Paintball Journal

When you have three, maybe even four or five guys playing in a somewhat small, indoor field you would think that there’s no way somebody is just going to come flying downfield and bunker your whole team right off the break, successfully too. Well, that’s the way I thought too until I had seen it at least two different times in a very short period.

The first time I experienced this, my team breaks out and I dive into back right. I come up firing down the snake side, and then begin to cross up. Before my gun is even down I get my face blasted, and this is all within seconds of the break. There were two guys walking, WALKING, up the opposite tape side, and as I looked over to the rest of my team I notice that they are all looking in. I don’t think either of the two guys ever stopped shooting all the while, and as they reached about the fifty, they ran the rest of the way and finished to finish them off.

The second time I was with the same group of guys, different day, and was taking some pictures on the sidelines. A guy by the name of Mike, tall and quite husky (the one you wouldn’t think to doing the run throughs), some how manages to split the field and bunker three people out, while the fourth had been shot off the break. How? He runs towards their back right, just to the inside. The guy in back right was shooting the tape, so naturally he didn’t have any idea what was about to happen, and that’s fairly understandable. The sad part is, the two other guys to the left side of the field were both looking towards their tape-side. Mike bunkers the guy in back right, calmly turns and shoots the two others in the side.

In both instances, the teams getting bunkered were all looking in the wrong direction, and not crossed up. I take it that both of them were planned to happen, whether it would work or not, so it could have just as easily gone wrong for them as well, because not only have I seen this done successfully a few times, I’ve probably seen twice as many end in total blunder. Somebody tries something like that and runs into three lanes of paint, because this time the team is watching.

Communication is key here. Never once underestimate your opponents, or question their stupidity. Make sure your team knows the basic plan, and keep it crossed up as much as possible! Communication! Communication! Communication! Do this, and you’ll protect against 99% of the people who try something crazy like running downfield off the break to blast you all in the sides when you’re looking the other way. And don’t think that it won’t happen to you, because that’s exactly when it does.