4. Listen for your opponent’s firing. While you are playing, your ears can often be your best friends. Whether you are hunkered down breathing dirt behind the giant X in the middle of a grueling NXL game or ghosting through the woods in a Ghillie suit on the way to save the world from aliens, you need to listen for the sound of markers around you. Listen for people shouting directions. When people are re-grouping or confused is often the very best time for you to make a move.
5. Try snap-shooting. The term snap-shooting refers to exposing yourself from behind cover for only a brief period of time while you take a couple of shots. You immediately return to safety. You have a chance to look around, albeit quickly, and make a decision about your next move.
6. Look at the field from different perspectives. What seems open while you are standing may be completely different if you are kneeling or crawling. In a scenario game , slight undulations of the ground can often achieve maximum concealment. In a tournament, you will have a chance to walk the field and even make a map of the placement of the blow-up modules. Before the game, take every chance you can to figure out what your opponent is going to do, how he will approach, where she will hide a sniper.
7. Come out from behind cover with your marker ready. Whether you’re on a recreational field or playing at the highest levels of international competition, expect the unexpected. When you leave cover, expect that you are going to be shot at and that you will find targets of opportunity to paint. Why miss a shot? Take it from the Boy Scouts and be prepared. If your gun is up and ready, you save several critical seconds.
8. Work with your teammates. It is much easier to move over the field if you coordinate and communicate with a squad or your team. You move; they cover you. They move; you cover. Or, in the real adrenaline rush, your whole team charges the enemy camp, firing and screaming at the top of your lungs.(This usually doesn’t work, but what a gas!)
Paintball players on patrol. “Are you covering my back?” Answer: “Yeah, are you scouting ahead or looking for nickels?”
9. Move around the field. It is much harder for your opponents to focus on you if you are continually changing positions. This also creates new angles on them while they are convinced that there are ten of you! Of course, in some situations, the more you move, the more you give away your position, direction and intent. So, be flexible and thoughtful.
10. Don’t keep coming out of your bunker in the same spot. This really applies to rec ball and scenario games , because in a tournament, each player starts with the tip of their marker touching the “dead box.” But only maybe five percent of all paintball is done in competition. The remainder is done for fun and to have the most fun you can possibly have, don’t let your opponents realize that you are coming out in the same area every time. If you do, sooner or later, they will be waiting for you with their gun up and balls in the air. By then, it’s too late to switch sides.
Bunkering. A strong, sandbagged position on a hill combines effective cover and an advantageous slope.
Whether you win or lose, the most important part of paintball is learning how to play the game fairly and well.
WOMEN IN PAINTBALL
Clare Benavides is spokes-model for Tom Kaye’s Airgun Designs .
For Paintball Digest, the author had an opportunity to interview some of the girls, too! Here’s what Blue’s Crew “Press Wench” Amy “The Girl” Chantry says about playing, competing and kicking butt!
Paintball Digest: Amy, you’re an avid paintball player and a member of a well-known amateur team with Michael “Blue” Hanse and EMR Paintball Park in Pennsylvania. I understand you’re the official “Press Wench,” so you must handle the publicity for Blue’s Crew. Is that right?
Amy: Yes, I help out with press for the team and I’m also the mother of two beautiful little girls and, as you might imagine, I’m very involved in their lives. I volunteer at their elementary school, work with the Parent and Teacher’s Association (PTA) and help out in the classroom, too. Plus, I cook and clean and play the big games when I can. I have a life, you know!
Paintball Digest: Anything involving children makes for one busy life. But don’t you think playing paintball is kind of extreme for women and certainly for the mom of two little girls?
Amy: Well, it’s like I told one of the paintball magazines a while ago, there ought to be a support group for us women paintball players, like Alcoholics Anonymous or Overeaters Anonymous, you know. “Hello, my name is Amy and I play paintball …” There aren’t that many of us yet, and people are only slowly realizing that we can play as well as and have just as much fun as the guys.
It’s when the other moms find out I play paintball that I hear, “Ah…. oh…really? Paintball ? Doesn’t that hurt?”
I remind them it’s childbirth that hurts and we’ve done that! What the heck is a little paintball going to do to you unless you have an accident? Some tiny welt if you catch a ball in a soft spot isn’t anything compared to the excitement of capturing a flag, or putting the opposing team’s general out of the game or defending a castle. Now that’s what I call fun. That or just sitting on the floor and playing with my little girls.
There’s a double standard at work in sports like paintball and we need to change it. Paintball is not just a sport for men. Neither is skateboarding or snowboarding.
I see more women playing every time I go out. I hope it will continue to rise. I truly believe that paintball is for everyone. So, I say, ladies, if you have a desire to try paintball, try it! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You might just have the best day of your life. Hope to see you on the field!
Paintball Digest: So, as a woman player, how are you treated by the guys? After all, men are 90-something percent of the players.
Amy: My saying that we women need a support group probably makes you think I’m complaining about the guys, some kind of macho attitudes on the field, but I’m really not. That couldn’t be further from the truth. When it comes to playing with the guys, I’ve never felt unwelcome on a field or felt like they were taking it easy on me because I was a girl. Actually, I’ve made some outstanding friends, maybe life-long friends, during the time I’ve been playing. I have always considered myself an equal on a playing field that’s mostly men. When the mask goes on, we’re all just players, and unless you know what your buddy is wearing, everyone is kind of anonymous.
Paintball Digest: So, being a woman on the field doesn’t slow you down and it shouldn’t be handicap for other women, either. Is that right? Attitudes are changing, and that’s good for everybody.
Amy: Women love playing paintball as much as men. We girls want to tell people about it, share stories about stuff that happens on the field and encourage other people to give it a try. Nevertheless, when you’re a girl, you sometimes get some