Impulse

For guns around 1J, I've found .32s to be the ideal weight. Maple leaf rubbers will hop them and they seem to work well with the power.

Accurate to 200ft isn't outlandish for an AEG if you spend time, money and effort tuning them. I typically aim for around that for all of my 1J builds and I can proudly say I've achieved it on all of my 1J guns so far, including pistols. And when I say accurate to 200ft, I mean hitting a torso sized target 9/10 times. Apart from my two stock Cyma guns, the mp5k and the spring shotty which are accurate to about 45m.

What don't I understand... Ghillies in the summer. Like, it's hot, and wearing a full suit makes it even hotter. Plus, they're not entirely necessary in airsoft anyway. I take the hot weather as an opportunity to practice my camo and concealment fieldcraft, because IT'S HOT ALREADY. Also people who yell at me to push up. With a boltie. In a ghillie if it's cooler weather. Because clearly I've designed my loadout for fast, aggressive pushes at the front of the team. What do they think I'm going to achieve with my mk23?

I also feel the need to also bring to the fore that running a bolt action rifle often feels like pistol primary, rifle secondary. So many game days where I get like 5 kills with the BASR, but 20+ with the pistol 🤣

I've done it before in woodland with my TM mk23 and played stealthy, since it fires as far as an AEG no problem, but is also very quiet. It was great fun, channeling my inner Solid Snake! I imagine it'd work in CQB pretty darn well, since engagement distances are a lot closer, and having such a small gun will help your mobility when navigating and clearing rooms.

Had another fantastic day at Worthing yesterday. The m21 still performs amazingly, and the camo and concealment fieldcraft is still working better than most full ghillie snipers. Had a great game where me and my friend (who actually introduced me to airsoft when we were 14 and still at school) decided to hold a flank away from our base and came under fire. Everyone else who came with us got shot and had to head back to respawn, so it was just us, a pair of snipers, against the world. No ghillies needed, just solid camo and concealment practices and teamwork. He held the front with his VSR, while I covered his flank with my m21 (as I had no MED so anyone who got too close to him I could generally hit out). The other two guys we were on comms with came up after a while and we held the flank for the whole game, with only one of us getting hit and it was to friendly fire since even our team didn't know we were there. Speaking of comms, we were all testing our new earmors, since 3 of us are heading to ai500 and ear protection inside is advised, and I love them. I can hear absolutely everything around me, while shielding me from loud bangs that would damage my hearing and the comms setup itself is lovely and super clear when it comes through. The PTT is super solid to clip onto my rig and then find with minimal movement when I'm lying prone. Totally worth the £90 or so. Also managed to test and set the hop and zero the scope for my spring VSR after setting it to 1.1J last week, since I was getting annoyed at the 2.3J setup. It was firing past 60m easily, and I could hit the 60m target literally 10/10 times, so I'm incredibly pleased. 1.1J means no MED, and reaching out to that distance with that accuracy is exactly what I wanted. All in all, the day was a complete success and it was a great Sunday!

Whatever's local to you, as long as it doesn't suck. I've been to both Worthing Airsoft and S.W.A (Sussex Woodland Activities) and both were great for different reasons. I haven't been to Dogtag yet, though I've heard mixed opinions on it. I'll still go and see for myself, but that's the point; I think whatever is local to you is good, as long as you try it and enjoy it.

I did keto for a total of about 10 months over the last year and a half, but it's super not for me. One of the side effects I got was heart palpitations if I was ever dehydrated, and I can tell you that waking up in the middle of the night feeling like you're dying is really not a fun experience. I still don't have much sugar, because I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I eat just a normal calorie restrictive diet, but not too restrictive since I'm also trying to put on some muscle. For me, being a total foodie,. one of the reasons I do so much exercise is because I also like eating lots

You don't need to run to be healthy. I've never been a runner, since my build is not conducive to being good at it, or it being particularly healthy for me to do too much. When I was a teenager in my school rugby team, I had to stop because I got shin splints because even when I'm "slim" I'm still pretty chonk. I could probably do running if I bought some expensive, fancypants trainers, but I hate running, so I would likely not do it and it'd be a wasted investment. I hate exercising for the sake of doing exercise, so the only running I do is during airsoft weekends. I've found that doing things that don't feel like I'm exercising are the best, so for me that's martial arts, airsoft and cycling to get from point A to point B; it's rare I go for a cycle just to go for a cycle. I've forced myself to hit the gym too, which is the only "workout" that I do, but I don't do cardio (since I do cardio when I cycle to and from the gym) and just focus on strength training, as it's what I enjoy. Also, swimming is both a full-body workout and it's low impact on your joints; it's like a super-workout. Highly recommend it, plus it's a skill that is worryingly lacking in this day and age; loads of people I know are absolutely terrible at it, and I live in a coastal town where the beaches are packed as soon as temperatures reach around 25 celcius! That's a free swimming pool right there, so how people are so bad I will never know

As someone who has worked with multiple VSRs, the TM is the easiest to work with. There are tiny inconsistencies between the clone rifles that you'll only find when you do multiple builds. For example, the JG stock isn't ideal for with the Action Army magazines and can have feeding issues unless you loosen the front bolt a little; too tight and the mags don't click in, too lose and the mags don't feed If I was going to do another build, I'd probably spend the extra £60 or so and just use a TM as the base.

You're going to get a bunch of different responses as it's largely a matter of opinion at the end of the day. Also, you're going to get people like me answering truthfully, but unhelpfully; I think the pre-ban Tanaka m700 rifles are the absolute best bolt actions to have ever graced airsoft, but good luck getting one. Heck, even the KJ Works clones are hard to find! *sounds of a salty airsoft sniper who wants one intensifies*

Yeah, a bright white shirt will definitely do it, but mad props for keeping the cartel look all day with it; I was honestly expecting more, as last time there were quite a few loud shirts out, but this time there were very few. I think I might've hit you a few times on the flank near the field as I saw and shot at a white shirt a few times so I had to move because I was sure you were zeroing on my position when a burst went right over my head! I think we need to play down in Paradise more. There are some pretty long sight lines, but there's also quite a few ways to break line of sight, and plenty of foliage to ruin shots. I think it'll be more manageable when players learn how to play it, but we never get the opportunity

Someone with a camera that doesn't suck took a picture today. Yes, the tacticool rail system is pointless because I not only don't mount anything on it, but I also cover it in rifle ghillie, but style > substance! Was my first day using it with the new HPA setup and oooooooooh boy was it stupidly good.

I think I just had the best weekend of airsoft I've had in literally a decade. Started with an airsoft car-boot sale, where I picked up a TM 4.3 Hicapa for £50, lots of socialising and chatting to everyone. Then we played some 5v5 and 4v4 games, because the player numbers were super low on the Saturday, which were really fun (and really challenging as a sneaky sniper, since the enemy team gets suspicious when they can't see the 4th or 5th player. It's a lot easier to keep track of things when there are only 5 enemies). Camped over night, which involved some great fireside chats with some of the other guys who were camping over, until 2:30am in the otherwise pitch black. Maybe I should've gone to bed earlier, but I have no regrets and I'd do it again. Then had a full day of fantastic games where I managed to sneak behind the enemy team in the morning games and was picking them all off from behind, finding out my friend was pretty much parallel to me on the other side of the area, shooting them from the front and this getting us some rather colourful, frustrated cries about how snipers are unfair. However, after lunch I was removed from my team and put in a small 6 person group of 2 scientists and 4 guards where the objective for both teams was to retrieve the scientists' briefcases and we were told by the marshalls to "make them work for it"... 3 hours into holding them all off and only 10 minutes remaining for the day, we decided to give a suitcase to each team so that there could actually be a winner to the games. Working as a cohesive unit is the real overpowered way of playing airsoft, as we simply set ourselves up in concealed positions (most of us were experienced sneaky-beakies and/or bush wookiees) with overlapping fields of fire, moving when we had to but always keeping each other's positions in mind when we did. I lost track of how many people I hit, but it was a LOT. Outnumbered, outgunned, but not outdone! So what did I learn? Apart from the normal reinforcement of "you can stealth in short sleeves and a cheap £25 leafy hood thing from Russia", I learned that my new HPA m21 setup is bonkers. Easily accurate to 60m and still pretty accurate to 65m on 1.1J, so no MED and full auto if I really want, though I did change my full auto to 3 round burst. It's also incredibly quiet, not quite as quiet as my VSR, but I think it's quieter than my mk23. It has definitely cemented itself in as my primary gun for the late spring through autumn while the site is pretty overgrown. We'll see if it can dethrone the VSR in the winter through early spring when the sight lines are longer, but it's so liberating being able to shoot people within 30m and having semi-auto ROF instead of bolt action, but also retaining that long range option. I'm going to have tree-trunk arms by next summer if I use this gun on the regular now. It weighs an absolute tonne compared to the VSR!

Wolverine Hydra Gen2. Was going to get the P*, but decided on the Wolverine because it was more affordable and does everything I need it to do. Plus, the Wolverine Bolt in my VSR hasn't done me wrong.

It's finally done and I test fired it a few times to see how quiet it was. I still can't believe just how silent it is! It blows my mind and I think it may be quieter than my VSR, but I'll have to test them side-by-side this weekend to confirm that. I'm so happy so far and looking forward to obsessively tuning it this weekend and I'm hoping to be hitting out to 60m accurately. Targeting 1.14J on .32s with maximum effective range and maximum air efficiency. And yes, that's a long line coming out of the stock, as I will put the tank in the stock pouch, though I do have a line and larger tank that I can use if I need. I think this might be my magnum opus airsoft sniper rifle build. The worst part about this is the quality of my camera, because my phone is about 5 years old

This is basically airsoft sniping in a nutshell and is why I've transitioned to a 1J m21 build, especially since I play at a thick woodland site that gets pretty overgrown in the summer. That's not just your experience, I probably get more mk23 kills than VSR kills these days 🤣

Yeah, we totally would have stayed if we didn't have to be at Worthing for the Sunday. It's a bit of a bummer, but it's how the skirmish days fall unfortunately. I'm looking forward to harassing the US as a VC sniper, as that's usually how I enjoy playing at skirmish days too. I think I'll always be an OpFor player at any of these sorts of events, as it just feels more fun to me. I'm on Cartel side for AI500 too

That's the one. The Devil's Pit, Luton. I'll be VC with my "stolen" VSR (Remington 700) and 1911, going up with two guys I get a lift with to Worthing who do a lot of Vietnam stuff (they're both big into their Russian kit). We will only be up for the Saturday though, as the Sunday is a Worthing game day and one of the guys in our trio is staff, so he has to be there.

I'll second this. I've had mine for 2 years now and all I've done (recently) is swap out the hop rubber, nub and barrel (because I like stainless steel barrels for longevity and I love Maple Leaf rubbers). Left the gearbox well alone and I'm feeding .28s through it to outrange most other people's AEGs, despite only shooting at 0.8J. And that's coming from a person who spends hundreds perfecting their gun builds before starting on a new one. I enjoy techning and tuning my guns, but that NGRS I just... haven't needed to or felt like it's worth doing. It shoots so well anyway and is incredibly reliable as my backup rifle now that I've moved almost completely into the scout sniper / reconnaissance roll.

Take your time and get what you really want. I suggested the VSR because it's what I have a lot of experience with, but you can do L96 builds, SRS builds, heck even m24 builds if you look hard enough and are feeling adventurous. Then there's semi-auto builds like SVDs, m14s, SR-25s etc; most people call them DMRs, but the only real difference between DMR and sniper is the style of play. You can be a DMR with a bolt action rifle, similar to how you can be a sniper with a 1J SVD. Everyone sees me as a "sniper" even when I'm running my m21 build at 1.1J, because of how I play and that it's tuned pretty well so it still has pretty nice range. A sniper rifle, whatever platform you choose, can be a pretty big investment if you really like it and decide it's the avenue you want to go down, and you don't want to look at your rifle and go "ew, I don't really want to use that, but I will because it performs well..." I would not recommend HPA as a first build. HPA is something that you need to make the conscious decision to go into, especially if you're installing it yourself as opposed to just buying a pre-built HPA gun like an MTW. It usually involves drilling holes in things and dremeling parts off the inside of your gun to get everything to fit nicely, or at least I'm 2 for 2 on that, since my VSR and m21 both required some DIY modification to the internals to get it together. HPA is a learning curve, but once you understand it it's a lot simpler than gearboxes. I've converted one of my VSRs and one of my m14s to HPA and they're the two main guns I bring to every skirmish day or event (my m21 is my main gun, with the VSR as a backup). The benefits of it for a sniper particularly (we don't need the ROF bulls**t that those zoomer speedsofters want) are that it's really, really quiet, it's really, really consistent and you can fine tune the power to exactly where you want it. Also, an aspect that people really underestimate for sniping, it makes the bolt pull absolutely effortless on a BASR. The number of times I've counter-sniped someone because I've seen their arm move to pull their spring bolt back, while they've had no idea where I am because my movement is a lot less and a lot more deliberate... It's a large number. Being able to pull the bolt back with a short finger movement that you can do nice and slowly makes you a lot less likely to be spotted than having to use your whole arm to pull back a spring bolt. The downside is that you either have to run a tank, which takes some getting used to and may also take a while to get right for you, as different people use different methods to carry their tank around. For example, I run a tiny 10ci tank in a stock pouch which makes it look impossible to shoulder (it's not on the right, but is on the left, but I can't aim on the left through a scope anyway because I can't close my right eye without closing my left), but most people run a tank in a belt pouch or small backpack with a line connecting it to the gun. Or you run a CO2 adapter in either a stock pouch or in the stock itself and run it on CO2 bulbs, but it's not quite as consistent and will start dropping the power as you reach the end of the CO2 bulb. Oh, it also costs an arm and a leg. I think my VSR cost me about £450 all in for the Wolverine Bolt, regulator, CO2 adapter and cylinder (and that's on top of the rifle and other upgrades outside the cylinder), and my m21 cost me around £400 for just the HPA engine. Then a tank, line and regulator is going to set you back another £100+, depending on which one you get. Then if you're running anything but the small 10/13ci tanks you probably need a scuba tank and fill adapter valve thingy, which will be another like £250 - 300... Yeah, it's pricey. Thankfully, I only use small tanks so I bought a hand pump for £50 for mine and just pump it manually. Takes about 15 mins for my 10ci, which means a normal 48ci tank (what most people run) would likely take me about 75 mins of pumping. No thanks! A well tuned spring rifle will sting just as much as an HPA rifle (assuming the HPA player isn't being a dirty cheatsydoodler and upping their PSI or dwell settings after chrono). It's usually because the person is using heavy BBs that it stings a lot. A well tuned spring rifle will also be about as consistent as an HPA setup too, but it's harder to tune to perfection since you are at the mercy of the spring god and all springs are not created equal. A well tuned spring rifle can also be tuned to be really quiet, but I don't think it can be as quiet as an HPA rifle because no moving parts in the latter. However, a spring rifle will never run out of power and doesn't need you to carry a tank. Like most things in airsoft, horses for courses and all that jazz. EDIT: Oh look, I wrote a small essay again. I should approach a university with my PhD thesis on airsoft sniping at this point 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Maple Leaf do a stock for the VSR with stock adjustment, though I believe they're around £150 for just the stock. Also, at some point, they'll be bringing out a new, super lightweight stock for the VSR, but Novritsch has exclusivity on it for the moment for his SSG10A3. Who knows how much it'll retail for when it does release though. I think the SRS vs VSR debate really just comes down to preference on how it looks. I think the VSR is the better platform, in terms of parts availability and shot to shot consistency, but the SRS is shorter and more agile, and easier to make it very quiet from what I've heard, though I just went HPA with my VSR and solved that problem that way! Also this, but... well, I'm not a fan of DMRs at all. I don't believe that the extra 0.5J is worth a 30m MED, since you won't gain that much more effective range. Some people love playing with DMRs though, so again I think it's personal preference.

First off, welcome to the forums For that budget you should be able to get something decent (and I don't care if people say "no, you must drop £800+ into a boltie to make it good" because they're objectively wrong ). Patrolbase has both the JG BAR10 (https://www.patrolbase.co.uk/jing-gong-bar-10) and the Cyma cm.701b in stock at the moment (https://www.patrolbase.co.uk/cyma-cm-701b-vsr-bar-10), both of which are based on the TM VSR platform, which has been a really strong platform for over a decade, so there's an absolute plethora of parts. The JG comes in at £120 and the Cyma at £130, so that'll leave you with room for upgrades. For immediate upgrades to put into it, I'd look at the Action Army hop unit, a 70 degree silicone Maple Leaf Autobot bucking and a Maple Leaf Omega nub. This'll put you up to just under £200 and the rifle will perform decently well. Some sort of cheap scope if you don't already have one will be useful too; you can get plenty of decent ones for around £50. Then I'd pick up two spare mags (£10 each) and call it a day for now. You can stash the mags in a pistol mag pouch, or even just in your pockets. A tightbore barrel would be the next thing I'd get, which'd put it up to about £320ish (depending how much you spend on the scope), but this isn't really a necessity as the stock barrel will do the job well enough. My choice for barrel is Laylax because I'm old school, but I know people love the Maple Leaf Crazy Jets too. Then power upgrades cost a lot and don't make a huge difference from the stock 420fps/1.7ish joules power, so I'd just use it until you decide you want to invest more, or until the internal parts break. The other thing I'd ask is, do you have a sidearm? Having a pistol is pretty essential when you're running a BASR, since you'll have an MED to deal with, and BASRs aren't the greatest platform for putting down any weight of fire in case you get caught out while moving. If not, I'd actually get a pistol first and run it alongside your AEG. Make a conscious effort to use it, since with an AEG you rarely actually need a pistol, but it'll help you get used to the movements and shooting it, which will help when you transition to using a BASR. For sidearms, I'll always recommend TM pistols, because they're fantastic and work all year round, though they do come with a ~£150 price tag. Good thing is, you don't need to do anything to them; they shoot fantastically well out of the box. Yes, you can run a BASR and an AEG (like your Specna carbine), but unless you practice doing it, it's awkward and clunky. I just realised I've written quite a lot, so I'll leave it there before I ramble even more. I love sniping in airsoft and could go on about it for hours 🤣

For the money and best all-rounder, I'd say any of the TM NGRS 416s. I've got the Delta variant and it's a fantastic gun; it's my better fallback gun now, since I almost exclusively play sniper now, but it's reliable and performs really well all year round. Plus you can get that realism aspect if you want, as it will stop firing when the mags are empty and you need to hit the bolt release when you reload from empty, plus the mags can be set to 30rd capacity for the added realism.