Better Think Again.

By JOracle

Hiding out in the pillboxes was a bad idea. As soon as Rory set foot into his, I knew that we were screwed. His footfalls made the muffled whompf-whompf sound of someone in the pillbox – a sound that could be heard halfway across the field. I was one of the “mutants” and I had been reluctantly convinced by the other mutants that we could rack up some quick “kills” by starting the game from inside the ‘boxes. “Yeah,” I agreed to myself, “there may be some quick kills – but for whose team?” The plan had a smell of three-week-old sauerkraut right from the start.

”Game on!” echoed through the woodlands and within moments a surge of “hunter” players rolled directly for Rory’s pillbox, guns blazing. Rory was getting flat-out pasted, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Unlike my-ill fated compadré, I had elected to shoot from outside of my pillbox. I figured that I would need to make a quick getaway and it turned out that I was right. From behind my pillbox, I watched the merciless beating that Rory was taking and I had a front-row seat when a guy ran behind Rory’s box and blasted him from point-blank range.

As so often happens when I’m wearing my Action Ghillie, the back-door runner didn’t notice me standing in plain sight about forty yards to the side of Rory’s position. Rory was taking his time getting out of the way and his body completely blocked my shot on the guy that had just bunkered him. Still, I kept the laser crosshairs of my Hakko Panorama Bed-24 sight on top of both of them, waiting for my chance.

Rory raised his arm and I arrowed two quick shots into the brief window between him and the opponent. The balls must have grazed Rory’s armpit. Then I heard Rory say, "You’re hit, dude."

Later, Rory filled me in on the details. The guy had back-doored him while Rory was bailing out of his pillbox. While he plugged his gun, Rory said that two paintballs silently and miraculously slammed into the guy’s hopper and chest. The dude cranked his neck around, believing that his own team had shot him and he swore a blue streak about his blankety-blank newbie teammates. The guy never did see me or hear my shots. Both paintballs had sped through that small window under Rory’s arm, like a pair of heat-seeking missiles.

Playing with the Special Ops Q-Bow Sniper – the latest version of the SpecOps line of Longbow Sniper markers– earns you lots gape-jawed wonder on the paintball field. Nobody has ever seen a paintball gun shoot like the Longbow. Non-believers, (the "no such thing as a paintball sniper" crowd) will have to find another style of paintball to bash. Frankly, I’m wondering if the Q-Bow Sniper isn’t the finest woodsball™ marker ever made.

The same afternoon as our ill-fated mutant game, we decided to put the Q-Bow Sniper up against the best tourney markers on the field. We hung a 6-inch by 6-inch plywood square in a tree and paced off 25 yards. We tested the Q-Bow against an Angel, a Shocker, an Autococker and a DM4. Right off the bat, it was obvious that the Q-Bow was in a league of its own. On single, snap-shot drills, the Q-Bow scored two to three times the number of hits as the tourney guns. The Q-Bow was consistently hitting the board eight or nine times out of ten. The tourney markers did a little better on double-tap drills – where each shooter took two quick shots. Still the Q-Bow hit the target half-again more often than even the best tourney marker. To make the test more “scientific” we had the same guys who shot the tourney guns shoot the Q-Bow. It made no difference – regardless of the shooter, everyone was far more accurate with the Q-Bow.

Does this mean that Special Ops Paintball has discovered some remarkable new barrel/gun technology that will revolutionize paintball? No, not really. This amazing accuracy has more to do with superior ergonomics and commonsense than it does with high technology.

The Q-Bow brings together many products that any experienced paintball player will tell you are good for accuracy. The base marker is an AGD Tac-One, the feed system is a q-loader™, and the barrel can be a 14 to 16-inch Stiffi (or CP, or Smart Parts, or LAPCO, or Hammerhead, or whatever you like). And, it always makes sense to shoot the finest paint available. But, the magic of the Q-Bow doesn’t come from this all-star cast of accuracy enhancers.

The Q-Bow shoots with amazing accuracy because the shooter actually sights the gun with every single shot. There is no "walking" the shot. There is no “instinct shooting.” There is no need to unleash ropes of paint. Put it to your shoulder and the sight pops between you and the target. Squeeze the trigger and the rest will seem like magic.

Many woodsball markers provide iron sights or allow you to attach a sight or a scope onto the sight rail. Yet these sighting solutions aren’t even in the same league as the Crossbow. When you use a typical sight on a typical woodsball marker, you generally have to search for it, line it up, then pull the trigger. In that same amount of time, an opponent with an electro will already have 15 balls headed your way. Even so, electros are horrible solutions for precision paintballing. Tourney shooters overcome the inherent inaccuracy of their markers by lots of practice and lots of paint. After all, you
can’t expect to shoot with any degree of precision
when there’s a center-fed hopper right in front of your face.

To beat a tourney marker in a gunfight, a woodsball marker must aim very, very fast. There’s only a split-second to bring your gun up and there’s definitely no time to search for your sight picture. The marker must roll quickly and naturally to your shoulder and the sight must instantly, effortlessly, pin itself on your target. And, that’s the simple genius of the Crossbow and the Longbow.

Thanks to the Special Ops horizontal breech and the q-loader™ hopper system, the Q-Bow feeds into the marker from below the barrel – with NOTHING on top of the marker to get in the way of your natural aim. That’s right, no feed neck and no hopper. When you bring the Q-Bow up to shoot, the sight appears, almost ghost-like, between you and your target. All that’s left to do is to squeeze the trigger.

And, you won’t find another marker that rolls to your shoulder more quickly than the Q-Bow/Longbow. The ergonomics and balance of the marker were inspired by fast-shooting military firearms. Woodsball play demands that you snap-shoot from a vertical plane. You carry your gun pointed down as you patrol and then you roll it up to your shoulder when you make contact with a target. On the other hand, tourneyball requires a sideways snap shot as you lean around your bunker. Tourney markers were not designed for the vertical snap shooting and their rear-heavy point of balance makes them awkward on the vertical snap. The Q-Bow was carefully designed to be the master of the vertical, woods-style snap-shot.

If you’re a sniper and you’re living the sniper creed (one shot, one kill and all that), the Longbow was made for you. Twenty shots and you better make them count. If you’re a sniper who doesn’t mind mixing it up in a firefight, the Q-Bow will give you the same sighting platform as the Longbow with a little more juice when you get pinned down.

Either way, you’ll find it hard to ever go back to spray-and-pray.