What's your "strangest" paintball experience?

[martix_agent]

Think store owner... Really nice place in Northeastern IN.
Shows up with a trailer every year...
Another hint... Founding member of Team Guido with the tie die shirts.
Which is another Monster Game story that needs to be told someday.

Admittedly, i've never been to monster game, and I don't know a tie-dye shirt team, either.

But, I do know of vendors in the Ft. Wayne area. I can't really see either of them doing that, though.

[PBGunny]

Think store owner... Really nice place in Northeastern IN.
Shows up with a trailer every year...
Another hint... Founding member of Team Guido with the tie die shirts.
Which is another Monster Game story that needs to be told someday.

[martix_agent]

Matrix... Being in Indiana, you would know who did it.
Hint: He was also at D-Day and was a vendor.

Engler showed up at monster game and lit one of these off? Or did I mix my stories, and the game master did this at monster game? Because that's even better if it's true.

The 508 paratroopers bought i think 3 cases of the handheld ones and damn near used everysingle one of them on the church at the end of D-day 2018 or 2017? That was an event for sure.

[PBGunny]

Matrix... Being in Indiana, you would know who did it.
Hint: He was also at D-Day and was a vendor.

[martix_agent]

Operation Smoke-um if You Got-um...
Would have been one of the Monster Games right before COVID, maybe 2017 or 2018.
A certain friend of mine got hold of an official Navy Marker Buoy that are used by the US Navy for rescue during ship sinking or man overboard.
It was pretty big, like a standard life ring but the middle hole was filled with the smoke device.
The LED strobe light wouldn't work, but it was thought that the smoke generation would still work.
After much trial, it was found to just fit into a large backpack.
Sunday morning, the deed was done.
We went out as a team from the west insertion just below Highlands.
We went towards West Point and about 50 yds from the bridges going towards Castle Rock, where the swamp starts.
Making sure nobody was around, my friend ran up the hill into the woods, removed the buoy and set it off.
For about 1 minute it didn't do anything, but after that the orange smoke started pouring out of it... thick orange smoke.
The wind was out of the north, so the smoke started rolling across the field and into the staging area.
Refs came running from all over the place, thinking the field was on fire.
Watching them run around in the smoke trying to find it was amusing.
When they finally found it, still belching smoke, they decided it needed to be put out.
So, one of them threw it into the swamp, figuring water would put it out.
Big mistake.
It floated out into the middle of the swamp, still belching thick orange smoke.
To listen to Dave Massey yelling at the refs to put it out over the radios was well gut busting.
I believe it was Narf who finally clued them into what it was and that throwing in the water would not do anything, since it was built for aquatic environment.
They finally figured out that it would stop smoking, but they were sure mad about the whole thing.
For the rest of the day, the staging area had this orange hue hanging in the air and it had that smoky, industrial taste in the air.
I don't think the atmosphere at the Tiki Lounge was what Dave wanted.

I've heard this story before and it's still funny today.

White River Paintball had a game master who bought one of these at D-Day and used it in one of their games. I didn't get to witness it, but I hear it put out smokes exactly like the story you told.

[PBGunny]

Operation Smoke-um if You Got-um...
Would have been one of the Monster Games right before COVID, maybe 2017 or 2018.
A certain friend of mine got hold of an official Navy Marker Buoy that are used by the US Navy for rescue during ship sinking or man overboard.
It was pretty big, like a standard life ring but the middle hole was filled with the smoke device.
The LED strobe light wouldn't work, but it was thought that the smoke generation would still work.
After much trial, it was found to just fit into a large backpack.
Sunday morning, the deed was done.
We went out as a team from the west insertion just below Highlands.
We went towards West Point and about 50 yds from the bridges going towards Castle Rock, where the swamp starts.
Making sure nobody was around, my friend ran up the hill into the woods, removed the buoy and set it off.
For about 1 minute it didn't do anything, but after that the orange smoke started pouring out of it... thick orange smoke.
The wind was out of the north, so the smoke started rolling across the field and into the staging area.
Refs came running from all over the place, thinking the field was on fire.
Watching them run around in the smoke trying to find it was amusing.
When they finally found it, still belching smoke, they decided it needed to be put out.
So, one of them threw it into the swamp, figuring water would put it out.
Big mistake.
It floated out into the middle of the swamp, still belching thick orange smoke.
To listen to Dave Massey yelling at the refs to put it out over the radios was well gut busting.
I believe it was Narf who finally clued them into what it was and that throwing in the water would not do anything, since it was built for aquatic environment.
They finally figured out that it would stop smoking, but they were sure mad about the whole thing.
For the rest of the day, the staging area had this orange hue hanging in the air and it had that smoky, industrial taste in the air.
I don't think the atmosphere at the Tiki Lounge was what Dave wanted.

[Trbo323]

Ok, bit of a long one here but it's good if you have the time. I originally wrote this out to send to a podcast I listen to so there's probably a little more explanation than you guys really need, enjoy


This is the story of how Mylie Cyrus assisted the German army in operation Michael Jackson.

You can't make this shit up.


So there I was, Christmas morning opening a letter from my wife. My brother in law and father in law also had identical envelopes. Inside was the trip of a lifetime. All three of us were into the sport of paintball and a while before I had wondered, "what's the largest paintball game in the world?" Turned out, at the time it was a game called Oklahoma D-Day and it happened every year. The game pulled in around 2,200 players each year. One of the interesting aspects of the game is the teams are structured similarly to how the armies were in WWii so all of the divisions and squads that were at Normandy are represented at OK D-Day. We had decided to join the German army for a few reasons, 1) the Germans are always outnumbered, sometimes 3 or 4 to 1 and all of us were experienced paintball players at that point so we wanted a challenge. 2) the game happens in June, in Oklahoma. It's HOT. the Germans are on top of the hills, defending often in the shade rather than climbing the hills in the sun.

So pack up! Road trip to Oklahoma from Portland! We picked up our rental RV in salt lake city which got a mind numbing 5mpg the rest of the way to Oklahoma. The event is a full week so we pull into the camp grounds Sunday night only to find that someone is in our camping spot. The organizers say hey no problem we will just move you guys to the end of the row. We move down to where it's more flat and find that we are actually camping next to our unit's XO, a big lovable guy who goes by his call sign "cupcake".

Monday through Thursday there is a game in the morning, in a different area of the 700 acre field. These games are just for fun, no points are awarded either way. It's HOT, 105° or thereabouts throughout the whole week. Usually those games wrap up around noon and everyone heads back to camp to chill, wait out the heat and tell stories from the day. In the evening they open up the airball field with stadium lights for people to play some evening paintball in camp once it's cooled down.

This leaves a large part of each of the days during the week to hang out in camp and chill. But because the event is so long (6 days) you are left trying to strategize. Each team runs radio towers and a dedicated radio shack that is full of radios. Idk if it was true but I heard there was more radio traffic during the d day game than there is when the US military takes over a city. It's a lot, each team is making their own transmissions, listening to the other team and sometimes making fake transmissions because they know the other team is listening. So if you can mess with the other team by causing them to waste time on the radio, that's a small win. Wasted time on the radio means they may miss some important radio chatter.

But what could we do on the field that would get them talking on the radios about our shenanigans? I think someone mentioned "let's build a fake tank" but we only had 2 days left so that was out but got someone else thinking. What about fake people? Mannequins? Well as a shock to nobody, there's no mannequins R us in small town Oklahoma. But what you can get on short notice is.... We'll just call them "inflatable people".

Yes ok, we used blow up dolls in a paintball game. The look on their faces said they were very surprised to be in a paintball game as well. All females of course and because it was a family event we did have to dress them. Trusty duct tape gave them tube tops and skirts. Somewhere along the way we named this whole plan "Operation Michael Jackson" I think because we were trying to be smooth criminals or something. It was hot, our brains were melted, alcohol was probably involved, give me a break

One of the girls got named Miley Cyrus, she was found to be sleeping "next to" one of the guys in our little section of camp in the RV. For the most part we wanted to keep the girls out of sight.

Saturday, D day comes and at least 2 of the girls make it out to the field. Our friend Miley makes it into the church building to the 2nd floor where she is posted up in a window.

From here I wasn't sure what happened other than I heard one of our guys, Tank, was hiding behind Miley at some point and using her as cover. Miley was taking an absolute pounding as everyone who saw her in the window apparently wanted to shoot her.

So the game goes on, 8 hours and I don't hear much, kind of forget about them. We get back to camp and I see our radio shack guy and remember we had sent the girls out. He sees our group and gets the biggest shit eating grin on his face. Of course he has been listening to the allies transmissions all day and we all ask what he knows. He says "guys, you are not going to believe this. Apparently not only did the allies find the dolls and were talking about them on the radio, a small group of them got ahold of one, took it to a ref and tried to turn it in thinking it might be a secret objective. Naturally it wasn't but not only did they not get points for it, the refs actually penalized them for basically wasting the refs time"

Gather round for the final score presentation. I don't remember what the exact totals were but they were in the thousands. A close game is decided by a few hundred points each way, 2015 was the closest game ever at that point and was decided by 5 points if memory is correct.

So I don't know what penalty the refs gave that group of allies, but if it's 5 or more points, our messing around and having fun trying to screw with the other team literally won us that game.

Good times




Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[boomersruckus]

Pushing on the cocking rod of the cocker as you shoot it. Moah Pooowwwaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!

[Hp_lovecraft]

We talk a bit more and determine that it is entirely possible to make a marker more efficient and by adding....*sigh* "power" to each shot you can decrease the amount of air used to get to a fixed velocity and therefore increase efficiency

In the old days, we would spray or coat all sorts of off things on our barrels for "more power". Like soaking in Slick-50 was very common. And huge barrels. Everyone seemed to own a 20-24" barrel for "more power". Once chronos became standardized, we all.... slowely... realized that this thinking was stupid. 300fps is 300fps.

That said.... once trick for "more power" that did work was dry firing at a certain angle a few times before shooting at the enemy. hmmmmm

[Hp_lovecraft]

My strangest- Some sunday in 1990 or so. The games were done, and I was heading home in my 1978 Buick Skylark. After leaving a gas station, I was pulled over by the police. Not one car, but three cars. I know that cant be good.

They order me out of the car, and have me sit on the sidewalk while they search the car, and pull out all my paintguns. It was mostly typical pump guns of the era. SL-68, Bloodsucker, Nasty Boys Super Intruder.. They place them on the hood.

The whole time they are super excited, telling me that they had a report of someone matching my description with a "car load of sawed off shotguns".. I tell them about paintball, but they kept repeating "talks like a duck". Which wasnt how you use that expression, but I wasnt going to correct them. They had no idea what paintball was. Paintball was still a fringe hobby and not well known.

Thankfully, I had some paintball magazines in the car. Paintcheck specifically. and I was able to show them what they were. It took some time, but the exact moment that they figured it out...... they just dropped everything and left immediately.


EDIT- Another story.

I love scenerio games and I love using smoke b0mbs. but the commercial ones were overpriced, and never worked good enough for me, so I started making my own in the early 90s.
My favorite scenerio game is Coram, in Long Island. It was awesome, and even had a helicopter. in fact, the helicopter was a menace, and made it difficult to attack the main hill fort.

So. I thought. What if I made a smoke b0mb so large, it would blind the helicopter? On my fanny pack was a pouch for a remote tank. Large enough for a 68k or 32oz tank. Which, coincidentally, a 2 liter soda bottle fit perfectly. SO, I made a huge smoker, filled the 2 liter bottle completely, and strapped it in my pack for the game.

Long story short- I set it off during the game... and it was a horror show. The smoke drifted across the nearby street, and throughout the staging area, and parking area, and just everywhere. They had to stop the game. Nobody got hurt, but boy they were very very unhappy.

[uv_halo]

A lot of these are good, and center around personal interactions. The first story that comes to my mind:
The background: It was a recball day at the field and it was BYOP, and we had a crowds in the 20-30 size. This was not too long before First Strikes came out and in that time, I was shooting Marballizer Gator Green exclusively. I clean my gun after every day of play. On this day, I was shooting my Woodstalker Ion:


I was about halfway through the day, in the middle of a match when, all of a sudden, my eyes stop working (and I was setup to not fire on eye failure), because I had (and have) a great history with them working. I drop behind cover, onto my knees and take my barrel off (the gun is pointing muzzle down). There's nothing in the bore. I look in the breach and, there's a glob of pink paint. No shell, no gator green paint, just a blob of pink paint covering the eyes and the front edge of the bolt. I call myself out and when I begin breaking down the gun, I realize "where in the hell did that pink paint come from?" I cleaned the internals out thoroughly and there was no gator green, and there was no pink (or any other color) shell. My hopper, feed tube and feedneck (and adapter) were all clean. The barrel and the apex front were clean. The only thing that makes sense is really only few ways this could've happened (one of them conditional) and, none of them are very likely:

• A pink ball somehow got into my case of Marballizer, and I failed to see it during loading my pods or, loading pods into the hopper and somehow it made a mess in my breach without getting pink paint anywhere else in the feedpath
• A pink ball was shot straight down my barrel and managed to be shot out (like the last shot before the eyes failed)
  • But only if my breach was clear (otherwise I'd find gator green in there too)
• A pink ball somehow exploded above me and, fill landed precisely in the warp feed adapter opening without managing to touch it and landed in the breach, possibly on a gator green ball that managed to fire before the eyes cut off.

I never figured this one out, and it's the only time it's happened. I've never had a case of a wrong colored ball appearing in Marballizer case, even after Empire bought them. I honestly can't remember it happening even with scenario or field only paint (I never bought economy, always at least mid-grade).

[uv_halo]

I got it! :P

[Magmoormaster]

The gun worked perfect, but only within the confines of the shop. Like it didn't want to leave.

oooOOOoooh!! Spooky!

I had that happen so many times when I was tech. I liked to tell people I had a magical aura that made guns work when they were near me. I also told people if I dropped a part while working on a gun, it was good luck. Mostly cuz I was a clutz, always dropped parts, and wanted to feel less embarrassed lol.

Man I got dozens of weird shop tales... let's see, there was a time when the owners of a store called Missionary Mall, which supplied clothing and other goods to mormon missionaries about to go on their missions, came in to buy some gear for their son. After talking with them for a while, they kinda looked at me and was like, "what size suit do you wear?" They told me they were discontinuing a size of suit, had one in their car, and said if it fit me they'd give it to me for free. It did in fact fit, though the cut wasn't quite to my liking so I never really wore it.

There was the time that, when working on a rental 98, I found dried paint completely clogging the rear portion and flutes of the valve. We stored them with the barrel pointing up, so a bunch of broken paint must have slowly poured down into the valve.

There was another time when we supplemented another company's rental fleet for some event... I think we just rented them like 100 air tanks or something. They brought their whole fleet to us so we could sort out which pieces were ours, and I found a Pro/Carbine with a blown gas line. It actually failed where the braided line was crimped onto the fitting. Check the tank, and.... yep, the low side burst disk had been replaced (not by us) with a 5k disk, and the reg had failed.

I was filling a CO2 tank one time. This particular whip had been used to fill thousands of tanks over the years, and the threads on the ASA/fill adapter had worn down to the point that while filling the whole adapter rocketed off the tank and smacked me in the chest.

Haha one of my favorites, and I laugh every time I think of this. Guy brought a Mini in for repair. I fixed it fairly quickly, called him to tell it was ready. Never picked up the phone. Called, emailed a dozen or so times, never came to pick it up. It sat on a shelf in the tech room for over two years, when the guy writes a 1 star google review saying "they've had my gun for 2 years I want it back." Never came in or called asking about it. We responded to the review saying "it's been ready for you to pick it up, come get it we don't want it." (the review is still there). A week or so later, a guy came in to pick up a gun, I asked his name, and it was him!! I didn't say anything about the review or the length of time, and he didn't either. He just paid and left.

Oh!! One more I just remembered. Guy brought in a really nice ebladed orracle, full eclipse pneumatics, etc, and wanted me to pump it for him. I put the pump kit on, and for some reason the hammer would recock itself after firing. Like, it would bounce so hard off the valve pin that it caught the sear again. Weirdest thing I'd ever seen. I finally convinced my boss to order an autococker valve tool so I could respring it, which took like 3 months to arrive for some reason. Got it working properly, called the customer, told him his gun was finally working. I told him I wasn't going to charge him due to the length of time it took to get it fixed, and he gave me the original E2 and eclipse front block I pulled off the gun. I told him they were worth a lot of money, that he should sell them, and he was like eh I don't want to deal with that. So I ended up building a sweet e-cocker of my own, which also ended up being an orracle lol.

I'm sure I have more, if I remember any I'll come back and share them.

[Fubarius]

Maybe spooky, well, spooky'ish.... ok just weird. Tales from the Workbench!

Player brings in a basic Piranha to the local shop. Says it's not recocking. Ok, not a big deal, happens a lot. Shop gives it a cleaning, lube, and new hammer o-ring. Test fires ok and calls the guy. He comes in the next day and picks it up.

That weekend he goes to play and gun will not recock. Brings it back to the shop kind of pissed off, understandably so. Shop calls their blowback expert... me. I come in and take a look. Looks fine, good and clean, right kind of lube, o-ring looks good. I test fire the gun, it recocks fine. Works fine firing just air, works fine shooting paint. Chrono's good too. I test with HPA and CO2. There is nothing wrong with this Piranha. I call the guy and have him bring in his air tank, just in case.

So later that night he shows up, air tank in hand. We top it off and screw it on and fire some air in the shop, PAC PAC PAC, fires perfectly. He's happy, I'm happy, shop owner is happy. All good to go.

Guy walks over to his car, and 5 minutes later he comes back. Says he test fire air in his car, gun would not recock. So he brings it back into the shop. I take it and test it, PAC PAC PAC. He's like it did NOT do that 2 minutes ago. I believe him, and on a weird hunch. I go to the back door of the shop. In the shop, PAC PAC PAC. One step outside of the shop, BRRRP. One step back into the shop, PAC PAC PAC. One step back outside, BRRRP.

The gun worked perfect, but only within the confines of the shop. Like it didn't want to leave.

oooOOOoooh!! Spooky!

[ChillswitchEngage]

Totally understandable.