Sherwood Forest Paintball - September 16, 2001 This was my second outing to a paintball field in the bay (-ish area, it was in Vallejo) and one that ultimately was much more positive than the last. How, you our intrepid reader do ask, did this miracle occur? Why, by eliminating all the 1200 dollar paintguns! This year's trip (again, le sigh... once a year) was organized by a friend of a friend of a friend... who spread his net and wove together through connections about 20 of us to head out to the field and get ourselves a little 'private' game going. The obligatory twist: field rentals only. I'd never heard anything about his field, so it was all a question mark in my head as we drove the long drive to get there. After the ubiquitous rough road entrance, the field emerged within a large grove (forest?) of eucalyptus trees. Now, eucalyptus is not native to the area, but I do not know if the owners planted them for this field, or if someone else did a while ago and these people took it over. At any rate, it was the ONLY foliage of a tree-like nature for miles around (or so it seemed :P) Fields* basically consisted of small clusters of trees (do they grow like that naturally?) (they are not thick-trunked trees, so the clusters was good) surrounded by lots of dusty ground (no rain, lots of people=dusty dirt) and a tonne of barricades. I mean a lot, you really couldn't go more than 10' without getting or being behind one. Piled trees, barrels, plywood (sometimes with cutouts), sheet metal, tubes, you name it. One or two 'houses/bunkers' on one of the fields. But that was about it... totally flat terrain. *YES! There was more than one field! There were 3 or 4 fields total. Not a huge amount of variation between them, just slightly different sizes and different bunkers. :P Since the terrain was, well, not terrain, it was the same ol' clusters of trees and, oh, did I mention bunkers? Oh, also, since no rain, don't even THINK of leaning against anything on the field, lest you be covered in many different shades of old paint. A few made that mistake. Once. We had a good smattering of people, most hadn't played before or too often. A few had cammo and/or other gear, rest were all in 'regular' clothing, though not that cammo had much bearing on a field like this. We split into teams arbitrarily and headed out for a rather late-start game day. Oh, hee, must relate this story: As we put on armbands for the teams (yellow and red/pink), a player on the other team asks "Why do we have the same colours?" He was colourblind. -grin- The red team ended up wearing a band on each shoulder so he could differentiate. }:> Field rentals were PMI Piranhas which may be ok under normal circumstances, but... well, they weren't the most accurate nor the most efficient. But then, the paint... oh my, a seam that was very noticeable and the ever-present-field-paint-dimples. Whee. Accuracy was not the word of the day. Spray and Pray was almost a necessity. To quote one player firing on me, he had the gun wedged in a way that it most certainly was not moving, and the balls were passing in about a 10' circle/cone around my position. Yuk. Still, since we were a single group, we basically did this large paint sharing thing that saw us distributing paint amongst everyone throughout the day so firing lots didn't matter as much. Frustrating as hell though... to fire and fire and fire and just not see anything actually hit. Blue shell with white fill. Looked like bird poop. :P First game of the day, our team strategies a bit and William and I are to run to the right and get up far, staying 10' apart. Well. I think I went too fast :P Got pinned down, and William was no where to be seen. Went to try to move forward to get into a better position, and got dinged, looked and saw colour and called myself out... ah, you the reader are now saying "hey, but wasn't the fill white?" Indeed it was-I called myself out on a bounce. I had lightly brushed against something and gotten coloured. Ooops. Let me say this, though, there were a lot of bounces that day, kinda surprising with how dimpled the paint was. I survived many a game because of just bounces. Odd. Well, I had to redeem myself second game. Especially since our team had gotten slaughtered. Sooo... I start on the left side of the field. Elim a few on my way over to the... right side of the field }:) Work my way up I can see the flag station. One of our guys rushes forward to grab the flag and gets tagged from a hidden location! MMM... someone is hiiiding. Observe from behind cover, end up seeing the person briefly behind their barrier. Trade a few shots, but mostly observe, for there is another player off to our (there was another teammate about 15' away) left. Well, they are either eliminated or moved away, for we seem to be alone. On a coordinated signal, we move forward, one on each side! Plywood is a very 2 dimensional cover, so it was clear shot once past (and I was fortunate to have a small cluster of trees to hide behind). Still, those damn guns, took a good exchange before I was able to strike the player in the shoulder. Haha, FLAG GRAB! Run RUN RUN Run, fire to our right (original left), fire and just keep running, hang, woo! From that moment on, the yellow team started to do much better }:) Our movement ended up getting a lot better, our placement better, and our coordination better. That didn't stop us from getting pinned down in really moronic locations sometimes, all bunched up. :P We lost those games. Other memorable moments... Getting beaned in the head. Often. Actually, I got gogged WAY to many times that day... either someone out there had a rifle that was actually accurate, or they were all just lucky. The number of times I would do a quick look about and got gogged was very irritating. Especially the constant cleanup :P But I also got beaned on the head a few times, mostly glancing non breaks, but one solid one to the forehead just above the goggles that certainly left a mark. Got to witness another flag hang by our team, in a 5 person effort to go up and get the flag, and protect the bearer on the rush back. We managed to eliminate the whole red team a few times :P One game, was by my lonesome and made my way up to the back end of the field (the back being the opposing side, of course), when I start to receive fire. Hunker down, see someone rush over to behind a bush... waitaminute, did I see a yellow armband. He fires a few shots my way, I call out for his colour. He fires some more, I ask again. He fires more, I expose my armband. We laugh much after that }:> No one had realized I had made it so far forward. We won that game through elimination :P Third game I think it was, we split forces 6 one way, 3 the other, one defend. Our 3 person job: Hold them off. And that's what we did. :P Just kept on firing and keeping them pinned down on that side while our 6 person team made their way deep for a flag grab and return. Worked well... The fields were overall pretty small. I don't want to think what it was like for the walk-ons, there seemed to be about 30+ of them on the small fields. Actually, I got fired on again later in the day by members of my own team who were unaware of my position... maybe they just wanted shots at me :P There were a few good moments of small rush forwards to get better angle fire, but nothing more that was truly story-noteworthy, I think... The last game was interesting, since we were all really low on paint. We distributed our remaining paint to each player, meaning we all had about 25 shots left. -grin- So, out we go... almost counting shots... I was pinned down for a bit, and the player suddenly runs away! (He had gone to get ammo from dead folk, we agreed that be ok) Move up and around, but apparently the three remaining players run up the field at once, right past one of our hidden players who pops them all in the back. :P My tally for the day was likely around 6 or 7. Not fantastic, but alright for playing with an unfamiliar marker and really lousy paint :P I was eliminated maybe just under the 50% mark in the games. If it weren't for the fact so many were head shots, I'd be fine with that. :P Welt count, I got 3 good ones, including the head shot, and 2 minor ones. Knees took a beating from kneeling and crawling :P Worst welt of the day came for a poor chap who was surrounded but was hiding so no one really knew he was there... until one sheet of plywood fell over. Pelted by 4 shots, close range, good grouping. One large welt to the upper back, eep. Overall the field wasn't bad. The variety helped, and the staff was not fantastic, but kept a handle on things (though only one ref per game/field, though we were a small group, honest bunch and small field). Pretty efficiently run, though, which was nice. So, it was a good day, and paintball was redeemed in my eyes. Of course, we had to isolate ourselves for that :P If we play again I'd like to use my own marker... mostly my own paint :P. It's an old gun now, should be alright, right? }:) I was happy that I had much, much better situational awareness this time than last, and was able to move a lot more and not get pinned in crappy locations as often. Though, with the lack of lower foliage, it was easier to spot people. There will still times where I had no idea where anyone was, or where fire was coming from. Must get better at that. Also, doing my stance training at gongfu has certainly had a benefit-I was able to crouch behind stuff in a stance-like position for quite the time without getting tired! As a final comment, the top of the line guns are... the Autococker (Still! Most accurate!) and this new, electronic-internals, low pressure, uber gun known as the Angel. 1200 bucks. Yes, one thousand, two hundred dollars for a paintgun, and that's without the tank! It IS nice, but DAMN! Until next time...