Boston Paintball, indoor Somerville field
2003-03-04 21:24
I got to play paintball again. Yay. Only the third time though. Work took us. Yay.
The dramatic difference from the previous two times was that
it was indoors. I really prefer to play in the woods, in the mud.
But indoors did have its advantages. It's probably more applicable
to self-defense / IDPA type stuff (although certainly not perfect).
Probably the biggest advantage is that the ranges aren't far enough to
highlight just how miserably inaccurate the markers (guns) are. There is
basically no hiding. You know where your opponents are. The.. edges are
much more well defined. The ground is flat. Outdoors, with a lot of
space, I played many different kinds of games. Indoors we only played
last-man-standing - there really isn't the room for variety.
I was very pleased that my goggles did not fog up this time. I think
that was largely due to a lack of vents around them. I kept them sealed
to my face from the first time I put them on, this might have helped
as well.
About half way through my marker started malfunctioning - it
was spraying paint instead of firing balls. I yelled to a judge. I was
quite disappointed that he just said he couldn't help me in the middle
of a game. In my strong opinion, judges overseeing matches with rented
guns are supposed to carry squeegees and help immediately with problems
like this. Instead, I was basically dead for that match at that point.
He removed and cleaned my barrel at the end of the match. By the time
we were done, there was paint coming out the
back of my marker.
My boss commented that once a ball breaks in a marker you really need
to take it all the way apart and clean it thoroughly. I've had this
happen before, and would agree. I think the only solution is to get my
own and learn to clean it.
There were about 22 of us. A little much to put all of us on one
half of their field. About perfect to split us into 4 teams, and run
two games at once, one on each half of the field.
We were there for about 2 hours, and 500 paintballs per person was
perfect, and very conveniently worked out to one bag per person.
The best part was one game where I got four clean kills, and wasn't
sure if I'd gotten one more. As I was walking off the field I asked my
boss how many people were on the other team, to which he responded
"Four or Five. Yeah, you shot good." To be honest, this had a lot to
do with the position I took, which was his idea.
I didn't wear a scarf around my neck to avoid the pain of a shot to
exposed skin, as I've been meaning to, but fortunately I still haven't
been hit in the neck. I was wishing I had brought both knee and elbow
pads, for diving behind objects, low crawling, and maneuvering on
my knees. But I don't think I saw anybody else there (including the
uniformed people coming in after us) wearing any sort of pads.
The things that would have improved the experience the most would be:
- A marker that didn't fail and continue to have problems (is it really that hard to design one that doesn't break paint inside it?)
- A marker with accuracy that does not suck
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