had a special place in their hearts for the Tippmann A5 but the question on the street lately has been will the newest release from Tippmann, The Tippmann X7, conjure up the same cult following that the Tippmann A5 has enjoyed for years?

For years now paintballin' guys and gals alike that have just been getting into the sport have gone the A5 route due to its reliability, ease of use and of course the bang for the buck factor. Most people have held onto their beloved A5's as they have progressed in their ability because of the A5's ability to do the same. No matter what your skills are the A5 has the ability to adapt and grow right along with you (unless of course your skills have to do with speedball, that's another story).

The recent release of Tippmanns X7 came with a lot of hype. It was the first release in history that was a collaboration between a manufacturer and an existing paintball retailer have joined forces to release a gun. The real question is whether or not a collaboration like this is for the best. There is quite a laundry lists of cons that come from a collaboration of this nature, one of the largest is limited mods.

Although Tippmann is claiming that there will be millions of different setups for the look of the actual gun, that is all banking on when Specops decides to release them, because they have exclusive rights to the mods for the X7. Now does "exclusive rights" mean that other manufacturers aren't going to enter the market with some mods of their own, maybe, maybe not. I guess it all depends on the mood of the guys at Tippmann and Specops whether they decide to pursue legal action or not is up to them.

The biggest downside to the Tippmann X7 is the lack of control that the paintballers around the world have over the "non-commercialized" customization of the marker itself and that is really where the A5 is still far superior, there are thousands of ways already that you can customize your Tippmann A5 and there are no restriction as to who can jump in the market when they create something that is different and possibly cooler than the last guy had created.

With all that said our opinion on the Tippmann X7 is that it is overall a good gun. How can you go wrong with Tippmann Reliability right? A couple of the features that we liked the most about it is the scratch resistant plastic, which has gotten some mixed reviews and most especially we like the e-trigger options. Compared to the etrigger options on the A5 where you have to do a lot of holding the button down and waiting for the light to turn and then stand on your head and jump up and down on your left foot, the Tippmann X7 etrigger allows you to switch from safety, to single shot to fully auto while still have the option to fire in three round spurts. Even with all the politics surrounding the gun we feel it is a great gun for beginner to intermediate woodsball players.