Reviving this thread, with the hope of recruiting another LMG user to the club!
The major issue with LMG’s, is the cost/performance ratio. If you spend £400-500 on an M4 based AEG, perhaps - Specna prime, Krytac, VFC, Tokyo Marui etc, you’ll get a great performing gun out of the box, built well and in most cases, changing the hop up bucking can unlock all the performance you’ll need. Accessories are easy to get, magazines are cheap and battery options are simple.
However, the same money in the LMG world, will get you something from A&K, Classic Army, maybe a Krytac LMG, but those are north of £500 easily now. If you’re not into DIY and upgrades, just buy the Krytac LMG. It’s m4 based, performs great out of the box and in my experience, Krytac guns don’t come with things like fancy Bluetooth mosfets, but the quality control is great, you get it out the box, plug it in, feed it some .28’s and it’ll outperform most other RIF’s. Plus, by the time it finally dies, you’ll google HPA kits and realise how easy it is, being a V2 gearbox! I’ve had a MK3 Krytac LMG, put 20,000 rounds through it and loved it, just found it too similar to the other AR’s I’ve got and it wasn’t scratching the support gunner itch.
Fast forward the clock, I ran a Lambda Defence Mk48 for 4 games. Simply put, a £700, 11kg beast of a machine gun that frightens the life out of your target, moments before the gearbox locks up! Incredible display piece, but so temperamental and the out of the box performance is shocking for the price point. It’s also a significant hazard in your home, because if you lean it up against a wall, it’s so heavy that it’ll actually knock the wall through. Ensure you only ever rest a Mk48 up against a load bearing beam.
That went, so I bought a VFC MG4. This gun is insanely good, with just a hop bucking change - lightweight, unique and brilliantly usable for a big LMG. It’s got a stupidly over complicated box mag and feeding system, but as long as you don’t abuse it, it works. However, as an impulse buyer of things….i decided to move it on, sold it to a friend of mine and now 10 games days and what must be 30,000+ rounds later, he’s still loving it with not much more than regular maintenance required. Bonus points, it’s ridiculously light and weighs about the same as an accessorised M4. Might spoil the ‘feel’ of a heavy LMG, but you feel like you’re cheating the system a little bit, by having all that suppressive capability in something so light. You can pick these up for £700-800 as a used buy sometimes.
So, now I’m 3 months into life with an LCT M60E4, aluminium version. They make a beautiful steel version of this gun, but it suffers from the same issue as the Lambda Mk48; it seems to be hell bent on reaching the centre of the earth with nothing but your biceps and back keeping it upright. It’s way too heavy and there’s nothing wrong with admitting most of us aren’t manly enough to wield guns like that round all day!
In steps the aluminium model - it’s 95% as pretty to look at, but weighs a modest 6kg. Out of the box, it fixes all the issues you get with an A&K M60. The quality control is excellent and everything looks and feels great. The hop up actually works, the air seal is acceptable and it feeds perfectly. The bipod won’t snap off and the pins on the body won’t just fall out of it after a few games. It’s the best LMG I’ve had and you can literally aim, squeeze and hold for 2,000+ rounds if you want to. Battery storage is in the stock, it’s wired to deans out the box and on a 7.4v Lipo, the ROF is actually quite well judged for balancing a slow enough ROF to not eat all the ammo up too quickly, but fast enough to make the sound super unpleasant as the rounds hit any cover or hard surfaces around your target. It should also be noted that the M60/PKM/M249 style ‘brick’ gearboxes are seriously strong and much more suited to constant full auto than something like the V2 gearbox in a regular M4 platform.
Trouble is, you need to spend £950 to get an LCT and it’s quite new to market, I haven’t seen a used one yet.
As someone who is probably 3 years ahead of you in their LMG journey, I’ve made all the financial mistakes, mishandled my guns at times and chopped and changed, so that you don’t have to! I would be many many £’s better off, if I started with the LCT, by not having to tinker with previous guns, sell them at a loss etc.
It might seem an expensive hit at the time, but buy right first time. LMG’s cost more to produce, so the cost/performance ratio is worse and we the consumer, pay the price. If you buy an A&K, it’ll do fine, for a while, but when it stops working, you’ll spend loads of money getting it running again. Then when it’s running, the box mag will break and you’ll buy a bullgear replacement for £160. Then when you realise it’s not feeding well, you’ll buy their hop unit, nozzle and a Prometheus hop rubber. And on and on and on, you end up spending the same anyway, just over time.
Difference is, when you come to sell up, because the itch has been scratched, the LCT will always be worth more to the next person, because it’s an LCT and not an A&K.
So, in summary, you could consider:
Buy a used A&K M249/M60 = try out the platform, pick one up as cheap as you can and just see how you get on.
New Krytac LMG = out of the box performance with minimal drawbacks and it can run the same mags, batteries and optics as other guns you or your mates might own. Arguably, a CYMA RPK can be a cheaper alternative to this. Lots of AK compatibility and perfectly acceptable performance for just £300-350. Many people make the mistake of overlooking CYMA guns - most of their products are actually quite good.
New LCT M60, VFC MG4 or similar high-end well reviewed LMG = massive upfront cost, but a significantly easier life and you gain my respect.
Ares M60 = all Ares RIF’s are…..poor. You can get good ones, but it’s unlikely. Parts are proprietary in most cases and they’re just rubbish. Once upon a time, they were, but nowadays, a CYMA at half the price beats an Ares all day.
Novritsch SSR249 = a marketing success, but really the best way to think of it, is an A&K M249 with some of the fidgety issues fixed. The hop unit is good, the box mags are more reliable and the QC is slightly better. The actual internal parts used though, aren’t amazing and there’s definitely a bit of Novritsch brand name tax in the pricing on these. Other issues include the ridiculous battery compartment design, that requires you to disassemble the hand guard, losing all the screws in the process. There is no chance you’ll get through a day without needing to change the battery, because the storage space is stupidly small. While your friends are swapping batteries via their convenient cranes stock butt plates, you’ll be breaking out your Allen key collection trying to work out which size they are again and what bit of grass the screws just fell into. Personal opinion, but I also think it’s quite ugly - certainly the runt of the M249 litter.
VFC M249 = an honourable mention. This gun is awesome to look at, awesome feeling to shoot, but you must HPA it. Green gas on an LMG in the UK just doesn’t work. As a result, the cost of one of these and the HPA accessories, is easily £1,000+. You also need to be a DIY person, because whilst they’re generally reliable, they require a lot of maintenance to keep them lubricated and running. Typical VFC issues though, immediate barrel and hop upgrade required. They also use a slightly different cassette style magazine that goes under the feed tray. Only 150ish round capacity and quite unusual in shape, so carrying 10 of these around might be quite awkward. The alternative is to buy an AEG box mag and an adapter kit, but to be honest, by the time you’ve HPA’d it, converted the box mag and invested in the upgrades, you could have bought a 4-bed detached in Surrey.
ICS L86A2 = an honourable mention. I’ve got an ICS L85A3 and whilst its internals are a bit dated compared to some newer guns, they’re really good. They take M4 mags, albeit can be a bit picky on which ones. The battery storage is good and because it’s a bullpup, the accuracy/range potential is excellent. I’ve never owned an L86 specifically, but a guy at my local site has had his for about 10 years and despite it being smashed up for a decade, its cost less than £100 to replace the bits that have worn out and you’ll never see anyone else using one. It will not agree with an 11.1 Lipo, but use a 7.4 and it’ll be happy. It being an old platform is actually a benefit here, because parts are widely available and most gun techs are familiar with how to work on them and fix them if they play up.
