20 Tips and Pointers to Greatly Improve Your Airsoft Skills

These are 20 tips and pointers to greatly improve your airsoft game. As long as you keep these tips in mind, you will see much improved accuracy, focus, and overall performance in your airsoft. But, read these tips with a grain of salt, for example, numbers 12 and 13; having a bunch of different guns gives you versatility to use different style guns in different situations. But the point 12 and 13 are making is that if you are thinking about spending a bunch of money on a bunch of different guns, maybe you should think about buying one really good gun or upgrades for a gun you already have, instead.

  1. Always use your sights. You should almost never fire from the hip, even with fully-automatic guns.
  2. Practice how you would be in a game. Wear all the equipment, clothing, and use the exact guns that you would be using in a actual airsoft match while you practice.
  3. Use the correct BB weight for each individual gun. When you first get a gun, you should test which BB weight works best for that gun (test with the three major BB weights: .12 gram, .20 gram, and .25 gram). Look for accuracy and how far the BB will go before it lands.
  4. Keep a good grip on your gun while you’re shooting. Keep the stock (if you have a stock) firmly pressed against your shoulder and your weak hand holding the gun, while your strong hand pulls the trigger.
  5. With spring pistols, keep the gun in your strong hand and cock the slide with your weak hand. (Some people do it the opposite way because it’s easier to cock with your strong hand, but it decreases accuracy)
  6. Take your time and aim. Don’t panic and start firing if you see a opponent in a airsoft match, take you time to line up your sights and make a accurate shot.
  7. Once you fire, don’t wait around to see if you hit your target. After the BB leaves the barrel, there’s nothing more you can do. Immediately re-arm (get another BB chambered) your weapon before bothering to see if you’ve hit. If you missed, fire again. If you hit, move on.
  8. Wear the appropriate clothing. If you’re hot/cold/uncomfortable you’ll start hurrying shots and sacrificing accuracy.
  9. Calm yourself before a airsoft match. If you go in angry, nervous, etc. you will make mistakes. Get in the mind set of a robot: you need to remember all of what you’ve learned while practicing and what you’ve read in this post and complete your mission.
  10. Practice makes perfect. I know I’ve mentioned practicing before, but it’s vital that you do so. The more BBs you put down range the better you’ll get.
  11. Push yourself. If you push yourself to hit a 12-inch target at 50 feet away, think about how easy it’ll be to hit a player from 20 feet. Try to find your maximum range and then practice from even farther away.
  12. Upgrade the airsoft guns you have instead of buying more of them. Investing in optics, extra magazines, and accessories will greatly improve your performance with that gun. Besides, you can only shoot one gun at a time anyway.
  13. Invest in a good quality gun. This adds to number 12, if you invest in a more expensive, better gun, it’ll pay off. AEG’s (Automatic Electronic Gun), for example, are good to invest in. They’re usually fully-automatic and one will serve you better than the two cheaper spring guns that you could have bought for the same amount of money.
  14. When retreating, don’t attempt to fire back. You should only retreat when it’s your last option and you’ve already tried everything to hold back opposing players. That said, you shouldn’t turn around to fire back if you’re already retreating. If you couldn’t hold off opposing players staying still, you’re not going to do anything randomly firing backwards as you are trying to run away. The chances of actually hitting someone is slim and trying will only slow you down and give the other team time to catch up to you.
  15. Be tactical. For example, if you’re planning to come around a corner (this especially applies for CQB game-play), take out your secondary, which is smaller and lighter than your primary, and breech the corner with that. This will allow you to bring your gun up and aim much faster than you would using your primary. As soon as you’ve cleared the corner, though, start using your primary again.
  16. Use all the tools at your disposal. If you have a airsoft grenade, don’t be afraid to use it. The same goes for if you have a flashlight, secondary, speed re-loader, or any other tool you may have. Make it as easy for yourself as you can.
  17. If cover is available use it. Unlike video games, though, visual cover might not be the greatest choice. The mandatory orange tip on the mussel of every airsoft gun pretty much makes it imposable to try to hide. If you’re laying down in visual cover and are spotted you are in some deep trouble. On the other hand, using physical cover is a good strategy. You can pop in and out of physical cover, making quick shots when you come out and then immediately going back in, gives the opposing players very little chance to hit you.
  18. When there’s a break in the action, you should immediately reload. When you do reload, make sure you’re completely maxed out. Depending on how safe you are, take time to get a BB in the chamber as well as completely reloading your magazine. Make sure to keep an eye out for enemy players and at least a couple bullets loaded into one of your weapons, while you reload the other one; you’re most vulnerable when you’re reloading.
  19. We’ve already mentioned practice multiple times before, but it’s important to maximizing your practice time. Apart from “pushing yourself”, drills are the best way to go. Practice everything: reloading, shooting while moving, shooting while lying down, coming in and out of cover, etc.. Do a drill multiple times. It will get boring and frustrating after a while but you just need to take a little break, reestablish yourself, and keep on going. Succession is key.
  20. The last tip is one of the most important and the most obvious. Take care of your guns and they will take care of you. Keep them in a safe place where they won’t be broken, lube and clean them as necessary, and (as mentioned before) give them the right ammunition.

Tips to Reloading Airsoft Guns (How To Get More Shots Per Magazine)

You can’t have a gun without ammo. You can’t have a airsoft gun without BBs. It just won’t work. That’s why the biggest hassle in any gun fight is reloading. In this post I’m going to show you how to get more shots per clip, which may not sound like a big deal, but when a friendly airsoft fight turns into a war, a couple extra shots can kill/tag a couple guys on the opposing team. Think about that, less players shooting at you, that’s a pretty big deal. Find your type of gun below, and get your guns locked and completely loaded.

AEG’s (Automatic Electric Guns)

AEG’s usually have big reservoirs that are pushed into the chamber via spring that you crank by turning the wheel on the bottom of the magazine. Take a completely empty magazine, and fill up the reservoir just like you normally would. Now I know that you’re suppose to put the magazine into the gun and then crank the wheel, but this time crank the wheel on the bottom of your magazine just until the BBs reach the top of the chamber. Then open up the reservoir again and there should be room for at least five more BBs if not more. Fill the space up, and then insert the fully loaded magazine into your gun and then crank the wheel all the way taught. This has now given you a average of 10 more BBs in your magazine.

Spring Pistols, Shotguns, and Sniper Rifles

Unfortunately, there’s not much extra room in pistols/shotguns/sniper-rifles magazines for extra BBs due to their slim, tidy design. However, you can add just one more shot. How you do it is, take a empty magazine from your gun. Then load it with just one BB. Now insert the magazine with the one BB in it into your gun. Now simply cock your gun just like you would to get one in the chamber. Then take the magazine back out and it should be empty. Now fill the magazine up just like you normally would and insert it into the gun. The single BB you loaded earlier is now in the chamber, giving you a extra shot. Just be careful to keep the gun on safety until you’re ready to fire because as soon as you pull the trigger, it’s loaded and will fire.

Gravity Fed Hopper Guns

Gravity fed hoppers are the most simple design out there, making it the hardest to manipulate. Basically, BBs are stored above the chamber, usually in a scope or a compartment. To juice some extra rounds out of these you’ve got to get creative. What you need to do is take a piece of construction paper and roll it into a giant straw thing and tape it so it wont unroll, make it just small enough to fit into the hole where you pour BBs into to fill up the scope/compartment. Shove it into the hole about a half inch in and tape it into place so it wont fall off. Now fill it up with BBs so it fills the compartment and the funnel you made up to the top. It might look ridicules, but it gives you a average of 50+ extra BBs. This is to give you a idea of what it would look like if you cut your gun right down the middle with your funnel inserted:

Spring Rifles

All spring rifles have different magazines, which makes explaining this part hard. There’s some guns were you have no room to “top off” (I’ll show you how to top off in a moment), and for those guns (a example is the Mossberg M590 shotgun from Soft-Air USA), the only thing you could do to get as much ammo as possible is to “get one in the chamber”. Scroll up to “Spring Pistols, Shotguns, and Sniper Rifles” to learn how to get one in the chamber, it’s the exact same concept. But some rifles (the Stinger R34 from Crosman, for example) has a little more room to work with. To give you a idea of what kinds of magazines can top off, take a look at the picture below. You need one like that, with the outward notch:
The notch usually isn’t that dramatic, but the bigger it is, the more ammo it’ll hold. On magazines like this you usually pull a spring down on the front of the magazine and you usually lock it into place some how, then you either pour the BBs in from the notch, or if you have a reservoir that you shake to make the BBs fall in from the reservoir.  As seen below, the BBs fall into a sort of chamber in the magazine. The BBs don’t take up that whole chamber, the notch up on top is empty, so you can just manually drop a couple BBs on top of the others. A idea of what you’re seeing below is the “before” is a normally loaded magazine. The “after” is a normally loaded magazine with three extra BBs on top (the extra BBs are shown in red):

Just make sure to keep the magazine up right while you insert it into your gun becuase the BBs on top are loose and could fall.

That’s about all the different ways you can extend your BB count. While these methods do take longer to load than just a regular load, you never know, maybe those few extra BBs might save your hide and keep you in the game.