Sniper Advice

[Gungeorge]

Unsure which of these to go for was looking at a mb-06 but decided to go with one of these looking for advice on which guys any help appreciated fairly nooby but

 

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING GOOD STOCK!!!

not looking to upgrade for a while

 

http://www.airsoftworld.net/warrior-l96-mk-3-sniper-rifle-and-bi-pod-black.html

 

or

 

http://www.airsoftworld.net/airsoft-guns/airsoft-bb-gun-type/airsoft-bb-gun-rifles/sniper-rifle/king-arms-blaser-r93-airsoft-spring-sniper-rifle-black.html

 

[TacMaster]

I'm afraid no sniper rifle is good enough out of the box, they all need expensive and extensive upgrades/mods to get them to a high enough standard to be more effective than a normal AEG.

 

The rifles which require the least work out of the box are the A&K M24 and the A&K SVD. These still need work OOB though.

[two_zero]

THERE ISN'T ANYTHING GOOD STOCK!!!

[GingerBreadMan]

I have used the l96 for a day and while it does need upgrades, it wasn't bad OOTB. Make sure you are using decent heavy bbs, have your hop set perfectly and zero your sights well and then see if you enjoy sniping enough to spend more money on upgrades. As for upgrades there are plenty out there for the l96, however i am not sure about the other one.

[Rock-climby-Dave]

I USED TO BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAID!

Honestly. I used to be all over you can't snipe for cheap.

 

http://www.patrolbase.co.uk/airsoft-sniper-rifles/cyma-cm701b-vsr-bar-10-flat-black.htm#.VD1vlUBsIU0

It's got a decent trigger, nice bolt pull adn does 500 out of the box. I bought one with my own cash, put a 3-9x50 sight we got in the same day (£50) and with a bag of the .43 Welts (£16.99) went out and did well with it.

 

The rifle is (honestly, not trying to sell stuff needlessly here) about 90-95% as good as my £900 TM VSR build straight out of the box. Yes, at the maximum range the shots do sometimes go a little out, but that's the £700 difference. You sometimes have to put 2/3 shots out to hit someone 90m away. Seems like a good deal to me.

 

All of that will be under £200. It's a good base to start from for upgrades if anything DOES break (not sure on longevity yet, only used it for 1 game)

 

EDIT: The sight I picked isn't on the website, but we do have them in stock - the same thing can be found on ebay for about £35-40 just any old 3-9x50 with sunshade.

[Airsoft_Mr B]

Whilst there isn't exactly anything amazing stock, you can definitely start off with a good platform to upgrade. There are four in my opinion worth taking a look at. Stay away from most WELL and CYMA snipers, because a lot of the internals can be off spec and not compatible with third party upgrade parts!

 

I have an A&K M24 which comes with some nice parts out of the box. I'm yet to do a review of it, because I haven't skirmished it yet and also I have no other sniper rifles to compare it's performance with.

 

Secondly, there's the Tokyo Marui VSR-10 or it's clone, the JG BAR-10. Both are great, especially the TM of course! TM's go for ~ £160+ in the UK whereas the JG can be bought for around £80-£90 from continental Europe (TaiwanGun in Poland, although they recently put up the price at which you get free shipping from about £65 to over €300!) Loads of upgrades and lightweight

 

Finally there's the WELL Warrior L96 (MB-01) Also cheap, and doesn't need many upgrades to be an effective rifle.

 

When you buy one remember to budget for a scope too because I still need to buy one for mine which will be at least another £30 and up to £50.

[Chock]

You can theoretically use a sniper rifle out of the box, but you'll likely be outranged and outgrouped by any other sniper at the skirmish who has been at it a while. My A&K SVD is not bad as standard, does nearly 500 fps right out of the box and is pretty accurate too, so I'd probably get some kills with it as it came, but there is a reason why there are a crapload of upgrades available for it and every other airsoft sniper rifle. Either way, you are gonna need a decent scope on whatever you get. You can get a decent PSO-1 airsoft replica sight here for fifty quid if you go with the A&K SVD, although it does require a bit of coaxing to go on the A&K's rail:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/270951265654?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

The A&K SVD can be had for about 130 quid, so that would still leave you a score under 200 quid for something half decent with a good scope on it. I'd expect to throw another fifty to seventy quid at the thing in upgraded bits and bobs to get it up to snuff for some serious sniping, and probably a bit more if you decide to really do a nice job on the thing. There are plenty of dedicated forums kicking around for upgrading A&K SVDs, a quick search on Google will turn those up for you. If you do go with the A&K, you definitely want the larger cocking lever, as the stock one is a bitch to pull back with cold hands, and a bipod is virtually a necessity for a sniper rifle too, unless you want to do the cliche terrorist 'bungie chord around a tree' trick. At least with an airsoft sniper rifle, you don't have to piss on the ground in front of your firing position to prevent the muzzle blast kicking up dust and giving away your position lol, but you almost certainly will have to Ghillie it up a bit, although that is an easy DIY job.

 

Keep in mind however, that any serious Milsim will probably insist you are on the rebel or Soviet side if you have an SVD, similarly, they'd probably insist you were NATO if you had an L96 or a Barrett, although for a regular skirmish, you could go on either side, but it is something to bear in mind if you have any plans to do Milsims, because to be outfitted for either side would probably end up getting expensive what with you needing an NATO and an OPFOR sniper rifle, and relevant secondary weapons too, not to mention the outfits as well!

 

As it stands, most stock sniper rifles are more like DMRs with a slower rate of fire without the upgrades, especially the A&K SVD, because the real SVD is semi automatic. If you want to go DMR, the WE GBB M16A3 is a good starting platform.

[Mr Monkey Nuts]

Airsoft is full of myths that are never well founded let alone proven. Bolt action rifles are no exception to this, I sometimes wander whether those spouting the "needz moar upgradez" line are those who have bought into the upgrade route and are simply trying to justify their own expense, and I know for a fact some are trying to put off new players from sniper roles in order to make themselves appear more l33t.

 

With sniping there are lots of things that will cause you to have a bad day and bad accuracy, more so that with an AEG

 

1) if you cant shoot you cant snipe and if you have never shot accurately before you will not be a good sniper on day one. they are a different game to assault weapons, they are their own discipline and take a degree of marksmanship, patience and field craft. Stuff you don't learn on day 1 of skirmishing, (1a) it takes time and practice.

 

2) They are cheap and they are Chinese, they are not built pristinely, by those who love to build precision guns. They will be full of gunky grease, screws will not be tight and bits will be in wrong, Any new gun (even aegs) should be stripped cleaned re greased and tightened up again, clean and de grease the barrell, fix any air leaks with PTFE tape and give it a good once over. Again this level of tech experience doesn't come on day 1. See 1a

 

3) Your scope is more important than your gun, buy a cheap chinese one and its going to be poor, don't zero it properly at the range you want to be most effective at and its going to be poor. Most scopes sub £50 are going to be bad out of the box. look for branded scopes. Hawke would be my budget recommendation, SMK if you really are on a tight budget. AND FOR GOD SAKE CLAMP IT DOWN!

 

4) You need heavy BBs, .2 wont cut it, no one can tell you what is the best weight as its purely personal, but any lower than .3 is useless for ranged accuracy. see 1a

Heavier bbs are more expensive but you wont eat through them anywhere near as fast as you do in an aeg.

 

5) Don't expect the world, you cant hit that 200m man hiding behind the log, its a BB gun, realise its limits. Learn to calculate range, I bet your perception of 60 meters is a lot different to my perception of 60 meters, amd we are probably both still way out. see 1a

 

The majority of Snipers who give up fall foul to the majority of these rules, if you correct them all I can guarantee any cheap bolt action rifle will at least match an AEG in terms of accuracy and range, The hardest one to get right is Number 1, and the most important is 1a.

 

I have used an MB06, (ASG Urban Sniper to be precise) and I was very impressed, they lad bought it new and it was his first day skirmishing it, the scope was the wrong way round, not clamped down and he was using bulldog .2 bbs. he hit nothing in the first 2 hours before having a hissy fit.

We swapped guns, after I cleaned grease out of the barrel with bog roll, put the scope on properly and zerod it, and loaded up with .28 bastards, I was able to get some nice kills with it out to 50 (ish) meters on a small site. Its a good gun if you put in the effort. imho you cant spend £110 on an aeg and get the same performance.

[Gungeorge]

I know the basics I just don't know the rifles

 

I know I'm not gonna be amazingly out ranging other snipers I just need something that's useable right away that I can spend time and money on upgrades later

[Monty]

I know the basics I just don't know the rifles

 

I know I'm not gonna be amazingly out ranging other snipers I just need something that's useable right away that I can spend time and money on upgrades later

 

The L96 would be the best gun to go for. I've had three of them (Mk.1, Mk.2 and the Mk.3 version) they're very rugged and reliable rifles. Plenty of upgrade parts available as well.

[Preston]

Regarding the a&k svd. Other than the extended cocking handle I would suggest getting the alternate hop up. This saves you having to take the top cover of and using a tiny allen key to adjust the hop. This can be purchased from http://www.airsoftsniperparts.com/apps/webstore/products/show/2657310

[Mr Monkey Nuts]

The MB06 (same as ASG Urban Sniper)b is the same internals as the l96 acording to ASPUK (original maruzen clones iirc), for £110 its a good choice. A TBB will cost £30, a bag of BBs £20. all in £160 with some change, strip it clean it and your good to go. It just doesn't look very pretty.

 

Alternatively I like the JG BAR 10, but not shot one, so cant comment on anything other than feel and finish.

 

If you are spending £130 on a cyma, personally I would find the extra £35 for a TM

[Mr Monkey Nuts]

Regarding the a&k svd. Other than the extended cocking handle I would suggest getting the alternate hop up. This saves you having to take the top cover of and using a tiny allen key to adjust the hop. This can be purchased from http://www.airsoftsniperparts.com/apps/webstore/products/show/2657310

 

Why? what advantage does that offer? Every time you adjust your hop up you lose your zero, the Allen key is designed to be as solid and consistent as possible

[Samurai]

As always, I recommend A&K M24. Clean it, use it. There is plenty of upgrade capacity in it for later. But yeah, if you can get an unmodified TM, that is the best.

 

I started with a Well MB06. Quite cr*p. I had L96 one or two, still quite bad. I have an upgraded Bar-10. This one is great. Both the Bar-10 and the A&K M24 take VSR parts (mostly) and that is still the best sniper platform.

 

What Mr Monkey Nuts said is very true. You have to be prepared to absolutely suck at the first dozen of games. On my first sniper game my only success was that I got my crosshairs on one guy (and missed the shot). I couldn't even aim at anyone else, and by that time I already had a few years of experience with my aeg. Ok, it was milsim, but that gives the idea how different sniping is to "aeging". On my second game I could shoot one guy, and then gradually I became better and better. I'm still not good.

[team flex]

The MB06 (same as ASG Urban Sniper)b is the same internals as the l96 acording to ASPUK (original maruzen clones iirc), for £110 its a good choice. A TBB will cost £30, a bag of BBs £20. all in £160 with some change, strip it clean it and your good to go. It just doesn't look very pretty.

 

Alternatively I like the JG BAR 10, but not shot one, so cant comment on anything other than feel and finish.

 

If you are spending £130 on a cyma, personally I would find the extra £35 for a TM

to be fair it comes with three mags and a 500fps spring, so for the tm your looking at 200 quid. My mate has recently poured 700 quid into a sniper, and although it's nice and all it still seems to me to be harder to play with than aeg. Obviously it will take a lot of practise.

 

My personal choice would be the cyma or tm, which is a very upgradeable platform

[Ian_Gere]

 

Why? what advantage does that offer? Every time you adjust your hop up you lose your zero, the Allen key is designed to be as solid and consistent as possible

Hmmm...

 

The reason I bought the advanced hop unit (from airsoftpro.cz who designed/implemented production of it because it was cheaper when bundled with the extended cocking handle & postage than buying from ASPUK) is because getting the top cover off and more importantly back on without removing a side mount scope is quite a pain in the hole and, while you can set your hop at home and leave it, in my experience the temperature and humidity affect hop performance, so i often adjust my settings during a day.

 

When firing at ppl 60m away it doesn't matter so much: it is just a case of adjusting elevation and the way i have my scope zeroed, i am not aiming at a cross hair point anyway*. But out at 80m and beyond (which is where the expense of a PDI 6.01x590mm barrel shows), setting the hop right for the conditions is the difference between a precisely aimed shot which will only miss if it is deflected by air movement** and a lob shot which may land anywhere within a meter of the target.

 

*it's a PSO-1 mind so it has a differentiated T reticule, not cross hairs anyway

 

**which is always the most significant factor in long range shots, no matter how heavy the BB's are

Edited October 15, 2014 by Ian_Gere
i'm talking about an A&K SVD

[Mr Monkey Nuts]

So in a nut shell its for convenience? The standard hop works well, is accurate and consistent, but a pain to adjust?

 

I take on all your points and agree entirely, I left hop adjustment out of my earlier post because I assumed it was a given that you should set your hop for any gun from pistol to BAR.

[Ian_Gere]

Actually i can't swear to the accuracy or consistency of the stock one because i replaced it as soon as i realised that it would be annoying to use in the field, so i never even skirmished it once.

 

I do have a means of testing accuracy at range without taking a gun to a site, but it's a bit dodgy so i try to keep it to a minimum. Thus i never bothered figuring out if the stock one held its setting well or not, but you have to imagine that a grub screw adjuster would lend itself to consistency. Still, the twist collar design of the advanced unit also has little room for movement - in fact the only point where inconsistency can creep in is the width of the plunger which presses the rubber, ie to the degree which it must remain loose enough in its hole to move back up freely when the collar is twisted to reduce hop up, it can move side to side. This is true of the original design also however, because the grub screw itself is not in contact with the rubber - it depresses a plunger also. This is also true of a nub in an armature hop design mind, just in a different way.

 

I keep meaning to get the Dremmel and Vernier out to shape a new plunger for mine, so that it ends with something like an H-Nub, because I want to sack the W-Hold bucking i'm using - it doesn't want to lift 0.4g BB's without being 'on' more than i want* and I want to shift up from 0.3g Blaster Devils i'm using, but a flat bump in the rubber and flat nub is a recipe for instability in applied hop, which is fine at AEG ranges and ROF's, but is more than the difference between a hit and miss when aiming at a head at even 60m, let alone 80m.

 

*I could always shift up spring power to overcome the FPS drop from applying so much hop, but cocking the thing is a ball ache for me anyway (because i have an illness which causes me constant pain in my hands), which is the main reason why I decided upon a 6.01mm diameter barrel - to get max power from an Element M135 spring. Ideally what I want is a version of the advanced hop unit with a milled rectangular space for an H-Nub or one of those RA-Tech uber hop cushions, with a plunger milled concave at one end to contact the nub, but this would introduce the possibility of torsion during adjustment, so the whole plunger/hole combo would need to be replaced with a square cross section design... not that i'm picky or anything as a simpler improvement, PDI could always get with the programme and make W-Hold buckings as sticky as Prometheus Purple soft ones... i mean ffs, for those of us prepared to pay over £20 for a bag of sniper BB's, replacing the hop rubber because it wears out faster is hardly an imposition!

 

BTW I am generally of the same opinion that there is an awful lot of bollocks talked about upgrades and I think that for many, if they produce any benefit at all, the returns become vanishingly smaller beyond a certain point so, considering that this is also when the expense becomes a bit gasp-worthy, a lot of them are not worth it - they do not get you anything in a skirmish which better fieldcraft wouldn't. In the case of PDI barrels however, you can tell where your money went during the first group of shots you fire through 'em... 10m extra effective range is a big deal when complete concealment is not an option on the particular field you're on, especially when you're attacking other snipers.

[Gungeorge]

http://www.patrolbase.co.uk/airsoft/aw-338-sniper-rifle.htm#.VD679vldWmR

I was also got linked this

I must say I prefer the looks of the l96 rifles to SVD'S

 

but thinking either this or the l96 I linked

[Ian_Gere]

^^There isn't a single brand of AW .338 with a good reputation and some are well known to be utter pigs. ASG do not actually build their own guns, they licence designs and have them manufactured under their badge. What this means is that, whichever design they have licenced, it is either a pig or unspectacular at best. It's sad because it's a great looking gun, but we can't help that...

[Gungeorge]

^^There isn't a single brand of AW .338 with a good reputation and some are well known to be utter pigs. ASG do not actually build their own guns, they licence designs and have them manufactured under their badge. What this means is that, whichever design they have licenced, it is either a pig or unspectacular at best. It's sad because it's a great looking gun, but we can't help that...

 

 

Absolute shame cracking looking gun too

 

may just go with the first l96 I linked then

[Ian_Gere]

Yeah, i don't know what is different about the AW .338 replicas, because even the cheapest Well Warrior L96's have a... well... established upgrade path and, as we have discussed, although some of it is expensive bollocks which doesn't actually translate into much bang for your buck, things like steel trigger mechs which allow you to use powerful springs without short term failure and CNC hop units/hop arm, which produce better consistency between shots, so that if you miss (and 'kin trust me, you will) your attempts to correct for a/some subsequent shot/s have some chance of working, are worth it.

 

We have touched on some of the other things surrounding sniping other than the gun and IMO the role of a sniper is about a different mindset to typical airsofting: it is true to say that success as a sniper is gained more through mastering fieldcraft than the particular gun you use; not just the obvious skills like estimating range, windage, predicting target movement, camouflage and concealment, hidden movement, etc. but things like when to shoot so that you don't give your position away whether you hit or miss and selecting a kill zone which you can hit effectively from as unassailable a position as poss and thereby deny access through it to the enemy, giving your team an advantage out of all proportion to how many people it takes to gain it (force multiplication, ie you and perhaps 1 or 2 assault rifles, to prevent a rush attack knocking you out, can dominate an entire flank/zone, meaning your team can use sheer force of numbers to dominate elsewhere on the field - and they do not really even need to be in on it*, to be tactically aware, they can just find themselves owning because even totally uncoordinated fire has a suppressing effect in sufficient volume and sooner or later someone will grab the opportunity created to get forward and shoot around cover, then the momentum takes over).

 

However it's also like learning the guitar: if it sounds shit it takes a particular type of stubbornness to persevere, bordering on pig headedness and/or OCD - if your gun is shit then you can go through the motions of fieldcraft and, no doubt, learn plenty... but just like you can't take a guitar that wont stay in tune and an amp that sounds like a brass band in a biscuit tin to perform on stage, pig headedness alone wont dominate shit in the field. So while it's perhaps no longer true that you need to spend several hundred pounds in upgrades on top of a minimum hundred and fifty quid for the base gun, it is true that unless you have at least a 10m accurate effective range advantage over just about any AEG you will be up against, your low rate of fire and having to reacquire the target after every missed shot, to some degree even when you've got recocking down to a fine art, is such a disadvantage that you will get pwned so often that it will more than likely soon loose the novelty factor and become bloody depressing.

 

Svetlana my SVD does have a lot of upgrades and some of them have proved fairly pointless, or at least premature in as much as I replaced bits which i knew would wear out with more robust parts before the originals were even close to heading for the great plastic box in the sky, but I began skirmishing her with just an upgraded hop unit and rubber, a cocking handle extension, and a Madbull 6.01x590mm barrel - oh and CT-2 grease, the bang-for-buck-ness of which cannot be propounded enough. I still don't have a full ghillie suit (i sometimes use a veil) and initially i just wrapped some scrim around her front end to break up the hideous two tone covering tan paint job i inherited from her previous disappointed owner. I wouldn't call myself an expert sniper by any means, but i have managed some spectacular shots**, the memory of which is all that sustains me on days when the wind is against me, the light is all wrong for seeing where my misses went, my team mates have so little tactical awareness that i have to be my own security detail, and a marshal decides to take more of an interest in watching me for the rubbernecking than any game management reason, since i was, until they stood there staring at "a bush", completely unnoticed by the opposition... but I do love it...

 

However, despite what seems to be a degree of natural aptitude and my love of sniping, with a gun which could do the business from the get go, I nevertheless do get pissed off. I always take an AEG to the skirmish as well, even though I may only use it once, because there's only so much exercising fieldcraft skills but failing to get hits or prove tactically effective and living on remembered glories that I can take before I start to feel like the laughs/quid has proved to be a poor investment of funds. I can't imagine that I would have learned even half of what little i know now if my gun had not been good enough to get some successes early on and, if that were true, I would not have the pleasure of exercising that knowledge in the field now either... I'd have given up for sure - like most people who buy a sniper rifle and either don't bother to upgrade it or don't go far enough.

 

 

*it's a thankless task usually - people don't often realise that their bull-by-the-balls-grabbing assault and subsequent run of 15 kills was made possible by perhaps one or two hits you got or even misses which nevertheless shat the opposition up - you have to enjoy knowing what you did and having a secret smile about it, because nobody other than other snipers wants to hear the...

 

**minutiae of difficult shots with which i could bore the arse off almost anyone if i didnt have a modicum of self control

 

 

But hey, when it goes well, when the angle of sunlight is working for your direction of attack/defence against the particular background colours of the terrain, when the wind conditions are relatively stable, or even when it's blustery if the direction of blow is at least consistent within say 60°, when the marshals are watching the game not gawping at your uberness, when your team mates do take advantage of your force multiplication and muller the opposition, when you're aiming, for the sake of easy conversation, a metre high and a metre wide, to compensate for range and wind, and leading the moving target by say another 5m and you get the hit, when your target looks around confused and cant see you so doesn't take the hit and you pop him/her again... when even then he doesn't take the hit but swerves off behind cover and never comes back... when you are basically owning half a field and nobody else really understands it... you are fucking |33†.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Ian_Gere
failed to end a sentence lol

[ikarma70]

I have an A&K svd and it was double feeding bb's quite often until I fitted the ASPUK hop up and then it worked perfectly.

The A&K uses AEG parts which means you don't need pricey sniper bits. Also on the svd, if you break your scope, you can resort to using the standard iron sights.

 

I will also say that you don't need the svd type sights, I fitted a regular 4x40 scope which gives superb clarity and light gathering abilities.

 

 

On the l96 and others you have a 28/30 round magazine, the A&K svd has 60rnd mags and these have metal outer casings.