ULTIMATE BREACHER

Finally the long-awaited new Tokyo Marui Saiga-12 SBS is upon us! Their brand new tri-shot gas blowback shotgun with semi-auto and fun for the family, full-auto mode is a new member for their flagship Saiga-12 family lineup.

Debuting at the 2023 Tokyo Marui Festival, it reached stores in Japan on late March this year, finally fulfilling their promises of selling it by spring this year, without any delay, for a hefty price tag of 64,800 Yen (US$411.36 or EUR380.96).

Now this May I bought it with the last of my “food budget”, and it reached my front door shortly after; it entered my own personal collection, and after using it for almost a month in multiple games, I can comment on it from top to bottom.

WITH THE ARRIVAL OF TOKYO MARUI’S LONG AWAITED RECENT RELEASE OF THE SAIGA 12 SBS MANY DISCERNING PLAYERS AND FANS OF THEIR NEW GAS AUTOMATIC TRI-SHOT PLATFORM WERE KEEN TO GET HANDS ON WITH IT; OUR “MAN IN JAPAN” TAMA ONCE AGAIN BRINGS US TALES OF HIS OWN EXPERIENCES AND HIS ENJOYMENT OF A NEW ADDITION TO HIS PERSONAL AIRSOFT ARMOURY AS HE’S PLAYED WITH IT FOR A WHILE NOW IN THE TOKYO AREA!

Before we get into the details, we should talk about where its moniker is derived from; Saiga-12 is a Russian-made automatic shotgun, or semi-automatic if considering the civilian models, named after the indigenous Saiga antelope that lives in the mountains of Urals and the steppes of Mongolia and of course the “12” refers to the calibre and ammunition it uses, namely 12-gauge shotgun shells! The Saiga is thus intended predominantly for hunting and sport shooting. For anyone with a passing knowledge of guns, you would likely see the Saiga-12 and say “That’s an AK-47”, because it is yet another variation of the venerable and widespread AK platform. It uses the same rotating bolt, long-stroke gas piston system as an AK rifle, as well as the same controls.

With the same large lever for safety on the right, ducktail shaped charging handle, and large topmounted cover, it even uses the same rail or scope mounting shoe on the left side of the receiver, although of course all in a modified form so it can fire the huge 12-gauge shotgun shells. They increased the width of the dust cover, with a sliding metal flap that rides on the recoil spring to completely seal the dust cover from any dust that can get into the gun, with a bolt-lock when the magazine is empty. They also modified the stock with a sporting stock on some models, to make it into a proper sporting shotgun. The Saiga-12 SBS is basically a cut down version of the normal Saiga-12, from the original 22.8-inch barrel the recoil of the real thing!

REPLICATED-ISH

The Tokyo Marui Saiga-12 SBS is technically not a proper replica of the Russian model Saiga-12 as it was modelled after a Tromix S-17 Semi-auto shotgun, which is an American upgrade of the Russian Saiga-12, by an American company for the American civilian market. However, they don’t make their own copy of the Russian Saiga-12 shotguns, but rather modify an existing base Saiga-12 to a much more 21st century shotgun, making the gun shorter with an 8-inch barrel, fitting a Tromix folding stock onto it, door-breaching muzzle brake, SAW pistol grip, Galil handguards, charging handle, and iron sights, and also making use of much better American made internals and materials.

If Tokyo Marui wants to make a proper Russian Saiga-12 replica of the gun, they should go with the Saiga-12S EXP-01, which is basically a Saiga-12 with the length, furniture, and operating system of the AK-102, or what they should really go for the VEPR-12 which is the Saiga-12 that is decked out with picatinny rails which makes it a proper tactical shotgun. But onto the main event! The Tokyo Marui Saiga-12 SBS replica itself!

The first thing you notice is that it has a very good box, as is always the case with any Tokyo Marui, it comes with good packaging, although admittedly by manual, but TM also come in with a special loading adaptor for a speed loader, even though honestly you don’t really need it… we’ll get into that later.

Everything feels generic with the paperwork, unlike the AKM, AKX, or even their earlier Saiga-12K, where they look pleasing and feels more like a brochure you get from Mercedes-Benz; the Saiga SBS “intel” is just a normal paper that is put inside a plastic ziploc bag. It feels like what you get when you bought cheaper AEG or what they call outside of Japan manufacturers, it doesn’t feel like what Tokyo Marui would be putting out. But hey what am I bothering about, it’s just some owner’s manual, you’ll probably trash it the moment you finish reading it, and of course it won’t be foreshadowing any problems with the gun itself (Yikes).

So, the gun itself! Since I already tried the prototype version of the Saiga SBS during Tokyo Marui Fest, I was impressed that they kept almost everything the same as what they revealed during the event, it’s practically the same thing. They kept the muzzle brake, Boxy Galil-inspired handguards, the four picatinny rails, M4 style stock and grip, and overall it is as I expected. Unlike its real-life depiction it’s missing the Galil iron sights, charging handle, the SAW-style grip, and the original folding stock, and it’s still manageable, but I’m just butthurt by the detail they missed.

SAIGA-12 SBS IS BASICALLY A CUT DOWN VERSION OF THE NORMAL SAIGA-12, FROM THE ORIGINAL 22.8-INCH BARREL LENGTH TO AN ALMOST DANGEROUSLY SHORT 8-INCH BARREL, THAT’S ALMOST DOWN TO JUST A QUARTER OF THE ORIGINAL BARREL!” as expected from any other Japanese market replicas, but it does feel good, you can still clamp it firmly, but it’s pretty huge, and the ABS plastic of the handguard makes you a bit wary when gripping it too hard. It’s also being held on by the Picatinny rails on the sides and a single bolt on the bottom part. You can install an additional bolt, to make sure it’s locked in place, but you have to install the lower picatinny rail to put it in place. Also every picatinny rail from the factory is plastic, a bit weird considering the gun is a recoil beast, even the top picatinny which is made of alloy, and is still being held by the side picatinny rails and basically floating on top of the gun.

Let’s move down to the receiver, now if you had the original Tokyo Marui Saiga-12K, you will notice that the Saiga SBS’s receiver is similar, unsurprisingly, but hear me out here! Tokyo Marui basically recycled the Saiga-12K receiver to the Saiga SBS, without doing any modifications, even though the SBS stock is basically completely different to the Saiga-12K, with an M4 style stock and a collapsing button on the buffer stock, they still retain the original AK style release button and locked it with a bolt, heck!

They also still retain the hole where the hook for the stock locking catch is when it’s folded, they just got rid of the hook itself and left a hole on the receiver. Moving to the rear we get to the stock itself, a normal generic M4 style stock, with four positions of as in the Sig Sauer MCX, a boxy tube but hollowed out with adjustment points, but unlike the Sig’s stock, the Saiga SBS’s stock tube is made out of polymer, not steel or aluminium. Unfortunately it’s being held by a single allen bolt, on an M4 AEG buffer tube bracket, so long-story-short, you’re stuck with the original stock, until some OEM company makes parts for it.

Lastly, the Saiga SBS original long magazine, and as expected it’s huge; the magazine itself looks cool, it feels good, even though it’s made out of ABS it feels nice and firm, and it also retains the same feature on the old Saiga-12K short magazine, the integral thermometer to show how cold your mag is, as well as the ease of pulling the mag out of its shell with a single button, and of course the ease of turning it to dry-fire mode, this would come in handy later on. But other than that, as expected the magazine is just huge!

I tried to jam it into any pouch I had to hand, almost none of them would fit it. Single stack AK mag pouches, Esstac style 7.62’s, 7.62 NATO magazine pouches, Soviet surplus mag pouches, and many more but none of them would take it; the only magazine pouches that I tried and managed to fit it in were the open-top G36 magazine pouches, Smersh or SSO double stack AK magazine pouches, Chinese Chicom chest rigs, and Yugoslavian RAP M-70 magazine pouches. But out of all of these except the Yugoslavian RAP M-70, it was still a struggle to get the magazine inside, and it’s too long for the magazine pouches to be closed. So for anyone wanting to buy the long Saiga SBS magazine, do note that finding pouches that fit them is going to be a big pain in the butt, or alternatively just buy the short magazines, it’s way cheaper and easier!

SHOULDER BREAKER!

After you’ve finished gazing upon the new Saiga-12 SBS, it’s time to use it like it’s meant to be used, shooting the damn gun! Since the Saiga-12 SBS is basically a gas-blowback AK-47 that shoots three BB’s at the same time, operating the Saiga SBS is like operating any other gas-blowback AK. Insert the magazine at an angle, make sure the lip of the magazine is seated into the magwell and rock it back into a locked position on the release latch, flip the safety to fun mode, and pull the trigger for some pew-pew action, and let me tell you, this thing is a recoil beast!

Every time you shoot it’s basically trying to dislocate your shoulder, even when you use the low pressure non-freon gas (which is the only gas that is legal in Japanese fields), and the speed even on a .20g is pretty low at around only 50 to 60 m/s (164 fps to 196 fps) on non-freon gas, and 80 to 98 m/s (262 fps to 320 fps) on green gas. But it feels like you’re firing a CO2 powered AK47 with a full-travel kit, the Saiga SBS really rocks like crazy!

Fielding this thing is also super fun, since it shoots three BB’s at the same time, you don’t really need to be as accurate with your shots because the spread of BB’s will do the work for you. The BB spread is pretty wide, almost a half a body width and can reach out to up to 45 metres. Unfortunately the Saiga SBS is a non-hop up shotgun, which means you can’t change the trajectory or increase the range, it’s strictly a close range weapon. But it is a shotgun after all; you don’t use a shotgun to blast enemies from hundreds of metres away, you use it to blast away enemies in close proximity, and even with no hop-up, 45 metres with good accuracy and BB’s flying beautifully straight is already enough, and it’s a perfect weapon for CQC. And of course when you’re firing a gun that sounds so loud and shoots multiple BB’s at the same time, you’ll attract everyone’s attention; nobody in the enemy team wants to be on the other end of the barrel of the Saiga-12 SBS! I’ve seen people running away, hiding, begging for you to not shoot, and even worse I’ve seen a guy use his friend as a meat shield, so he wouldn’t get pelted by three BB’s at the same time, this gun can turn any six-pack dude with a fauxNavy-Seals background into someone begging for his life. This gun is just built differently, and what I mean is that can be either a good thing and a bad thing.

But let me talk about the Tiger Tank issue; if you’re a military tank lover or basically anyone who watches Girls und Panzer (BTW that anime is legit the best!), you will know what I when I talk about the Tiger tank, dreaded by most Allied soldiers of WW2, it was an AFV that became a legend for killing tanks, but it was never the most reliable or versatile; it was good at killing things, but not so good at staying alive, and that’s the problem of the Saiga-12 SBS.

The Saiga is plagued with weird problems that have baffled a lot of people, and the biggest problem is one that’s huge and makes the gun unusable. This problem comes from the factory standard magazine, the Saiga-12 long magazine, designed especially for the gun. The problem is the magazine is very unstable; most of the time the magazine doesn’t wanna load BB’s into the gun, or it does load BB’s, but won’t shoot, or it does load BB’s but it will only shoot either 1 or 2 BB’s at the same time, or stop shooting midway after you dump a full-auto barge of BB’s, or worse it just plain dead triggers the gun. It’s a very odd problem; it’s just like the gun plain out rejects you, and shoots whenever he feels like it too, because most of the time I check, the BB’s already went into battery, but the gun would act like there’s no BB’s or gas in the gun. If you try and turn the magazine into dry-fire mode, the gun will shoot but no BB’s will come out, even if you filled the mag full of BB’s.

We tried lubing some parts of gas O-rings and the knocker valve, but to no avail. We reduced the stress on the magazine spring, by putting less BB’s, still with no joy, and if you think that this problem is only for Saiga SBS’s, you’d be wrong, the original Saiga12K’s short magazine works flawlessly on the Saiga SBS, which is so weird because the long magazine is

SAIGA SBS’S STOCK TUBE IS MADE OUT OF POLYMER, NOT STEEL OR ALUMINIUM. UNFORTUNATELY IT’S BEING HELD BY A SINGLE ALLEN BOLT, ON AN M4 AEG BUFFER TUBE BRACKET, SO LONG-STORY-SHORT, YOU’RE STUCK WITH THE ORIGINAL STOCK, UNTIL SOME OEM COMPANY MAKES PARTS FOR IT” designed specifically for the damned gun, but it just doesn’t seem to work!

Also speaking about the magazine, the long magazine is super thirsty in terms of gas consumption, it’s like driving a supercar! I usually field the Saiga SBS on small and CQC oriented fields, where you probably only fight 10 to 20 people, the least being 5 people; so not too many people and because it’s a GBB, you try to conserve your shots. But even with that, almost every match I have to constantly fill gas and BB’s to the brim, and because it needs 90 BB’s per mag and has a huge gas reservoir it’s just too thirsty! You might end up using a full bag BB’s and a tank of gas for only half a day, especially if you carry more than one magazine. The second problem comes from the recycled receiver; you might think it’s a smart move, trying to make savings by using practically the same receiver as your earlier model, and doing little to no modification to it, but the thing is, they left the hole where there supposed to be a locking hook for the stock when being folded, a hole not big enough for a human finger to fit through, but a hole big enough to jam a BB into it right in a place next to where the magazine sits and feeds the gun with BBs, a recipe for disaster; BBs that get

“JAMMED BBS ARE A VERY PERSISTENT PROBLEM WITH THE SAIGA SBS, BECAUSE THE MAGAZINE IS LIKE A HYBRID OF AEG AND GBB MAGAZINE; THEY HAVE THE KNOCKER VALVE, GAS RESERVOIR, AS WITH A NORMAL GBB MAGAZINE, BUT AN AEG STYLE FOLLOWER” stuck in the hole, and then will obstruct you from loading a magazine and pushing new BB’s properly into position in the chambers. It’s just a small hole with no purpose on the gun, but why in the name of god did they leave it there? It’s a hole that can create problems!

Jammed BBs are a very persistent problem with the Saiga SBS, because the magazine is like a hybrid of AEG and GBB magazine; they have the knocker valve, gas reservoir, as with a normal GBB magazine, but an AEG style follower. So you can basically take out remaining BB’s from the magazine with a single lever, like the lever on an AEG magazine, and when you remove the magazine, 2 to 3 BB’s will come out of the magazine, just like an AEG. Unfortunately this can cause BB’s to jam frequently, not only on the aforementioned holes, but on almost every single opening in the gun, the knocker valve, the trigger mechanism, on a hole near the chamber, and more. I mean it’s like any other GBB AK, which has a tendency to hide BB’s inside, not only that, but usually where they’re almost unreachable or hard to get rid of.

Also with regard to the build quality of the gun, it’s sub-par, the plastic handguard doesn’t feel the strongest, the internals and furniture use alloy (because of Japanese regulations), and they also plugged the original stock lever and AK stock, replacing it with an extension for a mock M4 buffer, if you use it pretty roughly, the stock might fail on you at some point.

And yet the Saiga SBS with all of these problems comes with a hefty price tag, a whopping 64,800 Yen as stated earlier, with the problematic long magazine being priced at 7,980 Yen (US$50.87 or EUR 47.04), and that’s expensive for a gun that has these teething problems! And the magazine, just wow, that’s almost the same price as buying GHK M4 CO2 mags! You can buy two new Tokyo Marui M870 or KSG shotguns for the same price, or the cheaper and already preexisting Tokyo Marui AA-12, and still have some of the magazine money to spare. Also fun fact, if you’re thinking of buying this gun to invest and sell it in the future, you might wanna rethink your decision, because right now in the second-hand market, Saiga SBS are being sold around 45,000 to 52,000 Yen, a 10% drop in price and yet it’s not selling in there either! On the day I’m writing this review, Tokyo Marui has yet to address the Saiga SBS’s problems, but Marui being Marui they might make a 2nd lot with the problems solved, but for the time we are stuck with a Siberian Tiger with no fangs…

TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY?

Now onto my conclusion, should you buy the Tokyo Marui Saiga-12 SBS tri-shot gas blowback shotgun? Well it depends; if you are a pretty new player and have a thin wallet, I suggest staying as far away as possible from this gun, not just from buying, but also from the barrel as this thing is just scary to use and to be shot by. But if you are Elon Musk with a budget of SpaceX and twitter, really like GBBs and AKs in general, and don’t care about reselling your gun later, this is the gun for you.

Since it’s a very novel gun, with Tokyo Marui’s state of the art GBB technology, the tri-shot system, good build quality, and for those who don’t care about modifying their guns, this is the perfect beast for you! Or you just plain out wanna overpower people on the field with a full-auto tri-shot, yeah.... this gun will do the trick!

But this gun does still symbolise how Tokyo Marui are still market leaders; when it comes to the technology and manufacturing of gas blowback guns, no one in the industry is competing with what Tokyo Marui can put out right now, but unlike its predecessor, the Saiga-12K, the Saiga-12 SBS does leave a lot to be desired, especially when it’s not Tokyo Marui’s first rodeo when it comes to GBB shotguns. They showed the airsoft world that they can achieve the impossible with the OG Saiga-12K, even though they took their sweet time, but they executed it well. The Saiga-12 SBS… it’s just they haven’t taken their time well, and it felt rushed into the market. We’ll just have to wait and see if the Saiga-12 SBS can be the next flagship GBB of Tokyo Marui, be the “ultimate breacher”, and take the throne of the GBB competition, or it’ll be just a waste of money and a fake hype… hopefully I can bring better news regarding its development in future.

So, Tama from Tokyo with the Saiga-12 SBS review signing out! Sayonara! AA