Paintball Journal

There’s a new contest on PBNation. This time they’re offering $500 in give away prizes to their store. Here are the specs. As usual, you need to be a supporting member to be eligible to win.
$500 Heroes for a Day Give-a-way on PbNation

Hey, here we go again. 10 winners in one contest!

To celebrate the new release of Heroes for a Day we have a great contest that anyone can win and we are going to have a bunch of winners. With our good friends at Monkey with A Gun we are going to be giving away $500 worth of gift certificates for use in the PbNation store to a total of ten winners.

The Breakdown:

$100 for 1 Grand Prize winner

$75 each for 2 second place winners

$50 each for 3 third place winners

$25 each for 4 forth place winners

10 winners for a total of $500.00

Read the fine print and enjoy.

Got the tag? Get the Swag…

You must be a current PbNation Annual Supporting Member to register for the contest on the ASM forum on PbNation.

When someone says High Def Paintball, I start to salivate. I get a little twitchy, like I’d just downed a Bawls or something, and little beads of sweat start to form on my brow.

Perhaps this isn’t you. Perhaps you don’t enjoy seeing the latest paintball action with sick music and killer angles brought to you in high definition for free.

But for the other 99% of us, we’ll take these offerings from DKfilms and exalt them until the next production comes out. The links to download HB 07 are available here, and be sure to check out DKfilms’ new site.

Paintball has a huge online community. It’s been said that most paintballers spend most of their time talking about paintball on PBNation and watching paintball videos on YouTube and DarkSide, rather than actually playing. So why don’t teams, especially the ones playing on or close to a Pro level, maintain decent sites?

In my search in the past week for good sites that contain viable information, I can only express profound disappointment in most of the teams for not providing what so many fans would like: a site showing current rosters, events, rankings, sponsors, and all of that good stuff. While PBNation’s team forums are decent places, a more organized and compressed place to gain insight into a team would be more than welcome. Hell, even a well-run Myspace page or something would work.

All of the pro venues like PSP, NPPL, and Millenium maintain great websites. PBNation is one of the largest sports forums in the world. Get with it, Pro Teams. Make websites, and keep them up to date!

(Oooohhhh, I just called you laydeez!)

I came across an older link on PBNation - a sticky nonetheless (I mean who actually looks at the stickies) – Anyways, it’s an entire collection of video clips of nearly every sort of gun on the market. From Egos to DMs to Borgs and Defiants, you can find the video you’re looking for.

I’ve been browsing through them just out of interest, and I’m glad I found it. It’s a great way to actually see a gun in action, because it can be hard finding a particular one at a local field. Of course, it’s not quite like shooting one in person either, and that’s where the real decision is made. They can look cool, shoot fast, etc, but don’t make any impulses without trying one out for yourself.

An indoor paintball field has recently snuck into the local scene around here. There were rumors of a couple guys starting a field, but nothing more than just that, rumors. So a couple of months go by, and all of a sudden there is a 17,000 sq ft complex that’s already under renovation to build a speedball and a hyberball course.

It appears that Splatz Indoor Paintball is nearly ready to open its doors to the public, but that’s what I’m worried about. I hope this doesn’t turn into a watered down version of paintball, with the store owners complete noobs at sport and don’t know how to manage customers, from recballers to tournament players. I’m hoping that this doesn’t turn into field where little rich kids run the place, but I have a feeling it might be heading that way. A friend drove out there to check it out, and he said the fields were small, another downside. So I don’t know at this point. I guess I need to get out there in person.

I don’t think it’s going to even be able to compare to Friendly Fire. If you want solid, tournament-grade competition, that is the place to be, and that’s where we will be. Too bad it’s a hour and thirty minutes drive for us…

Anyways, it’ll be interesting to see how this place turns out.

On MSNBC recently, there was a short bit featuring paintball in the form of a recruitment tool for the US Army. In the newscast they explain paintball in one of the best, most simplistic ways I’ve seen in a long time from the media. Indeed, they don’t portray paintball as a violent sport, and share the concerns of many about the negative aspects of linking paintball with the military.

I am one of those who would rather not see paintball as something that the military can recruit with ease from. Really, the two have vague at best similarities, and while woodsball is the largest portion of the sport right now, for speedball to get the type of publicity and backing that it wants from the public, they really need to shy away from that violent, militaristic image. In 10 years, I see the speedball easily eclipsing the woodsball part of the sport, but it has to have public support.

This interview, despite its uhh “French”, is actually rather insightful. Jon Almera, Dynasty’s coach, was more than willing to give PBStar a mouthful about any and all subjects they could throw at him, from individual players to kids on the internet. Definitely worth watching, especially the bit at the end, y’know, with the zombies.

zombies, dynasty paintball, jon almera, paintball vids, pbstar

Check out this massive sponsorship deal that Dynasty has landed with JT – three years for over $1,000,000! It’s just another sign that paintball is on the rise! Simply amazing; that’s the most money any paintball team has ever seen, and that will be a tough one to break for awhile. I’ve always liked JT, and this is what the sport really needs right now. Two thumbs up to both JT and Dynasty for bringing the sport to the world!

As quoted from Paintballstar.com:

JT Sports LLC, a K2 Inc. company, announced today that it has signed a three-year partnership with the professional paintball team Dynasty. The deal’s value is estimated at more than $1 million.

JT Sports, the worldwide leader in the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of paintball products, has sponsored Dynasty since its formation in 2001. The new deal runs through 2009. Dynasty, the world’s top-ranked professional paintball team, has won the past five consecutive World Paintball Championships and has more tournament titles than any other team in the history of the sport.

“JT Sports prides itself on developing high-quality products for paintball players worldwide – from professionals like Dynasty to the millions of amateur and recreation players. The success of Dynasty is a true measure of what can be accomplished by using the best products,� said Chuck Hendsch, vice president of JT Sports.

As part of the deal, Dynasty will work with JT Sports to create a new line of customized Dynasty-branded, tournament-grade products. JT Sports and Dynasty will host paintball clinics around the world and appear together at JT Sports’ nationwide network of retailers. In addition, JT Sports and Dynasty will collaborate on tournament and event appearances.

“JT Sports makes products that help us win; without the support of JT Sports it would be difficult to have achieved all that we have,� said Dynasty captain Alex Fraige. “The same commitment and dedication that we apply on the field, JT applies in their products, which is why we’re thrilled to work with the JT Sports family.�

I’m anxious to see these new “product lines� as well – really anxious. I liked the past Dynasty jerseys, and JT always have solid gear and blending the two should make for a wicked awesome combo.

And a special thanks to PBStar for keeping us up-to-date on all the latest news!

The field is ridiculously sweet now, so professional and such, that I decided to give their website a little more face time, especially now that they have pictures of the last tourney up. I’m pretty excited to get back up there and play my team. My guys actually think they can bunker me in a 1v2 or 1v3, which is entirely outrageous. The main reason I want to do this is so that my team can get better at talking and running the field, because it’s apparently pretty hard to be scared of me right now. We’ll see come next week.

In other news, I may be getting a blog on Xtreme Paintball’s website soon. That should be cool, and I’ll be able to play more often with the added income! Don’t worry though, I won’t be leaving this blog for that one, I’ll just be writing them simultaneously. Yaaaay for not doing homework.

I came across a few videos on YouTube that I believe are worthy of a post. First of all, I would advise trying this on your first time to the field. Second, I really wouldn’t advise doing this at all.

Here it is: Pains Games Part I

I love the way the guy’s lens is completely covered after a few seconds, and he reloads blind and begins blind firing.

Pain Games Part II

And here is why Ions get a bad wrap from so many experienced players. I remember when Spyders and Tippmanns were entry level to paintball, but now it’s the Ion. Parents walk into the proshop and want a good gun for cheap, and the store owner points them straight to them. This kid gives the good Ion owners a bad name.

paintball, paintball video, pain games, Ion noob

You want footage of the games, but don’t feel like paying $30 for a new DVD after every event? Even though DerDer does an amazing job, most paintballers aren’t made of money. To see some of the action up close and personal from events that you couldn’t get to, check out PBStar. They do an absolutely awesome job over there, with pics, videos, and the latest news, so it’s definitely worth checking them out at least once. You’ll like what you see, I guarantee it. Here is some of the footage from PSP LAO, already up on their site. This particular match is the Final Match between the Ironmen and the Russian Legion.

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pbstar, paintball, ironmen, russian legion

EDIT: My apologies, but that is NOT Ironmen vs. Russian Legion. I dunno what happened to my embedded video…

This is one of the coolest paintball sequences I’ve ever seen. Evan says he recognizes a lot of the sound bits from some video games, but they’re really well integrated. The coloring and video editing of the whole movie is just incredible. Take a look.

NPPL has released the field layouts for the 2007 Huntington Beach event. Most are pretty generic, snake side and dorito with stuff in between. You know, the usual layout. But then there were two that caught my eye: the Spyder Field and the Bawls Field.

The Spyder field is just down right weird for an NPPL event. It has like…this diamond thing made up of pipe bunkers, or whatever you’d like to call them, sitting right on the entire left side of the field, right on the fifty. That’s not real uncommon, but then they have another pipe connecting the left side doll house to a right fifty stand up wedge. Bah, I can’t explain it, just look at the picture!

The Bawls Field has a double snake going, but both are fairly short. It seems like an interesting field to play, and should match up some wicked battles as both teams try to fit players in them.

Anyways, here are the links to the rest of the fields.

NPPL
Angel
JT
Eclipse

I just came across an interesting website that tracks serial numbers for stolen guns. This can be an extremely important tool if you’re buying from Ebay, trading over PBNation, or anything else like that. If you’re a responsible buyer, and you do happen to buy used guns from a stranger, then run the gun’s serial number in their search to see if anything pops up as stolen. If so, then you have just bought a stolen gun.

It happens a lot more than you might think. I’ve heard stories from different people about stuff going missing at tournaments, or just in staging areas. Last fall I was at the field, and a brand new Ion went missing along with my friends hand bag with wallet, keys, and a little bit of money. The bad part is that it happens so fast, within seconds and the person could be walking off with a thousand dollars worth the paintball gear.

And for all gun owners, go right now and record that serial number. It’s the responsible thing, and if or when you ever need to have it, then you’ll love yourself for writing it down. So, use the database, and lets make an effort to put an end to unchecked theft in the paintball industry.

I had been wondering where and how teams got their custom jerseys made. Well, I asked a local team, Junction Boys, where they got theirs and the captain, Big Mike, directed me to Custom Sports Gear.

They offer everything from custom jerseys to tech shirts for your team. And when I say custom, I mean custom. They will allow you to use one of their pre-made templates, or you can go the path of the brave and design a jersey from scratch using photoshop or something of its kind.

I’m not sure on the prices, but from the looks of these sample jerseys, it will definitely be worth it at some point in the future.