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You may well have been playing
rec-ball for a few years and like the idea of
that added adrenaline rush of a tournament. To
identify oneself and one's friends under the banner
of a team name is the first step, it embodies
the team and immediately brings those individuals
closer together and here I am talking about in
relation to what you would be used to playing
rec-ball. When I read some of the articles covering
rec-ball, I have to say, some of them make me
squirm with their pseudo-military talk and imagined
dangers, well stand by for a reality check, in
tournament ball, there is no room for all that
shit, it's in yer face, no compromise, hard hitting
reality, what you see is what you get.
The idea is simple, you play
to win games, not some imaginary objective loosely
linked to a military type goal, tournament paintball
is 100% real, no fantasy games here, no room for
the faint hearted and definitely no room for the
wannabe Rambo. It is a cauldron of competition,
even at the lowest standard of the lowest league,
the adrenaline rush is phenomenal, you make a
mistake, you are punished, just like any other
sport and this is where we begin to draw the lines
of distinction between rec-ball and tournament
ball.
 Paintball,
as a sport, at least in terms of tournaments is
an arena where you can train toward perfection
as an athlete, strive as team for recognition
and take pride in an identity carved out of nothing
by you and your friends. In Rec-ball, you may
be the finest paintballer living, but your deeds
will be lost amid a flood of individuals you don't
even know.
In a team, in a tournament, every
single one of you will become to be recognised
and hopefully respected, there are many facets
to this game of Paintball, you may be respected
for being a great back player, a very fair player,
a great attacking player, a great clean up man
and so on. If you ever get a chance to go to a
NPPL, especially the World Cup, then go, you will
witness the finest Paintball in the world, the
most highly motivated paintballers in the world
and most of all, you will experience the air of
competition, one team against another.
I am not in any way trying to
dramatise the idea of tournament Paintball, it's
just that it is what it is. The aspiring Paintball
team emerging from the rec-ball scene will I'm
sure be partially aware of some of the differences
already but I don't think they can ever know the
real 'rush' of what it's like until, in the now
famous words of the Nike corporation, they 'Just
do it'.
 First
off for the aspiring team, we need to set a few
things straight, no gun shoots inherently more
accurate than any other, no gun has a greater
range than any other, the biggest determinant
in accuracy and range will always be the paint.
Get shit paint and no matter how expensive your
gun, you won't be able to hit a barn door. The
point here is, don't waste time and energy chasing
elusive goals of perfection or technical excellence
that just ain't there.
You would not believe the level
of ignorance I witness in some of those internet
chat rooms, some of those idiots wouldn't know
a scientific principle if it came up and sexually
abused them and yet they talk as though they work
for NASA when they spout this and that, basically
ignore them. In fact, Paintball, for some reason
seems to more than its fair share of idiots, so
treat everything you hear with a little caution,
it may well be bullshit. Back to the team thing,
once you've selected the captain, sorted out the
hardware, all that is left is to construct an
approach suited to your team.
How serious do you wanna be? Basically, the more
you put in the more you get out, like everything
else really. If you wanna train hard for a few
months before you go into a competition, then
that's fine as long as you do the right things.
Just playing Paintball is definitely the wrong
thing to do, all you do is consolidate bad habits
with no real directive. You have to have an idea
of what is required in a tournament to be successful.
The best way to analyse this is to reduce the
game of Paintball to its component parts. Tournament
Paintball, is about winning games, to do this
you have to generally eliminate your opponents,
grab their flag and run it back to your base,
sounds easy, don't it?
 But
let's for the sake of this article run time backwards
to see if we can tease out what is truly relevant.
The flag hang wins the game, how did we do it?
Well, we generally had to shoot a bunch of the
opposition before we got anywhere near their base.
Well, how did we shoot them? We sat behind our
bunkers, as did they, and well, they seemed to
get up and walk off before we did, leastwise in
more numbers.
So, it would seem quite reasonable
to assume that eliminating opponents has quite
a significant effect on whether we can go in and
relieve them of their flag. That's not too surprising
really. In a general sense, sitting behind bunkers
or cover positions and being the better shot seems
to be what it is all about, the answer to that
is 'No it ain't', staying alive is what it's all
about.
Paintball shooting is not an accurate art form,
it is festooned with imperfections, aim your gun,
pull your trigger and you may hit what you are
aiming at. I have known players whose motto is
'one box one kill', this in fact was used on some
of those fancy stickers you can buy but it did
touch a nerve with a few people, accuracy by volume
also comes to mind. The point here is, it is not
a question of a one chance one shot scenario,
you have a hopper full of 200 paintballs able
to propel themselves toward you at the rate of
10 a second, even if you were Stevie Wonder, one
of them damn balls is gonna gog ya.
So, we have established that
the ability to eliminate an opponent is helped
if you are a good shot but it is also helped if
you have a quick finger and a hopper full of paint.
Now, the real trick is to be able to stay alive
under these seemingly unfair conditions, after
all, I would not like to be taken out by some
fool whose only attribute was a back-pack full
of paint and a zero skill level.
But it is possible these type
players can shoot out the best, we now seem quite
rightly to be homing in on what is truly significant
about playing Paintball, the ability to stay tight,
no matter how good or how bad or how much paint
is coming at ya, if you play technically tight,
you will not be shot, unless of course you are
Fred Schultz.
Whatever you hear on the Paintball circuit about
this, that, tactics, guns, blah, blah blah, this
is what makes a Paintball player. If you need
any further proof, then here goes. Just suppose
you are the greatest shot in the known universe
(I say suppose because everybody knows I am),
ok, you run out to your chosen bunker and Bam!
you get tagged either going in or coming out to
shoot. What good are your skills now? You're standing
in the dead box next to Fred Schultz listening
to excuse number 3245 from his Paintball book
as to why he was eliminated.
What if you were the quickest
paintballer in the world, you could outrun Ben
Johnson, let me tell you something, you ain't
gonna outrun my Automag, I seen Johnson run and
it ain't nowhere near 300fps even on the gear
he took. My point here is, people talk about this
guy and that , doing this shit and that, the one
basic principle of good technical play always
seems to be overlooked, that of tightness, playing
so your target profile is always minimised, even
when shooting.
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