Sunday Paintball Funday

Jason had called me up yesterday and asked if I wanted to go play some paintball today. His son was coming along.

I said yes, and it turned out that Abby was also interested in trying paintball for the first time. Leah was under the age limit so it was Abby and I off to the fields.

We played at Futureball Paintball, which was a great choice. They're pretty much the nicest run and most friendly staff of the three paintball fields I've been too here in Michigan. The players tended to be friendlier as well and it was a great place for a first timer to learn the paintball game.

With a variety of playing fields we signed up for the 9-1 playing time.

We got there, got our rental gear and signed the waivers, had or safety and rules orientation, and then we geared up and started playing.

Here's Abby all geared up and ready to go.

The day was sunny with barely a cloud in the sky and the temps in the high 80s, so we certainly felt the heat running around.

Abby soon got the idea of the game and quickly learned about taking cover, fire and movement, and covering fire as well as bounding forward. She was devilishly hard for the other team to hit and had a good habit of hiding and then popping up when least expected.

The best field we played on was the Urban field. First we had to defend the house and a cone in front of it from being touched by the opposing team, and on the next game we had to attack it.

We lost the first game even as we were doing pretty well in defending the area when one of their team pulled a trick and stayed by our side before the game started and then moved in to the area under the house, making everyone think he was on our team, and then he suddenly popped forward to grab the cone. Tricky, but a great sense of daring and style.

On the next game however we then got to attack. Jason, Jack, Abby and I worked our way around the back of the house, advancing in bounds and getting closer and closer in. We were pinned a few times by a guy using a full auto paintball marker but we were able to keep going.

Along with others we managed to take the house but the other team still had the area under the porch and would hit anyone coming out to grab the cone which happened to the first couple players that tried it.

I advanced edging along the wall outside of the house out of their sight and then telling the people in the house to cover me I dashed to the cone and got it, winning the game.

A few more games with the last two at the Futureball City field which was a lot of fun, and over a 1000 paintballs shot between Abby and myself, and we were done.

We then went to lunch and came home quite exhausted from running around in the heat all day. Abby handled her first paintball game like a champ and wants to do it again.

If we do this again, we're at least buying our own face shields as the rentals were very scratched up and crazed making vision not nearly as good as it could have been.

The after a shower and cleaning of the gear, we headed over to Jason's place with the family and two other families we know in common for a pool party and ended the day having a most excellent time with friends.

A great Sunday indeed.

Weekend Fun - Paintball!

On Saturday I went to Hell with some good friends of mine.

Hell, Michigan that is, and we played some paintball at Hell Survivors which has quite an impressive set of playing fields.

We played for three hours and it was quite a bit of fun, but led to quite a bit of soreness both from paintball hits in lots of places and just running around lugging a paintball marker for hours.

Lesson 1: If you moved, you got shot.

Lesson 2: If you held in place, you got shot.

Lesson 3: Shooting back helps.

In one game, I was the last survivor of my team. While I had a decent position and was happily engaging multiples to my front, and I nailed a couple of them, but the rest were pinning me nicely in place complete with an automatic paintball gun. Since I was pinned, another couple players came around and flanked me and that was that.

We played multiple games in quite a few locations including an urban mockup that was fun with very close range action.

Some people take the game extremely seriously and have the equipment to match, but it was all in good fun and everyone was a good sport and everyone had a darn good time.

Saturday With Paintball

I was invited out by a friend last Saturday to go to a paintball event he had setup with about 24 other people. Having only done paintball one time before, about 12 years ago, I was interested and agreed to come along and give it a try.

One interesting thing about paintball is how into it people can get - there's a very strong player base that likes to play and heavily invest in their equipment.

Here's just a couple of my friend's paintball markers:

That's a Tippmann 98 , sort of the AR-15 of the paintball world - apparently its a solid reliable performer that can be modified with different sized barrels, hoppers, triggers etc. He kindly let me use this one and it was quite fun indeed.

The other one that looks like an AK is a Tippmann A-5 , with modifications to look like an AK added.

In short, you have people who are very dedicated to the paintball game and very good at it, and who know how to wring the most accuracy out of their markers to paint the opposing team.

Masks and eye shields are mandatory when playing, and with good reason. With those .68 caliber balls heading towards you at 285 fps, they hurt. They hurt even more when they don't break and instead whack you and bounce off. Gloves and full skin coverage with clothing are good ideas as well.

In the group, there were various munchkins playing and they were tigers on the field. They were small targets and hard to hit, and had no compunction about aggressively letting the opposing team have it.

Here's one, all armored up against incoming rounds, and a padded chest protector not seen in this photo but worn later rounded out his protection striking a pose:

"What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz? CHICKEN?"

We played at the Lone Wolf Paintball field by the Gibraltar trade center.

For a couple hours we played 8 different matches on 3 different playing fields. From a small speedball field to a very large field, to one

Paintball guns have neither the range nor accuracy of real guns and have a bit of a parabolic arc to the shots. The paint does tend to get everywhere.

It's quite an experience being under paintball fire, and it does make you seek cover quite quickly. You also learn the difference between cover and concealment quickly, as paintballs have a way of finding holes in your cover to zip through and whack you.

One interesting lesson when playing paintball is that movement, any movement, draws fire, and lots of it.

A corollary to that is that movement can result in paintballs to the ribs, and paintballs to the ribs, especially when they don't break, hurt and leave really interesting colored bruises.

Another lesson is that you run out of paintballs really fast when trying to suppress other players, and then you're reduced to firing air and trying to psyche out anyone on the other team from rushing you until they figure out you're firing blanks. I actually held the flank of our team's position for about three minutes firing air alone until the other side finally figured out there was no ball traveling with that air, and then I got flanked and whacked.

We won a few games, lost a few games, and had a good time win or lose.

It was a lot of fun with a good bunch of people, all of them good sports.