Off Topic - Paintball

[Andrew]

Played paintball yesterday in the rain and cold, which was probably not the brightest thing (I was almost over a case of the flu).  Today I am a little under the weather.

I have to tell you, it was rough for me.  I always seem to use a type of paintball gun that nobody else does.  For the longest time it was my trusty VM-68 EXC, now I use an Automag (with some improvements).  Yesterday, out of probably 60 people, mine was the only Automag.  Spyder's (and clones) galore, several autocockers, three angels (egad), and any number of other guns.  It made me very sad.

The first couple of games were on a wooded field.  It had a stream running along the tape (boundary) on one side.  With Cpl Kubie and two of the younger kids (10-13), we beat back the enemy advance there and turned their flank.  It became a rout at that point.  I quickly decided that the stream was my friend.  If you were willing to get wet you could get down into it and move along; it was dead space that the bunkers uphill could not cover.

The other team quickly got the idea and put four guys to defend the stream during our last game on that field.  Four other Marines at that.  Again I had Kubie and two younger lads with me.  We took out one of the bad guys and ran another off, but the final two were dug in like ticks in their bunker (pile of logs in and next to the stream).  Kubie and the others gave me cover, I charged, the defenders died.  One guy was pretty upset with me - he tried to return fire, but I was running and shooting.  He got stitched royally.

After a few games they changed the teams around and suddenly I found myself with the best gun on my team, while the other team had a number of electronics.  Kubie and I did our best, and we usually got at least two of them for each of us, but when the other team is spraying that much paint...the outcome is nearly a given.  Most of the time I use about 200 - 300 balls per game.  One of the guys with an angel never shot less than 800 balls.  Do not get me wrong, my gun will throw paint fast, but I do not do so unless I think I can get someone.  Simply raining paint on the other team is not my thing.  I really like games where you are limited to just a hopper (200) and maybe one reloader (100-150) of balls.  Those are fun.

Long story, but thought any other paintball players might be interested.

[Perk]

     I remember the second time I played paintball.  It was last summer and we were in my friends backyard (The place was a forest).  Well during our last game we were playing everyman for themselves and I was using my Traccer (decent gun at the time).  My friend has a Shocker and in this game someone gave my position away when I was trying to creep up on him.  So out of nowhere I heard paintballs flying all around me ( My friends strategy is just to rain paint all around and sooner or later he'll hit something).  So I do the only thing I could I ran as fast as I could away from him while shooting.
     
      I failed to remember that there was a creek ahead of me and with that creek there was a six or seven foot drop.  When I got to the cliff I was running at full speed and still shooting so I didn't see it until the last second.  So I did the only thing I could I leapt off the cliff, over the creek, onto a little island, while still shooting.  Then I hit the ground HARD.  I broke my hopper (which everyone affectionatel called Gaygreen because it was super neon green) and lost all my balls in the creek.  My gun was thrown from my hand and into the creek.  And I bounced upon impact and I laid there for a few minutes having had the wind stolen from me. Took me a few days to get everything in the gun cleaned out.  But it wound up working for a whole year until this summer when my bolt snapped off inside the barrel in a quickfire game we were playing.  :< .  To this day everytime we play paintball someone brings up my Superman impression.

[Andrew]

Used to have one of these myself.  I am sorry that I sold off most of my old paintball guns, like the Trracer and my  Sheridan KP2.  One of the reasons I have refused to sell my VM-68 EXC - nostalgia.