Movement on the woodsball field

I attempted to play woodsball this past weekend.  Went to a new field (for me at least) and met up with a couple of fellow Ridgerunners.

I say attempted because we were the only three who were there for a woods game.  Plenty of speedballers milled around firing off their mouths as fast as their trigger fingers, but it’s mutually agreed upon amongst my teammembers that we’re not Speedballers…so we did a bit of 2-on-1 action.

I’m the newbie on the team, so I have a lot to learn.  It certainly showed.  I got paired up with Will and we hunted down Chip (bait and switch more like…with me being the bait).  I learned some valuable lessons about the importance of movement on a woodsball field.

You either move a lot, or you don’t move at all.  There’s not much room for a middle ground.  My own personal style of play involves the latter.  I like setting an ambush and waiting for an unsuspecting victim.

With 2-on-1 though, it’s hard to sit still for long.  Will plays much more aggressively than I do.  I did my best to keep up with him, but never seemed to be much more than a meatshield/paint magnet.  Generally, I would end up drawing Chip’s fire while Will moved up for the kill.

Will and Chip are both great players.  They are constantly on the move…patrolling the perimeter of the field, doing hit-and-run skirmishes, and rarely if ever stay stationary for more than a handful of heartbeats.

Here I am, dressed up in my custom-ghillied dagger vest and AG Hood, traipsing around like I’m on a densely-foliaged runway.  My mind is screaming at me to find a good perch and wait, but my teammate is telling me to stay close and move as a pair.  I followed Will’s instructions as accurately as I could, but didn’t feel like I was playing “my” game.

Chip pointed out a very important point after we finished up…my ghillie was actually giving me away.  I have a mixture of Action Ghillie material and some “Sneaky Leaf” brand faux foliage zip tied to my hood and vest.  It’s the middle of summer, and yet I had a bunch of yellow and brown faux leaves strewn about my camo.  Chip said that if it weren’t for this very odd mismatch with my surroundings, he might not have noticed me a couple of times.

Basically…It stuck out like a sore thumb in this particular field.
While we were packing up, I took a minute to snip off all of the “dead” leaves while mentally kicking myself for such an idiotic mistake.  In my head, it looked neat and proper (there are dead leaves all over my home field).  On the new field, it looked very out of place.  Lesson learned…no matter how cool it might look, the important part is matching your camo to the surroundings you’ll be playing in…which may change every week.

I didn’t have the most fun I’ve ever had, but I didn’t have a lot of fun in some of my college courses either…and yet I still learned some valuable info that I’ve never forgotten.   This will be the case with this weekend’s excursion.