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About the Game Since I discovered airsoft in 2004, I don't play paintball anymore. I've saved the page below in case someone somehow had a link to it that could usefully be preserved.
Paintball is the only sport I've ever loved with this sort of intensity. It's just a perfect game- massive adrenaline, strategies, tactics, and CO2-powered paintball guns. You don't have to be in great shape, own expensive equipment, or devote your life to it.
On the other hand, since I started playing in 1995, I've started running to keep in shape, spend at least $1500 on gear, and devoted my life to it. But I didn't have to. I'm just that silly. Honest. And while I'm talking about me, I'm Team Internet Paintball #2327, Spyder Owner's Group # 1237, TS-1 Owner's Group #218, and Palmer Owner's Group member #079.
Photos coming before 1998. Maybe. Clip art © Durty Dan ( http://www.durtydan.com/ )
What
I Play With (my gun, you pervert!)
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About Paintball The typical paintball game is a variation of capture the flag. Two teams square off on the field. The first team to grab the other team's flag (or sound their air horn, or equivalent) wins.
Each player wears protective equipment (mandatory facemask, plus whatever other gear they want) and carries a C02-powered paintball gun. Radar chronographs make sure that the muzzle velocity of the paintball does not exceed 300 feet per second.
If you've ever seen a gelcap, you know what a paintball is. Instead of being small enough to swallow in one gulp, a paintball measures .68 inches in diameter. Instead of medicine, it holds water-soluble paint. Getting hit by one stings for a few minutes, and leaves a weird-looing surface bruise. But it doesn't really hurt. Paintball (if you play with a proper mask and gun) is safer (in number of injuries per year per thousand players) than golf.
More information on paintball is available from http://www.warpig.com/paintball/newbie/newbie.shtml.
Tips for Buying Your First Gun Paintball players love to talk about gear. (Ask me about my gun, or yours. Feel free.) But they sometimes run out and buy gear without really thinking about it.
The best way to buy a gun is to take your time and do your homework. Read rec.sport.paintball on Usenet. Check mail-order catalogs and ads in Action Pursuit Games. Then go to a store and see if you can shoot the gun. At the very least, see how it feels in your hand. If you think you want it, ask if you can take a look at the manual and packaging. It sucks to buy your first gun and not be able to figure out how it works, or have it break your first day. Make sure it feels like a quality product with a good manual.
Once you own your own gun, you'll start playing with it. There you're on your own.
Want to see more technical stuff? Take a look at
Where to Play I usually play at Colors in Fremont, Michigan. It's about three hours from Ann Arbor, MI. Directions are on-line.
Why drive so far? Playing locally, you sometimes get a pretty high-powered crowd. If you don't own a gun, you can expect to pay $10 field free, $15-25 to rent your gear, and possibly high prices for paint. At Colors, the people are great, and the fee is $5 for the day. If you need to rent, that's another $5, for a semi-automatic paintball gun with a nitrogen power system. It's worth the trip.
We have also been known to play at Hell's Survivors in Pinckney, MI. I'm not a big fan, though. The people aren't especially friendly, the fields are small, spray and pray prevails, and only the "Master's" field really allows much strategy- although the Village certainly does test one's might. Anyway, for the aforementioned high prices, it just isn't that cool. One major bonus, though, is that the ladies' outhouse is supposedly quite tolerable. That fact alone entitles them to some sort of humanitarian award.
Who I Play With
I play with Zorak's Minions (evil.mantis@umich.edu),
a 5-person fireteam. We're not actually a tournament paintball team, though,
for several reasons.
For
those who don't know, Zorak
is the evil mantis from Space
Ghost: Coast to Coast. He combines a cunning and scheming
nature with a sort of adolescent "Beavis & Butthead"
joy in destruction. So do we. "Blast him! Blast him!"
Despite being a mantis, he has also proclaimed himself the Lone Locust of the Apocalypse. Think of him when you look to the night sky. Click his picture to hear his haiku. Image from © 1995 Cartoon Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Image borrowed from http://www.filmzone.com/SpaceGhost/zorak2.html.
Aside from my self, Zorak's Minions are:
Marc has great stealth skills . He can crawl as fast as some people walk, and stop dead in his tracks in an instant. That's his modus operandi- vanish and reappear in inconvenient places. There's only one rule for dealing with him: When you least expect it, expect it
He plays with a truly unique gun, a Tippman 68 Special semi-auto with a custom-made 20" J&J chrome barrel with a Bob Long Whisper Brake and siphon CO2. It's heavy enough to be very accurate, and the long barrel makes it very quiet. It's perfect for sniping- he can hit at ranges where locating him by site or sound is simply impossible.
Until Merrie showed up, I was the shootinist guy on the team. Not anymore. She's ferocious, mean, and unusually happy. Not to mention cute. How many other people could charm their teammates into giving them a gun for their birthday?
Said gun is a Tippman 68 Carbine with a 16" Smart Parts All-American barrel.
Rob is just this guy. I'd say more about him, but he smokes, and the stench always irritates me. So I'm supressing him.
Rob shoots an ATS-Tagline AT-85R full-auto. Heh heh heh.
Gary is a giggling psycopath who plays without fear. He's small and quick, almost as sneaky as Marc. But while Marc will try to shoot you in the back, Gary just wants to shoot you. Actually, he wants to shoot you and everyone on your team. He's a tactical chameleon- if you expect him to sneak, he'll go wild. If he's pinned, he'll start sneaking. If he can't defend, he attacks. As long as he gets to shoot someone, he's happy.
His new favorite tool is a Tagline TS-1 Select, factory stock with anti-siphon CO2. It's one sweet little toy. For pump games or emergencies, Gary also owns a PMI Trracer with a 16" Smart Parts barrel.
The Minions also recommend U.S. Cavalry's Tiger Stripe fatigues (AV 15706 and AC15707) and RP Scherer Premium Gold paint, preferably in the "Fire Rock" color scheme.
Zorak's Minions also operate the highly secret (and somewhat fictional) Mantis R&D Lab.
What I Play With My new favorite gun is my Palmer Houndstooth. I found that I was spraying and praying a bit too much with my semi, so I'm back to pump for a while. It's set up with bottom-line anti-siphon CO2, a spiral-ported barrel, Stabilizer regulator, and (sometimes) an Armson Pro-Dot sight. In action it's quiet and nicely accurate. I couldn't really ask for better.
My other gun is a Worr Game Products Autococker, with custom work by Bad Boyz Toyz. Custom work includes:
The Autococker has a reputation as an unreliable marker, but that's crap. Mine has been bulletproof. I've never had a problem that wasn't directly traceable to a mistake I made. Hint: Put the bolt in with the top side facing up. Down is bad. I've moved my opinions about paintball gear to a separate page.
I used to have a Tippman SL-68 II with a 16" ported and straight-rifled J&J brass barrel, with a camoflauge paint job I did myself, but I sold it when I got the Palmer. Darn nice gun for the price, though- I recommend it highly.
Stories
Every paintball player has favorite stories to tell. Half the joy of the game is the ritual discussion of how clever you are- or more often, how clever the guy who tagged you out was. We traditionally begin such stories with the incantation, "Dude, I was so hosed!" I've got two stories to tell on this page. The first is the best single kill I ever saw. The second is just funny.
The best kill, without a doubt, goes to Marc Renouf's tag on Merrie Haskell one fine summer day. Mer was hunkered down in midfield. Marc and Todd Sobocinski were moving up on her and almost didn't see her. She moved to shoot them, they both turned and unloaded on her with perfect synchronization. She claimed to have been hit by at least six balls. So far, this is typical.
At home at the end of the day, Merrie took off her field jacket. We could see a pink stain in the center of her tank top. "Mer", I said, "They really got you good- soaked right through your coat!" We agreed she had indeed taken some paint. She came back a few minutes later with a much odder tale. She was holding a nearly intact paintball. Which, she explained, had come from her cleavage, inside the bra, where (thus cushioned) it had been slowly leaking pink paint.
Mer wasn't shooting pink that day. Todd was dating Mer at the time, and certainly didn't shoot her there. So we must assume that Marc somehow managed to shoot the paintball down the neckline of her jacket, through the neck of the tank top, into her cleavage. He'd made this shot from a good 45 feet, too.
I told you he was sneaky.
Then there's a truly bad day we caused someone. The Minions were playing at Skirmish USA in Pennsylvania, in the area called Circle City. It's a power-line clearing, full of plastic obstacles, with forest on both sides. A shootout in the clearimg, around the obstacles, is pure speedball. But taking fire from the woods on either side, if you're in the clearing, is just death. We figured the real way to control the clearing was to split into two teams and control the forest on either side. Me and Rob took one side, Marc and Gary the other.
After a while, Rob heard someone and began moving, keeping under cover. Farther away, I scampered up for a flanking shot. Rob opened up, and when the guy ran, I shot from his 2 o'clock. We both chased him into the clearing.
Two-thirds of the way across, he came under fire from Gary. He radically altered his course, but he had to go more or less forward- otherwise he'd be in the middle, taking fire three ways. So he charges into the forest.
And Marc shot him in the back. (If you're wondering why this page used to say the guy lived, it's because I lost sight of him and thought he got away. Marc corrected me.)
Chicken jokes notwithstanding, sometimes it doesn't pay to cross the road.
