Paintball

Used to play competitively back in the 90s. It's a shitload of fun. Was nice having paint sponsorship as that gets really expensive if you're doing tournaments.

I played a couple years ago. Its a fun, but really expensive sport. Speedball tourneys are really expensive. I would go through a couple thousand rounds easy. We had a few sponsors that got us paint at cost which helped, but when you spend $60 or paint every weekend and tournament fees, it adds up.

You planning on playing speedball or rec ball?
Pic of me I thought came out cool.

Few more.

Did a mix of CTF and some speedball. At Nationals in 96 in DC went through over 16k rounds personally on the weekend. Glad that shit was free!

I'd say gun, mask, hopper, tank. Playing with a rental gun sucks. Mask next because uncomfortable mask sucks and having it fog up means you can't see shit. Hopper isn't that big of a deal because it won't matter much in recball, you won't be shooting 15+ balls a second. Tank, same thing. Almost any tank will work, only thing to worry about is how heavy you want it (steel or fiberglass) and how much air you want it to hold.

Played for the first time at the Bunker in Wyandotte Oklahoma when I was 13. This is the group that does the massive D-Day scenario game every June. Anyway, I played hard for a few years. Walked into the Dairy Queen on my 14th birthday, got a job and starting dumping all of my paychecks and birthday/christmas presents into the sport. My first gun, (probably like most who played for the first time in the 90's) was a Daisy Stingray. What a piece of shit, but man it taught me to appreciate my upgrades. I laugh about it now, but also snagged the Vents Predator mask and wore all of the shit that came with it.

Yea, bitches


By the time I was 15, I went through my Tippman Pro-Lite and had my Automag w/compressed air and some ViewLoader electric hopper (I think that was it), and was carrying like 8 full pods into every game (lol, I probably weighed 100 lbs. at the time). It was a lot of cash for my age and eventually I started putting my money towards alcohol.



Anywho, I'm a ripe old fart now at 31, but I started playing again about two years ago. My nephew, who is now 15, got into the sport and this has given me the sweet opportunity to play again under the guise of quality time. I dropped the $ on a nice medium range setup that I'll likely never upgrade (Axe, Rotor, Sweet Prince Empire's Dye mask ^, a Crossfire 48/45 tank, etc.). It's been pretty great coming back. I mean, I miss the sound of the autococker block all over the field, but the days seem to have more players now than I saw in the 90's. A few guys from work are showing interest, so I may start making this a once/twice-a-month thing, instead of every two months or so.

Oh, and the best time of my life was volunteering at the Bunker in the summer when I was 15. I would ref when people showed up to play, or I would play if a group arrived with an uneven number of players. I was paid in paint and MRE's and it was glorious.

if anyone in austin area wants to buy my old autocoker w/ eblade, let me know

we would play speed ball mostly, but expansive yeah

paintball fields can get crazy about the rules. i hear its cause they can lose their insurance real easy and new fields couldn't get insurance for years.

we eventually got our own field. a friend with some land caught city workers tearing up a drainage ditch and noticed they were breaking up the old cement pipes, and driving it off in dump trucks. he talked to them and they said the old cement pipes (3-5 foot thick) couldn't be reused. so instead of breaking it up and going to the land fill, they dragged them over, w/ a 100' crane, to his field. where you see those blow up obstacles on normal courses, we had cement pipes up in the air. made buying paint cheaper cause we weren't buying it at the field, and no field costs. we eventually went will kill zone shots as well, head and body only. arms and legs would come home w/ so many bruises.

Hah! I still have my old autococker. Motherfucker was a bitch to get the timing right.

i was heavy into it with my cousin back in the late 80's early 90's
this was went tanks were just getting STARTED all games competitively HAD to be played with the 12gram co2 cartridges(200fps max speed , it was pretty much 100% capture the flag. i played competitively for a bit but nothing major. biggest tournament i attended was when i played @ West Point vs the cadets and several other teams.

best match i had was in NH for fun, 3 15 man teams- capture the flag for 45 minutes. at the end my team won with 2 of the flags, i was the only person left on my team- i also captured both flags WHEN i was the only one left(i ran FAST back then). the other 2 teams, one had zero people left, the other had 5. the game started, my team decided to play Defense, and both the other teams came at us at the same time in bull rushes. i was the only one to get out "alive" then i ran. found the blue teams flag- did a quick scout, saw no one, ran in, Grabbed it, ran towards the other base- quietly went up, scouted, saw no one ran in grabbed flag...then started heading back to my base with the flags...and ran into the survivors heading to THEIR base with my team's flag.. then spent 15 minutes running full bore avoiding being hit in the woods. it was AWESOME.

my gun was a modified Nelspot pump action with a 14" rifled barrel. 12gram quick release cart holder, 50 round hopper (hoppers were new as well)-

again this was before semiauto's were legal, and only a few people had the 12oz? co2 bottles, by the time i stopped playing they had just started legalizing for competitive play the 12oz? bottles...

also had a blast playing at night, nailed a guy right in the balls with my gun from 40 feet away in the dark bushes, the only light was in the immediate area of the flag.

i played in New Hampshire.

I played a bunch in the late 90's/ early 2000's. I even worked at a field over a summer one year. I probably started and quit a couple of times. It would start with playing some woods-ball every weekend, realizing I was too good for that, moving up to speedball, playing in a local tourney circuit only to realize tourney ball was all about how good you were at cheating, getting discouraged and quitting the sport, only to start the whole cycle over again the next year. I don't know if X-Ball is still popular, but those were some of the most intense and fun tourneys I ever played in.

I had a sponsor most of the time, but even getting all my gear/paint at cost still ended up being a very expensive sport. I haven't played in probably 10 years now. Wouldn't mind grabbing the equivalent of a Tippman '98 and playing some woodsball again, but I am afraid of getting sucked in again.

my kids want to play.

two are 8 the other is 11. maybe in 2 years.
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The field I worked at they had to be 14 I believe for insurance reasons, although it has been 10+ years since I did that so my memory is a little hazy. I do remember having to turn kids away since they weren't old enough, talk about some sad kiddos. Doesn't stop you from letting them shoot each other in the woods though.

i looked the cut off is 10 at the parks/fields i looked at.

Lenardo_sl said:

my kids want to play.

two are 8 the other is 11. maybe in 2 years.
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im not a father, but paintball is a pretty easy way, in my mind, to expose your sons to some extra curricular, all-in-fun, old fashioned play-through-itpain.

Milsim player here, could never get into the whole speedball shit, running around dressed like a motocross racer spraying and praying with spaceguns.

I'll pass.