Fully Modular

The Tippmann/SO X7 paintball marker offers players multiple options for butt stocks, fore grips, magazines and other important tactical features.

You’ve read the reviews. You’ve shot the marker at your local paintball store. It’s time to push the Tippmann/SO X7 to the limits of its capabilities. The key lies in the paintball marker’s fully modular design.

Maybe you want to create an X7 that resembles, from butt stock to barrel, an M16, AK-47 or G-36. You can do that. Or mix and match to create the perfect marker for your game. How about a collapsible CAR stock to get that “just right” fit up against your shoulder, an M16 short mag because it looks cool, and the XP5 SD shroud and foregrip to mount a tac light on your two-inch bottom rail for night play?

With more than 70 different mods, including magazines, butt stocks, foregrips, sights and rails on the market or scheduled for release soon, you’ll see a lot of X7s on the field, but you may not see two that look exactly alike.

Special Ops founder Jayson Orvis believes that engineers are rapidly reaching the natural physical limits of paintball marker performance. Ergonomics is the next step. And ergonomics is personal. What feels right for you, the fast and feisty dagger player, may not be right for the team’s sniper.

Players can spend hours on the X7 builder designing their “dream gun,” from an M16 look-alike with an air-through Commando stock to a compact G36-style carbine with a folding stock and full-auto capabilities thanks to the X7 e-grip. Add scopes, sights and flashlights to the foregrips with Picatinny rails, and you’re ready for anything you encounter at your local field or 2,000-player scenario game.

Best of all, you can add the mods without marring your X7—no set screws, compression rings or adapter sleeves required.

With the introduction of the X7, woodsball has gone modular in a big way. Aside from the coolness factor of having a marker that looks just like your favorite real firearm, what’s the benefit?

“A slightly more accurate barrel is going to have a very tiny effect in winning a gun fight,” says SpecOps’ Jayson Orvis. “But if you create a marker ideally shaped to fit in the woods paintball environment, and more importantly, can be changed to fit whatever style of game a player chooses, you’re going to have a huge effect on the practical accuracy of that marker. If that marker flies to the shoulder and that player can look straight down the top plate and be immediately lined up on the opponent, he’s going to shave a half second off his acquisition and he’s going to win the gun fight.”

You can give yourself that half-second edge with a marker custom-designed to fit your style of play. Many of the parts are made from the same glass-filled nylon composite used in real firearms, designed to look and feel like the real thing.

Orvis notes, “We have a giant vault full of machine guns that we pull out and compare, ergonomically, and in function, to paintball guns. This is what the military world has developed over the last 300 years as an ideal ergonomic platform. How can we fort this over to paintball? The result of that is the X7.”

Lightweight, thanks to a magnesium alloy body, with Tippmann’s classic field strippable design and famous durability, the X7 is the hottest thing to hit the field since SpecOps unveiled the Panzerwagen. Add a hopper with the lowest profile we’ve ever seen, and you have a gun designed from the ground up for the serious woodsball fanatic.

Mods are rolling out faster than you can load a hopper. So, in the words of that famous ‘80s movie karate guru, Mr. Miaggi: “Choose…”

An XP5 fore grip and a choice of XP5 magazines make your new X7 look like an MP5 machine gun. Add an e-grip (coming soon) and it will shoot like one, too, with a choice of full-auto or three-shot burst. If you purchase a curved or straight XP5 mag, don’t forget to pick up the XP5 mag well, which connects to your X7 at the same attachment point as the stock X7 mag well, without any permanent changes to your marker. The XP5 SD free floating two-piece fore grip and shroud set allows you to add a 2-inch bottom Picatinny rail, and comes with an end cap (for running with the fore grip and no shroud), plus an XP-5 sight.

All the parts are available to make your X7 look just like America’s best-loved assault rifle, the M16. A choice of magazines, including the X7 M16 short mag and the M16 X Short Mag fit right into the X7 mag well. Add an M16 fore grip, hand rail and sight, plus your choice of stock, and you’ll get more looks than a Keely Watson calendar. The carry handle is a real boon for those long treks through the woods during 24-hour scenarios.

The AK-47 is another popular design for mil-sim style paintball markers, and the X7 version isn’t a cheap plastic look-alike. The AK-47 fore grip, curved mag and sight are all made from the same durable materials as real firearm components. The fore grip allows you to add the X36 carry handle for a convenient touch that doesn’t take away from the realistic look of the marker.

The rest of the X36 accessories also work well alone or as a set. Combine the X36 fore grip, carry handle and an X36 folding stock (coming soon) to create a pretty close paintball replica of the HK G-36 assault rifle, Germany’s answer to the M16.