1000th Post: Paintball

The field looks something like this.

It's a so-called Sub-Air field with obstacles/covers made of a material similar to a bouncy castle, filled with air. The field size is about 30x50m. One can also play different scenarios like forest or warehouse, but that's too dangerous for beginners and isn't available in my area.

First off, payday. We each paid 50€ for the day. This includes rent for the court and equipment, costs for the crew running the event, as well as ammunition. Quite a pile of money, but then again, you don't do this every day.

My glorious task-force (me on the right).

27 players = 9 teams with 3 players each. Teams chosen at random. Yay, no girls or fat guys in my team! We chose to deceive our opponents by calling our team "Underdogs".

The game mode was 3vs3 Capture The Flag: take the flag (actually, it was a rag) from the enemy base and bring it to your own.

OMFG, he stole the flag!

Since that's not violent enough by far, of course you can also shoot people. Whoever is hit anywhere on the body or weapon is out for the round.

Headshot! This dude is dead.

We played a round robin system (each team playing each other team once), then playoffs between the 4 best teams.

It turned out in practice that CTF is not an appropriate game mode for paintball. Every single match consisted of one team eliminating the other, and then strolling over the empty battlefield to collect the undefended flag. Just call it Team Deathmatch next time.

It wouldn't be much fun without acting tough, right?

So this is the equipment you get:

1) The weapon. It uses compressed air to shoot its bullets. Bullets meaning 2cm sized balls of gelatine filled with food coloring. The guns are semi-automatic and can fire around 3 or 4 bullets per second. You get 120 bullets per round, which is usually easily enough. It can happen that the bullet doesn't break on impact to leave a color stain and bounces off instead, in which case the hit doesn't count. Outside combat, you put a sock on the muzzle so it can't fire accidentally.

2) The mask.
You have to wear a mask to protect your face whenever you are on the battlefield. That makes sense, because the head is hit relatively often. It's uncomfortable because you kinda get tunnel vision with it, and also everybody sweats inside it. It looks fucking badass though.

There's also body armor available, but that is for whiny little girls, and the torso isn't hit that often anyway. It is advisable to wear a long sweater and jeans though - the shots can hurt quite a bit on the naked skin. Yes, that makes you sweat when the weather's hot. Oh, and wear some old clothes because they will get dirty.

Some in-game action shots in here. Some may be blurry, the pictures were taken through a safety net.

Agreeing on a strategy before the round.

Before round start: all weapons must point backwards.

Start! Gogogo zergling rush!

How NOT to hold a gun or take cover. Girls!...

This is how you do it right.

Me sniping some noobs.

Now isn't that manly?

Fucking base camper.

This dude is so tall he can actually shoot over the smaller covers.

For Aiur!

The tournament unfolded very well for my team. We dominated the round robin with 5:3, with each of our wins coming without any losses on our side. Thus, we led the scoreboard after 8 games and advanced to the playoffs.

In the playoffs, we again won the first and third match in dominating fashion without any losses. In the second match though, we failed to kill a single opposing survivor when there were still two of us. This cost us the tournament, and we finished in second place.

My personal stats:
8 kills, 4 deaths, 7 team wins, 4 flags. There weren't many more frags left for me, because my teammate raped the whole tournament in the ass with 15 kills. Frag stealer I say!

Well, it can hurt to get hit. At close distances, you can get some wounds if you are unlucky. But that's your own fault, because you were
a) not dressed properly with reasonably thick/strong cloth
b) not fast enough.

Wounds like in the pictures above are the exception, not the rule. Normally, getting hit doesn't hurt all that much. Like getting a moderately powered fist punch, or getting an elastic band snapped on you. You don't even care much during gameplay because you're so full of adrenaline. You normally get away with thumbnail sized red spots which don't do anything and vanish after two days. So don't let that stop you!

We concluded the event with a nice barbecue on site. Every single one of us enjoyed our paintball day a great deal. We'll come back next year. If you're anything like me, you may find joy in trashtalking, posing with cool equipment and real-life counterstrike. Seriously, it's a great way to spend a day with a horde of friends, or as a social activity with the guys from your job. Try it!