PaintballX3 Magazine November 2013 Issue | Page 96

product review
By now everyone expects the hottest new
paintball gear for the coming season to
debut at the Paintball Sports Promotions
World Cup in Florida at the end of each
professional season. The 2013 World Cup
did not disappoint, with new markers, new
goggles and new gear coming from big
companies and smaller companies alike!
What few expected at the largest and
final professional paintball tournament of
the year, historically the place where all
the hot new tournament equipment is first
shown to thousands of excited customers,
was for the most talked-about item at the
show to be a scenario/tactical paintball
gun. However, arguably the hottest product
at the 2013 PSP World Cup was a tactical
marker, the new Empire DFender. Rather
than simply release another new paintball
gun similar to any other, a new color of
something pre-existing or just another marker with sight rails bolted all over it, Empire

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brought something new with some impressive features to the World Cup and excited
both tournament and scenario players alike
(though it does still have a bunch of sight
rails all over it).
The first thing anyone looking at the Empire
DFender will notice about the marker is its
lack of anywhere to bolt, slap or twist a
hopper on top of it. That doesn’t mean the
marker doesn’t have a hopper, or is magazine-fed. Empire simply chose a different
spot for that hopper and a different means
of moving paintballs from the hopper to the
paintball gun for firing. With the DFender, the proven technology behind the Axe
marker and Prophecy loader, pro-tournament-winning pieces of equipment, are
packaged together inside a lightweight
but remarkably durable magnesium shell.
The hopper is simply placed in otherwise
unused space, the marker’s butt stock,

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