PaintballX3 Magazine November 2013 Issue | Page 100

product review
hopper. Simply thread on a bottle or plug
in a remote line, add paintballs and go
blast bad guys. Speaking of blasting bad
guys, that’s where the fun begins.
Just walking around a staging area with
an Empire DFender is difficult but fun, as
everyone at the field will at least take a
look, while many will be brave enough
to come on over for a closer look, to ask
questions or even ask to shoot the marker.
Even with batteries in the back, paint in
the stock-housed-hopper and a 68 cubic
inch bottle threaded on, the marker isn’t
heavy and once it’s shouldered, the shoulder and off-hand take all the weight eliminating issues of back-heaviness. Adjusting
velocity at the chronograph is simple
thanks to a cut through the magnesium
shell allowing an adjusting wrench to be
inserted. Getting the DFender up to speed

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takes only a few moments.
When playing with the DFender at one
of the largest and most intense scenario games around, the 2013 Fulda Gap
scenario at Command Decisions in North
Carolina, the most impressive thing we
found about the DFender, other than that
whole “no hopper on top” thing, is how
quiet this marker fires. Most of the people
we shot with the DFender simply had no
idea we were around as this paintball
gun issues a very faint pop when firing at
275 thanks to all those ports in the barrel.
So long as the shooter doesn’t keep the
switch on “machine gun” and blast long
streams that opponents will be able to
track back to the shooter, the DFender is
so quiet that it will keep the owner well
hidden on the field. The ability to size
paint to the barrel with the included Super-

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