Chan's Personal Blog

Well, yesterday I was out paintballing with my youth group at Stormin Norman's. Before the day started, I was having a few second thoughts like.... man, its been a few years since I've last played, what if I'm not as good anymore. There was also a noobie that everyone was wanting to hunt down to settle some scores, and I thought, it would be really embarassing to get shot down by this person.

When we got to the paintball field, we surveyed our potential competition. We had a group of 10, and there was another party consisting mostly of kids and a few parents. There was also one pro paintballer who had his own gear and uniform. We got out to the field, and it was going to be a 10 vs 10 battle for the afternoon. The teams were divided and from my church group, we had myself, Pastor Doug Slack, and my brother. We also got the pro paintballer, one parent, and the rest kids. The other team had seven people from the church group, and the rest kids plus a parent. Originally, I thought the teams were going to be unbalanced because the other team had more able bodied men and women; this didn't prove to be a problem.

The scenario of the day was attack and defend. The attacker's objective is to attack the defender's base, and take down the base flag. The defender's objective is to prevent the attackers from obtaining the flag for 10 or 15 minutes.

Game 1

My team started as the defender. Our strategy was to send three people outside of the base to harass the enemy and buy everyone some time. Everyone else was tasked to defend the base. When the game started, I dashed out of the right side of the base. I stealthily got behind enemy lines, and started my attack run up a hill and took out four attackers. They never saw it coming because I was shooting them from behind. By midgame, I took out another two attackers on a hill, but then another three attackers showed up. I take another one out, but the ref tells us to stop firing. Apparently I was shooting at my own team mates. I thought this was an enemy because he was facing our base like an attacker.

This friendly fire confusion happened because by the time I took out the two attackers on the hill, they were the last of the attacking force. The rest of the defenders rushed up the hill that I was shooting at. We were shooting each other because there were no enemies left, and the referees didn't realize this, and they hadn't stopped the game. The referees are supposed to end the game when one side runs out of players. We completely dominated that game.

Play of the Day

The play of the day comes from Game 4 where Doug and I were attacking the enemy base. This is the play of the day not because of how many kills we got, but it's the strategy that was in play.

At the beginning of the game, we cleared the right side of the enemy base, and we were going to the center of the field to prepare to capture their flag.



As we went to the center of the field, I noticed that all of our attackers to the left had been eliminated, and the defenders were rushing up from the left hand side. If we didn't take them out, we would have been encircled and they'd have clear shots at us from behind. So, I rushed to the left side to hold off the enemy while Doug took on the base defenders. I managed to eliminate two defenders immediately, because they weren't expecting me. I moved further down to the left, I found another two defenders huddled behind a bunker. I couldn't pick them off, but I was keeping them pinned down, and they couldn't move against Doug.

Meanwhile, Doug entered the enemy base and neutralized the guards in the tower fort, and blew away all of the defenders, and bagged the flag for the win. The crazy thing is, the tower guys didn't even warn their teammates that someone had entered the base, and that's how Doug managed to get the element of surprise.

Anyway, the strategy was great because two of us were able to handle eight defenders. That is some serious force multipliers there.

This weekend marks my epic return to the paintball fields; I haven't been paintballing in over two years now. Unfortunately, most of my crew is either in Vancouver or is unavailable, but we'll have to do. I'm going with my church youth group to Stormin Norman's.

To prepare, I've been building endurance by running 2.8km twice a week since the middle of April. The best time so far has been 13:50 which is still about 40 seconds slower than my running times back in high school. But hey, high school was a very long time ago, and I'm getting old.

The other thing I've been doing is reviewing battle tactics, and I've come across an excellent introduction to paintball tactics. It's entitled, the "Paintball Tactics Guide". The guide uses Flash to demonstrate its key concepts, and it's very entertaining to go through, and it covers all the basics that you need to know. The guide starts with individual level tactics, then squad level, then team level. It's very well done!

For the more hardcore tactician, you can scan through the U.S. Army's Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad Training Manual. Some really good stuff in there, but it's a long read. I've been told most military tactics will work in the paintball field. Err.... minus the parts about putting up defensive barbwire, calling in airstrikes, and positioning heavy armour units for frontal strikes.