ChoicePaintballGuns

When you’re going to a paintball competition, if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.  Here are a few tips to help you remember some of the important things before you go….
Plan: Know your game plan before you go. How are you getting there? Where is it? How much will it cost? The average tournament will cost about $150-200 for entrance fee and about $60-70/case for paintballs. You will find differences but this at least gives you a place to start. What is the format of the competition? The standard around the country for smaller events is either 3-man or 5-man team competitions.  So make sure you bring the right number of people for the event - and remember to bring alternates in case something happens. Is it speedball or woodsball? Make sure you take the appropriate gear if you’re going to a multi-day scenario paintball game (like D-Day) so you can plan your provisions. Not only will you need the right paintball equipment but you may also need camping gear.
Night Before: NEVER tinker with your paintball gear the night before. It is one of the ten commandments of tournaments. If you do, the only thing you’ll accomplish is possibly messing something up and it’s tough to get USPS to 30 second day air something to you. Plus I think the paintball gods just don’t like it as something always ends up worse off the next day. Get plenty of sleep and get up 30 minutes earlier than you think you need to get up. Trust me, waking up at 4:30am can take as much as 30 minutes just to figure out how to put your car key in the ignition.
Arrival: When you arrive at the competition, you need to claim your staging area. Do this with your bags and all your paintball gear, but always make sure someone is staying with your stuff. It is a shame but there are people out there who take advantage of tournament noobs by swiping gear.  Next on the list is to register and fill out waivers.  Do this as quickly as possible so that you can get your schedule and walk the fields.
Take the Long walk: If you didn’t get the chance to make it to the event station the night before to walk the fields then it is a good move to do so now (or as soon as humanly possible).  Setting up your gear can wait, you need to know what you’re doing and just what to expect from the fields. Know where everyone is going and what paintball guns everyone is shooting.  It helps lessen confusion later on during the heat of the competition.
Travis Sauer, Midwest Assassins Division 1 Paintball Team Captain

In short, finding/building a paintball team is like finding friends, because your teammates should be your friends. So don’t rush; you’ve got time.  Work on your skills and talk to the people in charge… before you know it you’ll be standing at the starting box, with 9 other players at your side screaming your head off getting ready to tool fools.
AHHHH!!!! WHAT?!?! You want me to lead a rag tag bunch of guys, to places all over the nation, deal with travel arrangements, internal fights, sponsorship, and late nights just to go shoot other people? YES! Welcome to being a captain. Please understand that there are two forms of captains.  The Field Captain and the Off-Field Captain. This article is about the Off-Field Captain.  Sometimes it’s the same person as the On-Field captain, sometimes it’s not.  It’s confusing but don’t worry, Here are a few tips to keep your head above water:
Picking the captain: When your team picks a captain, he/she does not need to be the best player on the team.  In fact sometimes it’s better if they are not.  That way the captain can deal with issues as they come up and not kill your game if he’s talking to the head ref while your team is playing another game.  Pick someone who has the free time to do the job and who people will listen to.
Never be afraid to ask for help: You are the leader of a TEAM and team’s need to help each other.  If your teammates want to go to the World Cup, well they either have to go sweet talk mom and dad or they will have to work with you to lower costs, get support, and maybe even fundraise.  If your teammates are not willing to work together to help raise money or get your team where it needs to go, then trust me; you will go nowhere.
Surround yourself with good advice: Try to be that player you can look up to to ask questions, be a good friend, or offer support when needed.  Being a leader is never easy and it helps to have someone you can turn to to get the second opinion to make sure you’re making the right choices.
Travis Sauer, Team Captain of Midwest Assassins Division 1 Paintball Team

As the leader of a team I am often asked “How did you do it? How did you get this thing started?” People look at my roster and are shocked when they see 30+ names on it. Getting to this point was no cake walk, but it was less trouble than you would think. Here are a few tips of some steps to take for building a successful paintball team….
Find a home: Somewhere around you is a “home field”, someplace you can get to and play at often. This is generally the best place to start. Meet up with some of the walk-ons who show up each week, make some friends, exchange numbers, find out when they are coming again. After a while you can make your own little group of people who play together. Then ask the ref if he can keep you all on the same team sometime…wow…did I just say team? Yeah it’s really that easy.
Get organized: The first thing you’ll need to figure out is who is the man in charge, someone has to make the arrangements and have the final say in matters (And trust me it happens a lot that you need to have final say). That person does NOT need to be the commander on the field, but must be the off-the-field leader.
Where ya going?: It is important to figure out where you want to go with your team. Is this for fun? Is this to hopefully get good enough to get a sponsor? Is this an attempt to make a new pro team? Then figure out what events you want to do; 3 man team play, 5-man, 7, 10, x-ball, do you want to play tactical paintball? Perhaps you can decide this from what most of your guys like to play or what kind of paintball guns everyone has. If everyone has Tippmann and T68 tactical paintball guns, maybe you should lean more toward playing tactical paintball.
Start small: One of the best places to figure out what works is to go to a local tournament or a small young guns event and try yourselves against the local talent. YES you WILL get romped. But you’ll find some great teams to play with who are in your area, and remember you only get better by playing people better than you.
Travis Sauer, Midwest Assassins Division 1 Paintball Team Captain

What is the difference between C02 and N2?  One very important difference is the lack for the need of an expansion chamber on your paintball gun or CO2 bottle.  The Co2 deals more with the Ideal gas law from physics.  When you shoot fast the pressure of the tank drops rapidly, and the temperature continues to drop to the point that the only thing going to the expansion chamber is liquid CO2. This causes the expansion chamber to fill up with liquid CO2 and also make the paintballs shoot faster than normal.  In some paintball guns this could cause lockup or even damage.  These are some pitfalls of using an expansion chamber; but if you use N2 instead, you won’t need the expansion chamber and won’t have to worry about these problems.
Joey Withrow Midwest Assassins Team Perryville, MO

After you’ve been playing with the same old paintball gun for a while, you soon get a craving for something fresh. You’ve also probably seen Joe Blow paintballer down at the field with a totally decked-out paintball gun and he’s absolutely crushing his opponents. When you get the craving for something faster, it’s time to think about an upgrade to your paintball marker.
There are many different ways to upgrade your paintball gun. The first one, and probably the easiest is to upgrade the barrel. You can get more out of your paintball gun barrel by making it longer, adding rifling (grooves inside) or fluting the end (tiny holes that let air out ahead of the paintball). These additions will add to your trajectory’s distance and straightness greatly. After you’ve upgraded to a rifled barrel, you may also want to consider getting an APEX barrel from www.choicepaintballguns.com. You can direct your paintball for longer distance or curved shots with this addition that goes on the end of a rifled paintball gun barrel.
You can also upgrade the insides. By getting better, lighter, more efficient internal parts to your paintball marker, you will be able to shoot farther and faster. A lighter hammer takes less work from the paintball gun to move faster, therefore pushing out more paintballs faster. You can buy individual pieces (striking bolts, paddles, etc.) or you can buy kits that have multiple internal parts upgrades. Check out the Tippmann Cyclone Feed Kit for example.
You can also upgrade the trigger. Most paintball guns come with a stock trigger system that’s semi-automatic. You can purchase better/electronic triggers for most paintball guns. These will allow you to shoot faster and have choices such as 3-round burst or fully automatic. Some of the higher end competition paintball guns have electronic trigger upgrades that can have up to 17 different trigger settings!
Depending on how fast you want your marker to shoot, you can also upgrade the hopper. Most paintball guns operate by a gravity feed loader, however you can upgrade to an electronic loader that will feed paintballs to your paintball marker at alarming speeds, making your paintball gun shoot much faster. We recommend a Halo-B electronic loader or the Pinokio hopper for tactical or increase storage capacity.
Finally, consider buying an upgrade kit. These are kits you can buy that will basically turn your stale, old paintball gun into a brand new killing machine. Kits are available to turn your paintball bun into an MP5, M4 Carbine, Sniper paintball gun, AK47, M16 and many more. Many times these kits also have upgraded pieces in them, for example many of the kits on www.choicepaintballguns.com come with tactical rifled barrels.

What’s your favorite brand/company; What do you like that they have/why do you like them? What’s your least favorite paintball company and why?
I would have to say that Spyder is my favorite brand because that’s all I shoot.  I think the durability and reliability are practically unmatched by these paintball guns.  Tippmann is also great like this.  I’ve used several different Spyder paintball guns and they have never let me down - easy to use, hardly break down and plenty of paintball accessories you can add.  I have Spyder paintball guns for speedball tournaments and also a Spyder MR1 for all our tactical games and practice.  Honestly the MR1 has become one of my all time favorite paintball guns.  My favorite company would have to be our team sponsor, ChoicePaintballGuns.com.  I like that company because they sell the best paintball guns and accessories.  They also have low prices on most items and they will give you good deals on packages.  I really like the assault rifle paintball guns and also I like the paintball pistols.  This company also carries an unbelievable selection of tactical paintball vests and scenario gear.  My least favorite paintball company would have to be brass eagle.  I didn’t like their guns very much, but their paintballs are decent.  I had too many problems with my brass eagle paintball guns breaking too easy; oh well - you get what you pay for though.
Joey W.  Midwest Assassins Division 1 Paintball Team, Perryville, MO.

If you know somebody in your life that’s interested in paintball, tell them it’s a great activity for learning strategy, hand-eye coordination, and various other skills.  Parents should understand however that paintball is an activity best enjoyed responsibly.  If your young child is asking for any kind of paintball accessories, make sure that they’re ready for that kind of responsibility.  Paintball guns shoot fast and it hurts to get hit.  Make sure they have the proper safety equipment before playing, so they don’t think the sport is too ‘intense’.  This is the main reason that you should be 18 years old before playing; most kids (who are too young to play) think it hurts too much to get hit with a paintball.  Safety must always come first when it comes to these kinds of activities.

The best way to introduce a younger child into the paintballing community is by providing him with all the safety gear and a very basic paintball gun.  The most important piece of safety equipment for the newbie is a good set of goggles or a paintball mask.  After he or she’s been properly versed in paintball safety and given all the necessary protective gear, look into paintball pistols.  These make ideal beginner guns because they tend to be smaller and more manageable.  They can also be outfitted with many extras once they prove he or she is responsible and capable of handling the basics.

One thing I have learned from paintball is team work.  Another thing I have learned is that being friends and playing paintball as a team are two totally different things.  I’ve learned that sometimes the paintball team can have a little conflict, but it should never stop you from having fun.  I have also learned how important it is to have patience also.  I have also learned that paintballs don’t fly straight at all.  I have learned that getting shot with a paintball stings a little at first but if you stay with it long enough and focus on how fun it is to play, the sting of getting hit suddenly doesn’t sting that bad anymore.  Finally, paintball has taught me that it doesn’t matter how good you are, you just have fun with it.  
Joey W.  Midwest Assassins, Division 1 Paintball Team, Perryville, MO.

You’ve been playing paintball for a while, what equipment would you recommend for the newbie, just starting out?
Obviously, the most essential piece they’re going to need is a paintball marker.  The gun I would recommend for a beginner is a Spyder Xtra, Sonix, or even a Spyder MR1; these are easy to operate, maintain and there are many attachments and upgrades you can buy for them later.  They’re also very reasonably priced for a first gun.  To make the gun work, you’ll need air; I recommend starting with CO2….. start with either a 9 or a 12 oz. CO2 tank.  Next importance, you should think about safety.  I would recommend a full head paintball mask, to protect your face and eyes and just in case you get shot in the back of the head.  You can play with no body protection if you want, but it kind of hurts a bit when you get hit with a paintball, so a beginner may want to consider purchasing a padded vest and/or a padded jersey.  The paintballs I recommend is the kind that your team uses.  I would probably start off with Brass Eagle Monster Balls; their cheap and readily available - you can get them at Wal-Mart.  Our sponsor sends us Karnage paintballs and these are much better but we generally need more of them and Monsters bridge the gap nicely.  I would also recommend wearing a good pair of paintball gloves too. 
Joey W.  Midwest Assassins, Division 1 Paintball Team, Perryville, MO.

I love scenario paintball the best; it’s really fun to compete with to.  You get to go out in the woods and hunt people down.  I don’t think it’s as fun to know where your opponent is like you do in speedball; in woodsball you can run into them while on patrol or you might walk into an ambush where they’re hiding - there’s unexpected action at every corner.  What’s the most awesome though is to be able to track your opponent, sneak up on them and either set a trap and ambush or snipe them off one by one from a vantage point.  I would rather be in a natural landscape too; natural terrain is so much more unpredictable than bunkers.  I don’t want to hide behind huge balloons.  I guess I like woodsball the best because its like hunting, except your not hunting deer with a rifle, but hunting people with a paintball gun!  And guess what?  They’re hunting you too!  The guns are sweet as well; I like Spyder MR1 and MR2 juiced up with a sniper barrel and a killer scope.  Travis, our captain has an awesome Tippmann X7 M4 Carbine paintball gun; I think it’s a good choice too.
Joey W.  Midwest Assassins Division 1 Paintball Team, Perryville, MO.