Paintballing for the First Time

Original Date of writing: April 15, 2007

It was a drizzly day yesterday, but around 2:00 it began to clear up. I called around to a couple of the fields nearby and found one that had a group coming in around 3:00. They said it was no problem for me to show up and play.

I packed my gear and headed out.

The place was way out in the sticks. The directions they gave were flawless though, so I didn’t have a problem finding it.

I was fearful that the group would be a bunch of 12-year olds on a birthday party or somesuch. As I pulled into the parking area, I saw a bunch of people in BDUs…and they were all way too tall to be little kids. Much relief was felt.

I did a brief round of introductions. These were all military guys from the nearby Ft. Campbell army base. Good deal…I can dig that.

Round 1: Woodsball: When you don’t know anything, you can’t make mistakes.
We started with picking teams for the first game…woodsball. We set up, hollered back and forth that we were ready, and started the game. My memory isn’t so great on this first game. I was trying to learn by observing my teammates, but quickly found out that they were almost as wet behind the ears as I was…or at least it seems that way in hindsight.
Picture a Civil War battle being fought in the trees. No attempt at stealth…everyone found a spot of cover and traded shots until they got hit. I was the second person to get tagged out on my team, and they ended up wiping the walls with us.

Lesson learned: Do it yourself…don’t just mimic what the others are doing.

Round 2,3,4: Speedball
A small speedball course was set up to one side of the woodsball field. Everyone wanted to give that a try, so we headed over that way. We played a couple of games fairly quickly. I’ve learned that speedball doesn’t make for a good story. Lots of shots flying, not a lot of things to say besides “I was hugging that barrel like a drunken barfly on an ugly waitress” and the complete lack of satisfaction that I got from it. Speedball just isn’t what I’m cut out for.

The moment of stupidity
I had a noobish moment.
We had eliminated all but one guy who was pinned down behind a barrel and a pallet. I knew he couldn’t see me, so I shifted up to the cover just in front of his position. While my teammates laid down a hail of fire to keep him tucked in, I ran down the boundary and shot him from 10 feet away. I’m not sure what happened…I guess I had a brainfart or something. We’d all agreed to not shoot from point blank and instead yell “Bang! Safety kill” and get ‘em to surrender. This totally slipped my mind in the heat of things and I pegged him once in the arm. I’m sure he’s got a bruise. I apologized profusely and made sure he knew I didn’t do it on purpose.
Thankfully, he was a good sport about it. During our next speedball round, he tagged me in the arm (from a much further distance) and we called ourselves even.

Lesson learned: Even though I’m an admitted non-fan of speedball, I did learn something. I’m a noob…I need to think about the range I’m at before I do something stupid like that.

Round 5: Woodsball: The Art of Cover
We took a break to refill air, hoppers, etc. and had a couple smokes and whatnot.
We decided to go back to playing woodsball.
In the next game, I was a bit more prepared. Another teammate and I hung out way to the left, while the rest were positioned on the right. He and I spent some time hanging back until the other guys engaged. Once we heard them shooting, we began moving up our side.
We both found some great cover and began exchanging shots with two that were facing us. It bogged down with poking out from behind cover, firing off some shots, and ducking back in.
It was just a matter of time…lucky shots tagged both of us out.

Lesson learned: Cover keeps you from being hit as often, but they still know where you are.

Round 6: Woodsball: Confusion and Concealment
With this lesson learned, I started the next game right next to the boundary of the field. With nobody else with me, I knew I could flank without anyone giving away my position by firing too early. I crouch-ran, low-crawled, and used the sound of firing to mask my movements.
I got into a great position and was able to take three enemies down in quick succession because they were too focused on the rest of my team. After getting these three, I had a friendly start shooting at me but was able to wave him off before he got me.
Not seeing any further enemies, I started moving in towards the center of the field…there was one guy left on the enemy side, and three on mine. I saw movement along the opposite edge of the field from where I had begun my flanking, so I began stalking him. I couldn’t tell at this point if it were a friendly or enemy, so I tried to get in close enough to see if I could recognize him.
Well…he popped out from behind a tree and lit my position up. I returned fire and he began running away. I shot him in the buttocks and he yelled and bawled about it. (I found out later that his marker had jammed, which is why he ran away.)
As he walked towards me, we realized a grave error had been made. He was on my team! We both said our “woopses” and I turned 180 degrees to face back into the field.
Again, I saw movement…so I stalked up a bit. We saw each other, but held fire.

Having just pounded one of my teammates in the buttocks (yeah, that’s how we talked about what happened after the game…we had great humor), I was hesitant to light him up. I yelled out “I’m Tripp, who are you?” He yelled something back that I didn’t quite catch. So, I held the barrel of my marker pointing towards the ground and walked right up to him. At 2 feet away, we were still confused. Everyone from this other group tended to look the same because they were all army guys with their BDUs on. I had a realtree patterned t-shirt and a pair of tiger stripe BDU pants on, so I was a bit easier to identify.

He said “I don’t think we’re on the same team.”
I said “Yeah, I don’t think so either, but it’d hurt like hell if we shot each other right now.”
He said “Yeah.”
I said “Let’s just call it even.”

We both walked to the neutral area where the others waited. They asked who got who and got a good laugh out of the mixup.

Lesson learned: Stealth and concealment is far superior to having a good piece of cover but everyone knows where you are.
Secondary lesson: Know thy teammates.

Round 7: Woodsball: Sneakiness is next to Godliness
The final game was another round of woodsball. At this point, our teams were tied up one to one.

By this point, I had gained a reputation for being sneaky. I guess everyone that had been tagged out the last round had swapped stories about how they went down.
I again chose the right flank just along the boundary and another teammate joined me. He said that I should stay hidden and be sneaky, and he’d draw their fire.
It didn’t quite happen that way. I found a great piece of concealment and no sooner did I get settled than I saw an enemy stalking the same area coming from the other direction. If I moved, he’d see me…so I kept still and waited for him to come into range.
My partner must have gotten impatient, because he was nowhere to be found. I held my position and held my fire. Minutes passed and the entire field was silent…no shots fired so far.
I remembered some tips I’d read online about playing effectively…one of which was to avoid having tunnel vision. I mentally marked where my quarry was and did a couple quick scans of the area. I’m glad I did. Another enemy was further forward and a bit closer to the center. He hadn’t seen me, but I had a great angle to take him out.
I held fire though…I had spotted the new threat, but had lost track of the original guy. A mental “oh schnarkeys!” kept me quiet until I could spot him again.

Shots began near the center of the field, and my secondary target began a retreat…moving across my lane of fire towards where I’d lost my original target. Now that I didn’t have to worry about crossfire, I lit him up. He had no idea what happened. Two three-round bursts and he called himself out without knowing exactly where I was.

My shots had flushed out the guy I’d lost track of. He was beginning to flank me just along the edge of the treeline. He made no attempt at stealth…he crashed through the brush trying to get to a position with two large trees forming a tight V to set up a defensive position.

I began moving parallel towards the way he came from and caught him looking the other way. It was close…and having already embarrassed myself with the earlier point-blank shot on the speedball course…I yelled for a safety kill. Well…he decided to chance it and began shooting. I’m not sure how it happened, but he missed. I ran towards the edge of the field, getting an angle on his trees he was using for cover and laying down fire to keep his head down.
I got a lucky shot and he howled in pain as I connected multiple rounds with his wrist, hand, and arm.

Having wiped out the opposition on this side of the field, I began moving deeper into enemy territory. There’s an open trail that cuts right through the field at an imaginary halfway point. Two more enemies were using this trail and a copse of trees and brush for cover…facing towards my team’s “side” of the trail. They had a damn good position…but only against people that were still on my team’s side of the field. I had them outflanked and they didn’t yet know it.
The guy who had his arm torn up was walking down the trail, but was honorable enough to keep silent as he walked towards the neutral area.
I wasn’t sure how long that honor would last, so I tried to hurry in moving up into range.
About the time I had a decent shot, he had moved up to his teammates. I had to wait for him to pass before I could attempt a shot. Again, I admire his honor. He didn’t tell them where I was.

I shot the nearest of the two enemies and he looked over at me in confusion…then recognized my camo (Remember, I was the only one that DIDN’T have a BDU jacket on) and cursed, then raised his hand and started the walk out.
His partner hadn’t seen the shots, but obviously knew something had gone wrong because of the direction the guy had just turned to look at me before calling out.

I snuck up a bit closer…closer than I liked for a shot that wouldn’t hurt too much. Having again hit someone from close range a minute ago, I was worried about causing too much pain…even if the guy deserved it for deciding to shoot instead of surrender.
I yelled for a safety, made sure they saw me, and waited. They didn’t surrender. Matter of fact, they ignored me and went back to trading shots with two other guys on my team.
I was a little confused. Maybe they thought I was on their team…after all, I was behind them.

I yelled again…”Surrender or I shoot you.”
No response…
My two teammates were rushing the last enemy…I was actually further away than they were and they still didn’t have LOS to the enemy player. When they did, it would hurt like hell if they both shot ‘em.
So, I did the humane thing…I shot the last player in the hopes that they’d call themselves out before my other two teammates made it REALLY hurt.

Thankfully, they called out after a burst of three shots and the game was over.

We all walked back and had another round of smoking and trading stories.
I had gained a reputation on my first time playing…”Sneaky Git”

I took it as a complement. I’m not sure why nobody else was doing anything similar. These were army guys, so I guess I expected a bit more than the bounding overwatch that they did. Nobody really went to the lengths that I did to be sneaky.

Lesson learned: Stealth and concealment rock, but don’t be afraid to shoot someone just because you think it’ll hurt. Everyone has different pain tolerances and a guy that yells and bawls from a hit from 20 yards away might just be a sissie.

Wrapping Up
All in all, I had a blast. As we were cleaning gear, one guy asked how long I’d been playing and prefaced it with “You played like you’ve done this before.”
I explained it was my first time and he was surprised at that. I did explain that many moons ago in my days of Boy Scouts, I was a Capture the Flag fanatic. I guess that was a good enough explanation.

We exchanged phone numbers and all headed out.
Good times…good times.

MVP of the day: My kneepads. Hands-down, this is the best investment I’ve made. The ground was wet and squishy, there were fallen limbs and brambles everywhere, and these things gave me the added courage I needed to get down and dirty where others might worry about hurting themselves.
In fact, during Round 5, I was tagged out because I got shot on the kneepad. Suffice to say, it didn’t hurt a bit.

I had bought an el-cheapo set of Rollerblading pads back at Christmas and never really used ‘em. Sooo…about a month ago I broke ‘em out and used some painter’s tape and camo spray paints to tiger-stripe the kneepads to match my pants. I did a little of the same to my mask and hopper as well.
Now that I’ve had my trial by fire, I’ll probably do the set of elbow pads in camo as well. After having gone without them the first time out, I’ve decided that I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of maneuverability and stiffness in order to give me more confidence when low-crawling.