Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Not to brag, but I've played paintball for close to 14 years and won 2 world championships, and since I've retired and gotten into real guns I've realized a few things.

A) Shooting your gun is just shooting, nothing more, nothing less.

B) Paintball teaches you to move, think quickly, and how NOT to get your head blown off.

C) It's fun, and when you play with your friends you can learn from each other and become better prepared incase the SHTF.

Keep this in mind, Hitler was able to train a fleet of pilots using gliders.

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Were you part of the invasion and takeover of AR15.com?

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Actually the only time I've been on ar15.com was to download some manuals.

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Kin,

How long did the games last. Is there a clock and do you go into ot. thanks, Champ

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

I'm a member there but have never posted. (ar15.com)

But whats up with this (do tell)


DBD

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Yep there was a 20 minute clock, now they're 5 minute games with 2 25 minute halves. We played 20 minutes 10 versus 10, on a point system, 3 points for a kill, a loss of a point for someone killed on your team, 20 points for a flag pull, and 50 for a hang. So if you killed everyone and didn't loose a player you'd get 100 points.

Quite often in the semi finals we would NOT hang a flag because we'd want a weaker time in the finals, even if that meant we ranked 3rd or 4th going into finals.

Now adays the fields are small, and the guns do all the work. Man, playing in the woods was were it's at, not in a 20 yard by 60 yard field with blow up bunkers... Just my .02 cents.

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Paint ball is alot of fun.
Except when it is below 32 degrees.
Its like getting hit with rocks moving at 250 fps.

Added incentive to avoid being shot.

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

I've just started to use high end airsoft guns for simulated training. The advantage here is that because the ammo is smaller the guns are more realistic in size. You can pretty much get exact replicas. 25 cal plastic pellets @300 fps use black ones and you can't see them coming or where they are landing but they don't explode so you have to go on the honor system.

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Paintball is fun, but hardly prepares for SHTF.

I don't think ANYONE plays with a "I could lose my life" mentality. It's usually gung-ho "oops I got shot".

So many people think that SHTF is gonna be you and your buddies in a battlefield standoff against a military. If that were the case, they would simply call in an airstrike and you would be toast.

I think the articles written by FerFal about the SHTF in Argentina is close to what it would be like here.

If you want to play paintball AND prepare for SHTF, here's how you play:

First it must be in a real urban setting (no plywood storefronts, real homes and streets), no one in uniform, have twice as many people in the game not playing (unarmed), include paintbombs (grenades), boobytraps, oh yeah... include your wife, kids (infants) and other loved ones, have it take place over several days, no electricity, and no one should eat for 3 days prior to playing, and have limited ammo. You can't display your weapon all the time or you will get it taken away or you will be shot. You goal is not to get a flag, but to not get robbed, killed, and to provide for your family on a 20th of what you make for a living. Keep them safe too, even when you're not there.

Sound like fun? Of course not, it sounds like a miserable game, and it would be. I would love for some people to play this way and then report on the mental aspect of it. Even then it would only be a game, because the losers would only have paint on them.

I'm not trying to be a smartass, I LOVE paintball. I just think paintball is about as realistic as a video game.

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Fill the paint balls with gasoline and enjoy........ :beer:

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

I've been in firefights, I play paintball, MKinla has it right. Paintball can be an excellent training tool as long as you play the game right. Speedball and its variants have the least relevance but some of the tactics do carry over to close quarters fighting. I hear a lot of older guys and especially "professionals" like active military and police whine when they get bunkered because it wasn't realistic, they should be hunkered down making some kind of elaborate plan, etc. Not. It's just like in real life, if the badguys knows where you are and you aren't shooting or moving he's going to run right up your butt and shoot you in the back of the head. Paintball guns fire a projectile that have a more radical ballistic arc, lower velocity and shorter range than most real guns, otherwise all aspects of ITT/STT can be applied. If you can't adjust from rifle to paintball gun I have no idea how you expect to transition from rifle to shotgun or from shotgun to pistol. Then people whine about the bunkers, "plywood isn't really cover!" Yeah, no sh!t, Sherlock! It stops paintballs the same way a big rock or a solid wall can stop bullets, the materials don't matter it's the form that matters. Cover is cover and you work it the same.

People who whine about it not being a useful training tool generally either can't conceptualize well, find their poor quality training they have a lot of emmotional investment in doesn't work so well, or just can't make sense out of a firefight. The latter one is actually pretty common, not everybody can make sense of any kind of fight, to others it is a very clear picture. There are other reasons people whine about it, some probably just don't think it is manly enough for them. I can understand that. I'm fairly young still, a lot of the older police and military guys got much more realistic training on a daily basis. In the good old days they did force on force training against real humans with real bullets all the time and when they qualified on the range they weren't shooting silohuettes or bullseyes made of paper or plastic but condemned criminals because it is more realistic. :aetsch:

All weapons based martial arts have a nonlethal proxy of that weapon. MILES gear sucks, civilian laser tag stuff isn't any better. Airsoft is ok but seems to have a shorter range than paintball. The worst thing about paintball is it is difficult to shoot through light brush.

No, SHTF isn't about squaring off against a combined arms unit with a motley crew of friends with small arms. However it is extremely easy to concieve of situations where you or a group of friends might have to fight a gang off your homestead or neighborhood or something similar. NOLA, for instance. If you think you're only ever going to be up against a lone adversary who does not make use of cover, concealment and manuever you may as well buy a single shot NEF 12ga shotgun for under $100 for home defense, shoot the lazy badguy as he stands around in your living room waiting for it and be done with it.

I also wouldn't worry about ar15.com being invaded by paintball or airsoft players. I have found it an extremely reliable yardstick that if a man's chosen weapons are an AR-15 and a 1911 he has much the same mindset, just different toys. If he had a paintball gun instead he'd say recball is gay, if he had a Civic he'd dis on Rustangs. The ones with credentials are even worse.

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

Well said. SJ.

I don't have any one to play with here.
I've wanted to play for awhile.
None of the Fla. members have posted on this thread yet, so I'm assuming they don't play?
I may just get off my ass and see if there is some club or something I can join....

Re: Play "Paintball" to prepare yourself
 

I'm in FL, Tampa Bay Area. I play, my wife has tried it a couple times. Depending on what you mean by SFL I could reccomend a few places. If you're just starting out I would advise you to stick with mechanical guns because the fancy electronic jobs are not suitable for use in even light rain and usually have fancy looking but comparatively fragile designs. The Tippmann 98 series are beasts, I have a heavily modified 98 Custom, they are the AK-47 of the paintball world, you can't kill them with a stick. If you're looking at it from a training perspective I like the idea of the 50 round "pocket hoppers" since it makes you reload more often. Then again it takes more time to reload a paintball gun than a real gun so it is kind of irrelevant. I'd also reccomend you stick to woods or recball games and avoid speedball for a long time. Speedball players trend towards being geardos and the ones who take the most unrealistic approach. If you have any kind of background in combat shooting at all from classes to theory to practical experience and approach the game with an open mind you will find there are some things you learned and some things you knew. My first day on the field was with my younger brother, my rented gun broke down so I took to tapping out other players hiding behind cover using the same tactics I learned for taking out bunkers in real life as my brother provided covering fire at a slow, steady rate. I got a lot of fun out of that.