[Fubarius]

So another year has come and gone. Lets take a few intelligent guesses about the next year in paintball.

With the PSP dropping their rate of fire cap to 13.33 BPS old Revolution hoppers (expecially rare pre-BE colors) will become the next big collectible. A player just won't be 'agg' unless he has a copper, olive, or some other rare colored revie.

A side effect will be some back players switching back to a high rise feed neck.

Short barrels (4 to 8 inches) will come into style, with many players using just their barrel backs. They'll claim that it lets them switch sides of the bunker faster, and the deafening sounds will confuse their opponents when doing bunkering maneuvers.

Special Ops will manage to get a program on TV, and all us 'normal' woodsballers will have to suffer through ALL the new players, even the renters, saying they're a "Broadsword", or "Dagger", or "Ambush" and pointing at our nice guns and saying "Wow, you shoot a ____, you better be the Hammer".

Dye, following Planet Eclipse's lead, will release a "special" version of their DM8. It will perform and be functionally identical to the 'normal' DM8 but since it will have coil springs instead of bevel washers in the regs and weight a half oz less it will of course cost $600 more. All the agg'lets will claim it shoots 2 bps faster.

PE, not to be out done, will follow the pbn trend of players bakeing their guns in the oven to change the color and offer 'pre-baked' finishes on their guns, for only a couple hundred more than the normal finishes.

One of the two major tournament leagues will abandon the inflatable bunker for something that doesn't tend to deflate at the most inconvenient time. This leads to bunker designs shifting to look like something you might actually take cover behind in a firefight and spectators that know little about the sport suddenly find the game a little easier to comprehend.

A tournment league FINALLY hires a full time professional reffing staff. The number of penalties skyrocket the first couple months but then level out. Players agree that the reduced cheating is actually a good thing. (I've been predicting this one for the last couple years, maybe we'll get lucky this year)

A side effect is some big name player manages to get himself banned from the sport. Haven't had this happen since Jeremy Salm in 02.