The EMG DD MK18 AEG By ICS

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]This is everything modern airsoft guns are trying not to be. Heavy quad rails, old school controls, and pretty much zero amb dexterity.

[00:00:12]But somehow there's an undeniable appeal. Most of you probably think we only review GBBR, but every once in a while, an AEG like this shows up and reminds you why the platform still matters.

[00:00:27]Heat. Heat.

[00:01:00]Today we'll be checking out the EMG licensed Daniel Defense Mark18 by ICS.

[00:01:06]And this one isn't just your run-of-the-mill version 2. It features a split design gearbox, a quick release spring guide, and their in-house S3 MOSFET trigger.

[00:01:19]Let's take a closer look together.

[00:01:23]And inside the box, well, you're first greeted by the EMG license uh certificate, and then you'll also find an IC product catalog.

[00:01:37]There's also this little card which you can scan for your instruction manual.

[00:01:41]And you of course have a 120 round midcap magazine.

[00:01:46]And then finally, there's the barrel clearing rod. And of course, the gun itself.

[00:01:55]Well, for starters, this gun has great externals. I really dig the overall coyote brown color. It has a deep and matte finish. And I really like how the color between the plastic and the metal parts are very well matched. And being a licensed product, you can of course expect to find appropriate markings all around the gun. It even has the little Daniel Defense logo on the fake bolt, which I think is a nice touch. The gun already feels quite heavy even without any accessories on it. I think at this point the Mark 18 is considered somewhat of a classic. The control interface is rather traditional without really much MB dexterity except for this strange looking charging handle.

[00:02:41]It comes with ICS flip up front and rear sights and you also have plenty of rail space for accessories. Usually traditional quad rails like this have the tendency to weight more than modern M-LOK designs, but there's something very robust and reassuring about these types of quad rail handguards. The gun feels very solid, like nothing moves or rattles in any weird way except for the stock, which has a little bit of free play, but that is completely normal with this type of telescopic stocks. The grip and the stock borrow elements from a real Daniel Defense furniture, but as you can see, the design has been slightly modified to be better suited for an AEG. Now, the grip is of course thicker than your uh gas blowbacks or real gun grips because uh it needs to accommodate the motor. Now, since I have pretty big hands, I do find it pretty comfortable to hold. And the rubber texturing also adds a lot of grip. And you can see that there's quite a bit of thread locker oozing out from the bottom here. And I honestly think this is a good measure because one of the leading causes of a strip pinion here is the motor height dropping. So you really want that to stay exactly where you want it to. The stock is also beefed up to make room for battery storage. It is adjustable for six positions of length and you can easily access the battery by pulling on the butt pad and rotating it.

[00:04:07]This is a lot easier than having to remove your entire stock to access your battery from the factory. Your battery connectors are already configured for Dean plugs. It's 2026 people. If you're still running to MIAS, it's time to step up your game. And the fuse is also located right here. So, it's very easy to inspect or replace it if necessary.

[00:04:29]Now, before we dive any deeper, let's take it for a spin on the range. We're going to run it through the chrono with some point 2s just to see what kind of velocity we're getting. Then we'll dial it in for a more suitable BB weight.

[00:04:46]138 135.

[00:04:49]This gun is shooting pretty hot out of the box.

[00:04:56]All right, that's 10 shots.

[00:04:59]Um, our maximum reading was 139.2 2 m/s.

[00:05:03]Our minimum reading is 134.3 and that's an average of 137. That's pretty hot for a uh for a factory unmodified gun. So, uh I think maybe we're going to go with.3s here just uh for a little bit of a better stability downrange.

[00:05:19]Now, let's uh throw into full auto and see what kind of rate of fire we're getting.

[00:05:29]So, we're getting 19.5 shots per second.

[00:05:32]That's actually pretty good. Uh, considering that this gun is shooting pretty hot. Well, I guess the good news is, uh, I think it's running some pretty capable internals to handle that kind of power at this kind of speed. But, um, you might want to downtune this gun if you plan to use it for C2V games. I don't think I think most most indoor places are not going to let you in at 140 pretty much meters/s. And by the way, I am using 11.1 lithium ion batteries. Um, this gun is lipo ready out of the box. So, uh, that's where some of that rate of fire is coming from. Now, of course, all that rail space means modularity. So, let's go ahead and put some essentials on here. A vertical grip, a sling, a weapon light, and of course, an optic to complete the look of this rifle.

[00:06:31]And I just so happen to also have these Daniel Defense rail covers. I think they'll go nicely with the rest of the furniture.

[00:06:56]Nice. I really got to say that I love the look of these vertical grips on these beefy old school quad rails. All right, so again, I think I want to use 3es for this gun with its uh out of the box velocity just for a little bit of a better stability down range without losing too much initial velocity. So uh just like any M4 AGs, uh top-up adjustment is fairly straightforward.

[00:07:18]Just pull back on the charging handle to reveal the adjustment dial. You want to turn down on that dial for more hop up and up for less hop up.

[00:07:31]Actually, before we continue any further, I Let's uh get rid of that tag.

[00:07:36]It's becoming a real eyesore.

[00:07:42]There we go. All right, let's start off with some closer, smaller targets.

[00:07:56]Let's see if we can get those swingers, too.

[00:08:15]Oh, that wasn't too hard.

[00:08:17]Now, being an electric gun, it obviously has no recoil, but it is designed to have that fake bolt move back with every shot like so for a bit of added realism. It even has a little label here telling you to not put your hand anywhere near the ejection port when you're shooting so that it doesn't get pinched by the bolt.

[00:08:38]But, it's just a thin piece of metal. It can't be that bad. Give it a try.

[00:08:47]Oh, [ __ ] Okay, that's that's worse than I thought. That's worse than I thought.

[00:08:52]Um, yeah, I guess uh that's why they put the label there. But that's just a sticker. So, you can go ahead and peel that off to uh clean up the look of the gun.

[00:09:05]And there you go. You can go ahead and peel off that sticker once you have been sufficiently warned. Now, when I shot the gun earlier, I did notice that for an electric gun, it has a pretty snappy trigger response. And that's because it uses what ICS calls their trip 3 MOSFA trigger, which is programmed to precock the piston before you pull the trigger, giving you a much snappier response. Uh, traditional AEG start with the piston forward, and it doesn't start to pull it until you start pulling on the trigger.

[00:09:36]That's why there's a little bit of delay between pulling the trigger and breaking the shot. But with this gun, you're starting with the piston already pulled to the rear. So once you pull the trigger, it only needs to turn the motor a little bit to release that piston, breaking the shot almost instantly. Now, take notice when I put the gun into safe, you'll hear that little bit of a winding noise, and that's the gun decocking the piston when it knows that it's not being used to uh avoid putting additional strain on the gearbox. Now, I can kind of appreciate this feature coming from a uh well, right now mainly a GBB user for that familiar trigger response, but uh this sort of comes with its own little set of issues as well. So, for instance, let me pop the magazine back into the gun.

[00:10:24]I'll take a couple of shots.

[00:10:27]Very snappy. And when I put it into safe, since the piston is still being released and pushing air forward slowly, there's a chance that your last BB is going to roll out the muzzle. In this case, it doesn't. Now, the problem is the next time you put it off safety and shoot it, your first shot in this case is going to be a double feed.

[00:10:47]That's because the nozzle already dropped once and now by taking it off safe, the nozzle is loading another BB from the magazine again. So, essentially end up with the double feed. I think it would have been a lot nicer to design the uh decocking feature to be activated by the forward assist instead because the forward assist does nothing on an AEG anyways.

[00:11:14]The way it's designed right now really isn't conducive to shooters who practice a more thorough habit of using their safety of uh putting their gun in safe whenever they're not shooting. Now, you might also notice uh by immediately switching back to semi upon putting it safe, the first couple of shots can feel slower. That's because upon returning from the safe status, the MOSFET takes about four to five shots before it relearns to precock between each shot again. So, um I think that would be my main gripe about this gun right now. All right. Now, let's try shooting at some targets further away and see how this gun handles some distance.

[00:12:01]So, our first target is 20 m away from me. Next one 30, 40, and so on. The last furthest targets 50 m away. Let's try the metal targets.

[00:12:13]30 m, 40 m, 50 m.

[00:12:23]We started off with consecutive hits all the way up to 50. That's pretty good.

[00:12:27]And uh we also have one red balloon set up next to each target. So, let's see if we can pop all of them in one go.

[00:12:36]20 30 Okay, took two shots.

[00:12:45]40 Nice. 50.

[00:12:51]Ooh, it's going to be a hard one.

[00:13:01]The balloon's even smaller than the silhouette at this distance. Uh, we haven't shot much full auto. Maybe let's try uh doing a burst. See if we can take out the balloon.

[00:13:12]Yeah, you know what? It's just Yeah, we we had two solid hits there. It's just not popping it from this distance. So, um, think, uh, out of the box, uh, we can expect to hit our targets pretty reliably up to 50 m. Now, if you want to, uh, get a little bit more accuracy than that, I'm sure with a little bit of a hop up and barrel tuning, this thing has plenty of potential. I have to say, I really miss the consistency of AEGs.

[00:13:38]While GBBRs give you that realistic experience, um you often worry about pressure changes when the weather is unstable. Well-built AEGs like this one will shoot exactly the same until the battery runs out. Well, I guess in the case of this gun, that is except for the first five shots after taking it off stage. There's just something very reassuring about the simplicity of electric guns. They're also low maintenance and cheaper to run. That's why I always recommend electric guns for beginners for a more hassle-free experience on the field. Speaking of maintenance, traditional AEGs can often be a pain in the ass to work on uh because they have the tendency to explode as soon as you try to open the gearbox. And that's because your main spring is only held in by the gearbox gels closing on itself. First of all, this gun uses a split gearbox design, which means when you tap out that rear pin, the upper receiver can actually fold open like a real gun. We're going to use a little punch here.

[00:14:41]Just keep in mind to not lose the pin because it is not a captive pin. So, with the rear pin out, you can now open up the upper receiver.

[00:14:51]>> For this kind of system, a lot of people would be asking, "Hey, how about the gear? How about the piston? How about whatever small parts that goes into the gearbox? Are those proprietary? The answer is no. All those are Tokyo Marie specs. So even if you want to upgrade your gun, you can simply buy the ICS guns with the split type gearbox and then take it home and upgrade it yourself.

[00:15:14]While the gearbox design is different, all the internal components are standard version twospec. So that means your gear, your piston, your cylinders, your cylinder head, all that can be easily upgraded with an abundance of aftermarket option. This design also allows you to build two completely separate upper assemblies for instant reconfiguration to fit different scenarios. For example, you could have a 10.5 in upper for your CQB games, and you can also build a separate 14.5 in upper with maybe a magnify optic when you're expecting to make longer shots.

[00:15:50]Another nice feature is the quick release spring guide. So, if you want to change the output of your gun, if you want to swap in a different spring, all you need to do is find any sort of a small tool such as this pin punch, stick it in the back of that spring guide, and notice that there is a groove on the spring guide. Turn it so that it lines up with either the 12, 6, 9, or 3:00 notch. Push it in. Turn it and as soon as it lines up, you can gently release it. That way you can elegantly remove your main spring without making a mess. This is a very convenient feature if you expect to be opening up your gun a lot to uh work on tunings and upgrades so that uh the spring guy doesn't just launch itself and mock Jesus as soon as you open your gearbox. I actually used to work as a gun tech in an airsoft store about 12 years ago and I can't remember the number of times cars have gone flying across a shop. Needless to say, I wasn't the best tech there, but um I'll just say that I'm just grateful to still have both of my eyes.

[00:17:01]And by the way, I also noticed that the instruction manual you get from the little card with the QR code on it doesn't also give you the diagnostic manual for your MOSFET. So, I have gone ahead and linked that separately in the description.

[00:17:17]If you enjoy this video, please drop a like to support our work and also consider subscribing to our channel so you can stay up to speed for all of our future content. This is Louis from Crossmire Airsoft signing off.