Paintball Journal

You practice for a reason. You practice to get better. You practice so you don’t make noob mistakes in the middle of your first tournament. I believed we learned an invaluable lesson, the hard way mind you, last Sunday. As the title suggests – cross it up and lock it down.

Too make this simple, I broke to back right. The rest of my three teammates broke to the left, one stayed home. I get up from my slide and just as I look to my left I take one to the face from two guys gunning their way up the opposite tape. That leaves the rest of my team looking inside (by coincidence), and the two guys slip right in behind them – over in fifteen seconds.
It was a serious lack of communication. All three of them assumed that somebody was watching the left tape, which I was for about a half second. Besides that though, they assumed that one of them was watching that left side.

Lesson one: never assume anything in paintball.

A couple games after we received a helping hand from one of the older guys. We went with a defensive break with everybody crossed up, that was our main goal. We held most of our bodies for a good time, but eventually fell apart. But we accomplished what we planned. It held them from getting into the key bunkers that they wanted for the majority of the game.

Lesson two: Cross it up.

You can form an entire game like this and play defensively, but more than likely you’ll be doing this when you’re down bodies, especially when you only have two left. There is really no other way to mount a defense, unless your bunker positions are just right. The main thing is to have patience. You want them to run into your zone, so don’t get shot out trying to gunfight a guy way downfield. Another point is to learn your back side and just how far it sticks out. Since you’ll be focused on one zone typically, don’t leave your backside hanging out to the point where they can get a simple angle on it.

A - Lay down
B - Stand ups
C - Bricks
D - Half moon
E - Small can (down)
F - Tombstone