A brain fart worth sharting

[Pyrate Jim]

What are the "eras" of paintball?
Years ago, when the Paintball Marshals ran the travelling museum, we would generalize saying "this is stone age, that's brass age, that's aluminum age, that's silicon age".
Obviously, there was a lot of overlap.
The Stone Age were like Splotchmarkers, Splatmasters, 007s before the pump.
The Brass Age was BE (obviously), Sheridans, and PMI.
The Aluminum Age started with the box bodies and progressed to the fancy milling and cool anno they couldn't do to brass.
Silicon refers to batteries, microchips and such to operate.

I don't feel that encompasses the entire spectrum. It doesn't cover the magazine age when you relied on monthly publications for information on upcoming games. Likewise, it doesn't cover the connected age growth of the internet in the spread of paintball knowledge of what's going on, both locally and globally.

What am I missing? The shift from woodsball to concept fields? The growth of competitive teams?
I would appreciate any input,

[k_obeastly]

the space (d***o) age

[Alexndl]

The arrival of CA in tournament
pre lawsuit...
transition from CO2 to HPA?

[wunderbarsafari]

The Wal Mart age. Seriously, quite a number of us never would have heard of paintball otherwise.

[OpusX]

This got our college newbs through. What a time.

[k_obeastly]

U.s.cavalry times, my first pb catalog. Only 2 pages but ooohhh did I dream.

[OpusX]

I can relate to this

[MrKittyCatMeowFace]

The youtube age. What got me into paintball was watching videos of it. kevin qmto was my favorite (still is) because he kept them silly. .

[Fossilhead]

Look at all those clouds....

In the beginning. There were markers what splatted trees and cattle. That became a game.
Then bigger power sources. Constant air and ammo boxes.
Then autococking mechanisms like a small sewing machine strapped to the front of an old Studebaker.
Then regulated sleek machines capable of 7 balls a second.
Tournaments held in the woods.
Then speedball. Some psychopaths version of a paintball thunderdome hellscape complete with black tubing's and 4 plex bunkers pulled straight from the leftover props trailer of a bad 80's sci-fi movie. It was brilliant.

Then someone inflated the bunkers. Put batteries in the markers. And destroyed everything.

That's the short version.

[flyweightnate]

We probably need to demarcate between the insane BPS wars and cheater boards of the 2000s and the more stable era we're in now, with reasonable BPS caps and highly engineered guns, both mech and electro. I think the Enmy/ Emek/ Inception era is distinct from the Xmag/ Timmy/ Matrix era.

[Fossilhead]

Not that there's anything wrong with a good Timmy.
Those guns are great. But yeah things got crazy for a bit.

Uncapped semi mixed with ramping...

[Tarsun2]

i always just saw it as:

the beginning. the pistols marking trees era that morphed into the survival games and pump.
after that, it was semi auto
semi auto morphed into electro.
then the markers got electronic tech. ramping, eyes, that kind of thing.
and that era lasted until magfed and milsim.

you can judge the age of someone when they say something like, "when i started playing, we all used a 10 round splatmaster and just had goggles."
or "when i started playing, markers didnt have eyes." or "what was it like playing without ramp/eyes?". or even, "check out this call of duty ar i just picked up with integrated laser sight, low rise co-witness red dot scope, and forward assist."

[k_obeastly]

The agglet age… usually 12-15

[Olsson]

The Prefab Age.

[Grendel]

• Pre-Constant Air (CA)
• Pre-High Pressure Air (HPA/N2)
• Pre-Electro-Mechanical
• Pre-2008 (BPS chasing, Heyday of Scenario/Big Games, Gardeners/Big Corp destroying Paintball)
• The Dark Age of no money/job (Pre-2012)
• Return from the ashes to present