Semis and CO2

There's something familiar about playing paintball with just a good old Tippmann, Spyder or similar-type gun with a CO2 tank. It probably has something to do with the way I was introduced to the game, but there's something so comforting about just screwing on a tank and pulling the trigger. Playing with dwell times and tuning output pressures and getting after-market boards can be fun, but it also can take away from the pure enjoyment of the sport of paintball.

One thing I've come to realize is that a competition with the "best" guns doesn't mean the game is any more fun to play. The games I enjoy the best are when everybody is shooting a comparable gun. That way, when somebody does better, it's because that person won on their merits. I don't care if it's Egos and Angels, Tippmanns and Piranhas or plastic pumps, it's better when everybody is shooting comparable guns.

But, when I play a game with semi-automatics, I find that I run more, spend less time behind bunkers and generally enjoy the game more. I like the basic blowbacks because they remind me of playing the game how I learned to play it.

Semis and CO2 originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 12:32:53.

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Olympic Paintball

With the 2010 winter Olympics coming to a close, I'm reminded of  a question I posed two years ago during the 2008 Olympics: does paintball deserve a spot in the Olympics? My original thoughts on the matter haven't changed, but I'm interested in what any of you readers might think about paintball becoming an Olympic sport.  Share your thoughts in the comments.

Olympic Paintball originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 22:52:01.

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Mini-Compressor for Paintball Coming Soon

Finally, some good news in paintball.  Tom Kaye, the legendary paintball designer behind AGD and the Automag has returned to paintball with, in my opinion, the most exciting paintball announcement in the last few years.  He has announced plans to build a miniature paintball air compressor that will run off electricity and a cheap shop compressor (which only will run occasionally) and will be able to fill compressed air tanks to 4500psi.  The concept is simple - create a low-power, low-cost pump that will fill tanks to high pressures over a long period of time.  Current guesses are that a 68/45 could be filled in about 4 hours.  While the slow fill time will mean you can't refill a tank between games, you will be able to fill a tank overnight without paying several thousand dollars as the expected retail price is $300-$400.

For those of you who use compressed air, you know how its reliability, consistency and ease of use make it the preferred (and sometimes required) air for competitive paintball.  You also know how difficult it is to keep your tanks full when you're not at a professional field.  This new compressor solves that problem by allowing you to play (or tinker) where you like and fill your tanks at home.  With the expected cost of $0.05 an hour to operate, filling a tank will now cost twenty cents - less than the gas to drive to a paintball field or store.

I will definitely be in line to get one of these when they are released.  I'm a big fan of Tom's work at AGD (and still own some of his products) and I'm an even bigger fan of the idea of filling my compressed air tanks without going to a scuba store or paintball field.  The mini-compressor is still several months from production, but you can view a video of a prototype to see what it's all about.

Mini-Compressor for Paintball Coming Soon originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 22:41:13.

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New History of Paintball Website

There's a new paintball site that I'm very excited about.  Paintball X3 has released a new History of Paintball website that I highly encourage you to check out.  I'm familiar with the general history of paintball, but the early years were before my time and much of my information has come from anecdotal sources.  This new site provides a detailed history that comes from the people who were involved and fleshes out the general story that is commonly available on the web.

I'm sure that The History of Paintball took countless hours and it is evidently a labor of love.  The site's primary author, John Amodea, has done a wonderful job of sharing the history of the sport in a fun and entertaining way.  As an added bonus, John has been involved with the sport for almost its entire history so you can get a first-person's view of the sport's growth and development from someone who lived it.

If your not familiar with the history of paintball or you want to learn the personal stories from the people who lived them, check out this new site.  It's the best new paintball site I have seen in a long time.

New History of Paintball Website originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 19:15:05.

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What Makes A Good Paintballer?

I've played with some good paintballers in my day and a few really exceptional players.  I've also played with countless average players and a handful of down-right awful players.  I wish there were some magical rule that could explain the differences between the best and the average (such as being a great shot or knowing when to move), but I'm convinced that good players come in many different forms.

Just like in basketball where a point guard excels in ways a center doesn't and vice versa, paintball players have different attributes that can help them excel at different aspects of the sport.  Some people have a sixth sense about when to move and when to stay put while others have a knack for hitting the competition from anywhere on the field.  Others are leaders that move their team and get others in the right position to make the winning move.  Some really successful players, though, don't seem to do anything particularly well but end up winning time after time.

My personal opinion is that the one thing ability is most prevalent amongst good paintballers is their ability to mentally keep track of the field and know what's happening.  Average players usually know what's going on directly in front of them, but the best players have a good idea of what's happening behind them and on both sides at the same time as they're shooting it out with a bunker straight ahead.  That allows them to know when it's a good idea to move or retreat and they almost never end up getting hit unawares.

There are countless good paintball players out there.  What makes the best players you know so special?

What Makes A Good Paintballer? originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 at 21:21:23.

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KEE Action Sports Buys JT

Following the news that JT was closing its Brass Eagle paintball manufacturing facility, the writing was on the wall that JT's days were numbered.  After several days of rumors, KEE officially announced that they will acquire JT's assets including the JT, ViewLoader and Brass Eagle brands.

With this purchase, KEE now is the unchallenged paintball giant in terms of the size and scope of paintball equipment offered - ranging from guns to soft goods to paintballs and everything in between.  With the addition of JT, KEE now owns roughly half of the common brands of paintball gear including Pure Energy, BT, Empire, Halo, Invert, Diablo and RPS.

I hope their increasing market share will drive them to perpetual innovation and not to a monopolistic control of the industry.  Only time will tell how it turns out for them and for paintball as a whole.

KEE Action Sports Buys JT originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 15:11:07.

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Paintball in 2020

Where will paintball be in a decade?  It's never easy to predict the future, but that doesn't mean we can't try.

My first thought is that paintball, for the most part, will be a lot like it is today.  During the first two decades of paintball's existence (the 1980s and '90s) there were substantial changes in the equipment, the playing style, the manufacturers and the mentality of what the sport was supposed to be.  In the past decade, though, the game really hasn't developed that much.  Sure, the equipment has improved and the cost of electros and paintballs has dropped, but the basic paintball experience is much what it was ten years ago.

I imagine that the lines between committed speedballers and woodsballers will be just as pronounced as they are today and I seriously doubt there will be any sort of coming-together between the two sides in terms of a common format to play.  People will still be drawn to one form or the other and, for the most part, stick with that style of play.

I'd like to hope that more people will play the game in general, but I'm not convinced that will be the case.  It seems that for every new paintball player, an older player quits playing.  I expect there to be a larger percentage of people who will have played paintball, but not more that are currently playing.

I do have one, slightly odd prediction.  I bet that within a decade there will be a paintball gun that doesn't require a compressed air or CO2 tank (or even a propane tank).  Whether it shoots by having a built-in, battery-powered compressor (something rumored to be in the works a few years ago) or being powered by springs or by pumping I won't speculate on, but I bet something will come out.  I doubt anything like that will become mainstream, but it will give some variety to the sport.

I really don't know what's going to happen and my speculations surely reflect that.  My general theory that it won't change might be based more on a hope that it won't rather than a true belief.  There's always the possibility that government regulations will hit the sport hard or that manufacturers simply go out of business, or a new variation of the sport will become hugely popular, but I really hope it stays how it's been during this past decade.  For all of its ups and downs, paintball is still about the best way to spend a summer morning with friends.

Paintball in 2020 originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 20:23:26.

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Dye Paintball Flooded

This has been a bad month for paintball manufacturers, but at least Dye's current problems aren't based on a faltering economy.  NBC San Diego reports that a damaged fire hydrant flooded Dye Paintball's facility resulting in thousands of gallons of muddy water inundating the company's warehouse.  They report that damages total $200,000.  Hopefully this is just a blip in the road for Dye and they continue to turn out high quality (if somewhat expensive) products.

Dye Paintball Flooded originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 10:52:53.

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A Year With a Pump

I did it.  And I don't regret it in the least.

I've now gone a calendar year while only playing with a pump in real games.  I've shot lots of non-pumps during that time for reviews (and just for fun), but whenever "game on" has been called, I've been on the field with a good, old-fashioned, one-shot-to-one-pump paintball gun.  I have to admit, while I was outgunned many times (there's nothing quite like taking on an Ego with a Phantom), I had a blast.  Plus, I spent considerably less on paint.

To be completely forthcoming, I didn't play in any competitions this past year and I didn't play nearly as much as I wish I could have, but I did play quite a bit and I had a blast.  There are also a few lessons I learned from the experience.

1. Pumps do save you money.  I don't know the exact numbers, but I rarely would shoot a bag of paint (500 balls) even after playing all day and shooting as much as I wanted to.  Other days I would shoot less than a hundred shots over the course of 5-6 games.  With that little paint being shot, you can afford to shoot the nicest paint out there and you'll still be saving money.
2. No matter how skilled you are, you can still be outgunned.  I like to think that a skilled tactician can outplay someone shooting a stream of paint, but that's not always the case.  While skill and movement definitely are what make the player, a faster gun definitely has its advantages in certain situations.  In speedball when I'm heading down a snake towards an opposing player, I'd definitely prefer to shoot as fast as he can.  In the woods, slow shooting is less of a disadvantage.
3. Light-weight is the way to go.  I typically played with a pump, a 50- or 100-round hopper and a 9oz CO2 tank.  You can't get much lighter than that and playing with a full hopper, 68cu tank and larger gun now seems somewhat awkward.
4. Pumps can shoot faster than most people give them credit for.  On a chronograph I'm able to regularly get 5 balls per second with my pump and I imagine I get a constant 3-4 on the field when I need to.  That rate of fire is still slower than a Tippmann, but it's faster than most people think.
5. Don't overfill your fifty-round hopper.  If you're playing with a small hopper, don't fill it all the way to the top because your paintballs will form a little bridge over the feed neck and nothing will come out.  I made this mistake more than once.
6. Pumping with your off-hand is a hard skill to learn.  After a year, I still never mastered pumping with my right hand and shooting with my left - probably because I only did it in dire circumstances.  It's an important skill to learn to shoot with your off-hand, but pumping with the wrong hand is just plain awkward.
7. Pods are a pain.  Since I never shot very much, I rarely wore a pod harness or brought extra paint on the field with me.  When I occasionally did take a harness out again, it just felt cumbersome.  (The fact that I never used the pods I carried with me probably contributed to my present distaste to lugging them around.)
8. Shooting semi-automatics (and full-automatics) is fun.  While I really enjoyed my year with the pump, I realize that there are times when I really would prefer to pull out something a little faster or I want to shoot with just one hand.

A year with a pump was great and I'll never forget it.  I'll also probably never do it again as there are so many guns out there that I'm hankering to try out in a game.  If you've never tried playing with a pump or if you haven't played with one in years, I'd highly recommend giving one a try - even for just one day.

A Year With a Pump originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 17:02:19.

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Where Can Paintball Improve?

While following the sport of paintball, I've often wondered where the sport really needs to improve. Is it the cost? The difficulty in recruiting new players? The inherent differences between speedballers and woodsballers? The lack of media coverage?

I'm very interested in ideas that my readers have, but I will also share some of my own thoughts.

I think that paintball has done a fair job of making itself known, but I think a big problem is lack of advertising.  I'm well aware that most fields don't have a huge advertising budget and manufacturers are dealing with tough economic times, but millions of people have no idea what paintball really is.  Whenever I bring up paintball in a larger group I'm amazed at how little the general population knows about the sport - anything from not knowing that paintball players wear goggles to thinking paintballs are shot with gunpowder.  The public needs to be educated and advertising seems to me to be the best way to do that.

Another area where paintball can improve is to better serve the market.  The simple truth is that piantball can be very expensive to play and the primary players are teenagers and young adults who lack expendable income.  As I've mentioned before, unless paintball is the #1 priority, many college-aged players simply can't afford to play it on a regular basis.  I'm not sure how to improve this as field owners really can't charge much less for entry fees, but a larger emphasis could be placed on outlaw fields and home-built courses coupled with competitive pump-play or capped rates of fire to save on paint.  I've known a number of people who simply couldn't afford to continue to play the sport and have "retired" for a number of years before taking up the game again once they found a better-paying job.

A final area where paintball can improve is to put more research money into lower-end equipment.  While I will gladly admit that the Ego 10 is superior to the Ego 9, there are relatively very few players who buy top-end guns every year - it's time for some of Planet Eclipse's innovations to trickle down to sub-$200 market.  More effort needs to be spent improving the Wal-Mart guns that the majority of paintball players start with.  When a player first starts out, a reliable, simple-to-care-for paintball gun will hook them more than anything else.  While I've been impressed with the improvements in manufacturing of low-end gear over the past few years (especially Spyder guns), it still needs to get better.  When I suggest which gun a parent should buy for a child, I really want to be confident that the gun will work well the first time it's used and still be simple enough to be cleaned and maintained by an 8th grader (Tippmann, I'm looking at you).  So far, reliability and simplicity don't go hand-in-hand with all of the low-end gear and mass production has lead to too many low-end lemons.

Paintball is doing okay, but it could be doing better.  Remember, there are manufacturers and important leaders in the industry who read this blog, including your comments, so now's your turn to share where you think paintball can improve.

Where Can Paintball Improve? originally appeared on About.com Paintball on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 12:56:37.

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