Tell a story

[gabe]

Go on, tell a story about a really cool paintball game. Just like the whole thing, don't hold back. Write a damn book if you please.

Basically it's cold and dark and I need to hear tales of glory on the paintball field.

[Trbo323]

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is at least a million

This should entertain you for almost an hour if you care to watch the whole thing. If nothing else I recommend the last 20 or so minutes, that was the final battle

https://youtu.be/u-BrPEY2YP4

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[glaman5266]

Well, here's a short story about my first year running a team in our local league. This was maybe 2006? I had only been playing a few years by then, but I really wanted to start a team & play in the local league the local shop owner was helping to run. The league was hard bunker speedball on rec fields, 5-man teams. This is my absolute favorite format. We had 2 woodsy fields, a hyperball field & a barrel field.
So I got 4 other regulars together & we just went out and played. We sucked! It wasn't that we as individuals sucked, but as a team we sucked. We had 5 or 6 teams that year for the 10 week league. The 1st place team had it locked up by week 6 'cuz tourney ball is all they did. They played D4 in regional stuff, so they were better than the mix of country boys, high school students, old farts and stoners the various teams had. We were in dead last place from the start through week 6.
But week 6 was the beginning of our turnaround. We won two of our three games after sitting down & talking it all our & coming up with a different strategy. Basically it boiled down to myself & my best friend (who I still play with today) on one side & the other three on the other. They all worked better with three heads- alone or in pairs they weren't great, but all together they were like a fortress. My buddy & I were the better individual players & could handle ourselves, so we would simply leapfrog up the field to take people out. So that's what we did!
So at week 6 we were still dead last. But we had another team just a bitching about us 'cuz "We are losing to the worst team in the league!" LOL! Apparently we weren't the worst. We just didn't gel yet. But we gelled hard after week 6, beating all of the other teams, even the D4 team once or twice. We came back to ultimately claim 2nd place overall, which was basically the new 1st place considering the team that locked up actual 1st by week 6. That was my biggest accomplishment in paintball game-wise. I'll take a pic of the trophy & post it.

[Arthur]

I forget what SG West it was but it was a good 7-8 years ago. During the night game a buddy and me had a forward position in the DMZ. We were right on the front and back then much of the DMZ was dark. We had a great time earlier in the evening taking Dark Wood. The other side sort of ran out of gas and it became eerily dull. So while we're bullshitting and laughing at this bunker, I just happen to turn on my flashlight and we've got 3-4 bogies charging out of the dark... like literally 5-10 feet out. We lit them up out of sheer terror. Some bad words were thrown our way. It appeared they walked off the field. I felt bad at first but any night game comes with that sorta risk. If you can't handle the heat stay outa the kitchen. lol

[flyweightnate]

During a night game, a guy on my team sees a light... aims the buzzard... shoots... hears a moan?

Turns out someone was looking on the ground for something they had dropped, and were facing away from us, showing us their "good side". He tagged the guy in the marble bag.

The guy was walked to a safe zone by a ref, where he promptly removed his mask and threw up.

[Tinybear]

Was playing player appreciation day years back at Wasaga Beach paintball.

we where playing a large field. Objective was to just pull your opponents flag.

Game was mostly a stale mate and refs called 5 mins left. I was low on air. So despite me being rather large and outa shape I decided it was a good idea to hand off my marker to my sister and make a suicide run for the enemy flag (didn’t have anything to loose). At the time we were trying a flank manoeuvre, So The run would have been a solid 100m of ruff terrain.

So off I go at full tilt. The whole run I hearing paint buzz me But nothing connects some how. Half way there I’m having to resort to holding my Damn pants up as they keep falling (was in process of loosing weight and some gear was too big). By three quarters I was WINDED and literally yelled “will some one f@*ing shoot me”. I made it to 10 feet before getting shot out and the ref called the game. Both teams congratulated me on an epic hilarious run. And I vowed never to pull that shut again lol.

[rawbutter]

I told this story before on old MCB, but it's worth repeating here.

Back in 2011, my church (which was holding services in a rented high school auditorium at the time) finally bought 50 acres of land after years of searching. Before a building could be constructed, however, there were three old abandoned houses on the property that had to be demolished (two ranch-style homes and one larger, two-story, four bedroom house). Finding the right company to do that took about a year, so for one year my buddies and I were allowed to play paintball in the houses. Our favorite game mode was storming the house (think Rainbow Siege). One team would defend inside the house, and the other team would have to get inside and eliminate everyone. The team outside had infinite respawns, but they only had 10 minutes to eliminate everyone inside. Otherwise the defenders would lose. Despite the added cover, it was remarkable hard to win as the defender. The people outside could run around wherever the wanted to, but inside there were only a set number of windows you could shoot out of. As long as the attackers laid down good cover fire on those windows, it was very hard for defenders to look out and return fire (not to mention intimidating since the paintball rounds would smack into the walls and echo loudly throughout the house).

Anyway, we knew this wasn't going to last long, so we played about 6 times in three months. And we were telling everyone about how much fun we were having, and we inviting everyone we could to come and play. Even the pastor of the church played with us once.

The best part happened right before the houses were finally torn down. A friend at church had a desk job at the DEA at the time, and after playing with us twice he started telling all his work buddies about it. Somehow word spread to one of the FAST trainers at the DEA (FAST teams are like the DEA's version of SWAT teams), so he contacted us and asked if he can organize a special training day for the teams that he was currently training. My friends and I would be the "terrorists" that are holed up inside the house, and his teams would try to take the building. He offered to pay for our paint, our air, and our time.

We said yes.

It was crazy cold on the given day....below freezing if I remember right. But the FAST trainer still showed up with about five different teams with various levels of skill. It was a very different experience than normal paintball, of course. The trainer gave us some strange rules. He had obviously thought this through. The FAST teams were going to be dressed in their usual tactical gear with no paintball masks, just regular goggles, so we were instructed to aim low and try to be careful and intentional with our shots. If possible, we were only supposed to shoot the guys once in the chest (because they were wearing vests and had the most padding there). This was actually easier done that said. Most of the time our engagement distance was less than 20 feet, so taking precise shots was remarkably easy if the FAST team wasn't looking at you. The FAST team players were also "invincible." The point of the exercise was to allow them to practice entering a house. It wasn't about "winning" or "losing." So, the trainer told us that even after one of his men was shot, that man would be allowed to shoot back and keep going. Their "score" would instead be determined by how many times they got hit while taking the house. When we were shot, on the other hand, we were supposed to lie down "dead" and then wait until the house was cleared.

We thought this was going to be a piece of cake, especially since we would have 6 guys inside the house and the FAST teams only had 3 or 4 coming in at a time. But once the games started, we realized we were dead wrong. The first "problem" we noticed was the fact that the FAST teams didn't bring their own paintball guns. They brought modified M4s that shot simunitions, which were far more accurate than our markers. (I had a Viking at the time, but everyone else was using Tippmann 98s and mech Spyders.) The FAST teams also didn't enter the houses like we expected. We've all seen the movies were SWAT teams smash down doors and jump through windows all at once, so we expected to take advantage of all that chaos and get some good hits in, but the FAST teams would instead approach the house slowly in a T formation. They would stand back-to-back-to-back so that each man could cover 120 degrees of area. They would move very carefully, backs always touching. Add to this the fact that everyone was a VERY good shot, and you can start to see how difficult it was to land a hit on these guys. Someone was always looking in your direction. If you popped your head out a window to get a look, you'd get double-tapped in the face almost instantly. If you tried to sneak around behind the team, someone was always covering the back. So, we probably lost the first 5 to 10 match-ups without even getting off a single shot. We would poke our heads out windows and get double-tapped in the face. We would wait in rooms, listening for them to come in the door, and then pop around a corner quick to shoot where we thought they would be, but they always seemed to be a few feet in a different direction, and we'd always get double-tapped again before adjusting.

One time while waiting in a room I even got shot in the back. I was leaning against the wall, my marker trained on the door waiting for the FAST team to enter, and I felt these hits in my back. I turned around and then realized that there was a quarter-sized hole in the drywall, probably from a hammer that missed a nail. The FAST guy had noticed that tiny hole and shot me through it. Crazy.

Then to make matters worse, some of our guns started malfunctioning in the cold. So, we had to start using our back-ups. At the time we only had Brass Eagles and Piranhas. One of my friends even busted out an old pump Traccer.

Fortunately, the FAST trainer noticed this and took pity on us. He had a few spare M4s with simunitions, so he gave those to most of my friends. (Sadly, my Viking worked like a champ, so I never got to use an M4. But that was actually a good thing that I'll get to later.) The trainer also gave us some new "rules." He told us that we were now allowed to have a "second wind." Even if we were shot, we were allowed to "overcome our wounds" and come back to life after a minute or so on the ground.

This was the game changer. The FAST teams would still come in and shoot us instantly, but as soon as they left the room, we would claw back to our feet, change positions, and come at them from behind. The better teams were ready for this, of course, and would just shoot us again, but a lot of the teams were less experienced and didn't cover their flank as well, so we finally started getting some good shots in. This then gave us the idea to start each match with a few of our players hidden outside the houses. That way we could pull off these sick flanks as soon as the FAST teams were inside the front door.

Someone actually got a pretty good picture of me doing just that, actually, coming around from the back of the house to surprise the team as they were going in the door.




We also started using distraction tactics. One of our outside players would shoot in through the empty windows, for instance, to draw the team into an area they weren't really ready to enter. Then after overhearing the FAST teams talk after one of the matches, we realized they were VERY nervous and getting hit in the face with a paintball, so we started using that to our advantage too. My buddies and I started pre-firing BEFORE coming around corners. We would aim low, fire a bunch of shots into the floor, and then come around a corner still firing until we could see the team and take a better shot. In many cases, the FAST teams would flinch and retreat before they could even see us, and then they were off balance and unprepared for us coming around the corner. We could usually score a hit that way before they returned fire. We were still really good with out shots, though. One guy did get hit in the throat, sadly, but he took it like a champ and mostly bragged about it for the rest of the day. Everyone else just got shot in their vests or legs.

Getting hit with simunitions, by the way, wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. We were all layered up for the cold, so the simunition shots didn't hurt nearly as bad as paintballs. It felt more like getting hit by an Airsoft BB.

It's hard to tell you what happened during any particular game. They were all kind of the same. Slow, methodical, tactical. When I play paintball with my friends, it's usually more like ping pong. It's fast and everyone is constantly moving. But this was more like chess. Still, there were two moments that really stood out.

The first happened to my friend Jason. He was posted inside the house, in a back bedroom, buy we also had two guys roaming around outside. The FAST team came in, shot him, and he laid down on the floor like he was supposed to. But then the FAST team in the room started taking fire from outside the house. Paintballs were flying in through the windows and hitting the walls. So, the team leader called for cover fire. Two of the men started pouring shots out the windows as they retreated into the hallway, and since they were firing simunitions (which are basically the same as real bullets, except the bullet part is wax instead of lead, and there's less powder in the shells), all those shots were ejecting casings out of the M4s. And there was Jason, lying on the floor laughing hysterically as he's being showered with brass. Each of the men firing had a 30-round magazine, and they were both empty by the time they retreated out of the room.

The second thing happened to me. The larger, two-story house on the property had an L shape to it, and during one the last matches of the day, I was posted in the back hallway near the side door. Because of the L shape, I could actually see the font door of the house by looking out the side door and through a window in the living room. It was a long distance, but I could see the FAST team as they entered the house if I was careful. They were mostly focused on the interior rooms, and they weren't always looking out the bright windows. So, I was peaking, giving my friends intel, and then of course I had to take a few shots. I got one good hit on someone, and then one of the FAST guys peeled away from his team and planted himself in the corner next to the window I was shooting through. I heard him tell his team that he would cover them as they moved forward. But....it was near the end of the day. We had only been taking single shots all day, so I had a LOT of paint. My Prophecy loader was full with about 200 paintballs. And I had a Viking. So, I started shooting before he could stick his gun out of the window.

This is kinda what it looked like.



Instead of a single shot, I let loose with a burst. The paintballs went out my door, through the window, right past the guy's arm, and then hit the door next to him. I heard him curse. He pressed himself into the corner, so I couldn't see his whole body, but I could see the M4 he was clutching to his chest. I could hear him calling to his buddies for help. He sounded honestly scared.

For a second, I felt bad for him and stopped. I retreated a little bit, and then I heard him talking to his team. They had come to his window, apparently, and couldn't see me anymore. They gave him a little bit of a hard time for that, and then they started moving into the house again.

That's when I had another thought. I distinctly remember thinking, "Well, this is a training exercise. I shouldn't feel bad for scaring him. In fact, he should learn to work through the fear. Right?"

Then I poked through the back door again and completely unload my Viking. The FAST guy was still pressed into his corner, and so dozens of paintballs started pouring in through the window, right past him. He started cursing up a storm, calling for help...but I just kept shooting. Another guy did come to help him, but as soon as he tried to poke his head through the window, he nearly got hit in the face. Then he was cursing and scared and flustered. The third guy recklessly pushed forward ahead into the house hunting for me, and he did find me in a few seconds. But immediately after he shot me, my two other friends came out of the bedrooms and shot him in the back because he had rushed forward all alone. Then our two guys who were roaming around outside shot through the living room windows and hit the FAST guys in the front room. And so... this was the only game in which we actually hit every member of the FAST team.

Afterward, the guy I had pinned down didn't have any hard feelings about it, which was nice. I apologized for some reason, but the trainer said that was the most educational match of the day. Hopefully they got something out of the experience.

Sadly, the houses were torn down the next month and we never got to play there again. But at least we got a few good pictures.



I'm the one on the top right in the black jacket. My friend Jason (the one that got showered in brass) is standing to the right on the end. Good times.

[gabe]

Dude YESSS that is a dope story. I love stories of paintball in old abandoned houses and stuff.

Alaska was a big part of the DEW (Distant Early Warning) system during the cold war and still is and we have these huge Nike missile sites scattered around that were home to nuclear tipped SAM missiles during the cold war. They're all decommissioned now but the radar sites, barracks, vehicle assembly buildings, mess halls, silos...they're all still intact. Of the 3 sites we have here one is almost completely demolished from parties, vandals, and general neglect; one was turned into a park/rec center; but the final one is on top of a mountain over Eagle River and is pretty hard to access so it stayed in decent shape.

Up until 2010 it was simply abandoned so myself and 4-5 friends would hike up there with backpacks full of paintball guns/gear and play in and around the buildings. What an absolute trip that place was! The silos are really like medium/small aircraft hangars with these steam driven carts on tracks in the floor that they would use to wheel the missiles out of the hangar. What was left were these access tunnels below the launch pad that you could hide in as well as the hangars had these maze like escape tunnels out the back that had massive nuclear fallout safe blast doors. These silos are on the upper steppe in the mountain a total of 4 silos in groups of 2. The lower area had the VAB as well as a maintenance building/mess hall and dog kennels. The coolest part was the maintenance building had a utility bridge that was only about 2' wide but 30' long and 20' above the ground extending out of the hillside that it was against and going to the building. Basically you could sneak up around the building on a hillside next to it and then carefully (oh so carefully) walk along this utility line bridge onto the roof of the building and ambush people in the building from the roof and holes in the roof. Also it was steam heated so there were two massive steam boilers in the utility room which was as large as a 2 car garage and you could hide on top of the boilers and ambush people coming in the building from the back.

I mean it's basically just an absolutely insane place to play. We had some amazing games playing attack/defend in those buildings. A few times we would get into firefights in the silo escape tunnels and it was just absolutely pitch black. Basically you would just feel your way around in the dark and nearly bump into the opposing team in the dark.

That being said all this was insanely dangerous I'm sure but we didn't care as high school kids let loose with paintball guns. I'm sure walking along an elevated bridge above all sorts of broken glass and walking on questionably firm roofs of abandoned buildings was not all that safe.

This one, Site Summit was closed up in 2011 and is being converted to a museum of the Cold War. Too bad really because it was a lot of fun to play in but I'm sure a lot of liability on the Air Force with it being their property.

[Hp_lovecraft]

I remember my first big game. Triad Paintball, NH, 1989. That was the exact moment I was hooked on paintball.
Before that, 87-89, I'd mostly played at the local field..... because none of us had cars, and it was the only place close enough to bike to. I'd never seen a game with more then 30 players. Usually much less.

One day, the field owner had said he will be closed the following Sunday, because he is going to the "big game" at Triad. He offered to give us a ride, which we were thrilled about... until that meant sitting in the back of his rusty, dirty, debris-filled pickup.... and it was freezing in the morning. The ride was awful, but it was forgotten once we arrived, and it was a scene beyond our imagination. Over a hundred cars... parked everywhere, and around 500 players. I could not even fathom that there were 500 players in the world.

It was amazing to see all the cool technology, and all the amazing gear.... and the playing field was just massive. They used the entire property, containing all the subfields (towns, castles, arenas, etc). Everything except the gopher ball, which was on the otherside of the parking lot. It was overwhelming.

We split into groups, objectives were assigned, "generals" gave commands. There were lots of small objectives, and one large one- Grab and hang the opponents flag. Between myself, and my best friend Kevin, we understood -NONE- of it, except we were "red" time, going against "blue" team. If you died, you got recycled back at base

So we all started at the "red" base. Our plan was to just follow everyone else, and pretend we know whats going on. The field was largest enough that it took a while before we came upon the "blue" team, which led the a massive firefight. Out main team ran right into the other main team..... it was incredible, and scary. Your first skirmish in a big game is amazing. So Kevin, and myself ran away! We wanted to head back to base... but it was all woods and no paths. We were lost.

Totally lost. We just headed away from the noise of the firefight... and eventually we came to some red tape. We had no idea if we were north or south, so we just picked a direction and followed the tape line. The sounds of the firefight got less and less, so we figured we were heading back to base.

After walking for a while, we could see someone in the distance... a REF! standing on a bunker. All by himself. It was weird and surreal. But we were lost, so we walked over to the ref and asked "do you know where we are?". He looked... and laughed.... saying "Are you boys stupid or something?". We were still confused. "This is the middle of the BLUE base!". We knew we did not want to be here, so we started walking away... and then he said "Arent you going to grab the flag?". He explained that RED team was getting routed. So the entire BLUE team left the base to surround the RED base.

When you surround a base, you basically prevent recycles, so its a big deal. He also explained that all the dead BLUE players were heading back to base right now to get recycled. Crap! About 70 players were just a few minutes away from recycling at BLUE base, so we grabbed the flag and head back into the woods. At that point, we knew we were firmly behind "enemy lines". Boy, that was probably the scariest moment of my life. Like WW2 prisoners who just escaped into the german countryside.

So we carefully, quietly, discretely made out way back to the line. We had RED armbands, but walked liked newbs, so they assumed we were dumb BLUE players, and didn't give us a second look.
At just the right moment, we dashed across the line, and jumped into a RED bunker at the outskirts of the RED base. Nobody shot at us, red or blue. I think everyone was confused at what we were doing! I think BLUE saw the BLUE flag and maybe thought that it was a blue armband?

We discovered that the RED players did not shoot at us because they were all out of paint! THey were just hundled waiting to get overrun. THe base was surrounded, so no chance of resupply, or recycles. We offered out paint, as we have yet to shoot a single round! So they took some paint, and they were completely shocked to see the BLUE flag. We explained that we got lost, and the base was unguarded

But we didn't understand the signifigance. They explained, RED was getting routed. The base is surrounded, out of paint, and getting picked off. The battle was lost UNLESS.. UNLESS we can hang that flag at the central bunker. Time was running out, and we needed to sprint across open field to get there... we were so scared.

So the plan was to give the bunker all of our paint. They were give us cover while we made a run for it. Kevin, a small guy, would run in front of me..... so I might take the brunt of it. Hopefully he gets pretty close before being shot. Close enough that enother RED player can reach the flag.

So we ran, adresnaline pumping so hard that all I could hear was "thump, thump, thump".
Long story short... I was shot, many times. But Kevin made it, hung the flag. There was confusion when the ref ended the game. The BLUE team thought they had won, but actually RED won. It was just an amazing experience, and I was hooked on paintball after that.

[Trbo323]

Friend of mine while crouching down managed to get the elbow of his jersey attached to the lanyard of the barrel swab that was in his pants. So basically, his elbow was attached to his knee

In the middle of a firefight

He had to hobble around, moving his arm and leg at the same time any time he shifted position

We called him pinocchio the rest of the day

"Cause the ain't no strings on me"

The worst part for him was the rest of us were already out but standing about 10 feet away on the other side of the netting. Laughing our asses off with tears streaming down our faces as he tried to defend the top of the hill while we all reminded him that the game was on the line and he can't let us down

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