When I was younger I watched the man moun­tain that is The Gov­ernator; Arnold Schwar­zeneg­ger, play the role that was to make him fam­ous; The Ter­min­ator. Sent back through time, the mighty Aus­trian killing machine was naked on arrival and forced to pro­cure his weapons local to his tar­get; wait­ress Sarah Con­nor. As a kid I was mes­mer­ized by each and every scene of this movie and espe­cially the fam­ous moment when The Ter­min­ator is in the gun shop. For what does he choose as his fire-irons to lay the smack-down on the poor Miss Connor?

He chooses the AMT Hard Baller .45 longslide! (Well, the shop was fresh out of Phased Plasma Pulse-Lasers in the forty watt range). Ever since that moment, this mighty pis­tol has taken a near mythic status as the ulti­mate killing machine’s sidearm of choice. In air­soft terms, the closest thing this side of a 1000 GBP cus­tom pis­tol to “The Ter­min­ator Pis­tol” was a springer Auto­mag III made by Tokyo Marui. For whilst it was not the exact model of the great .45, it was made by the same com­pany: AMT. This was my very first air­soft gun, one I fondly miss and many a resound­ing cry of “Sarah Con­nor?” could be heard around my moth­ers house as I would Ter­min­ate my little brother whenever he became too annoy­ing. Roughly every 8–10 seconds. AMT have not exactly set the world on fire with their guns. Start­ing off as a Colt knock-off com­pany, their early mod­els were fam­ous for only one thing; jam­ming and even the rifle-round shoot­ing Auto­mag III was not recom­men­ded for self defense. Except per­haps when employed as a 8 inch truncheon. So the dream of actu­ally own­ing a gas blow back ver­sion of the Hard­baller remained in the minds of thou­sands of air­softers. That is until West­ern Arms brought it start­lingly to life… and here it is!

My online air­soft shop of choice was the ever reli­able UNCOMPANY in Hong Kong who were offer­ing the pis­tol at an amaz­ing $229 or around 114 GBP! Con­sid­er­ing the cost of import­ing ($53) and the expec­ted bill from the cus­toms man (30 GBP), I was look­ing at a total own­er­ship cost of 160 GBP, which for my own­ing my dream is none too shabby. The Hard­baller, as well as stretch­ing the wal­let, fam­ously stretches the hol­ster. Here are the basic spe­cific­a­tions of the model: Weight 912 g, length 267 mm (!!), capa­city 21+1 rnd’s, power 300.0 fps. With spec’s like that you would expect it to be dif­fi­cult to hol­ster, how­ever in my test­ing I have had no prob­lems hol­ster­ing it in any­thing that takes a stand­ard Colt 1911, with the pro­viso that it needs to be able to take the extra length. In other words, War­rior gear, Guarder Tornado’s and Colt hol­sters are fine. Whereas your 1911 Safar­i­land won’t and nor will many of the Black­hawk CQB/CQC hol­sters. Some­thing to keep in mind if order­ing blind off the web. One thing that stands out with all Colt 1911 mod­els is how slim they are. Essen­tially this is a very slim and easy to hold gun, lack­ing the magazine bulges of the Para-Ordinance range or the SVI pis­tols as well as the grip killing Tokyo Marui Desert Eagle, which often res­ul­ted in cramps even with my mon­ster hands.

It does how­ever have that nice heav­i­ness that many air­soft vari­ations of clas­sic pis­tols lacks. This is a WA trade­mark. Look­ing around the rep­lica, I can see that all the know­ledge and exper­i­ence that has gone into pro­du­cing so many 1911 vari­ants has not been wasted here.

The trig­ger is the upgraded and adjustable type for want of the cor­rect Allen Key. The stock pull is very light indeed, and if you take it off safe, you should be ready to shoot. The top of the rep­lica fea­tures a Bomar-style sight and a grooved rail top that runs the whole length of the gun.

The ham­mer action is very smooth and the fit of the slide is up to the stand­ard WA qual­ity. That is to say; top qual­ity. Notice the extra length on the safety latch. Being a Colt copy the rep­lica has only a left side safety. The trade­marks all all present and cor­rect. The right side trades are the words “STAINLESS — MADE IN USA” in the slide and the serial num­ber, AMT logo and “EL MONTE. CA.” on the frame. The etch­ing on the frame is not the greatest in the world, but it is clear to read at least.

On the right side you have “HARDBALLER AUTOMATIC”, the logo again and “LONG SLIDE CALIBER .45″. These are very clear. One of the first things I did was swap out the basic grips, which are plastic, for my Pachmayr?s Amer­ican Legend set, which cor­rect a lot of my per­sonal aim­ing prob­lems and also lend a very nice assas­sin look to the piece.

I must say that it looks the ser­i­ous busi­ness with these grips on and I have received many com­ments and “oooohs and ahh­hhs” from my friends and the crowd at my local ground. So, enough of the looks, what’s this rep­lica like to shoot and how’s it play at a skir­mish? Shoot­ing this mon­ster involved firstly hol­ster­ing it to my War­rior PLB Belt rig and set­ting up my shoot­ing gal­lery. My range here is around 20ft and well lit. I tested three types of shoot­ing. Firstly, I gassed up a mag with ICS Green Gas and fired 5 aimed shots. Secondly, I gassed up a mag with Abbey Pred­ator 134a and fired 5 aimed shots. Finally I setup a host­age tar­get, gassed up with green and did a back-to-the-target, turn, draw & snap-shot. The res­ults speak for themselves:

It is accur­ate as the math­em­at­ics cal­cu­la­tions of Mil­liard Gar­gan­tub­rain! Luck­ily for me, the very day I received it I was able to take it to my home ground of Elec­trow­erkz and play a few games with it. The first game was a straight pis­tols only game; my favor­ite. Usu­ally I use two hand­guns for max­imum fire­power and tar­get­ing, but for the review I left my TM 1911 in the safezone and went out with the hand­can­non. It has been quite a while since I have used a West­ern Arms pis­tol in a skir­mish. About half way through the game, and a good 15 kills to credit, I real­ised that I had REALLY been miss­ing it! The weight and solid feel is amaz­ingly con­vin­cing. All that extra cash is well placed in the build quality.

The old ques­tion of skir­mish­ing effect­ively with West­ern Arms is over. In a pis­tol game I will now prob­ably not use any­thing else. Not since I first skir­mished a Tokyo Marui Desert Eagle Hard kick or per­haps some of the best games with my old Tokyo Marui M93R have I been so in the zone. People take their hits form this gun and I was able to make some very nice shots.

Moreover, in the second game I was up against AEG’s armed only with the pis­tol and I was able to match their range over the 40ft of the Elec­trow­erkz ground floor with ease. Using the bal­ance of the piece to my advant­age, my one shot snap shots hit home and enabled me to pull back into cover before their burst fire hit back. So, what is wrong with it? Well, a little. Firstly, West­ern Arms sil­ver paint rubs off. Mine already has done so after 20/30 or so draws. If you are going to skir­mish this piece expect it to show it on the edges at least. Secondly, gas. This gun, when shot on green, ran out of gas before run­ning out of BB’s. A skir­misher will have a life lost at one point to this hap­pen­ing before he real­ises to count the num­ber of BB’s in to the mag. Also the fps on 134a is not amaz­ing. Thirdly, and per­haps most damningly, for all that extra bar­rel length, and this is a gun you can pump the bar­rel like a shot­gun, the inner bar­rel is no longer than a stand­ard 1911.

As you can see here, the inner bar­rel is way down the pipe. This is obvi­ously some­thing to be upgraded, but annoy­ing that it is miss­ing from the stock gun. Quite what the range will be after that upgrade… Finally, the facts of life: The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. This rep­lica burns very very brightly. I per­son­ally am not a bet­ting man, but I don’t expect this gun to last 2 years. I am going to use this as a base gun and upgrade it to the max. For a col­lector dive in. This gun is great. For a nor­mal, AEG using straight skir­misher look­ing for ulti­mate reli­ab­il­ity, stay with your Glock. This is a pistoleer’s gun, a Ter­min­at­ors gun. Single kills and head­shots to die for. It is, in the end, for those of us who demand that little bit more accur­acy from their shooting-irons. And a lot more style!

9.5 out of 10.

Regards,

Basho

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