Short Answer

It’s like paintball, but better.

Better Answer

Airsoft is a team based game that uses (often) realistic looking weapons to eliminate opposing players, by shooting them with little plastic pellets (BB’s), control objectives and otherwise run around having fun.

It can be played indoors or outside (in designated places, not like out on the street or anything) and is both a hobby and a recognised sport (more commonly known as Speedsoft). There are variations on how seriously the game is played, from just having fun, to playing as a sport, all the way to enacting a military simulation (known as Milsim).

The game relies heavily on an honour system, players are expected to call out when hit and take themselves out of play, the results of which will depend on the game but largely entails walking to a respawn point (often with a visible sign they are dead, such as a raised hand and / or by repeating the phrase dead man walking) and then getting back into the fun.

These BBs do travel pretty fast and can easily take out an eye or teeth, so good eye and lower face protection is essential.

More details

This is a general beginner guide, if you want more specific information, consider the following pages:

• Weapon Types
• Basic Maintenance
• Batteries
• Just HPA it (bro)
• Joule Creep
• Retailers

How do I get started?

Most sites offer to rent all the gear you need to play (including eye and lower face protection) and if you’ve never played before, It’s always advisable to play at least a few games with rental equipment. It’s also a good idea to try a few different places out too, before you really decide if you like it, and spend any real money.

If and when you are ready to start buying your own gear, you will need as a minimum:

• Good quality eye and lower face protection
• A RIF, it’s recommended to start with an AEG, along with a few magazines
• Batteries and charger for the AEG
• Some BBs

How Old do I have to be?

In the UK, if you are under the age of 18, you must be accompanied by an Adult. The minimum age if supervised varies from site to site, with some allowing those 11 years old, others 12 or 13.

How much does it cost?

Airsoft is one of those hobbies that can cost as little or as much as you want to spend. Game events ranges generally between £20 and £40 per person, with equipment hire often between £10 and £30. You can, in theory never spend any more than that should you wish to. New airsoft rifs (it’s always better to use the term RIF rather than GUN, lest you upset people) can cost anywhere between £50 and £1500 (or more in rare cases) but there is also a healthy 2nd hand market. Airsoft gear (such as clothes, holsters etc) are often fairly reasonably priced, but again can cost anything really.

The actual BB’s themselves are not expensive, in fact they can be purchased for as little as £10 for a bottle of 3000 of the little blighters. Here though generally speaking the more you pay, the better the quality and BB quality is NOT something that should be compromised on. It only takes saving a few pounds to cost hundreds to repair.

Good eye protection isn’t expensive either, Bolle Tracker 2 safety eyewear can be bought for as little as £12 and offer good protection.

No, but really, how much does it cost?

*starts weeping uncontrollably*

What are these BB’s then?

BB’s are little balls of plastic, generally 6mm in diameter, although you can get them up to 8mm. Most airsoft RIFs are built for 6mm though and most (if not all) sites in the UK will not let you use anything other than 6mm.

BB’s come in a variety of weights. The absolute minimum anyone should consider is .20 grams, and if you are playing indoors .20, .25 (or occasionally .28) will be the only allowed weights.

Outdoors though, you should try and use heavier weights as these will travel further, be less effected by environmental factors, and over distance travel faster. There is a good video made by Explosive Enterprises that explains this well.

The heavier the BB, the greater the cost to buy, while you can get a bottle of 3000 reasonable quality .20 BB’s for around £10, by the time you get up to .50 BB (about as far as they realistically go and only really appropriate for Sniper Rifles) you are looking at over £20 for less than 1000.

There are three main types of BB. Standard plastic, Biodegradable (the biodegradable ability of which merits some debate) and Tracer. Tracer BBs can be used in conjuction with a tracer device attached to the end of a RIF to become lumansecent when fired.

Some outdoor sites will insist you use Biodegradable. You can get Biodegradable tracers, which are about as expensive a combination as it gets.

Does it hurt when you get hit?

Yes, a little bit, but not enough to stop most people. Playing indoors can hurt a little more because the chances are you are going to get hit at much closer range than outdoors. If you have a very low pain threshold, then maybe Airsoft isn’t for you (although we’d still suggest giving it a try). It doesn’t leave anywhere near the marks you sometimes get from paintball though.

Player Etiquette

There are a few common guidelines for being a good player when out on the field:

• Always take your hits. It’s a game of honour and games rely on people being on honest about being hit.
• Don’t cheat call. If other people are not calling their hits, or are otherwise misbehaving, talk to a Marshal (that’s what they are there for) rather than trying to sort it yourself.
• Don’t shoot dead people / Overshoot. If someone’s already dead, avoid shooting them again, it saps the fun out of it for the other player and repeatedly doing so is bullying.
• Don’t blind fire. If you can’t see what you are aiming at, don’t shoot – you could be hitting someone at point blank in the groin, or eye-pro or the teeth.
• No Bang rule. Most places in the UK will tell you not to use the BANG rule, it’s just idiotic. You have a RIF, use it. Or if you are close enough, use the knife rule instead.
• Just have fun. Unless its Speedsoft or Milsim, don’t take it too seriously, most other players will just be wanting to have fun too.
• Respect the Marshals. The Marshals are there to make sure everyone has a ood game, give them the respect they deserve.

Buying Rifs

In the UK, there are some rules and regulations about owning and buying both Realistic Imitation Firearms (RIFs) and Imitation Firearms (IFs). Pretty much all of which is covered under the Violent Crime Reduction Act (VCRA). You can spend hours reading all about these things in the UK government guide on firearms, however as far as all this pertains to Airsoft is:

In order to sell a “realistic” looking airsoft weapon (a RIF), the seller (not the buyer) needs to be confident that the buyer has a defence for owning and using such a device. Despite what you might read on the interwebs, or on “the facebook” it’s the sellers responsibility to be confident that the buyer has that defence.

Defences include:

• For the purposes of a museum or gallery
• For the purposes of theatrical performances and of rehearsals for such performances
• In the production of films or television programmes
• For the organisation and holding of historical re-enactments
• Official government function / in service of His Majesty
• The acting out of military or law enforcement scenarios for the purposes of recreation (playing Airsoft)
• Display of realistic imitation firearms at a permitted event (essentially fairs or such)

In order to help sellers to be confident a buyer has such a defence, there are a number of registers that Airsoft players can be listed in (no, not those sort of registers). The most popular of these currently is known as UKARA, but there are others, such as BASC, Sportsman Association, Justcos, SWAT PASS,
MVT, AFRA amongst others.

If a buyer doesn’t have a sufficient defence to buy a RIF, they can instead buy an IF, generally known as “two tone”.

Essentially a RIF becomes an IF (two tone) by having at least 50% of the external surface painted in a bright (and therefore un-realistic) colour. Generally this boils down to half or more of the weapon being painted either red, blue or green. Some retailers will charge a small fee for this (£10 or so) others might do it for free.

Regardless of the type of Airsoft weapon you want to buy – RIF or Two Tone, you have to be at least 18 years old in order to do so.

If you want to be included in the UKARA database, you need to play at a site that follows the scheme registration, generally speaking playing 3 times over a certain period of time is enough. Then it’s just a case of paying a small fee, which can be auto-renewed annually. You will receive a UKARA registration number that can be used to purchase RIFS at sites (online and in person) that accept UKARA as a defence.

You can read more about buying RIFs in our retailers guide.

Owning RIFS

It’s perfectly legal to own RIFS (provided you are over 18), or two tones regardless of being in an Airsoft register, and provided you can be confident that someone has a Defence, you can sell them on, too. There is a healthy market for 2nd hand Airsoft weapons and gear, but social media prohibits you selling any there, so you need to do so through sites such as this one, or on WhatsApp groups.

It’s also worth mentioning that buying RIFs second-hand is a big gamble, you are spinning a roulette wheel where most of the prizes are worthless junk. You can get lucky, but you can also spend a lot of money on someone’s “upgraded” RIF that is beyond redemption too.

It’s worth mentioning that while it’s fine owning Airsoft guns, you DO need to be very careful about what you do with them and how you carry / transport them in public. This isn’t like paintball where you might have a huge cylinder of paintballs rising above something that looks like a sci-fi prop. Airsoft guns can look VERY realistic, so much so that as fair as looks go, they can, and do get mistaken for the real thing. They are often used for film and TV (more so since recent firearm discharge incidents) and even a trained eye might not be able to tell the difference until you start looking down the barrel (or in some cases the bottom of the magazine).

All this means that unless you want some attention from Police offers carrying the real deal (and probably shouting at you and pointing their weapons at the same time) you should ALWAYS carry Airsoft guns (two tone or not) in bags or cases that don’t display any of the guns visibly. It’s also a good idea not to just carry them around. Only take them out when you are actually going to an event, then if you are stopped, you have a valid defence for carrying them around (concealed) in public.

Definition of an Airsoft gun

It’s also important to consider just what is defined as an Airsoft gun. The Government definition is:

2.4 An ‘airsoft’ gun as defined in section 57A of the 1968 Act is not regarded as a firearm for the purposes of that Act. Section 57A defines an airsoft gun as a barrelled weapon of any description which is designed to discharge only a small plastic missile (whether or not it is also capable of discharging any other kind of missile) and is not capable of discharging a missile of any kind above the permitted kinetic energy thresholds at the muzzle of the weapon (see below). A ‘small plastic missile’ is defined in section 57A(3) as a missile that:

• a) is made wholly or partly from plastics;
• b) is spherical, and
• c) does not exceed 8 millimetres in diameter.

Section 57A(4) sets the maximum permitted kinetic energy levels for airsoft guns at:

a) 1.3 joules if the weapon is capable of discharging two or more missiles successively without repeated pressure on the trigger, and

b) 2.5 joules in any other case.

So it’s important to remember that for something to be considered an Airsoft gun, it has to stay within those energy limits. If it’s capable of automatic fire, 1.3 Joules, if it’s single fire only 2.5 joules. In the UK anything high than these limits is considered a firearm.

How do they work?

There as many different types of Airsoft gun as there are real ones. From Sniper Rifles to Pistols to grenade launchers and machine guns.

In principle though they all do the same job, which is propel (using a gas, usually air or propane) one or more BB out the front, towards the enemy. How powerful a RIF is considered is measured in either Feet Per Second (FPS), Meters Per Second (MPS) or Joules. Measurements are taken using a Chronograph and each site will have a limit that they allow, based on weapon type and power source.

Ideally, especially given UK law, site limits should be measured in joules, and should be Chrono‘d in the weight of BB that is intended to be used. One of the issues when NOT testing against the weight of BB actually being used is known as Joule creep, which essentially means that as heavier weight BBs are used, the actual energy that the BB has can increase. This is due to the potential of a heavier weight BB taking longer to exit the barrel and so when it does, can carries more energy in some circumstances.

So a site that Chrono’s a RIF with a .20 BB might see one energy level, but out on the field that RIF using a different weight CAN be outputting a different level of energy.

Unfortunately many sites STILL not only Chrono on FPS rather than Joules, but also a few still insist that .20 BB are used to Chrono, as historically limits were in FPS based on .20 BBs and they are too lazy, or just not smart enough to bother to keep up with the times.

Limits vary from site to site, but are often around the following:

BB weight	Most RIFS (FPS)	DMR (FPS)	Sniper (FPS)
Joules	1.14J	1.49J – 1.9J	2.32J
0.20	350	400 – 452	500
0.25	314	359 – 404	447
0.28	296	339 – 382	423
0.30	286	327 – 369	409
0.32	277	317 – 358	396
0.36	261	299 – 337	373
0.40	248	284 – 320	354
0.43	239	274 – 308	341
0.46	231	264 – 298	330
0.48	226	259 – 292	323
0.50	222	253 – 286	317

How that little BB gets fired out the barrel is done by four main power sources, including:

• Spring
• Electric (battery)
• Gas
• Hpa

Different types of RIF perform better when using some of these power sources. With a few exceptions, these generally fall into:

• Pistol: Gas
• Rifle: Electric or Gas
• Sniper: Spring
• Shotgun: Spring or Gas
• Support Weapon: Electric

That doesn’t mean that some of these weapon types are not sold in other power sources, but the are generally not recommended. You CAN get spring or electric powered Pistols for example, but they are not great.

If you want to read more on all the different kind of guns you can get and how each type works, you can look at our pages that go in to more depth about these here: Weapon Types

What RIF is best for me?

Whatever type of weapon you fall in love with is the best one for you. Seriously it’s very individual and personal. Don’t let anyone say “oh you have to get an M4 by specna arms” or “AK are the best”. Have a look round, ask fellow airsofters about their gear (most will be enormously proud of their RIFs and more than happy to show them off), but make your own informed decisions.

There are a few things to consider though.

• It’s a hobby. Like many hobbies, it’s inferred that things might not always work as expected and in the past (and for some manufacturers in the present) quality control (QC) can be horrendous. It’s not even as clear cut as cheaper RIFs are less likely to perform worse or have poorer QC, there are a number of manufacturers that charge a premium price but have RIFs that are just as likely to fall apart.
• It can get expensive quickly. It’s important to consider that it’s likely you won’t just pay for the RIF itself. You maybe have to buy more magazines, you might want scopes, holsters, slings and other accessories. How much all this costs often depends on the type of RIF you are buying. If it’s gas expect to pay a lot more for magazines. If it’s an AEG you will need to buy batteries and a charger.
• It’s a good idea to start with simpler RIFs. Again, it’s a hobby, and as such there is a level of expectation that you will sort some stuff out yourself. Of course you don’t have to, instead you can get a Tech to do any of that work – for some moneys. Even so, it’s still a good idea to start with something simple, like a budget AEG that will get you up and running with the minimum amount of fuss. Have a look at our Weapon Types page for more information

Just HPA it (bro)

You will hear this term often, especially if someone asks a question about upgrading or fixing pretty much any type of RIF. If encountered, you should just remain calm, smile and try and move onto another topic as soon as you can. Avoid eye contact if possible.

You can read more about this contentious subject here

What else do I need to know?

We’ve covered the basics here, but there are more guides on the site explaining some things in more detail. We also post about various airsoft subjects, so it’s always worth checking back from time to time to see what we are talking about. There are also a number of good people on YouTube and on Discord channels who talk about their favourite little corner of airsoft.

Other than that, have fun, take your hits and enjoy the hobby.