Tyler Tiberius, the Beginnings of Tiberius Arms

When 16-year-old high school student, Tyler Tiberius dreamed about making a magazine-fed paintball gun in calculus class in 1998, no one knew that in less than two years later he and his father Dennis, an engineer, would start a new company called Tiberius Arms. “I started playing paintball when I was 14 or 15-years-old and they just didn’t really have the guns that I wanted to play with. So I started thinking about what I really wanted to do; I wanted to play with the stuff that I saw in the movies. I wanted to shoot the bad guy and get the girl. That’s the real American dream. I wanted a handgun that looks like a real handgun – loads magazines like a real handgun. I kept thinking, it’s got to have the CO2 and the paintballs in the clip together. I started sketching out little ideas, and really the very first concept – the very first sketches,” Tyler told Paintball 2Xtremes Magazine.

But it wasn’t until 2004 at the International Amateur Open (IAO) that the initial sketches became a reality for Tiberius. He continued, “We set up a shooting booth and everything at the IAO. You should have seen people’s faces when we showed that gun off at first. It was such a shock. Nobody saw it coming. You watch your own industry; you don’t look for the side-steppers. You don’t look for that guy who’s been sitting there sleeping for seven years waiting, then all of a sudden just steps in with a full-blown product, which was our mantra all along.” That gun? It was the Tiberius 8 Pistol.

Within a few years of the release of the Tiberius 8 Pistol a whole line of accessories and configurations were available. In 2008 Tiberius released their Tac 9, also available in a number of configurations. The next year, 2009 they introduced the First Strike Round, a completely new paintball concept. The fin-stabilized, aerodynamic First Strike Round would literally double the effective rage compared to the traditional paintball—and it could be fired accurately at distances of 300 feet and more. The Tiberius Arms 4 Rifle and Tac 9.1 were their first go-to First Strike Round markers—and later the T15 and all of its versions came into the picture. Today there are more than a dozen guns that fire First Strike Rounds, many of the can toggle between traditional paintballs and First Strike Rounds with the flip of a lever or switch—guns made by DYE Paintball, Scarab Arms, RAP 4, First Strike Paintball, Tippmann Paintball, Spyder, Valken and a handful of others.

Guerilla Air

In the summer of 2012 Tiberius Arms acquired Guerrilla Air, manufacturers and distributors of high-end air systems and accessories for paintball. Guerrilla Air’s Myth, G2, Rbel, and Revolution regulators and Pro Series accessories, just to name a few, were some of the company’s hallmark products—many designed and engineered by Dan Colby, formerly of Air America and currently the president of Immortal Air. Colby’s long history developing air systems for paintball included such products as the Whispering Death, Unireg, Prophecy, Vigilante, Apocalypse and many others, mostly dating back to the 1990s and into the early 2000s.

Guerrilla Air (now under the First Strike brand) products include a multitude of air systems and accessories like burst disks, fill nipples, drop down asa (air source adaptor), air gauges and more.

First Strike

In 2016 Tiberius Arms and Guerrilla Air products were rebranded under the name First Strike Paintball. With three major names in the game of paintball now rebranded under the First Strike name, many of the products stayed the same but were renamed to reflect the company’s new marketing approach. The Tiberius Arms T15 marker is now called the First Strike T15. Guerrilla Air’s product line are now called the First Strike Hero line. The newly streamlined company’s product line is bigger and better than ever.

First Strike Paintball’s product line has extended far beyond paintball guns, high pressure air systems and First Strike Rounds—and now includes barrels, sight rails, magazines, regulators, apparel, airsoft products, parts kits, high pressure air accessories and parts, stocks and more. First Strike has CQB/CQC (close quarters battle, close quarters combat) versions of their gun T15, as well as an airsoft version (T15 A), all of which are incredibly customizable.

First Strike Paintball products are a fixture on the scenario paintball and magfed circuit. Their First Strike Sniper Rounds are a strategic weapon in scenario, big game and magfed games everywhere. The First Strike Ultra-Sphere Projectiles (USP) are First Strike’s newest addition to their projectiles line. Precision crafted, perfectly round projectiles deliver what standard gelatin paintballs cannot; consistent, dimple free accuracy. The weather proof polystyrene shell ensures consistent performance in even the most inclement weather and can even endure the heavy spring pressure required in today’s magfed paintball guns. They are expensive but they deliver.