Striker

For the armored vehicle, see Stryker.

The Armsel Striker is a semi-automatic 12 gauge shotgun featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 used mainly by the Russian Ultranationalists and Spetsnaz.

400px-Striker.jpg
The Striker was designed in Rhodesia and produced in South Africa, finding its way across the world but mainly used by the Chinese Army and many African street gangs. Unlike most shotgun designs, the Striker uses a revolving 12-round drum magazine. The shotgun is useful for riot control and combat due to its small size and high capacity, though slow to reload due to its design. The gun was redesigned and the current version is sold under a different name, the Armsel Protecta.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
The Striker makes it's first appearance in Modern Warfare 2.

Singleplayer
It has a much higher ammo capacity than any other shotgun, holding 12 shells in its cylinder. Like the M1014, it fires semi-automatic single shots, though this is due to a revolver mechanism rather than gas-operation. The Ultranationalists use it as their primary shotgun, though the actual primary shotgun of the Russian military is the AK-47 based Saiga-12KS-K select/fire shotgun, which unusually is not seen in the game, especially as the only armed force using it as standard weapon is the South African Police. There are some special appearances of it, including:
 * Kiril, who is the only member of the airport terrorist squad to use a Striker.
 * One of the Russian soldiers before the breaching wall at the shower room in the Gulag will occasionally hold a Striker with Woodland camouflage.
 * It is possible to find a Woodland camouflage Striker when the enemy deploys smoke screens on "Loose Ends", as a matter of fact, it can be very rarely found in the other camos in "The Enemy Of My Enemy".

Multiplayer
The Striker is unlocked at Level 34 in multiplayer.

The Striker is great for short-range combat, if used correctly. It needs its rather large 12-shell cylinder because it rarely kills with one shot at medium distance. Fire two or even three shots as quickly as possible. With a Grip the Striker has almost no recoil. Without a Grip the Striker has very predictable recoil: the first shot will be straight ahead, the second slightly higher and the third and all subsequent shots just a little bit higher than the second. Within the Striker's operating ranges, this tiny vertical recoil will almost never cause the player to miss if aiming at the chest, making the Grip's value questionable. Consider Extended Mags instead to somewhat mitigate the long reload time. Adding a suppressor decreases the range to near-point blank.

Rather surprisingly, Stopping Power works well with the Striker, essentially giving it more "range" as the few pellets that hit at larger distances will do more damage. Some believe the Striker is better at sweeping buildings than the AA-12 due to its larger ammo count and controllable rate of fire.

The most prominent disadvantage of the Striker is the very long reload. Each shell is loaded by hand and the cylinder is wound for each shell, so the length of the reload is dependent on how empty the weapon is. Reloading all twelve shells takes an inordinately long time (about 9 seconds). Pressing fire while reloading waits for one more shell to load then cancels and does not fire until fire is pressed again so switching weapons or sprinting are quicker, more effective ways of canceling a reload. The long reload can be mitigated somewhat by Sleight of Hand. Another good tactic is to reload whenever an area is clear of hostiles.

When fired without a silencer, the Striker creates a cloud of opaque smoke. This only obscures the target when aiming down the sights, however.

As with all shotguns, aiming down the sights actually increases the spread of the shots to equal or wider than the weapon fired from the hip without Steady Aim. ADS does NOT increase the range of the weapon, at least for iron sights and Red Dot Sights.

Weapon Attachments

 * Red Dot Sight (Marksman I)
 * Silencer (Marksman II)
 * Grip (Marksman III)
 * FMJ (Marksman IV)
 * Holographic Sight (Marksman V)
 * Extended Mags (Marksman VI)

Trivia

 * The model used in game isn't the actual Armsel Striker, but similar to the Armsel Protecta, as the Striker has a stock, and the Protecta does not. It also lacks the winding key of the Striker, which would make reloading even longer.
 * Even though the model already has a vertical foregrip, the Grip attachment for it in multiplayer which decreases recoil but does not change the weapon's appearance, very similar to the M4A1 Carbine.
 * The primary shotgun of the Russian Military is the Saiga 12KS-K select fire shotgun, not the Striker.
 * A Striker on Hidden always has Woodland Camouflage and very rarely, a Red Dot Sight.
 * Throughout Singleplayer and Special Ops, the gun can be found with a woodland camouflage, which is not possible on Multiplayer.

Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lRToMErJmY