ChoicePaintballGuns

As you get more addicted to paintball, sometimes it becomes tough trying fit it all in.  Keeping your grades up while playing paintball is a hard thing to do.  Especially if you’re playing other sports (along with paintball), you need to find time to get your school work done and still be able to play.  You’ll have to manage your time wisely while playing paintball during the school year.  School has to stay the main priority, so if your grades start dropping the parents start saying ‘no’ to paintball until your grades are up.  Knowing this, I like to try and stay after school some everyday to try and study and get my homework done; save some time for yourself to be able to study at school.  The last thing you want is not being able to play because you failed your last math test.  You have to try your best to do good in both school and paintball.  Getting a good job in the future is very important (more important than paintball), so dont blow off studying for an exam to go play with your friends.  I’m not saying give up on paintball or anything like that; just keep your grades up during the season and try to make time for both school work and paintball.
Mike Morton, Team Trinity

Have you ever heard the saying, “How do you get to Carnagie Hall? … Practice, practice, practice.”  If you want to get better at something (like paintball), you have to practice.  So like anything else, if you want to get good at paintball, you have to practice; but where?  My team (Team Trinity) has found a small, but very nice piece of woods close to where we all live to play in.  We have a designated playing field with a multitude of cover, and obstacles.  We’ve also set up a target field with three targets strategically placed by trees to simulate an opposing player taking cover.  This helps us practice aiming, rolling maneuvers and different moves we come up with.  There are many drills one could do to practice, but you just need a place to do it.  If you don’t have access to woods or someone’s property, you can also practice at a commercial field but this could get very expensive depending on how often you want to practice.  Just remember… the more you practice, the better you’ll get!  Your best bet though is if you can find a nice piece of woods or a field nearby and use it to practice with your team. 
Matt Kresch, Team Trinity

Keeping the game fun is the most important thing to do while playing paintball.  Paintball is, and should always be about kids (and adults) having fun.  Sometimes people will try to cheat, by wiping paint, ramping over the limit, increasing the velocity of their paintball gun higher than the ‘legal limit’ or using illegal paintballs.  These things not only take away fun, but can even make it dangerous to other players.  Some people complain about the rules or try to get one over on the refs and that just makes the game stressful.  Remember that there are other people playing and that you have to be respectful of other players by being a good sport; it’s fun to win, but it’s also fun just to play (and someone else win).  Every paintballer knows how ugly a game can get if it’s not played by the rules.  So remember…. play by the rules, be safe, relax, and just have fun.
Matt Kresch, Team Trinity

Paintball is easy to get addicted to; in fact I know a lot of guys who can be considered ‘over-addicted’.  Getting over addicted to paintball is both good and bad for a player.  It is good because it shows that you love to play the sport and you’ll play it enough to get good; but then the bad thing happens. You start putting money into it that you don’t need too; you start overspending every last dollar you’ve got.  Every paintball player at one time or another has spent money they didn’t need to; I know….  I was overly addicted to the game, and I still am.  Once you get sucked into the world of paintball it is very hard to get out of it.  I may need to join some kind of 12-step program to help with my paintball addiction!  The money comes in from the constant supply of paintballs you need, jerseys and everyone always wants the latest and greatest markers, and equipment; I sure do.  But now I try to control myself a little bit by saying to myself, “Hey the paintball marker I have is very good and still works fine; why buy a new one when I don’t really need it right now?”  I’ll tell you why you eventually give in and buy the new marker…. because they’re awesome!  Try not to get to overly excited with paintball, because it can clean you out quickly.  Two pieces of advice that I can give you is that if your going to play paintball alot… Get a job!  The other piece of advice is shop at www.choicepaintballguns.com - they’ve got great deals.

Good paintball tactics include knowing the lay of the land, knowing where your teammates (and enemies) are, and maintaining formations that will provide cover for your teammates.  One thing’s for sure, using all the right strategies will definitely put you in a better position to have success on the field.  First, go over a game plan with your teammates prior to the start of a match.  Decide on attack formations, skirmish lines, and the side of the field where you plan to focus your resources.  Decide if you and your team are going to attack from the right, left, or from a full-on, in your face, center attack right down the middle.  Lean on veterans who have had experience playing on that particular field or on ones with similar terrain/dimensions. What formations and moves work the best on this type of course? 
Make it a point to control the real estate of the field…. move down the field as quickly as you can when the game starts.  Paintball tactics such as this give you an obvious advantage on the field; the faster you move down the field to start the game, the closer you get to your opponent’s side of the field.  In ’capture the flag’ style games, this makes it that much harder for opponents to capture your flag; it puts them on the defensive immediately. Sometimes this may also allow you to control access to defensive posts such as trees, rocks, and shelters to attack from later.  This is a great strategy, but don’t go too overboard…. being patient and waiting for your shot can also pay large dividends.  Sometimes, if you decide to come out of the gate blasting, you can waste a lot of paintballs, and you might meet a splattering end.  Sometimes sitting, waiting, and thinking are the best strategy at any given moment. You may have a great stakeout point for blasting someone that wanders into your shooting range.  Finally, consider using a ’skirmish line’.  A skirmish line is a group of players proceeding in a line down the field while separated by ~10-12 feet.  This makes your group better protected from getting flanked.  The execution of a skirmish line gives you protection on your left and right as you proceed down the field.  Any opponents in the path of the skirmish line usually get snuffed out.  While your skirmish line is advancing, it’s also important to maintain a line of communication with your teammates.

Stay on the move!  Successful players manage to survive longer when they stay on the move, and change positions frequently.  When players move during a game, they are hard to hit.  Move around keep moving until you have your enemy in a position where you think that you can make high percentage shots, and be vigilant towards finding the best angles to shoot from to take your most effective shots at the enemy.  Also, try making yourself small….  When you are hiding behind a bunker, or running across the paintball field, try to make yourself as small as you can, giving your opponents a smaller target to shoot at.  If you are behind a snake bunker, then you must crawl or dive to avoid an enemy elimination.  When behind a short or thin bunker, think about all of your paintball gear, and make sure nothing is sticking out far enough for the enemy to hit it.

Being on a paintball team is really great, but the most important thing is teamwork.  Your team has to work together to get wins.  Make sure to always talk on the field while playing; communication during play is absolutely crucial.  The most important thing on the field is to keep talking throughout the game.  If at any point in a game you stop talking, you can quickly lose the game; a lot happens very quickly during a speedball match.  You might have had everything hashed out (strategies, moves, etc.) but everything can change in a split second so on-the-field commands and coms are key.  Remember that every player on your team is your friend; never get mad at your teammate for making a mistake on the field.  Any paintball team loses and wins as a team.  Never blame a loss on a teammate, it just ruins your friendship with that player and it does absolutely nothing but make the two of you mad at each other.  Also never rely on just one good player to win the game for you, because when/if you let your guard down, you can lose a game very quickly.  There’s no way around it, teamwork is absolutely key to winning on the field.  So always remember to communicate on the paintball field; always know where your teammates are, and be friends with the whole team. 
Mike Morton, Team Trinity

Before starting a game, strategize with your team to decide on who’s going to go where and how you’re going to move on the paintball field as a team.  Practice these maneuvers regularly so your movements are almost automatic. It’s also a good idea to practice vocal commands and hand signal communications as part of your strategic movement on the paintball field. It’s super important to make sure you know where everyone else on your team is going and where they’re at. Make sure all parts of the field are covered. If one spot is open, that gives the other team a great advantage right from the start. Also, make sure you can get to good cover where you can fire shots, but still be protected. Make sure you don’t over populate an area; if you have three guys behind a one man bunker, you give the other team a great opportunity to get quick outs, so spread out. Finally, KEEP MOVING; if you don’t, the other team can quickly move up and surround you. Try not to stay in one spot for too long and remember to keep moving forward unless you’re making lateral moves to flank your opponent. 
Mike Morton, Team Trinity

One of the leading ways for soldiers to train is through using paintball guns.  While paintball guns don’t cause permanent damage, it’s simple to identify who has been hit (or ‘marked’), and then take the appropriate course of action to avoid being hit in the future.  There are also specialized military paintball guns that are designed to be of similar size and weight as standard issue rifles and firearms.  Most of the tactical paintball guns on www.choicepaintballguns.com are these type.  This provides soldiers with a near authentic experience, and allows for tactical and battle training without endangering the soldier’s lives.  The police and military will often have their own paintball courses where soldiers can go against other squads or against each other and practice tactical strategies.  Paintballing is a great way for soldiers and law enforcement officers to train, and can improve a soldier’s instincts in battle and thus their ability to survive.  Paintball supplies are also much cheaper to use for training compared to actual rifles and blanks/mock ammo.  At www.choicepaintballguns.com, many military replica paintball rifles and paintball pistols are available to choose from.  The T68 Gen6 and MilSig K Series markers are probably the most reaslistic on the market today.