Throwing Smoke - the Ultimate Gimmick, or actually Useful?

[coyote]

We sold smoke at our scenario games and had a remote smoke setup as well.

It's fun. I have never seen it used where it accomplished a tactical advantage. If we ever had a situation where someone had a child too young to play they got to set off some smoke.

We always had a ref with a fire extinguisher to cover the use of this, as even "cold" smoke can start a fire.

[Mr. Hick]

I don't mess with smoke unless it's Willy Pete and I haven't found anyone on this hemisphere I disliked enough to "screen" with it.

[Tinybear]

So , big game coming up in 3 weeks (Wasaga Beach, Ontario ) , and I was thinking of splurging on some smoke grenades for the first time. My gut feeling tells me they are the ultimate paintball gimmick, and don't offer much advantage other than the pretty smoke display! But I'd assume some players actually have found a use for smoke, so have any of you guys ever used smoke successfully in a big game, and how was it useful to you?

I purchased one for the game as never tried it before. Not sure when to use it but figured I’d give it a try.

[Meleager7]

Cool! The theme from the guys here seem to be Smoke might not work as intended all the time, but are still fun, and add atmosphere to the game. I think i’ll grab a couple eg 18’s on game day

[Hp_lovecraft]

As a ref, I -HATED- them. They always seem to start at least one small fire every sunday. And when I run over to stomp it out.... its like the guy picking up golf balls at a driving range.... EVERYONE is going to try and hit him!

But as a player, I loved the idea. Especially the potential to change the course of a game. It got me in trouble at Coram paintball though. At Coram, the helicopter is a, menace... making it near impossible to attack certain targets. So I had the idea, what if I built a homemade smoker... so large... so very large, that it would hide us from the helicopter. I made some small batches, and they worked well, so I wanted to scale up. I figured the absolute largest I could make was roughly the size of a 24oz CO2 tank.... so that I could store it in my 24oz tank pouch.

So I made a bunch of these monsters, and took them to the "big game" at Coram. At the right moment, helicopter overhead, I lit the smoker, and gave it a throw... and.... the end result was pandemonium. So much smoke... and so much fire. Most of the refs ran over to stomp out the flames... meanwhile, the smoke drifted over to the nearby road... causing traffic problems. Long story short... they were very, very unhappy with me.

[BenoitOWN]

Smoke used right … events using yellows as mustard gas whenever one team have the advantage.

[XEMON]

The only 2 times I have seen good results from smoke grenades are as follow:
1) used to mark tank at big games: At at hose games we used smoke grenades to "destroy" teh tanks, allowed more people to get to them than just the 1 or 2 rocket launcher on the field.
2) I started playing with guys who were legionnaire (French military) and they had access to "special" smoke grenades ie: excess from the shooting range/training. Those made a LOT of smoke ... stained half the field ...

Those "civilian grade" fire starter dont do much more than that ...

[Seajay]

Smoke is awesome. Especially when it lands on your head and face punches you in purple or red goodness.

Wind can be a huge factor in how effective smoke is, but if you have 2 or 3 of them far forward of where you want to go, and not where you are currently at, it works!