to me! This means you have to communicate to your teammates on any paintball field. In competition, your team will have practiced giving signals on the field … and responding to them, too. In NPPL and PSP play, you cannot have anyone on the sidelines coaching or calling out positions or information. In the NXL and some collegiate play, however, this is actually encouraged.
When you are shooting from behind cover, present the smallest silhouette you can to look and fire. Lean out only long enough to get off your shots and then duck back. The next time you lean out to fire, choose a different spot to prevent your opponents from remembering that a right-hander will almost always lean out the right side to fire.
The problem with communication is adrenaline. It blocks your ability to hear, respond and react. It also blocks your ability to give directions. Everyone has seen the newbie hunkered in his bunker and just beyond there is an opponent approaching, intent on blasting him. The newbie’s buddy, who is only 20 yards away but equally pinned down, yells at him again and again, but the newbie doesn’t react. He has gone into a shell where nothing comes in and nothing goes out. It’s adrenaline in its extreme form.
If you are on a team, practice giving and responding to signals. If you are not on a team and are playing as a walk-on with a group of players you don’t know, you may want to pair off within the game for better attack and defense tactics and survivability.
TEAMWORK
Battle Drills or Immediate Action Drill
You can play paintball forever on recreational fields and in scenario games. At some time in your life you may get tennis elbow from doing chin-ups or maybe bust a tendon in your foot from running road races, but attacking and defending, dodging and shooting paintballs is practically a lifetime sport.
What takes your play to the next level, however, is putting together or joining a team. In a team, you can really move around the U.S. in tournaments and perhaps – if you are good enough – pick up some sponsors and make a little money, too. Or maybe make a lot of money.
Working together in a scenario game makes for good team practice. Most generals are only too willing to have a good team on their side. It gives everyone confidence that at least part of a big group of players will work together.
According to Jon Harris, a retired U.S. Army NCO and specialist in small unit tactics (www.tacticalmarkers.com), small unit routines can mean the difference in staying alive and getting splattered in paint. In the military or on a SWAT team, where they use live ammo and a hit is much more serious than a washable mark, such drills are a regular part of combat readiness and preparation. “I can tell you from experience,” Jon says, “these drills work. They are not hard, but coordination is the key. I remember practicing crossing the same road maybe 50 times in a day until I was satisfied that our squad had it right. Then, we did it again with everyone occupying a different position in the squad. Everyone had to know someone else’s job.”
Jon says an immediate action drill is used to rehearse reactions to contact with the opposition. Basically, they involve practicing your immediate reaction to a threat until it becomes an automatic response. In combat, you may only have seconds … if that.
Assume that the other team wants to catch you in an unfavorable tactical spot, an ambush, for instance. You will be tooling around with your buddies and suddenly, unless you are way out in the open, you will run into dozens of balls in the air heading right at you. You won’t have a big chance to shout “Incoming!” and hit the dirt shooting. In an ambush, contact will be sudden, violent, close and at short range. If you react slowly or in a disorganized manner, everyone will “die” and you and your whole team will be sitting out for a half hour. Drills help you react right – RIGHT NOW!
According to Jon, this kind of organized practice (let’s call it “practice,” not “drill”) is exactly the right answer to climbing the paintball ladder to top-level competitive play.
Here is one of Jon’s immediate action scenarios. Remember that these tactics are proven and are actually practiced by military units in the real world.
Large inflatable bunkers are the rule on the professional tournament circuit. When the competition has you pinned down by laying paint on a lane or “sweetspotting ,” you can lean into these bunkers several inches to avoid flying goo. Be careful not to get comfortable, though, because the moment you do, somebody is going to lay paint on your back.
The Patrol
Your team is moving slowly and quietly along the side of a trail in the direction of the opposition. The team is staggered or alternated left and right by the trail. You know where the other team members are because you can see them.
Suddenly, your point man makes contact. He has to figure out if you have been seen, because that will determine your response. Figure you have been seen, so your point man shouts, “Contact, front!” to give direction, dives for cover and begins laying down fire.
The rest of the team echoes the point man’s shout, “Contact, front!” and immediately moves forward into covering positions on either side. (Jon says it isn’t necessarily important that the front person hit anyone, just that he makes people duck and hide while his team members leapfrog forward.) Alternating moving and shooting and remembering not to be in anyone else’s line of fire, team members move gradually forward.
When they move, all team members shout, “Coming through!” to avoid being shot in the back. Paint is paint, but at short distance it can sting and how humiliating it is to be put out of the game by your own team member!
If a team member runs out of paint, he shouts, “Loading!” This alerts everyone as to why he is not shooting; he doesn’t want his teammates to think it’s because he is taking a potty break in the middle of the action. Finished loading, he yells, “Up!” or “Ready!” Reloading under combat conditions while you are moving or scrunched up on the ground is tough and takes practice.
The team continues its leapfrog technique until the team leader realizes it is going to be overwhelmed or can take its objective. If it appears that the team is facing a superior force or one with superior firepower and cover, use the same leapfrog movement for a tactical retreat.
“Remember,” Jon says, “you can never have too much firepower!”
TEN TIPS FOR BEGINNERS
Courtesy of Game Face
1. According to the folks at Game Face, communication is the key to all team sports. Use your teammates to find out exactly what your opposition is doing and where they are located on the field. This insures that everyone on your team is “on the same page.” In a super-fast game of airball or hyper-ball, this is extremely important because seconds are crucial to survival. And in a scenario game , unless your team’s general can communicate effectively with his troops, the game will rapidly degenerate into a free-for-all. In that circumstance, everyone has less fun.
It’s a team game, so talk to your teammates. “Here is how I’d do it,” explains one teammate to another before their team takes the field at a tournament.
2. Make use of all available cover. On a field or in the woods, you must use everything from tree trunks to prepared bunkers. On a speedball field, the situation is different because you know in advance where every prepared element is located, where the flag is hung and what the lines of fire will be.
3. Wait for the right shot. In the beginning, a newbie will fling paint for the sake of seeing it fly. Accuracy