Anybody else play paintball?
 

I took my best friend and my son to play paintball today. We've been too busy to play for the past year, but before that we played quite a few times. We bought the gear and have alot of fun. The sport is especially nice on a cool fall or spring day, since you tend to run around and get heated up with all the protective clothing. Anyone else do paintball?

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I went paintballing once. It was fun, but the paint balls hurt like he!l when the hit you. I remember I got 2 bruises that lasted 2+ weeks. I don't think I want to do it again. Then again, I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and thin long pants, so that may have added to the displeasure of being shot at. It's a very exhilerating and war-like sport, which is what I liked most about it.

Matt,
Yep, the paintballs can sting a bit. We dress in layers and I wear Goretex duck hunting gear and that keeps the paintballs from hurting. Outdoor paintball is more enjoyable (it's also called woodsball) than the indoor "speedball" because you're further from each other when you're playing. I would never guessed that it would be so much fun to play "capture the flag" as an adult!

I play twice a year and really enjoy it...I don't own my own gear and the range we play at does a good job of making sure the paintball guns aren't set on stun!
My son (11) and his friends, however, all own their own stuff and play at least once a month. I set up a course on my farm and the mom's and dad's rotate supervising the fun.
The neat thing is that the kids all work for their gear, paint balls and compressed air.

I love paintball! The best place for it is parks that are located around some woods or heavy foliage. And the time has to be the evening so you have low sunlight. Makes for one hell of a game.

I enjoy playing in a field with buildings (made out of pallets and plywood) or in the woods with trees, branches, logs... it's alot of fun but I sure am sore today!

Played a few times (all at night)...At an industrial complex and in the middle of nowhere.

I must say that playing at night makes the game even more fun because you can be very stealthy. And not only that, when things get really quiet, you start to think that you're making too much noise!

The only thing that sucks is that when someone camps out in a rooftop, it really puts you at a disadvantage!!

Ditto!

I play.

I used to play quite a bit, but I only made it out once this year. (Strangely, I'ved played much less since I bought a Porsche. ;))

I've gone through a lot of different equipment in the four years I've been playing. I currently have a 2003 Bushmaster BKO (heavily modified) as my primary marker and a 2004 Autococker (if you can call it that--I built it myself) as a backup. Everything runs off of compressed air--no CO2 for me.

I've got a few paintball jerseys that I wear when I play. One is flourescent blue and the other is bright red...I don't need no stinkin' camo.

The most important piece of equipment by far is the mask. If you go cheap everywhere else, spend absolute top dollar on a mask. This is the part that protects your eyes, ears, nose and mouth from projectiles traveling at 290 feet-per-second. Also, the cheaper masks tend to be much less comfortable than the high-end ones. I've got a Dye Invision mask and it doesn't feel like I'm wearing anything when it's on.

BKO

Outdoor paintball, we call paintball. Indoor paintball, we call "gay". :D

I used to play a good bit, but not in the last couple years. Surprisingly (or not) the decline in paintball coincides with me having gotten married.

I love my area of SC with plenty of wooded areas to play in. We wear lots of camo, and make stealth and tactics the primary emphasis. We never play speedball and never play indoors.

Anyway, I own an original, 1st gen Kingman Spider (with bolt mod) and also an M3 Sniper. I actually prefer the Spider over the M3, even though the M3 has electronic trigger, fire rate control, multiple modes, etc..

The spider is much lighter, fool-proof, and a better shooter. (The M3 is probably better on a speedball course where "spray-n-pray rules the day".) Unfortunately, the original Spider is NLA and I think they also discontinued the re-release - called the Spider Classic.

Co2 on both my markers.

we used to play long ago with the old singleshot guns, Splatmaster and Sheridan guns. it took a much better shot then to hit anyone. Those Sheridans could break the skin. lost interest when the autos came out. we would load up the dune buggies with 12-14 people and head out to the deep wooded areas. we used to play urban ambush too. sort of a driveby assasination thing until I shot my brother in the eye when he drove up to shoot me from his car. the paintball somehow curved up and then under his sunglasses. it wasn't pretty.

Custom Autococker here, way too much $ into that hobby:)

We play outdoors on 15 acres half wooded with big elevation changes. I have bulk CO² on site but Comp. air or Nitrogen are better.

One of the tactics I use in speedball is that when I know I can't hit someone, but I need to keep them from firing (could be several reasons for this), I will hit the back of their bunker with rapid fire to keep them from poking out.

I prefer speedball over woodsball. I like 5 on 5 or less. Why? Because I can keep track of every player on the field and their movement. I'm an aggressive "front" player, so in woodsball I am likely to get ambushed or flanked.

I agree that the mask is very important! I bought my son and I good JT masks and they protect our face, ears and eyes and they don't fog up like the cheap ones do...

Even in woodsball, we use "covering fire" when moving from location to location if we are in a close-fire situation. Kind of a standard tactic (the guys that made up our team were all ex-military).

The reasons you like speedball are exactly the reasons we like woodsball. We play in large wooded areas with teams that are big enough to break down into 2 or 3 man squads. It forces you to be more of a strategist than an agressor. Some people don't like that it makes for long games, but you end up with great opportunities to orchestrate big war games. Set up a squad as flag defenders, send out flanking squads, send out a hunter/killer squad, send an agressor squad up the middle, set up diversionary fire, set up sniper nests, etc.

I prefer NOT knowing where every enemy is. It heightens the adrenaline of the game when you have to consider every downed log as possible enemy cover and you have to consider every sound you hear as somebody getting ready to send bursts of stinging death your way.

I can appreciate that. Sometimes I like to play woodsball too.

Speedball to me is like chess. You have a well-defined playing field with fixed, eveny-matched teams. The real strategy there is in moving from bunker to bunker, as there is usually a "critical" (from which you can mop the field) bunker in speedball, and various methods of attacking it.

I've played in a few tournaments (all speedball). I lost interest because of the rampant cheating at that level.

Okay, I'll bite 'cause I'm ignorant... How would you cheat in the game? (non-playing shooters off to the side?!)

It's an honor system when you're hit. Cheaters wipe of the paint and keep playing.

That's basically it, though there are several variations. Pro players are taught to slide if hit while running to cover a shot with dirt. Players frequently "play on", continuing to fire when hit, then calling themselves out. The basic thing is there are always more players than refs, so things will slip by.

Also, it used to be that paintball guns in tournaments were limited to one shot per trigger pull, but some ingeneous teams wrote their own software that allowed you to "ramp-up" (allowed more shots than trigger pulls) or go full auto after a specific sequence of trigger pulls had been entered.

Playing outdoors and at night requires a LOT more strategy than a "speedball" where you know your opponents locations and could just spray paint.

The lack of lighting also heightens the adreline...I love playing the sniper and have everyone hunting me, but they don't know where I am!!

All this talk makes me want to play!

Here's my paintball "rig"...
 

Here's mine...

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My son's...

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My friend's...

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I know this thread is ANCIENT, but I thought I would reach out to see if anyone is still involved in paintball. I would also appreciated any updated, 2012 information on decent guns and gear. My 10 year old is getting interested, so me and a few neighbors are thinking about gearing up for this fall/winter.

By the way, any of you guys who "used" to be into it have any guns laying around that you would be interested in selling to me for my kids?

Thanks,

JA

My son is 20 and he is too busy for paint ball but I'll keep the gear ready for our young nephews...

I think airsoft may have captured part of the paintball market. You still need face protection but your body won't get bruised up. The guns don't shoot as far so it can be played in a smaller area (and it doesn't leave paint splatches all over).
When he was in high school my son and his buddies would play for hours in the dark at our house, the yard is a couple of acres and lots of trees.
Jim

We play a lot of airsoft as well. It is far less expensive even when buying the good BBs. We keep to a limit of around 400fps except for the sniper rifles. I don't kno whow far a paintball gun shoots, but I have picked off guys at 75-80 yards with the rifle (Echo 1 P90) and over 50 yards with the pistol and we usually play in pretty heavily wooded areas so a lot of action is 25-30 yards. These will still break the skin at closer ranges. We do the capture the flag, rescue/escort, king of the hill, recon teams and full two team battles.

The first time I played I only had the CO2 powered pistol and went through 650+ rounds one stinking trigger pull at a time. I enjoyed it enough to justify buying some better equipment.

The other nice thing about airsoft is the guns are patterned off of real ones and you don't have the big tanks or anything so the battles are more realistic. Check out airsoftgi.com for a good sample of the guns available.

I have tried PB a couple times with my son. IMO the main issue is equality of gear. If you are relying on range rental markers you better hope EVERYONE is using the same setup. I got seriously tired of getting nailed from 2x the range my marker could reach and/or having folks crank up the FPS on their high end marker once the shoot was in progress. The last time I did PB I got tagged on the top of my head - damn - it hurt to brush my hair for over a week.

Our interests now are punching holes in paper with FMJ for just a couple $ more than PB. :)

This thread brought back some memories as our son is 20 now and is too busy to hang out with his dad any more... Paintball dropped off the charts around me because it's fairly expensive and when the economy took the big dive, people didn't (and still don't) have the $ to to paintball. We have our own markers and gear and I think it cost us $150 every time we played. By the time you pay for the paint, CO2 refills and range time, it's gets very expensive!

Bag of 3500 BBs for airsoft is about $13 and the rifles are battery powered so they are cheap to recharge. Couple small CO2 cartridges for the pistol and you are getting by pretty inexpensively. Some of the guns can get stupid expensive, but decent ones can be had for a couple hundred or less depending on if you want different sights. I like the reflex sights as I can shoot with both eyes open easier.

Paintball markers can (and do) cost as much as real firearms!

Pelican Staff Plays Paintball
 

I play paintball quite a few times a year here in Southern California and it's a ton of fun. A few other Pelican employees have also joined in the fun and Wayne should be joining us next time we go as well. It's great exercise and great for team building and bonding with people not to mention it's a rush. We generally go to S.C Village or Hollywood Paintball park.

Good feedback, here. And Art, your son was only 13 when you last posted!! Wow...time flies, right in front of our eyes! My son is 10, and I can't imagine what it would be like for him to be moving on to his own independent interests!

AirSoft sounds like it has MANY advantages. I would be up for that, but I need to get past the mental barrier that it is "more dangerous". I guess it is the fear of someone getting one of those in the eye. All it would take would be for a kid to take his eye protection off, and for someone to pop him. Maybe they can be taught NOT to do that under any circumstances, but I must admit it is a concern. I guess a paintball could do some nasty damage to the eye as well??

Thanks for the comments...keep them coming.

JA

Paintball is still HUGE here. We have several courses and dedicated "woods" courses.

I love paintball.

What other sport can you run through the woods screaming and shooting at people? :p

angela