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For the real Army experience...
Yesterday's paintball experience was a perfect slice of what I hear the Army is really like: a whole bunch of hurry-up-and-wait. I started the morning by falling down the stairs, and that really set the tone for the day.
We got on the road much later than I'd planned, like 8:20, when we needed to be at Skirmish at 9:45. It is a measure of cosmic significance that Tripmaker reports the distance as 106 miles. Fortunately, we had an advance scout to phone back where the radar traps were, so we didn't assemble an escort of state troopers. We made it by the skin of our teeth (ignore Eli's claims about being pushed out of a moving car), got our shit together and repaired to Table S to meet the other small groups with whom we would be forged into a mighty sword of battle.
And then we waited.
Now, there's always some waiting at this point; they only have so many buses to carry people up to the advanced base camp. But 2 1/2 hours is just, how you say, completely fucking ridiculous. And then, once we got up to the advance area, there was yet more futzing around. Our guide was quite the opposite of the jewel we were assigned last time; I mean, he was friendly enough, but he couldn't find his ass with both hands, a map, and a GPS. He also had no ability to keep people on track, nor yet to take command of a situation. Every single time we were not actually in a match, there was dithering and delay and time-wasteage.
We finally got organized and marched out to a woodsy field for two capture-the-flag matches. The first one, I thought I was advancing on the enemy flag position, but in fact was way the hell out in East Bumfuck. Still, was keeping three of the enemy pinned down--I had a fantastic position behind a large old stump--and would have done for them if my gun hadn't started jamming. This gave them the opportunity to triangulate and take me out. Bah. Second match I accepted having to recock my gun after every shot, which is a damn nuisance; and also we had something approximating a strategy, and things went better. I actually took out an opponent whose crossfire was holding back our advance. Go Me.
Multiple people besides myself were having gun issues. A number of others wanted to keep playing, since we'd lost so much time fucking around. After more lost time fucking around discussing this, our little band (minus Adam) and a few others headed back for repairs or CO2 refills, while the rest went to play another game; we were to rendezvous at the Airfield (which is a field with downed plane bits). So we dealt with gun problems, bought more paint, grabbed a quick bite and headed back within the half-hour. Whereat we met the rest of our group returning for lunch and CO2. Argh...
Our guide, realizing that this was Not Working, took those who didn't need or want downtime to the new big castle, which is right close to the advance base. It's a damn big thing, big enough that they combine multiple groups for both attack and defense anyways, so it didn't matter that only some of our group was present. He dropped us off and went back to the base to send along the rest as they were ready.
So, the castle is fairly cool, though like all of their "defensible" structures it has so many entrances that you'd be better off in a rhododendron thicket anyways. It has an outer wall, an inner wall, bridges, towers, etc. There are "wagons" which can be dragged in front of the main gate to slow down the advance, which I thought was a nice touch. The field around it has a number of low walls to hide behind (and also the shell of a tank, don't ask me why). And, for extra entertainment, the refs pitch the occasional smoke bomb into the chaos.
The way the scenario works is, the attackers have to get in, capture the flag, and run it out the front gate. Attackers who are killed can go back to near the entrance to the field to resurrect. Here's the kicker: if a defender dies, he too must go back there to resurrect...but then he joins the attackers. So, there's no way for the defenders to win. I'm not clear on what the point is, other than to go through metric assloads of expensive paint.
We played two games there, once on the attacking side, and once defending. The first fight I actually didn't die, mirabile dictu. Erin and Eli and I moved along to the left side of the castle and got into a firefight with the defenders in the rear and central towers. We kept them pinned down while another squad assaulted through the side door there. We were very fortunate in our position, which had some well-placed trees and brush, and even so there were some shots that parted my hair or hit my gun. We got separated from the others, so I didn't know what they were up to, though it seems Adam took a joke seriously and jumped through one of the castle windows on the assault. Frighteningly enough, this worked, and he took out a whole bunch of defenders. The second time, Mike and I teamed up and started by positioning ourselves on the lower part of the inner wall, right near the flag, but we ended up helping defend the rear entrances. We and a few others were fighting off a squad coming up from that direction; a squad apparently consisting of the undead, because bullets meant nothing to them. I saw my shots hit on several, particularly one guy who I hit at least twice, and not one of them went out. Then they rushed us and that was it. As I was on my way out, I passed the guy I mentioned above--with a paint stain from my gun brazen on his collar--and said "You are so fuckin' dead, you bastard." He sort of laughed and made like he was following me off the field with his gun over his head, and then circled back and joined his unit. Bah.
When that nonsense was finished, our larger group reformed (more futzing and time-wasting) and we went over to a field called the Alamo, don't ask me why. It's just some random structures in the middle of a fairly-open woods. We had to wait for the previous team to come off it, and then there was a long discussion about what sort of game to play. Some guys who had their own guns wanted to play own-guns vs. rental guns, which would be something like 9 vs. a lot (though some people had apparently left; I wasn't clear on that). But another smaller group (who seemed like our sort of people, I note in passing) had almost no paint left, so some wiseacre suggested playing 'pain or paint', which is to say you keep fighting til you're out of paint or until you can't take the pain any more. Let me say how little interested in that I am...again, what's the damn point? It doesn't take any skill, nor yet talent. Bah. And it looked like it was going that way, but finally it was decided to do a regular elimination sort of thing. So the fight began, and the field was a lot smaller than we thought, so they were firing on us within 30 seconds, and Adam and Mike and I were all out within the first couple of minutes. So we got to sit around for quite some time. After that, twilight was closing in, and we had been given to understand there would be another match but it was not so; though the group who were about to use the Alamo offered to play against our group...but they were doing pain-or-paint, so fuck that shit. We went back, shot in a desultory manner at the shooting range, and called it a day.
For those of you keeping track, that was five whole matches. Five. For a $30 entry fee. I believe I speak for us all when I say "bullshit". We also used up a hell of a lot more paint than we had last time, which was financially displeasing; I think both because there were a lot more people on the field to shoot at, and also because the scenarios were much more Terminator than Predator. From this learning experience, I garner the following:
1) Try and get the magic 20 people so you can have your own group.
2) If you can't, try and have enough people to be a quorum in the group you're in.
3) Either way, find the name of the guy we had in the spring, and request him.
4) Or just find a place closer for a more regular paintball experience. (And frankly, that may be just as well; for myself, I prefer the woods-crawling game, and I can get that anyplace with woods, let's face it.)
We stopped at the Perkins That Time Forgot for dinner, which was a merry and enjoyable meal if rather long, and then home.
It's indicative of the lameitude of the experience that my worst pain is my tailbone from falling down the stairs. I have one welt between my shoulderblades that doesn't feel too great, and other than that, nothing to let me know I was out there. Feh.
We got on the road much later than I'd planned, like 8:20, when we needed to be at Skirmish at 9:45. It is a measure of cosmic significance that Tripmaker reports the distance as 106 miles. Fortunately, we had an advance scout to phone back where the radar traps were, so we didn't assemble an escort of state troopers. We made it by the skin of our teeth (ignore Eli's claims about being pushed out of a moving car), got our shit together and repaired to Table S to meet the other small groups with whom we would be forged into a mighty sword of battle.
And then we waited.
Now, there's always some waiting at this point; they only have so many buses to carry people up to the advanced base camp. But 2 1/2 hours is just, how you say, completely fucking ridiculous. And then, once we got up to the advance area, there was yet more futzing around. Our guide was quite the opposite of the jewel we were assigned last time; I mean, he was friendly enough, but he couldn't find his ass with both hands, a map, and a GPS. He also had no ability to keep people on track, nor yet to take command of a situation. Every single time we were not actually in a match, there was dithering and delay and time-wasteage.
We finally got organized and marched out to a woodsy field for two capture-the-flag matches. The first one, I thought I was advancing on the enemy flag position, but in fact was way the hell out in East Bumfuck. Still, was keeping three of the enemy pinned down--I had a fantastic position behind a large old stump--and would have done for them if my gun hadn't started jamming. This gave them the opportunity to triangulate and take me out. Bah. Second match I accepted having to recock my gun after every shot, which is a damn nuisance; and also we had something approximating a strategy, and things went better. I actually took out an opponent whose crossfire was holding back our advance. Go Me.
Multiple people besides myself were having gun issues. A number of others wanted to keep playing, since we'd lost so much time fucking around. After more lost time fucking around discussing this, our little band (minus Adam) and a few others headed back for repairs or CO2 refills, while the rest went to play another game; we were to rendezvous at the Airfield (which is a field with downed plane bits). So we dealt with gun problems, bought more paint, grabbed a quick bite and headed back within the half-hour. Whereat we met the rest of our group returning for lunch and CO2. Argh...
Our guide, realizing that this was Not Working, took those who didn't need or want downtime to the new big castle, which is right close to the advance base. It's a damn big thing, big enough that they combine multiple groups for both attack and defense anyways, so it didn't matter that only some of our group was present. He dropped us off and went back to the base to send along the rest as they were ready.
So, the castle is fairly cool, though like all of their "defensible" structures it has so many entrances that you'd be better off in a rhododendron thicket anyways. It has an outer wall, an inner wall, bridges, towers, etc. There are "wagons" which can be dragged in front of the main gate to slow down the advance, which I thought was a nice touch. The field around it has a number of low walls to hide behind (and also the shell of a tank, don't ask me why). And, for extra entertainment, the refs pitch the occasional smoke bomb into the chaos.
The way the scenario works is, the attackers have to get in, capture the flag, and run it out the front gate. Attackers who are killed can go back to near the entrance to the field to resurrect. Here's the kicker: if a defender dies, he too must go back there to resurrect...but then he joins the attackers. So, there's no way for the defenders to win. I'm not clear on what the point is, other than to go through metric assloads of expensive paint.
We played two games there, once on the attacking side, and once defending. The first fight I actually didn't die, mirabile dictu. Erin and Eli and I moved along to the left side of the castle and got into a firefight with the defenders in the rear and central towers. We kept them pinned down while another squad assaulted through the side door there. We were very fortunate in our position, which had some well-placed trees and brush, and even so there were some shots that parted my hair or hit my gun. We got separated from the others, so I didn't know what they were up to, though it seems Adam took a joke seriously and jumped through one of the castle windows on the assault. Frighteningly enough, this worked, and he took out a whole bunch of defenders. The second time, Mike and I teamed up and started by positioning ourselves on the lower part of the inner wall, right near the flag, but we ended up helping defend the rear entrances. We and a few others were fighting off a squad coming up from that direction; a squad apparently consisting of the undead, because bullets meant nothing to them. I saw my shots hit on several, particularly one guy who I hit at least twice, and not one of them went out. Then they rushed us and that was it. As I was on my way out, I passed the guy I mentioned above--with a paint stain from my gun brazen on his collar--and said "You are so fuckin' dead, you bastard." He sort of laughed and made like he was following me off the field with his gun over his head, and then circled back and joined his unit. Bah.
When that nonsense was finished, our larger group reformed (more futzing and time-wasting) and we went over to a field called the Alamo, don't ask me why. It's just some random structures in the middle of a fairly-open woods. We had to wait for the previous team to come off it, and then there was a long discussion about what sort of game to play. Some guys who had their own guns wanted to play own-guns vs. rental guns, which would be something like 9 vs. a lot (though some people had apparently left; I wasn't clear on that). But another smaller group (who seemed like our sort of people, I note in passing) had almost no paint left, so some wiseacre suggested playing 'pain or paint', which is to say you keep fighting til you're out of paint or until you can't take the pain any more. Let me say how little interested in that I am...again, what's the damn point? It doesn't take any skill, nor yet talent. Bah. And it looked like it was going that way, but finally it was decided to do a regular elimination sort of thing. So the fight began, and the field was a lot smaller than we thought, so they were firing on us within 30 seconds, and Adam and Mike and I were all out within the first couple of minutes. So we got to sit around for quite some time. After that, twilight was closing in, and we had been given to understand there would be another match but it was not so; though the group who were about to use the Alamo offered to play against our group...but they were doing pain-or-paint, so fuck that shit. We went back, shot in a desultory manner at the shooting range, and called it a day.
For those of you keeping track, that was five whole matches. Five. For a $30 entry fee. I believe I speak for us all when I say "bullshit". We also used up a hell of a lot more paint than we had last time, which was financially displeasing; I think both because there were a lot more people on the field to shoot at, and also because the scenarios were much more Terminator than Predator. From this learning experience, I garner the following:
1) Try and get the magic 20 people so you can have your own group.
2) If you can't, try and have enough people to be a quorum in the group you're in.
3) Either way, find the name of the guy we had in the spring, and request him.
4) Or just find a place closer for a more regular paintball experience. (And frankly, that may be just as well; for myself, I prefer the woods-crawling game, and I can get that anyplace with woods, let's face it.)
We stopped at the Perkins That Time Forgot for dinner, which was a merry and enjoyable meal if rather long, and then home.
It's indicative of the lameitude of the experience that my worst pain is my tailbone from falling down the stairs. I have one welt between my shoulderblades that doesn't feel too great, and other than that, nothing to let me know I was out there. Feh.