The Art Of Paintball Essay, Research Paper

The Art of Paintball

Whether you playing in a tournament or as a hobby, paintballing is a very fun sport. It is growing and becoming more popular every year. There are professional paintball teams that play in a forest for an entire day. Another way is playing indoors in a large room scattered with barricades. There are many different ways to paintball, this is the best way for beginners

Before you shoot your first paintball you need to take into consideration the type of clothing you wear to paintball. A general rule of thumb is the more padding the less bruises. If you are playing in a wooded area, fatigues are an obvious choice, but playing indoors, a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans work very well. It is also a good idea to wear a pair of gloves with the fingers cut off, because if you are hit in the hand with a paintball it stings. The same thing goes with a hat. There is one thing that you must never play paintball without. That is a face mask. It needs to cover your entire face and include goggles. If you are hit in the eye with a paintball it will put your eye out.

The first thing you need to do to begin playing paintball is find a paintball gun and some paintballs. Since the sport of paintball has risen dramatically over the past few years finding these essentials for the game is easy. If you are playing for an extended amount of time and will be using a large amount of paintballs, then a half of a case will be a good amount of paint to begin with. An average case contains approximately two thousand rounds, or paintballs. Essentially a paintball is a ball with the diameter of a dime that contains paint. The paintballs come in various colors and hold many colors of paint. The outside is a plastic material that is easily broken. You can burst a paintball by simply squeezing it between your fingers. After you have bought your paintballs, you now need to get a gun.

There are two basic types of guns used in paintballing, and they only differ because of their source of force. The most common gun is powered by air force. A small tank is filled with air and screwed into the back of your gun. These guns work very well for beginners and you get basically the same results. The second type of gun receives its power from nitrogen. It sounds more dangerous than it is. More force can be put on the paintball with these guns. Since you are a beginner you choose an air powered paint gun.

The first thing that needs to be done after you have gotten the basic equipment is load your air tank and set the speed on your gun. With loading your air tank, all you have to do is connect your air tank with another larger air tank and fill it up. The air tank that goes on your gun has a gauge that tells you when its full or when it needs to be filled up again. The next thing you need to do to prepare your gun for shooting is set the speed of the paint as it comes out. The professional paintballers set their guns at least at three hundred feet per second, but beginners need to set their guns at a speed no lower than two hundred and sixty feet per second, because any lower than that would not allow the paint to burst on impact. After screwing your air tank back into your gun and setting your gun’s speed, you now need to load your gun with paintballs. Since you will used between fifty and a hundred paintballs during one game (the average game lasting about ten minutes) a holder for paintballs sits on the top of your gun. This holder is referred to as a hopper. It is always a good idea to start with a full hopper because it is a very bad thing to run out of paint during a game. Before you begin to play you need to know some basic rules to beginner paintball.

Most of the rules are common sense. The indoor area is divided into half with a line down the middle. On each half, there is a main barricade that each team starts out behind. You can never cross or even step over the line that divides the area into half. You will immediately be taken out of the game. You can never be in the playing area without a facemask on. If the facemask comes even half way off you must exit the playing area. You cannot shoot the referees or shoot before the referees blow the whistle. If you get hit with a paintball, yell paint check. The referee will come to see if you have been it. Never leave the paintball area without having a stopper (a small plastic device that doesn’t allow the paint ball gun to shoot) in your gun. You should never shoot at the ceiling or anywhere without looking.

After knowing all that it is now time to play. You must first pick teams. With such a small playing area, a team of six to eight will be perfect. Now you pull down your mask and proceed into the playing area. The first thing you do is go to your side of the area. You need to make some practice shots to ensure that your gun is functioning properly, so you take out your stopper and shoot a couple of paintballs at the floor or wall. Now you are ready to play.

The referee asks each team if they are ready and upon a positive response from each team they say ready. When the referee says ready that is your cue to get behind the main barricade and point your gun to the wall directly behind the main barricade. As soon as the referees blow their whistle you may move from behind the main barricade and begin shooting. You have to be careful to stay low because if a person from the opposite team shoots the top of your head you will be out. You also can not keep your gun up all the time because if you gun gets hit you will have to go out as well. The first thirty seconds after the referees blow their whistles there is rapid paintball fire. No one usually gets hit though.

Now you must strategize. You have to look for movement and the angle of where paint is coming from. This must all be done without you exposing your position. Sometimes you can see a leg sticking out of a barricade and shoot at that. It is also easier to shoot someone while they are changing barricades. Sometimes if a lot of time elapses during a game, a time limit is called and no one wins.

As one team slowly weeds out another, you get an idea of where everyone is located. You shoot toward this direction, sometimes a gun will pop up and even their head so you just fire away, hoping you will hit them.

The game finally ends when one team is completely annihilated or they surrender. After game is called, a cheer rises from the winning team. The teams that were just playing try to figure out who shot who and where everyone was located at. You also compare “wounds”.

The pain of being shot by a paintball is not that bad, that is if the paintball explodes on impact. If the paintball does not pop on impact, then you are left with a sore spot for a couple of days. Even if the paintball does work properly, you are usually left with a bruise, but the pain leaves after several minutes.

Playing paintball is a fun hobby. It is a great game for relinquishing stress and tension. The downside to paintball is that it is quite violent. Everyone should play paintball once in their life to fill the adrenaline rush and competitiveness of the game. Its like no other you will ever experience.