Alright, today I’ve got a whole series of videos (one half-funny/half-serious, the rest pretty serious and straightforward), so this is going to be quite a comprehensive post and should get you well on your way in not only getting started in paintball but, if you follow the instructions, getting you to definitely be a serious force to be reckoned with on the field.
Remember that you absolutely must take safety precautions, there’s just no getting around this–I have personally
| met someone with a glass eye because they weren’t wearing a face mask while playing paintball and took a round right in the eyeball. Those paintballs are traveling at between 200 and 300 feet per second–for comparison, a .45 caliber slug exits the muzzle of a pistol at around 900 feet per second, so if a |
bullet going that fast can kill you do you think a plastic ball doing 1/3 that speed just might be able to do some serious damage if you’re not careful? It will. On that note, before we really get started, I’m going to give you a safety tip that, amazingly, they missed in all these videos but believe me you’re going to thank me for this if you hadn’t thought of it yourself. Gentlemen, how do you feel about a plastic ball striking you in the twig-and-giggleberries area (your crotch) at around 200 miles an hour (which is about 300 feet per second)? Ahhh, you all cringed, didn’t you? Yes, I imagine it would be quite painful and I don’t ever wish to confirm that. These videos cover pretty much all pertinent safety measures you should take, except this one which I would highly recommend you heed: WEAR A FRIGGIN’ CUP!
Alright, here are some really good tips compressed into a few minutes and presented in a very entertaining fashion, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sylvester Stallone’s deatbeat paintballing brother:
Alright, let’s get serious with some simple safety procedures and paintballing basics. The guy talking is John Greeley, the former field manager and current CEO for Hogback Mountain Paintball where he’s been employed since 2004:
How Not to Be Rendered Blind While Playing Paintball
How to Assemble Any Paintball Gun
And here’s how to assemble pneumatic and electronic paintball guns:
How to Shoot a Painball Gun Properly
Here you see a pro demonstrating how to properly hold, aim, and fire both a pneumatic and a higher-end electronic paintball gun:
When You Are and Are Not Out of the Game (Important–Noobie Mistake)
How to Move in the Paintball Zone (without getting shot)
How to communicate, use barricades and cover, how to handle a one-on-one firefight, dealing with snipers, and how to shoot moving targets:
How to Clean and Maintain Your Paintball Gun
Lastly, but not leastly, you need to learn how to clean and maintain your paintball gun because if you don’t it will jam and fail to fire the next time you take it out, resulting in you getting shot and eliminated–also, you probably paid a good bit of money for you gear, you’d have to be an idiot to not take care of it properly:
Additional Resources and Further Learning
Paintball.com–comprehensive ‘everything’ site on paintball.
Find out where you can go play paintball in your area with the paintball field locator.
Basic tactics and strategy for use in paintball (which is hosted on UC Berkley’s site for some strange reason–wonder who wrote this…)
Top 2 online forums for paintball: PBNation.com and PaintBallForum.com