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I used to play paintball quite often, but have not since Jenna's birth.  Well, this month as a recreational event the unit will be playing.  My experience in the past is that Marines are just as newbies as anyone else, because paintball is very different from actual combat.  It might bear some resemblance to SWAT-style training when you are playing speedball.

Anyway, I pulled my gun out to do a function check.  I have a customized Automag.  About the only thing an Automag ever needs is the o-rings replaced.  I do have a special bolt system for mine that prevents chopping a ball, which is about the only thing you ever have to play with.  That turned out to be a problem (probably due to the o-rings for it being old and I didn't have good replacements).  I ended up taking out the bolt and using the stock system, but I did place o-rings on order, because not breaking balls is a big advantage.  The bolt is called a "Level-10."


A good thing I found is that paintballs have come down in price.  Used to be, a case of decent paint was 2000 was $100, now it is $55. 

A bad thing I have found is that my beloved Automags are dying out as markers.  The day I went to tune mine up and test fire it, not one other Automag was to be found.  Considering there were a number of other high-end markers, more expensive than an Automag, it is not price.  Oh, and some of the other markers were having issues.  One guy had a brand new Autococker that he had to give up on getting to work.  So, what depressed me is that Automags, despite being compact and extremely reliable, are going away while other markers are continuing.

I also still have the gun I used for tournament play between 1993 and 1996, which is a great old VM-EXC by now-defunct Sheridan.

Oh, and I am resisting the lure of the newest Automag which has a new valve system and factory-installed level-10 bolt.

http://store.airgun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.prodInfo&productID=379&categoryID=81

Did you ever give airsoft a shot?  It's all I've ever played.  One nice thing in airsoft is for $55, you'd get around 20,000 BBs.


Dunno about paintball, but I do think one or two things might carry over to outdoor airsoft.  I haven't been in combat so bear with me. 

I know some tactics in teamplay are more or less the same, and some people use variant formations.  People also like to use hand signals, to keep enemies from overhearing.  With airsoft, some aspects of weapon handling carry over.  Types of movement and use of stealth and cover somewhat carry over (though I have to say a thick shrub probably wouldn't work as well in real life as it does in airsoft...). 

I've also found people getting tunnel vision in airsoft is a major problem (especially with engagement distances normally under 100 feet, meaning flanking can be super fast), and I suspect in real life combat you want to avoid it as well.  For me personally, I learned to avoid tunnel vision and be aware of my surroundings from playing first person shooters. 

That's really the only thing which carried over in that regard, of course, no matter what Lt. Col. Grossman says.

How many people are playing, and where?

From what I have seen of airsoft, it is much closer to what you would expect.  Probably the best thing this side of using MILES gear.  I have never tried it myself, probably because it is not as widespread as paintball.

Some things do carry over, but aiming a paintball gun is very different than a real weapon.  Same with hitting your target.  Even an accurate paintball gun is probably about on par with a pistol for hitting what you are aiming at.  Then you get into understanding how to match paint to barrel, how to get accuracy after breaking a ball in the barrel, and all that.  With an M-16, they understand immediate action and you don't have to worry about small paintballs just falling out or having brittle paint.  The mechanics are different enough is all.

It will probably be about 20 to 30 of us on that day.  It is one of those deals where we contracted for a special event, with them opening the field just for us.

I've been playing paintball for the last seven years or so.  I mainly play woodsball, and have never been a fan of speed ball and the such that most people play.

I have a Silver Tippmann 98 Custom with a 17 inch PigSticker barrel that I've had since I first started playing.  Back in 2003, we had a hurricane come through the area and completely flood everything.  My house was flooded, and eventually torn down.  My Tippmann got flooded as well.  It still works pretty well today after replacing all of the o-rings and springs inside but it's still not as good as it was before the flood.

About 6 months ago, I bought a JT Recon gun for 40.00 from the local WalMart.  It was on clearance and looked like a nice gun.  It's Camo and certainly blends in much better than the silver 98 ever did.

I recently bought a J&J Ceramic 16 inch sniper barrel for it, and it's a great gun.  It's much more accurate than the 98 was with it's custom barrel.  I've found that I go through much less paint with the gun than I did before, mainly due to the accuracy.  The recon comes with a handle on the top, which I removed and ended up putting a military grade "red dot" sight in it's place.

As for Airsoft, I've used a bit of it.  I actually keep a Glock replica airsoft gun on me at all times while playing paintball.  I use the 6mm airsoft paintballs and use the gun as a backup in case my main marker craps out on me.  We normally play one shot kills when it comes to the standard paintballs, but 2 shot kills for the 6mm airsoft.  The only drawback is that my pistol is not electronic, so I have to cock it for each shot.  I've considered getting an electronic airsoft pistol or electronic MP5 but I'd be afraid of chopping balls.

If you're using 6mm paintballs, you're pretty much stuck with single shot springer pistols.  Those are the only guns cheap enough that I'd personally ever consider using the things, and anything more powerful than them will shatter the paintballs instantly.

There are a few new guns that use a paintball roughly half the size of a standard paintball in realistic looking guns which work using magazines instead of hoppers, but they haven't really taken off yet.  Can't remember the company who makes them though, but it would be neat if it took off.

Jim,

I had wondered about that.  The 6mm balls do seem quite fragile. 

I'd love to play more Airsoft with some better guns.  Everyone around here has so much invested in paintball though, so it's not feasable for them to go out and buy new Airsoft guns.

Also, I think the honor system turns a lot of people off.  At least with paintball, you know when someone has been hit.  Airsoft, it's quite a bit more difficult to determine.

Considering what I have seen, the honor system is one of the reasons that Airsoft will never become too popular.  If you hit me, I will call myself out.  However, I cannot count the number of times (in open play) that I hit someone, see the paint appear on them, and they duck away to wipe.  I have even watched them wipe.  Me and those people often have a problem at the end of the game.  Sometimes, I get asked to leave, sometimes the cheater does.

Another reason I miss my EXC was that it was solid and had a steel handguard.  During an argument, one guy put his barrel on my neck.  I warned him not to shoot me.  He fired.  I had trouble swallowing for a day or two and a heck of a bruise.  I immediately swung a buttstroke and hit him in the temple with the handguard and he went down.  Some people were afraid I had killed him at first.

Man, that is seriously brutal.  I can't imagine being shot that close, especially on the neck.

The guy got exactly what he deserved.

That would suck to get shot in the neck with a paintball gun.

Even worse...WATCH THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXP4W0oXbgw)   :buggedout:

AND THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oN0GPVg_C0)

AND THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMARTVQGF3g)

I've never been shot with a paintball gun but I've heard it hurts like hell!

That first vid is fake.  I didn't see any paint come out of the marker.  Looked to me like he just shot some CO2 into his eye.

As for the second vid...pretty funny.  I do despise people with auto-markers.  Takes away the skill when you can spray-n-pray.

Always wanted to do paintball since the early 90's just never knew anyone involved and NJ is notorious for ticks.

Honor system is occasionally a problem in airsoft, can't lie about that.  It leads to airsoft being a bit more inclusive I think, but it is not as bad of a problem as you might imagine.  You mostly just have to avoid playing with young people and huge a***oles.  It is frustrating when you know you hit someone at very long range, but they honestly don't feel it though, I have to say (doesn't happen a huge amount, but still).

I still keep my modified spyder around even though I haven't played in years. I also have an old pump gun that took 10 ball tube feeds and 3 gram C02 whippets. There was once upon a time a company in the woods of North Carolina that only allowed these kinds of markers. No autocockers, no rapid fire, just shoot-pump-shoot.

Speedball was a little too fast for me, but it seems today that it is the only form of commercial paintball. I much preferred the woodsball. Playing on a field a couple of acres large with forts was great. You all had a fair chance, even those people rushing the forts because once you got inside, you could take those closeup shots you earned by penetrating the defenses. It got really exciting once you started learning the courses and could treat the field like a chess game with properly places shooters, decoys, cover fire, etc...

I prefer to play woodsball myself.  The place we are playing at has 3 different wooded fields, one of them with a central fort.

Kept a Tracer that I had for years, just to play in the pump-only leagues.  They were a lot of fun and a well maintained Tracer is pretty darn accurate.  Also, on my one team (Penguin Lust was the name) we had a guy named T.J.  His gun was a Spyder with a couple of upgrades, including a crazy 16 or 18 inch barrel.  That thing was amazingly quiet, we would call it the "gnat fart."  Having a quiet gun can be a big advantage in woodsball.

A couple of years back, when Paintballing wasn't readily available in this state, we went on a trip to the border, camped out for a couple of days, and had a day of paintballing.

Loads of fun, especially with friends.  And yes they can hurt pretty bad depending on how close you fire them.  Funniest moment of that day was watching two of my friends, on opposite teams, run onto either side of a hay bale without realising the other was on the other side of it.  They both popped out at the same time, and one of my mates reacted really quickly by shooting my friend in the thigh from about 4 feet away.  He had a killer of a bruise, but more importantly, we had a good laugh at his expense.

The really quiet spyder that TJ had resulted in one of my amusing paintball stories.  It was when TJ had just gotten his gear.  To get him started and give him experience, a couple of us went out to play.  We laid out normal rules for him, including minimum engagement distance, and played several games.  During one of the games, it was TJ and myself against three or four of the others.  We put him under a holly tree at the base of a pile of dirt (fairly large) and I was playing a mobile firing point from the dirt pile.  The others assaulted us.  During the game, Steve ran up and managed to make it into the dead space I couldn't cover by fire, which was right were TJ was setup to cover.  Steve started taking fire and didn't know where it was coming from (TJ under the tree).  He dropped to the prone right in front of TJ, intending to crawl under the holly tree and come up on my side.  He saw TJ at the last second and yelled, "Wait!"  TJ shot Steve in the top of the head.  Steve was ready to kick TJ's butt.

When paint ball was just becoming popular in California the company I worked for set up a game between the retail and the wholesale divisions, none of us had ever played before so all the gear was furnished by the guys who ran the game. The marker they furnished came with a holster and was basically a large hand gun with a 10"-12" barrel, co2 cartridge in the grip and a ten shot magazine under the barrel, fired double action so you could empty the marker real quick, and it was fairly accurate to about 10-20 yards. Only thing mentioned about engagement range was don't shoot people in the head from up close and always keep your safety goggles on. Each team had 24 players, the wholesale division people also had a yard manager who was a major in the California National Guard, he naturally took command of their team, in the first game of Capture the Flag he put out op's to make sure there would be warning of our approach, and then set out with a group that had scouts and flank guards, all very military. On the other hand the group I was with sort of took a vote and decided that since we knew about where their flag would be we would all just charge over there in a group and take it, we all took off, ended up running single file down a trail which was assumed to lead to the other side's flag, and for some reason most of us were laughing while we did this. Young man named Dwight had been assigned op duty and he spent a good amount of time finding just the right spot to watch his area of responsibility, failed to notice that there was a trail right behind him and that for all intents and purposes he had no cover at all on that side, Dwight hears us running and laughing and concentrates on the view of a trail about 25 yards to his front, we of course came by on the one behind him, everybody on the team shot Dwight at least 4 times from a range of about 4 - 6 feet, could hear him yelling "Ok I'm dead, you sob's stop shooting me". From neck to waist, front and back he was covered in day-glo pink paint and because he was wearing just a green cotton tee shirt he was also pretty bruised up. Sorry to say that every one thought the "Pink Blob" as he became known was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, we actually took pictures of him and were quite happy to show customers how he got that name.  :bouncegiggle: