Get a sport, play Paintball

[DIG_down]

Find yourself feeling bored or inactive lately? Ever played Paintball?

Paintballing is my favourite sport, and as of late my most loved hobby, more so than even MC. You may not think of Paintballing as a sport, or even know what it is, but with television coverage, official tournaments and sponsors, and games as large as 4000 players, I assure you it is.

Paintballing originally started with some farmer marking his cattle for slaughter, then some beers and buddies later, Paintball was born. The point of paintballing is not to shoot people, or get shot, it is to have fun. Working as a team with your friends, or even people you just met can be a lot of fun, winning or losing. If you've ever played an FPS you should have a good idea of what paintballing is, it's essentially a live-action first person shooter. No more clunky controls or silly glitches, you're only limited to what your body can manage, and believe me when youre getting shot at like crazy, you can move pretty fast.

I first started playing Woodsball, one of two types of painball the other being Speedball, with my cousin about five weeks ago and have been playing every saturday since. Woodsball can have any number of different game types(elimination, capture the flag etc) the name Woodsball refers to the setting, in the woods. I personally haven't played speedball yet but I will eventually. As for speedball, that is more of an artifial environment, usually a feild of flat turf or grass, littered by inflated balloonish cover thingies. As the name, Speedball, would suggest you need to be fas; shoot fast, move fast, aim fast, and shoot LOTS. For a beginner to the sport i wouldn't suggest speedball, Woodsball is a little slower paced and has much more newer players to play and learn with.

A bit of info on types of fields:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS3_Cd1tzew

You may be wondering just what kind of financial investment you'll need to make to play fun or effectively, that can range anywhere from renting your gun, air and buying paint for a maybe $50 day, to buying an elite custom gun for upwards of $500. If you can't afford to buy your own gun, don't worry there are alot of paintball locations that will rent to you for fairly cheap, the only real expense is the paint. Most Woodsball places won't let you bring your own paint because selling paint is how they make any money. Buying your own paint can get you 4000 balls for around $50 versus, where I go it's 100 balls for $10 or 500 for $45. If you really want to just buy a decent gun you can do so for one or two hundred, and it's yours forever. To give you an example of how much paint I use in a day, which is about average, I spent $40 for 500 balls yesterday and still have about 50 left over, other times i'll spend $80 for 1000($40 for lifetime members, which excludes the $10 admission, the membershipo is only a one time payment of 100). So it really just depends of how much you want to shoot, you can have a blast shotting very little or shooting alot, it's easy to play for about six hours spending only $50. But keep in mind I live in BC Canada so paintballing is pretty big here so I can't give much of an idea of costs anywhere else.

Painball is quickly becoming a worldwide sport so if you're worried about finding a good field nearby, don't, especially if you're in North America. If you want to go by yourself you can just google nearby paintball fields and away you go, Or if you're looking to take the whole family on an outing, that works too. You may not think of shooting people with balls of paint as family fun, but every week i go i see at least 3 or 4 familes geared up and ready to kill each other-in a good way though ;) So, if the kids are bugging you to buy them the newest call of duty, take them paintballing instead.

All in all it's jusst a badass activity, running around shooting people with guns, and not going to jail, what more could you want. When i first started I was a little apprehensious about getting shot and falling down and hurting myself and what not, but its really quite safe, you get some bruises and that's about it.

I didn't mean for this to turn into an essay but i got carried away.

Thanks for reading guys and i'll try to post some vids in a minute. I'm no pro but if you have any questions i would be happy to answer what I can.

[SterlingRed]

Ah yes...now i remember where all my money went while I was in high school...

Paintball is a lot of fun, I played seriously for about 3 years. Woodsball. I also worked as a ref now and then. I played with a classic autococker with a freak barrel and a halo hopper, I still have it lying around somewhere...along with 4 other guns. I don't have time to play anymore. :( I designed a gun for my senior project in college though. Never did get the machine shop time I needed to actually build all of it. Its on my to-do list.

[embirrim]

Paintball is a great sport, as is airsoft. I've played both with good teams, nice friends, sometimes worrying about money for paint/shots, sometimes not. All in all, it comes down to being able to get a nice team together, people who are willing to spend their time and money on that kind of stuff, and of course you getting the money as well.
Unfortunately, as it stands right now, I don't really have the money or friends to play. But I do recommend it to everybody.

[walker_boh_65]

This is a great idea! I should see if my friends want to great together and just have a day of paintball after finals.

[DIG_down]

Paintball is a great sport, as is airsoft. I've played both with good teams, nice friends, sometimes worrying about money for paint/shots, sometimes not. All in all, it comes down to being able to get a nice team together, people who are willing to spend their time and money on that kind of stuff, and of course you getting the money as well.
Unfortunately, as it stands right now, I don't really have the money or friends to play. But I do recommend it to everybody.

Definately, it really does help tremendously to have a good group of friends to go with, i've been going regularly with four other guys and when we're all on the same team..well the refs re-team us pretty quick haha
Even just going by yourself can be fine, it's pretty easy to meet people and usually everyone is very friendly, which honestly surprised when i started. I was expecting a bunch of rough gnarly looking guys ready to bonus ball me like crazy, but its really the exact opposite-little kids or super friendly guys.

Also if someone could PM me on how to embed videos and/or make links properly I would be very thankful as i'm not very forum-savvy

[Miss_Kat]

At first I thought this was a topic of another one of those bizarrely informative spam bots.

Can't say I've ever had an interest in paintball - I bruise easily enough running into walls all the time. The last thing I need is someone pelting me with wads of paint. My fiancé's a pretty avid airsofter, though. At this point I don't even know what he's invested more in - airsoft guns or real ones.

[Ribky]

When I was in college we used to play drunken paintball in an abandoned warehouse.

College kids are smart.

[ServantOMallard]

There's a place just near me called combat zone that's really good, I've been a few times on various birthday parties / stag do's. They have a guy who dresses up as predator with a high powered gun, pretty much a sniper rifle, picking off a few people who aren't pulling their weight. Its a great rush and an amazing way to just let loose. Wish it was more affordable though.

They do offroad go-karting at this place too, you can do half a day of each for just over £50 each if you've got a big enough party.

Can't say I've ever considered professional paintballing, sounds like a sweet gig to me though!

[DaDodsworth]

I've always wanted to get into it, but never have. A close friend of mine actually played semi-pro for a while, not to sure if he still does though. The team he plays in though one of them actually owns an woods that you can hire for an hour to play paint ball in, They have a guy that plays and dresses up in different outfits to take on people playing to add a wild card to it, Last time I heard he was a storm-trooper.

[Deepsniper]

I play airsoft not paintball. Our team where I live we play a very tactical and quick gameplay. Its a lot of fun I find and always a hoot. The best part I find is after the game is over the pizza, beers, and laughing at the welts we have a pointing out which one is worse. My next airsoft even I'm going to is the Operation Rhino In Ontario and that's Next month.

[DaveYanakov]

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