Paintball tactics

A Can of Man

Je suis aware
Reply to the "Small Unit Tactics" thread on "Military Related Matters"

Man I used to play a lot of paintball.
I was a section leader usually.
Basically keep the orders simple, the more incompetent your guys are, the even more simple it has to be. If possible keep your guys together, or if there is a splitting of units, make sure one of those units doesn't really move. If you have two groups moving you end up with chaos.... and even this is risky because the flanking group's task has to work successfully.
If you must split your team, make the worse players part of the team that has the simpler task. If both sections of your squad have complex plans, you're doing something wrong. Also remember to keep a veteran with them as section leader.
Another VERY useful thing for paintball small unit tactics. No snipers. You got any silly guy with a scope on his marker, tell him to take it off. Paintball guns have the range of a handgun at best. That scope is just silly and it prevents the guy from playing smartly. See the bad guy? Let off a burst of five paintballs. When was the last time you successfully used the sights of your gun and hit a tin can at 50m with a 8/10 accuracy? "oohh I want to be sniper." "Sit down and shut up!"
On that note, if you can afford it, you could have a few guys with bigger than usual hoppers as "SAW gunners." That can actually work quite well especially if you're defending. But I don't think I need to remind you that this is really going to cost you lol.
MOST IMPORTANT IS BELOW:
Also remember to tell your guys and make sure they understand before you go in that when they see the bad guys, and they don't know you're there, they must and MUST communicate to the rest of their group how many they've seen, where, at what rough distance and in which direction they're headed. I've had my entire group wasted on a few occasions when some trigger happy wiseass decided to tell the whole world about our whereabouts while we were still in an awkward position with 0 idea about the enemy except rough direction.
 
Good tips there! I agree, especially with having a veteran on each team element...and well, for everything. Paintball "Snipers" with their 16"-21" barrels can rot. Sniping in Paintball is bull.

Communication and coordination is key...last time I went paintball, we played one-sided capture the flag. My team was defending the flag. We knew what direction the opposition was coming from so I split my team up, 2 guys defend, 2 to head down the center. I would flank them and take them from their left to disorient them. Now I know it might not be a very great plan, but I'm only in High School eh. Well, while I was pre-positioning, one guy thinks he can pull off long-range because of his 16" barrel and does a lil spray and pray. They're wasting their paint and get taken out so I ended up having to take out 3/5 of the opposition. Sure it worked out well, but it woulda been nice to have all my teammates paint-free.

As for additional paintball tactics: Be easy on your paint, try to stick with one shot to spot and adjust, another to hit. Don't keep all the players too close to each other, it gives the other guys a better chance at multiple hits. Also, in the event one of you have to load paint, or switch tanks, make sure someone can give him cover. Had that happen to me once, I had to switch tanks, he had no paint, while loading I got taken out from the hiss it made :roll: ... Um, I think most of those are reasonable.
 
Well you got yourself a pretty good group.
You have no idea how easily teamwork can fall apart.

One example was when I took a flanking group to rush around the enemy and tag their base using speed and surprise. There were three guys. I told the 3rd guy that a point I would tell him to take position where he has a line of sight with the main opening and open fire (to draw fire). Me and the 2nd guy would use that diversion to run right at the enemy base (in a J shaped pattern). You'd think that if anyone screwed up it'd be the 3rd guy right?
Wrong.
The "stick right behind me the whole way!" guy disappeared during our run and I ended up tagging the base myself. That could have been disaster had the surprise not been complete.
 
Well Reneck that is some pretty good advice.

In our little squad we are all avid paintball players, I myself have been playing for 10 years. We all own very nice equipment, my section leader and myself use angels and the other guys use $500-$1000 guns. Every member of our team has a radio/headset and runs Nitrogen on their guns. Each carries between 600 and 1040 rounds onto the field.

The offensive doctorine I have devised so far centers on breaking the squad into 2 fireteams. One fireteam will be responsible for suppression of the enemy position to make them immobile while the second fireteam uses maneuver to close with and exploit the enemy position and make the kill. Generally, we like to infiltrate way around into the flank or behind the enemy positions and nail them that way

We don't really play as a 'team' in recreational games because they're so small, but we love getting all into tactics and such when we play our 500-3000 man games.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
Do you play woodsball or speedball?

Well, the fields we play recreation there are many fields; woodball, speedball, hyperball, mounds.

But what I really love are the gigantic 400-700 acre scenario games because you have the freedom of flexibility by fighting on a realistic battlefield.

I don't like tournament-ball but 1 member of the team is on the University of North Texas tournament team.
 
Woodsball is the best man. That's what paintball was made for.
Speedball becomes a bit of another sport... and I think I can name too many that are more fun than standing behind a pink marshmellow pelting away at a gazillion rounds per minute.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
Woodsball is the best man. That's what paintball was made for.

werd.gif
I love woodsball, speedball ends up just being who's got the fastest trigger finger and the most paint. Woodsball is strategic, careful, and awesome. Man it's been a while.


BTW, What markers do you guys have?[/img]
 
DlanoeG said:
the_13th_redneck said:
Woodsball is the best man. That's what paintball was made for.

werd.gif
I love woodsball, speedball ends up just being who's got the fastest trigger finger and the most paint. Woodsball is strategic, careful, and awesome. Man it's been a while.

I'd argue that; Woodsball tends to be speedbal with a walk to the game:p Speedball is fast, and it means you have to know who's doing what when all the time; and the importance of angels cannot be stressed. Case in point, first tournament I played we were blown out, untill a good buddy of ours gave us a good lesson in feild reading.
 
Point taken. Only thing is...In speedball, you can already see where anyone could hide and can watch things relatively easily. ..like a handful of marshmallows or barrels. In woodsball though, it's all about blending into the environment and sneaking around. There's a sense of, they could be anywhere, so you have to just as much, if not more alert.

But I could see how Speedball would be just as strategic and need as much alertness...I guess it just depends on how you like to play.....and maybe that I'm just a tad biased.
:)
 
we were getting back into woodsball but still do the speedball since thats the direction the sport is turning. Woodsball is a slower pace game/move to contact type and speedball is all about the angles and lanes. Just a truly great sport. Depends on those around you whether it can be a good day or bad by how the attitudes of those playing are.
 
In speedball you have to go in with your plan and stick to it wthout much chance of initiative. Woodsball allows for that much more.
Speedball is just sort of weird.

I have a Tippmann A5.
 
Same...It's a great gun, no chops so far, Mine's pretty stock, minus the GTA barrel that came with it. I'm thinking about selling it and getting an Ariakon Sim-4 though.
 
Just don't get a flat line. That stuff I hear has serious accuracy problems... if a paintball gun's accuracy wasn't bad enough already.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
Just don't get a flat line. That stuff I hear has serious accuracy problems... if a paintball gun's accuracy wasn't bad enough already.

Flat lines kill the velocity of the ball; that's where the inaccuracy occurs. A-5's are nice, I just don't like how the cyclose sticks out from the right side, but that's a speedball opinion I suppose.
 
2001 Angel LCD, Ricochet Apache loader, currently running Angel A.I.R. nitrogen but will be switching it out for a MaxFlow Inline Reg by May.
 
Forgot my marker:p SHooting a tooled spyder right now, that's becoming an Impulse in like a month :p Black, with a CP no rise, and blade trigger.
 
I joined a online pb brigade. It has rank structure but only for identifying experience. They even set up a scenario paintball league. Been with it now for 2 weeks so we'll see where it goes since I can only post on their forums and with my past playing experience I made corporal. Then I added my list of gear lol. Fastest promotion to sergeant I ever seen lol. The forum there has alot of tips for scenario geared players. They tend to play down the speedballers but I'll live through it lol. Went home for 2 week R+R and in 2 days put in about 16 hours of paintball and me and a teammate went through 10 cases of paint. Yea, we lay into the trigger but thats what its all about lol.
 
yeah i play alot of paintball usually iam the person that people shout orders to and also saves everyone asses tactics are usually attack on two flanks and keep couple at our own base thats pretty much it.
 
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