This album goes twice in a week because it is just BAMF.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.383123931719918.91803.116893811676266&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.383123931719918.91803.116893811676266&type=3
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Splatbrothers Domination, (SilentSavage)
Location: Splatbrothers
SPbTV Member: Silent Savage
Date: 2011
SPbTV Member: Silent Savage
Date: 2011
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Opie and the Alamo Part 1: Woodland Odyssey.
So after the little rant about 'The Importance of Getting your Ass Kicked', I think it's time we dial back and inject some humor into this thing. After all, paintball is really about experiences and is rife with hilarity.
The rant mentioned the problems and disasters that befell us at the VIP event in 2008. It painted a dark picture of epic failures, and yes, that is certainly one lens to view the game through. But it was also the scene of some equally epic funny times. For this post, we'll focus on the adventures and unfortunate bad luck of one individual I will simply refer to as 'Opie.'
Now don't get me wrong, Opie was and is probably a good dude. Which is to say he meant well... he played with heart... but the VIP event was probably a few degrees above his level of prowess. The team he was attached to was a small squad. One adult player, seasoned and reliable, two young teens who were equally dedicated and proficient... and Opie... If Team * had been a tricycle, Opie would be the 4th wheel.
Each field group was supposed to be a mixed bag of specialized players. An HQ team, some speedballers/heavy hitters, a role player or two and a recon/LRRP group that was to sprint to secure and area, and once that area was locked down, conduct penetration across the field beyond the 50 yard line.
Sadly for us (I think we were red group), the only people who showed up were my brother and I, Team * who were also part of the LRRP, and the FC and his son. None of the shooters, LARPers, or anyone else assigned to Red Group made it to the event. The FC did not arrive until the morning of, so I got to attend the commanders brief the night before where the Prof and the other honchos laid out the plan for the next day (assuming that each group would have 40ish people).
Game day dawned bright and early. I briefed our little recon squad on our task... to sprint off the break along the northern edge of the field and engage/stop the enemy's forward momentum as soon as possible while the rest of the group filled in behind us. We had already field walked the area the day before, even practiced a few sprints to see how far we could get in the first 1 - 2 minutes. Team * seemed up for it and motivated. The problem was as it got closer and closer to the kickoff, we realized we weren't going to have anyone to fill in behind us. I approached the Prof. They said they would try to reassign some people to our zone, but we would need to be able to try and hold it on our own.
Off the break we made decent progress. We reached the hill we'd predesignated as a Rally point and stashed a backpack full of paint, water and grenades, along with an A5 SAW, behind a log bunker with a good view up the draw. That was intended to be the fallback position and we called it 'The Alamo.' Any time we got down to halfstrength, at least two people were to fall back to that position and defend it until help could arrive.
The hours that followed were brutal with fighting in and along the drainage below the hill along the road (see map) When we were shot out we would end up heli-dropped into the opposite corner of the field, often near the castle, and if we survived these drops (which was rare), we would have fight our way back across the field. We fought a few actions up the draw, but most of the day was spent in and around the Alamo dealing with Damage Inc. I began to notice as the day went on that Team * was doing really well. The two teens were strong players and could hold their own, but Opie was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He became more of a support player and we put him in charge of retrieving ammo and handling comms/running back to base with briefs. Comms weren't critical because we only had inter-squad radios. The FC had joined the Mission Team and took with him the secure line used to communicate with the Prof and the HQ on an official secure channel.
Things got increasingly desperate. The players assigned to help us gradually vanished and went off to do other things until it was reliably just the 6 of us going again and again into the breach, hiding in the bushes, and sacrificing ourselves to get ambush kills. At one point Josh came on the squad comms in a faint whisper. He was hiding somewhere down the draw.
"They are coming... at least six... do not respond to this, they will hear my mic"
and then
"They are really really close now... I am going to turn my radio off... I love you all."
A few minutes later they were on top of him and there was an eruption of gunfire and then nothing until he respawned.
When he turned his radio back on off the field we called in for support.
"Josh, we need some more pods and water."
"Okay."
"This is Opie, I'm in respawn, it just opened, I'll bring paint to you guys."
"Okay man, thanks."
We spread out around the top of the Alamo and waited. Minutes dragged by.
"Opie, where are you?"
"I'm on my way! I'll be there soon."
"Dude, hurry up!"
The route along the tapeline to the top of Alamo took about 40 seconds at run. Even at a walking speed, he shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes. But a few minutes turned into ten and we were getting really low on paint, to the point where we were divying up hoppers. Another ten minutes.
Josh spawned arrived with a few pods within minutes of hitting the field. It helped but it was hardly enough for the 4 of us.
You didn't bring more?
No, Opie said he had it.
Great, but WHERE is he?
He isn't here yet? He inserted before me in the last window!
How is that possible? You didn't see him on your way here?
Nope.
I got back on the radio.
"Goddamn it, Opie, where are you?"
Opie came back on the radio, but was broken up by static.
"I... lost.... where.... soon."
"Opie, come back, where are you?"
"I'm a little lost.. I'll .... "
More minutes dragged by. We now broke apart and scattered as they enemy pressed the hill. We were low crawling through the bushes, taking pots shots at people who were only meters away. It was getting bleak.
My radio crackled. This time Opie was completely unintelligible. The Motorolas had a 2 mile range. Now there were trees and minor elevation changes, but the field was only about a halfmile wide and clearly marked with tape. If he was on the field, there's no way he could be stressing the coverage.
And then a big push came and rolled up over the hill in a wave and we were all dead.
We went off the field, rekitted and headed back to the respawn. As we sat there, Opie came stumbling out from the woods opposite the field.
Opie? Where the hell have you been? Taking a piss?
OMG guys! I'm so happy to see you!
Where have you been?
I don't know!
What do you mean you don't know?
I inserted and I went left and then I just kept walking.
.... and...?
And I walked and I walked and I couldn't hear you guys shooting any more!
So?
So then I came out in a backyard and there were little kids on a trampoline and I wanted to ask for directions... but they saw me and started screaming for their mommy so I just turned around and came back.
What?
At this point Opie was mentally re-classified from 'questionable asset' to 'well-intentioned liability.' His impact was far from over and his coup-de-grace was yet to come, but we can break down something of what happened thanks to Google Earth. It is probably for the best he did not ask for directions. Given the choice between facing a mother who emerges from her house to the chorus of her screaming children and sees a young man dressed to the 9's in camo and burdened with intimidating-looking equipment asking directions in a panic and a hurried retreat, I think he opted for the right move. Though what I wouldn't have given to be a fly on that trampoline if it had gone down.
Here we have a general field map. The borders of Sherwood Forest play area are shown in yellow. You can clearly our respawn, base and location of the Alamo and our 'red' zone of responsibility. Opie had around 100 meters to cover and could have done so in less than a minute. But assuming that he respawned as Josh was leaving the field, and then Josh had to wait another 20 minutes to get back in play, and he arrived before Opie... and then we fought another 10 - 15 minutes before getting overrun, returned to the camping area and then back to respawn (10 minutes).... that is nearly an hour. The journey of the ill-fated Opie had to be substantial.
Out of curiosity after the game, I set out to analyze what he did wrong. Where the hell had he gone? A house? A trampoline? An hour journey? As far as I can figure there are 4 houses within walking distance that he could have reached.
Here we have a map showing the 4 most likely locations he arrived to.
But Opie's geography skills had yet to reveal themselves to the fullest potential...
Part 2: Heart of Darkness, coming soon.
The rant mentioned the problems and disasters that befell us at the VIP event in 2008. It painted a dark picture of epic failures, and yes, that is certainly one lens to view the game through. But it was also the scene of some equally epic funny times. For this post, we'll focus on the adventures and unfortunate bad luck of one individual I will simply refer to as 'Opie.'
Now don't get me wrong, Opie was and is probably a good dude. Which is to say he meant well... he played with heart... but the VIP event was probably a few degrees above his level of prowess. The team he was attached to was a small squad. One adult player, seasoned and reliable, two young teens who were equally dedicated and proficient... and Opie... If Team * had been a tricycle, Opie would be the 4th wheel.
Each field group was supposed to be a mixed bag of specialized players. An HQ team, some speedballers/heavy hitters, a role player or two and a recon/LRRP group that was to sprint to secure and area, and once that area was locked down, conduct penetration across the field beyond the 50 yard line.
Sadly for us (I think we were red group), the only people who showed up were my brother and I, Team * who were also part of the LRRP, and the FC and his son. None of the shooters, LARPers, or anyone else assigned to Red Group made it to the event. The FC did not arrive until the morning of, so I got to attend the commanders brief the night before where the Prof and the other honchos laid out the plan for the next day (assuming that each group would have 40ish people).
Game day dawned bright and early. I briefed our little recon squad on our task... to sprint off the break along the northern edge of the field and engage/stop the enemy's forward momentum as soon as possible while the rest of the group filled in behind us. We had already field walked the area the day before, even practiced a few sprints to see how far we could get in the first 1 - 2 minutes. Team * seemed up for it and motivated. The problem was as it got closer and closer to the kickoff, we realized we weren't going to have anyone to fill in behind us. I approached the Prof. They said they would try to reassign some people to our zone, but we would need to be able to try and hold it on our own.
Off the break we made decent progress. We reached the hill we'd predesignated as a Rally point and stashed a backpack full of paint, water and grenades, along with an A5 SAW, behind a log bunker with a good view up the draw. That was intended to be the fallback position and we called it 'The Alamo.' Any time we got down to halfstrength, at least two people were to fall back to that position and defend it until help could arrive.
The hours that followed were brutal with fighting in and along the drainage below the hill along the road (see map) When we were shot out we would end up heli-dropped into the opposite corner of the field, often near the castle, and if we survived these drops (which was rare), we would have fight our way back across the field. We fought a few actions up the draw, but most of the day was spent in and around the Alamo dealing with Damage Inc. I began to notice as the day went on that Team * was doing really well. The two teens were strong players and could hold their own, but Opie was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He became more of a support player and we put him in charge of retrieving ammo and handling comms/running back to base with briefs. Comms weren't critical because we only had inter-squad radios. The FC had joined the Mission Team and took with him the secure line used to communicate with the Prof and the HQ on an official secure channel.
Things got increasingly desperate. The players assigned to help us gradually vanished and went off to do other things until it was reliably just the 6 of us going again and again into the breach, hiding in the bushes, and sacrificing ourselves to get ambush kills. At one point Josh came on the squad comms in a faint whisper. He was hiding somewhere down the draw.
"They are coming... at least six... do not respond to this, they will hear my mic"
and then
"They are really really close now... I am going to turn my radio off... I love you all."
A few minutes later they were on top of him and there was an eruption of gunfire and then nothing until he respawned.
When he turned his radio back on off the field we called in for support.
"Josh, we need some more pods and water."
"Okay."
"This is Opie, I'm in respawn, it just opened, I'll bring paint to you guys."
"Okay man, thanks."
We spread out around the top of the Alamo and waited. Minutes dragged by.
"Opie, where are you?"
"I'm on my way! I'll be there soon."
"Dude, hurry up!"
The route along the tapeline to the top of Alamo took about 40 seconds at run. Even at a walking speed, he shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes. But a few minutes turned into ten and we were getting really low on paint, to the point where we were divying up hoppers. Another ten minutes.
Josh spawned arrived with a few pods within minutes of hitting the field. It helped but it was hardly enough for the 4 of us.
You didn't bring more?
No, Opie said he had it.
Great, but WHERE is he?
He isn't here yet? He inserted before me in the last window!
How is that possible? You didn't see him on your way here?
Nope.
I got back on the radio.
"Goddamn it, Opie, where are you?"
Opie came back on the radio, but was broken up by static.
"I... lost.... where.... soon."
"Opie, come back, where are you?"
"I'm a little lost.. I'll .... "
More minutes dragged by. We now broke apart and scattered as they enemy pressed the hill. We were low crawling through the bushes, taking pots shots at people who were only meters away. It was getting bleak.
My radio crackled. This time Opie was completely unintelligible. The Motorolas had a 2 mile range. Now there were trees and minor elevation changes, but the field was only about a halfmile wide and clearly marked with tape. If he was on the field, there's no way he could be stressing the coverage.
And then a big push came and rolled up over the hill in a wave and we were all dead.
We went off the field, rekitted and headed back to the respawn. As we sat there, Opie came stumbling out from the woods opposite the field.
Opie? Where the hell have you been? Taking a piss?
OMG guys! I'm so happy to see you!
Where have you been?
I don't know!
What do you mean you don't know?
I inserted and I went left and then I just kept walking.
.... and...?
And I walked and I walked and I couldn't hear you guys shooting any more!
So?
So then I came out in a backyard and there were little kids on a trampoline and I wanted to ask for directions... but they saw me and started screaming for their mommy so I just turned around and came back.
What?
At this point Opie was mentally re-classified from 'questionable asset' to 'well-intentioned liability.' His impact was far from over and his coup-de-grace was yet to come, but we can break down something of what happened thanks to Google Earth. It is probably for the best he did not ask for directions. Given the choice between facing a mother who emerges from her house to the chorus of her screaming children and sees a young man dressed to the 9's in camo and burdened with intimidating-looking equipment asking directions in a panic and a hurried retreat, I think he opted for the right move. Though what I wouldn't have given to be a fly on that trampoline if it had gone down.
Here we have a general field map. The borders of Sherwood Forest play area are shown in yellow. You can clearly our respawn, base and location of the Alamo and our 'red' zone of responsibility. Opie had around 100 meters to cover and could have done so in less than a minute. But assuming that he respawned as Josh was leaving the field, and then Josh had to wait another 20 minutes to get back in play, and he arrived before Opie... and then we fought another 10 - 15 minutes before getting overrun, returned to the camping area and then back to respawn (10 minutes).... that is nearly an hour. The journey of the ill-fated Opie had to be substantial.
Out of curiosity after the game, I set out to analyze what he did wrong. Where the hell had he gone? A house? A trampoline? An hour journey? As far as I can figure there are 4 houses within walking distance that he could have reached.
Here we have a map showing the 4 most likely locations he arrived to.
House A is the closest possibility, but I think we can rule that out because he would have had to enter the field and get so turned around that he crossed back over the tapeline, back over the road and headed completely in the wrong direction immediately. He was no genius, but I don't think this is a reasonable hypothesis.
Given that we met him emerging from the west when we arrived back as spawn, House D presents itself as a nice option, but again, he would have had to get turned around 180 degrees while still in familiar territory, occupied by friendlies and within earshot of the spawn, other players etc. So let's rule out D as unlikely as well.
House B then becomes a possibility. If you zoom in they have a pool and a nice home, possibly own a trampoline as well. Opie could have gotten on the field, headed north following the tapeline and then mistakenly crossed it and continued. But that house is only a few hundred meters from the field. Even if he was stalking his way towards it, it does not justify a 40+ minute journey that brought him near to the limits of radio range.
That leaves us only with House C, unless he trucked out even further. I lean toward C and I am inclined to suppose the following occurred.
Opie enters the field shortly after Josh has been shot, exited and turned back on his radio. Opie is laden with paint and water and he wasn't the most fit guy, so he starts humping towards us. Assuming it was a close helo drop (it was the afternoon, and we had stopped the suicide runs), he is close to HQ and heads towards our base to intersect the tapeline path and wrap up to the Alamo from behind, the safest and most familiar approach. However, the swampy bushes behind the base may have obscured the tapeline. At some point, he mistakenly crosses it. He continues heading North, and in typical Opie fashion does not question why the sounds of fighting recede. He is loyal, we need paint, he chugs on for nearly a half a mile through forest, hill and dale until he emerges, tired and confused, in the backyard of House C and encounters the children. Here, he realizes he has fucked up, is lost and not in Kansas anymore. He panics and begins heading back the way he came. He angles west in his confusion, intersects the wood road that he should have followed back to camp, but crosses it and continues on, wandering southerly until he gets within earshot of the respawn, whereupon he makes a hard turn to the East and rejoins us at the spawn.
It is possible he walked further, especially given the degradation of radio quality. But I think these four houses are the most reasonable, given the time frame, his loadout and ... skills. There are obvious and very basic navigational mistakes he made that and easy corrections he should have made that we don't really need to go into, so here I simply present you the most likely Odyssey of Opie.
Part 2: Heart of Darkness, coming soon.
Monday, March 25, 2013
The Importance of Getting your Ass Kicked
I shall confess (as if it were a Sin!) that I have been reading a lot by TB lately. Which is some circles is probably unforgivable. But I don't really like circles anyway. I'm more of a polygon kind of guy. A lot of the recent postings have dealt with what seems to be ongoing issues relating to the RPA group, hypocrisy, the PC movement in paintball etc.
Let me come right out and say I don't agree with everything Mr. TB has to say, but that doesn't mean he isn't worth reading. If an MA in Anthro studying Iraqi war refugees will teach you anything, it is that you need to collect data from every side of a story before you even begin considering making judgement calls (and that you should make your kids study IT or engineering, in Chinese). I don't have a dog in the fight, nor do I have sufficient information about the specific events and movement in question to make any judgement. But I will say the posts have provoked thought, which I believe to be one of TB's main goals, and which is in stark contrast from a voice that is trying to dictate thought. And provoking thought is very different than simply provoking... ie flaming, trolling, baiting, being antagonistic for the sake of conflict etc etc. He would like people to think, to consider his argument, not agree with him, just consider his point of view. And while he is sometimes defensive, I suppose he has every right to be, if he feels he is under attack. These nudges of thought have been going on for a few months now, and I thought it was time to let them out. This is not the most coherent pb post I've ever done, but so be it.
On SPBTV
First, a note of self-awareness. In this post I will get critical of e-celebs. Now it would be easy to accuse me and the other members of SPbTV of wanting to be e-celebs. We run a youtube channel. We talk about stuff and share games. But the e-celeb movement is far greater than just paintball and is a sad commentary on our digital age. I consider it a part of the 'reality' movement and I think it is detrimental to many aspects of society. I also can argue that SPbTV is not an e-celeb platform at all. We are, as Monty Python put it, more of an anarcho-syndaclist commune that enjoys paintball, does not mind getting more people to play (will get into this later) and happily shares vids on the internet whether you watch them or not. Most of our 'fan base' is a few hundred people that know the contributors and thus most of our views come from the northeast region, Sweden, and the southern seaboard where Doc gets his kicks in. We don't make a penny from channel (I think we actually have made about $1.87 from google click throughs since 2009. We're gonna buy a boat, motherfucker).
We aren't using the channel to make money or to make any sort of serious soap-box stand. We just film paintball, occasionally drink and talk about paintball, and live our merry lives. It helps keep us mercilessly free of the political meatgrinder and allows us to enjoy the hobby/sport at our leisure. In short, we are believers who aren't selling anything. We are just creating and sharing as we feel moved to do so. You can criticize if you want, but in the end we will continue doing what we do until we don't want to do it anymore... at which point we might stop... or not... but we don't have much of an agenda other than enjoy ourselves and entertain the small but loyal fanbase we have who know us as the humorous, hard-playing nutjobs that we are.
Now let's get into it. I'm going to discuss losing, but frame it around some other important issues I have watched arise in paintball in the last few years, VIP, NJNAM, issues of sponsorship, what I am calling the MVP vs MSSPP (most successfully self-promoted player), the argument over quantity of players vs quality of games and a few more things as I write them out. Sit back and enjoy.
VIP EVENT 2008
I've only been on the field with TB once, at the shitshow known as the Viper VIP I event in 2008. This game was rife with all kinds of problems but it taught me an immense amount about the dark, political side of paintball, the danger of self-promoted teams, the uselessness of forums, and who is worth their salt in a gunfight when the chips are down, versus who wants laurels for showing up/can't handle an unfair world. To be fair, I have no grudge against Viper and have enjoyed his games, but again, this might be one of the perks of being a player's player and staying in the periphery of paintball as much as possible. In regards to TB, I will say prior to finding his blog a few years ago, I only knew him through the demonization on the forum prior to VIP one, where numerous people painted all kinds of dark and evil pictures of him. I chose to listen to Barney who said TB was an extremely proficient commander and not someone to underestimate. Barney is usually a sage about these things. I managed to shoot the 'ever so evil' Mr. TB in the back of the head on the stairs of the castle at VIP, an act I was particularly proud of given the amount of propaganda we were fed in advance. (Again, he is far from angelic, but I certainly think he has an unfair bias against him) We flipped a table up to block the stairs to the tower and hit him as he came up. He argued with the ref that the rules explicitly stated that moving bunkers was not allowed and we counter argued that the table was not a bunker until we had moved it. The ref thought we had a valid argument and let it slide. touché, rule lawyers, touché. And we got our ass beat and everyone hated him more.
But then in listening to Cilio talk about him in the years that followed perspectives change. But this was, until sifting through his writings, the extent of my interaction with him. It will suffice to say that I bear the man no ill will, as he has never done anything against me. The people I respect in paintball, while perhaps not fans of his, have at least a healthy respect for his capabilities as a General. Clearly the inner circles of media, industry, production, field ownership and long time veteran players have YEARS and years of bad blood between each other. And as previously stated, I lack sufficient data to justify any final judgement so I'll keep my focus on things that I know and experienced and localize judgement to those games/incidents, not on individuals, their companies, the company they keep etc. But I think the TB forum has seen a lot of discussion about politically correct paintball movements, movements that want to be all inclusive and honor ppl for participating and this is something I have my own opinions about, and if reading the writings of 'the Evil TB' have triggered thoughts, they still deserve consideration.
4. The Danger of Hubris
MVPs are Earned on Game-day.
E-Celebs and 'Sponsorship'
They know it. You know it. I know it. No one wants to say anything about it because that's just the way things are but we all know they get a discount on the products in return for promoting them... and that's it. The deal may be a little sweeter here and there, but that is the basic gist. If they have a youtube channel or a blog with significant reach, then they might even get stuff for free. This does not mean they are a good player, good for the hobby/sport, or even a good person. They get 'sponsored' because they harassed a company with how awesome they are, know someone who knows someone, impressed someone at a single game and/or have social media reach. The problem is that reach is both fleeting and has no reflection on their skill as a player. If you have been around for awhile and woken up to things, then I don't have to tell you much more, but if you are new to paintball and 'impressed' by people walking around preaching about sponsorship, don't be. There was a time when I too was immensely impressed, but paintball sponsorship is a vehicle for the industry to sell more stuff. And unlike Redbull supporting this guy....
.... the paintball industry doesn't have to shell out millions of dollars to put their name on a player or team, because the paintball culture is so obsessed with 'getting sponsored' that they will do it for a merchandise discount. It costs the industry a minuscule amount of profit margin, but the team/individual typically immediately feels validated, special, and superior. When someone comes to you and says they live in Malibu in a house that their paintball sponsorship helps pay for, you call me and let me know so that we can be impressed together. Til then, keep your grains of salt near to hand.
This is less of an issue in Speedball because I think speedballers are much more in tune with the industry and probably less prone to the fantastical self-aggrandizement and imaginations that people in scenario/mil-sim so easily buy into. Why? Probably because speedball remains focused on competition... in which there are winners and losers... in which hard work is rewarded and anything you say can easily be decided on the court. Your smaktalking can be validated in a matter of minutes in front of spectators and if you aren't as awesome as you say you are, everyone will know pretty damn quickly. In addition, companies sponsoring speedball teams incur higher cuts to their margins. The cost of playing speedball competitively includes gear, training, practices, training camps, managers and coaches, much much more than just mask, tactical vests and cool looking 'woodsball' guns. With greater cost comes the desire to ensure the sponsorship is money well spent, so speedball teams with a laundry list of high end sponsors are more likely to be talented and well trained than a scenario player with a similar list who 'gets excited' about their products in public instead of using them in tournaments streamed live and watched around the world. Just remember that the scenario player listing all their sponsors probably still pays about 70 - 80% for their stuff and isn't being flown around the world on any company dime, and is incurring next to no cost to the sponsor. And also beware of the self-sponsorship. If I start a company called Awesome Industries and then use that company to sponsor myself and my team, there might just be a conflict of interest there. Just sayin'.
There are always a few exceptions, but those are reserved for either extremely skilled players or for extremely good self-promoters.
If you have been in paintball long enough to love it and have decided to stay with it because you derive satisfaction from playing, good. If you haven't reached this point of Zen yet, I will warn you that if you get obsessed with sponsorship, you will only get frustrated, even more so in the world with Youtube. Self-promotion works two-fold. One, it helps the individual feel important and validated, and two, it generates reach, which is turn can be parlayed into discount/free stuff. Again, none of this has anything to do with paintball skill. I would advise young/new players to avoid eating at the trough of the self-promoters, not because I have anything personally against them (I don't bother to care), but because for your own personal development as a player, you will not learn anything and you will only feed the problem. You should go out and find players who are much better than you. Here's a hint, most of them don't have a youtube channel. Go out, find those players, and play with them, talk with them, LISTEN to them, watch them.
Here's some basic tips to help you out:
Your gun really doesn't matter. Keep it clean and shooting between 250 and 300.
Your mask really doesn't matter so long as it protects your eyeballs.
Your camo style doesn't matter if you learn how to move (so long as it isn't fire-engine orange... which could be a detriment).
Your style of play should be acquired through watching others and trial and error, not pre-determined or adhered to by agreement in advance. You hamstring yourself and your ability to grow and change.
Always be open to changing up your playing style and challenge yourself annually (Recommendations: pump play for a year, play with your non-dominant hand for a year, play with limited paint for a year etc etc)
Whether you are sponsored or not doesn't matter at all and has very little if anything to do with your skill as a player. Don't ever feel diminished by or inferior to a sponsored player unless your experience with them makes you respect them (which is actually unrelated to their sponsors... see how that works?)
Trust (just about) no one!
Nothing that any of these talking heads is telling you matters (including me!), this applies to life, not just pb, but we'll keep it focused. If you want to get better at paintball, you have to play with and against people who are better than you and focus on specific skills and techniques. That means you're going to have to lose. No one ever got better watching someone else talk about how awesome they are. Nor did they get better winning all the time. People get better because we go out and problem solve and we figure out how to do new things to win. So stop eating mental garbage and worrying about noise noise noise and just go out there, play, and get your ass kicked really really hard and then figure out what you did wrong.
I've seen Dave drop a base so quickly the other team accused him of cheating and had the game reset... and he dropped the base again in just as little time. That is physical skill. I have watched Barney role-play and General his way to a dozen victories and remain above the political shitshow. That is mental skill.
I don't know what type of gun either of them prefers and it doesn't matter. Just take all those concerns and chuck them. Play with a goddamn slingshot. It will teach you how to sneak and make good decisions in a hurry.
The most important thing you can do is learn to lose. To lose with grace, dignity, after a hard fight, and then get back up and try again. Don't ever feel entitled to anything you haven't earned and especially don't let other ppl get away with this ideology. Anywhere in life. It makes us lesser, weaker people, as a whole. You may have to adjust your youtube subscriptions or at least the mental lens you watch with, but it will be worth it in the end if you actually want to improve.
NJNAM 2009 may have been rigged. I don't know. Again, after any game the rumor mill spills excuses on to the interwebz to accommodate the losers and strip satisfaction from the victor (this is why you should probably reduce use of forums as well). What I do know is that at one point Tack, Ricky and I stood with our feet against the command tent/spawn point shooting in every direction while Dave, Norbert, Paco and about 60 people from the other team stormed our base area. Nearly every other player on our team ran from the field outside the tapeline. Fled. Routed. We're not talking a few people. Several hundred running through the tapeline like it was a marathon finish line. And this was the third time that game that Dave and his boys pulled this move. Maybe it was because our General had pissed someone off. Maybe it was because we had 'been given all the walkons to make up for the difference in numbers' but maybe it was just because our team was sucking and couldn't figure out where to dig deep. Tack and Ricky and I stood there with our feet on the tent which essentially made us immortal and took shot after shot until we were surrounded and the game produced called it. We fought both days and night until we were burger meat and then we never played against Dave again. But when the game was over and we had lost as team, the 5 or 6 of us who had stood there surrounded while everyone fled had maintained our dignity. We had fought a losing battle with honor and the excuses were for other people. If you must lose a paintball game, and statistically, that is going to happen to you, then you should not be among the excusers. Be among the ones bloody and ruined at the end who were beaten on the field, but not broken and beaten in spirit who slink away to take potshots on forums. There are no excuses that really justify leaving or quitting in a way that also allows you to 'win' or 'equalize' the events on the field. You can decide to leave, and that is fine, it is a decision, but these come also with consequences and you must be able to live with them. And if you can, fine. I've quit a few things in my life for good reasons and I live with the consequences. But you can't make an excuse for why you quit and then have 'ifs, ands, buts and caveats' to try and cover up the consequences, to try and dodge them. So don't try. If you can't handle loss, don't play paintball. And check yourself, because Life is going to knock you around something fierce.
So I have wandered and drifted in my ramblings and rantings and I probably have more to say or could have done a better job but so be it. I didn't mean to offend anyone, but people really need to become more self-critical. Criticism is healthy. It's like maggots eating dead flesh. It's gross and sticky, but in the end it is better for everyone than gangrene. Trust me. Been there.
So go out there. Play your heart. Play with what you have, don't worry about the next big thing. Your budget for new gear will get you to 2 years worth of games, and you will learn a lot more playing more games than you will playing one game with a new gun. Take your licks. Learn from your mistakes. Don't run your mouth (because then you give your opponent the opportunity to rub it in your face, a satisfaction that I never have allowed any opponent), Don't care about sponsorship too much, and don't eat at the pigsties of self-promotion when you can go out and play/learn from actual masters.
Your homework for 2013
Lose a game by a margin of at least 50% of the points while only leaving the field for paint and air for a rental-level or pump gun. It's harder than you think. You'll have to pick your team and event wisely (the game producer has to not bend the rules to buffer a losing team and your team will have to perform terribly). Write me an email when you've done it.
/Rant
Benny Out
Let me come right out and say I don't agree with everything Mr. TB has to say, but that doesn't mean he isn't worth reading. If an MA in Anthro studying Iraqi war refugees will teach you anything, it is that you need to collect data from every side of a story before you even begin considering making judgement calls (and that you should make your kids study IT or engineering, in Chinese). I don't have a dog in the fight, nor do I have sufficient information about the specific events and movement in question to make any judgement. But I will say the posts have provoked thought, which I believe to be one of TB's main goals, and which is in stark contrast from a voice that is trying to dictate thought. And provoking thought is very different than simply provoking... ie flaming, trolling, baiting, being antagonistic for the sake of conflict etc etc. He would like people to think, to consider his argument, not agree with him, just consider his point of view. And while he is sometimes defensive, I suppose he has every right to be, if he feels he is under attack. These nudges of thought have been going on for a few months now, and I thought it was time to let them out. This is not the most coherent pb post I've ever done, but so be it.
My family doesn't have a lot of traditions, but one of them when I was young was to watch 'The Princess Bride' at least once a year. I would postulate that TPB and Calvin and Hobbes had more effect on my intellectual development than any amount of schooling. You could obviously jump on that as a 'weakness' or 'a pity' or 'very telling' but I wear it as a badge of honor. You can learn a tremendous amount about a healthy approach to life from those two sources alone.
One of the telling quotes from TPB occurs when the princess has been kidnapped by a pirate and they are having a discussion while they flee their pursuers. The pirate at one point turns to the Princess and says,
"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." LINK
This concept is one that I think America in particular has forgotten, or wants to ignore. I believe many of the 'problems' in paintball are systemic to our society, not just the sport/hobby/LARP etc that is the many-faceted passion we all share. For the sake of this blog I will try to shy away from larger issues of politics, economics, etc, and focus on impact of these problems on paintball. But first point people should take away from this is that I generally don't trust people who are selling something. Hunter S. Thompson called America a country of 200 million used car sales-men, and the older I get, the more I think this is applicable. It is not that everyone is a lemon-dealer... but many of the loudest voices are. And one of the surest ways to know if someone is a lemon-dealer is to see how well they stand up to investigation, criticism and differing points of view.
The true believer simply and strongly believes. He or she does/markets/say/sells whatever with conviction and therefore they don't usually rise to defend their 'thing' from an emotional position, but rather from one of facts. If you say their product is inferior to X (product can be anything from a gun to a field to youtube channel to an idea to a philosophy), they will want to know specifics about your complaint and they will answer these back with measured responses. You may still disagree at the end of the day, but believers will go on believing and working towards their goals and when they feel they have addressed your concerns professionally, they will just move on. The believer understands there are many roads into the future that could be beneficial. They have chosen the one they are most passionate about and leave open the others for pursuit. They will take criticism in stride, leave dialogue opportunities open and conduct themselves reasonably.
The Lemon-dealers of life jump down your throat almost immediately at the first sign of criticism. Their goal is to silence you or relegate your opinion to the background. Lemon-dealers do not take kindly to criticism. They know, consciously or subconsciously, the lack of true value in their product and thus their primary concern is quelling all inquiry into that value. They are insecure in their position. Want to know if someone is selling you something? Criticize it rationally and if you get an emotional response in return, your lemon-dealing-alarm should go off immediately. If they can, they will draw on any and all support necessary to ensure they discredit your opinion. The Lemon dealer wants to corner some piece of the product market (again, material, geography, ideology) and use it for their own benefit. And don't let them wave their success in your face as testament to anything. Untold millions of dollars have been made, scammed and stolen by lemon dealers in every industry ever. Money just means they are a successful con artist, not a worthwhile human being (Convincing you to reframe what you value in life is a blog for another day).
This is why, after spending several days digging into TB's world I feel that yes, he can be a dick, an asshat and a bit superior at times, he is also not selling anything. And since I trust that he is not selling anything, I am more inclined to at least give his opinions the time of day. And it would also seem he is deep into it with various groups that may or may not be Lemon-dealers threatened by his message. There are many people I have met who hate TB for a variety of reasons. Playing Scenario game rules to the hilt/letter of the law. I understand their frustration, but I also understand where he is coming from. There are people who just don't like losing paintball games. That's too bad, because life is full of loss and if you can't handle a paintball game, then you can't handle life.
Which brings us to the the second and probably most important quote from the Princess Bride, one that was a mainstay in our house... "Get used to disappointment." Link
I'm going to open this up now into a series of posts about LOSING paintball games, why the games were lost, why losing and coming back from loss is important and why I feel somewhat inclined to agree with TB and his 'ilk' about the problems with the PC movement, shameless self-promotion and other issues.
Which brings us to the the second and probably most important quote from the Princess Bride, one that was a mainstay in our house... "Get used to disappointment." Link
I'm going to open this up now into a series of posts about LOSING paintball games, why the games were lost, why losing and coming back from loss is important and why I feel somewhat inclined to agree with TB and his 'ilk' about the problems with the PC movement, shameless self-promotion and other issues.
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| Better buckle up. |
First, a note of self-awareness. In this post I will get critical of e-celebs. Now it would be easy to accuse me and the other members of SPbTV of wanting to be e-celebs. We run a youtube channel. We talk about stuff and share games. But the e-celeb movement is far greater than just paintball and is a sad commentary on our digital age. I consider it a part of the 'reality' movement and I think it is detrimental to many aspects of society. I also can argue that SPbTV is not an e-celeb platform at all. We are, as Monty Python put it, more of an anarcho-syndaclist commune that enjoys paintball, does not mind getting more people to play (will get into this later) and happily shares vids on the internet whether you watch them or not. Most of our 'fan base' is a few hundred people that know the contributors and thus most of our views come from the northeast region, Sweden, and the southern seaboard where Doc gets his kicks in. We don't make a penny from channel (I think we actually have made about $1.87 from google click throughs since 2009. We're gonna buy a boat, motherfucker).
We aren't using the channel to make money or to make any sort of serious soap-box stand. We just film paintball, occasionally drink and talk about paintball, and live our merry lives. It helps keep us mercilessly free of the political meatgrinder and allows us to enjoy the hobby/sport at our leisure. In short, we are believers who aren't selling anything. We are just creating and sharing as we feel moved to do so. You can criticize if you want, but in the end we will continue doing what we do until we don't want to do it anymore... at which point we might stop... or not... but we don't have much of an agenda other than enjoy ourselves and entertain the small but loyal fanbase we have who know us as the humorous, hard-playing nutjobs that we are.
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| Panel 2... said no SPbTV member, ever*. *Sober |
Now let's get into it. I'm going to discuss losing, but frame it around some other important issues I have watched arise in paintball in the last few years, VIP, NJNAM, issues of sponsorship, what I am calling the MVP vs MSSPP (most successfully self-promoted player), the argument over quantity of players vs quality of games and a few more things as I write them out. Sit back and enjoy.
VIP EVENT 2008
I've only been on the field with TB once, at the shitshow known as the Viper VIP I event in 2008. This game was rife with all kinds of problems but it taught me an immense amount about the dark, political side of paintball, the danger of self-promoted teams, the uselessness of forums, and who is worth their salt in a gunfight when the chips are down, versus who wants laurels for showing up/can't handle an unfair world. To be fair, I have no grudge against Viper and have enjoyed his games, but again, this might be one of the perks of being a player's player and staying in the periphery of paintball as much as possible. In regards to TB, I will say prior to finding his blog a few years ago, I only knew him through the demonization on the forum prior to VIP one, where numerous people painted all kinds of dark and evil pictures of him. I chose to listen to Barney who said TB was an extremely proficient commander and not someone to underestimate. Barney is usually a sage about these things. I managed to shoot the 'ever so evil' Mr. TB in the back of the head on the stairs of the castle at VIP, an act I was particularly proud of given the amount of propaganda we were fed in advance. (Again, he is far from angelic, but I certainly think he has an unfair bias against him) We flipped a table up to block the stairs to the tower and hit him as he came up. He argued with the ref that the rules explicitly stated that moving bunkers was not allowed and we counter argued that the table was not a bunker until we had moved it. The ref thought we had a valid argument and let it slide. touché, rule lawyers, touché. And we got our ass beat and everyone hated him more.
But then in listening to Cilio talk about him in the years that followed perspectives change. But this was, until sifting through his writings, the extent of my interaction with him. It will suffice to say that I bear the man no ill will, as he has never done anything against me. The people I respect in paintball, while perhaps not fans of his, have at least a healthy respect for his capabilities as a General. Clearly the inner circles of media, industry, production, field ownership and long time veteran players have YEARS and years of bad blood between each other. And as previously stated, I lack sufficient data to justify any final judgement so I'll keep my focus on things that I know and experienced and localize judgement to those games/incidents, not on individuals, their companies, the company they keep etc. But I think the TB forum has seen a lot of discussion about politically correct paintball movements, movements that want to be all inclusive and honor ppl for participating and this is something I have my own opinions about, and if reading the writings of 'the Evil TB' have triggered thoughts, they still deserve consideration.
Prior to the VIP, I was completely in the dark about the larger scenario world. The game was an invite-only grudge match and 'anybody who was anybody' was vying for a slot on the roster. I won a spot on the list through sheer physical on-field performance at EMR that impressed the Professor of Ambush Alpha. He mentioned the upcoming game in Indiana and I wrote to him to see if there were any slots left. There were two, which he gave to me and my brother, solely on the merit of my performance at EMR and the promise that we would bring our A game. This is to say we had no street-credit, no sponsors, no money, nada. We were nobodies, which in hindsight, was greatly to our advantage as we had no 'face' to lose at the game. But we treated the opportunity to go to the game very seriously. We ate rice and peanut butter for 2 months prior to the game to save up the funds for the journey. We trained like hell. We had told the Prof that we would bring it and that is exactly what we intended to do. We showed up to the game with an A5, a LAW, maverick pump and two 98C's. We bought one case of paint to split between the two of us. And we brought it harder and played more intensely than many who showed up with trailers, armories and a nascar list of sponsors.
What is really important to know is that our team, this composite of all these 'awesome' scenario teams from the East got its ass kicked mercilessly by Hawk and TB.
I've had several years to reflect on this. It would be easy to chalk it up to factors 'beyond our control' and in so doing, pass the buck/blame/responsibility. Certainly there are advantages that the other team had. They had TB and his command experience, as well as members of Thunderstruck, but we also had quite a lot of time and opportunity to recruit. However, Hawk and TB recruited effective teams for winning the game... which is different that recruiting loud, self-promoting teams who feel they are entitled to a spot at the table. These teams had experience playing on that particular game field (something that most of our players did not), which certainly helps, but we arrived a day early and had ample time to recon the terrain. Nearly all of our players had to complete a 10 - 17 hour drive to get to the field. But so did several of TBs teams. These are factors that certainly played a role, but I think we lost for much more specific reasons for which we, as a team, were accountable.
1. Recruitment of 'well-known' teams does not equal recruitment of a winning team.
Admittedly, the VIP event was supposed to be a grudge match between the best of the East and the best of the MW/W. The problem with scenario paintball is that there remains to this day, no good way to determine who the best scenario teams are. Worse, a team may have an excellent player, but the rest of that team may be deadweight. I say deadweight here because this was a grudge match, a competition. If you enjoy paintball, self-promote, have a few sponsors and attend a lot of games, in the current world you have the ability (as opposed to the right) to claim you are somebody in the scenario paintball world. The problem is that in a competitive scenario game, none of those things matter. And a team with a single good player should send that player, not bring along 6 other guys as the coattails. To be invited to such an event and expect to be useful, you need to be either very smart, very fit/proficient or preferably both (if you look at say TB/Cilio you have a good commander who isn't really cut out for repeated field sprints and a straight killer, so things balance). Simply because you have a banner and sponsors doesn't make you the best. But this mentality was rife on the private forum used to plan the match. A lot of bragging. A lot of posturing. A lot of people thinking the game was already won simply by the 'merit' of the teams who were attending. I gained a lot of respect for some teams at this event, and I lost complete faith in other teams and could not read their postings, websites or promotional material afterwards without a smirk. This was a watershed wakeup for me and I'm glad I went through it, even if it was quite literally physically painful. Internet warriors abound. Real ones are few and far between.
In the end, over 30 people didn't even bother to show up. In a game that was designed around 150 vs 150 and in which months of planning had gone into deciding who would be responsible for which zones on the field, this had a serious impact. To those people who stayed home at the last minute, I have very little respect. Short of a family emergency, which I could understand, you had every reason to be there. You took roster slots away from people who would have gladly gone to the game and then shorted the rest of us. When I say we ate nothing but peanut butter and rice to afford the game, I mean it. We sacrificed for what we thought would be an opportunity to play in an epic paintball game with the best of the best and we were left hanging on game day. But still, ~120 vs ~140-150 ish is not enough to justify getting mauled so badly. I've had better fights with 3:1 odds against. There's more to this.
2. Too many cooks.
We had a LOT of excellent commanders recruited for the game. Prof, Barney, Decker, Herc just to name a few. The problem is that I could go on naming names. I'd have to dig out a team list, but we had at least 10 people who have commanded games. These people were assigned as group leaders for the zone control. This created an issue when things started to go south. Imagine a room with Patton, Bradley, Eisenhower, and half a dozen other Generals with only a loose understanding of who is really the decision maker. With too many General officers we had too many shifting thoughts on tactics and movements. In a 150 player game you need more reliable shooters than you need field-grade commanders. And every commander that got recruited wanted to bring along 'his' guys that he trusted and vouched for. We ended up with a very top heavy team structure. A 150-player game is an Army company, it's 4 platoons and an HQ. At most, you need 2 field grade commanders and good comms with your FCs/PLs, who are adept at leading, but not necessarily picked from the General-caste. We had a General, 2 XO's, 5-6 FCs (also former generals) with their 2nds, the comms units, dedicated roleplayers, Team and Squad leaders and on and on etc etc. It was fun, of course, because everyone had a 'role' and felt important. But tactically it was a mistake. When you break it down, over 25 people, more than 1:5 or twice what an infantry line unit would field, were in leadership positions or redundancy leadership positions. The HQ needed to be slimmed and the rest of the force needed to be shooter/tactically heavy, with people who could take initiative and have the fitness and shooting skill to win paintball while the HQ set forth clear, concise objectives. This is not what happened. At all.
With everyone stirring the pot and having their own ideas, we lacked a necessary clarity of purpose. Tactics were constantly shifting. The FC's were pulling people out of zones for missions. Things got confused. The airdrops were a disaster. Viper has gotten a lot of flack about the helo-drops over the years. I understand what they are trying to simulate but their execution has always been somewhat lacking. But the opposing team used theirs very effectively, so I cannot say we lost the game do to the helo-drops. But the mis-use of them contributed. We would be lined up and annihilated and have to wait another 30 minutes while Cilio and his boys ran amok on the field knocking out missions. As a Player's player, there is little more frustrating than having to sit on the side-line because you got helo-dropped into an open field for the 4th time in a row. I don't know what happened at the command level, and I respect most of the men who were there in positions of leadership, but too many leaders was a problem.
We had a LOT of excellent commanders recruited for the game. Prof, Barney, Decker, Herc just to name a few. The problem is that I could go on naming names. I'd have to dig out a team list, but we had at least 10 people who have commanded games. These people were assigned as group leaders for the zone control. This created an issue when things started to go south. Imagine a room with Patton, Bradley, Eisenhower, and half a dozen other Generals with only a loose understanding of who is really the decision maker. With too many General officers we had too many shifting thoughts on tactics and movements. In a 150 player game you need more reliable shooters than you need field-grade commanders. And every commander that got recruited wanted to bring along 'his' guys that he trusted and vouched for. We ended up with a very top heavy team structure. A 150-player game is an Army company, it's 4 platoons and an HQ. At most, you need 2 field grade commanders and good comms with your FCs/PLs, who are adept at leading, but not necessarily picked from the General-caste. We had a General, 2 XO's, 5-6 FCs (also former generals) with their 2nds, the comms units, dedicated roleplayers, Team and Squad leaders and on and on etc etc. It was fun, of course, because everyone had a 'role' and felt important. But tactically it was a mistake. When you break it down, over 25 people, more than 1:5 or twice what an infantry line unit would field, were in leadership positions or redundancy leadership positions. The HQ needed to be slimmed and the rest of the force needed to be shooter/tactically heavy, with people who could take initiative and have the fitness and shooting skill to win paintball while the HQ set forth clear, concise objectives. This is not what happened. At all.
With everyone stirring the pot and having their own ideas, we lacked a necessary clarity of purpose. Tactics were constantly shifting. The FC's were pulling people out of zones for missions. Things got confused. The airdrops were a disaster. Viper has gotten a lot of flack about the helo-drops over the years. I understand what they are trying to simulate but their execution has always been somewhat lacking. But the opposing team used theirs very effectively, so I cannot say we lost the game do to the helo-drops. But the mis-use of them contributed. We would be lined up and annihilated and have to wait another 30 minutes while Cilio and his boys ran amok on the field knocking out missions. As a Player's player, there is little more frustrating than having to sit on the side-line because you got helo-dropped into an open field for the 4th time in a row. I don't know what happened at the command level, and I respect most of the men who were there in positions of leadership, but too many leaders was a problem.
3. Not being able to handle Loss.
Hemingway said that a true Man can be destroyed, but not defeated. Interesting concept. Hold that thought.
Hemingway said that a true Man can be destroyed, but not defeated. Interesting concept. Hold that thought.
We started losing the VIP from the first hour. The Zone my group was assigned too was supposed to have 40 people. We had 7. We were given the same task. Take and hold the zone. Obviously this didn't work. However, since the 7 of us that did show up had been recruited for recon skills, we fought a decent guerilla action in our area all day long, hiding and sniping, harassment only. We managed to get Paco because he was talking to a ref about using a sniper card, so we knew he was a HVT when we opened up on one of our ambushes. But that was about all we could do. The group commander with the command radio fucked off to join the mission team and left us with nothing but our inter-squad coms. We were left to our own devices for the entire day and if we survived the suicide helo-drops, when we got back to our zone, it was always overrun. We picked a hilltop as our rally point and would put out skimirshers just to slow down advance and prevent tapeline runs, but without comms, things got so confused during one cat-and-mouse skirmish with Damage Inc that our own command initiated an assault on the hilltop where we were hiding and shot several of us in the back. There was massive failure going on all over the place. This is not to say that many players brought it as hard as they could, but as we started to lose, morale began to plummet and we needed to reorganize, not come apart. Some of us did that in small ways, but other ppl bailed.
This is where the Hemingway quote becomes applicable. My brother and I only spent one hour of the entire scenario game play off the field voluntarily (which is to say, when not dead). The rest of the time we were always in it, trying to at least do the job we had been assigned to do (day 1). I have heard from reliable sources that 2 hours after the game started, significant numbers of players on our team were threatening to pack up and go home. they were in the parking lot to this effect, while the rest of us were getting mauled in the woods. We opted for destruction over defeat. It was quite obviously that we were losing and badly. But this has happened to lots of people in history. Thermopylae, Bastogne, Ia Drang. I am not comparing the scale and importance of those events to a backyard wargame in Indiana, but rather what people chose to do when in those situations. Admittedly, they did not have the option to pack up and go home, their choices were fight or die, but in a paintball game, there should be no excuse for not double-down and fighting on, rather than trying to pussy out and then blame XYZ (producer, field, other general, cheating etc etc etc) while you pack your bags. That is defeat.
4. The Danger of Hubris
Perhaps this ties back to the big name teams that were recruited and the shit that was talked up before the game. They set the bar extremely high (we will roll over them in the first hour), they talked it up to all the 'lesser' teams who weren't going (WE are going to the Invitation-only VIP event and we are going to kick ass), and they believed in their own hubris (I think I am awesome therefore I am). When we got our teeth kicked in in the first hour these narratives began to come apart. Not only would we have to fight very hard to make any semblance of a comeback, but there was a very clear possibility that we would lose and that they would have to return to their various operational theaters, bearing the shame and blame for a crushing defeat. People seemed much more inclined to excuse what was happening than admit we were playing an inferior game of paintball, face that fact and try to overcome it.
Josh and I, and Tack & EOD, had very little to lose. We were the riffraff, the unknown dregs that nobody knew. We came to ball and we intended to do it. So we did not feel this pressure. But I pray that wherever I end up in paintball, I never reach the point where I am packing my bags and thinking up excuses to leave so I can slip away. Your life is never at stake in a paintball game, only your reputation, which is not helped by exaggeration, self-inflation, pre-game smack talk and then running away with your tail between your legs because things didn't go your way. At the very least, if you fight an honorable fight until the bell rings, you can redeem some measure of respect.
The night game rolled around. This was supposed to be an all-nighter. These were, after all, supposed to be the best of the best. Josh and I stood down for the dinner break, put on dry, dark clothes, rechrono'd and were ready to go. At the start of the night game, we had maybe 30 players at the spawn point. 30. the other 100... parking lot, sleeping, doing whatever, but not playing this game that they had talked about, promoted, bragged and hyped for months. Enough said on that point. I don't know how many the other team fielded, but it was more and they brought it.
The 30 of us that played, I think, enjoyed quite possibly the only few hours of success that the team had at VIP. People had brought generators so we lit up the area around our base like a state prison. I had cut out about 15 'Ivans' from Pizza boxes, head and shoulder silouhettes. We put them in the windows of the base so it looked like there were more people inside than there really were. Repeatedly during the night refs were asked to go into the base and check players who were actually Ivans that had been shot up. This was probably the one tactical stroke of genius I contributed at all to the game. At one point there were only three people defending our base and the Ivans drew sufficient fire to keep them alive as well as pissed off and sewed some doubt into the attackers.
We also rigged LEDs on the hill in the back that was our rally point and defended the tapeline against incursion. I don't know if the mission team got anything done, but I do know that at night, it was truly a battle in the sense that there were smaller number of dedicated players on both sides (we were still pathetically outnumbered through fault of our own sides laziness) who got to duke it out. Respect to everyone who played that night. I had a good time. Stressful but solid. And I was pissed when we were told to stand down only a few hours after it began. So much for fighting the hard fight.
The next day people began to leave, saying they wanted to get an early start on the long drive home, so we had even less people while the other team was starting the morning fresh and riding the wave of success to the win. We linked up with Tack, collected all the LAW cards and just ran around breaking things with rockets. We had fun. We channeled our rage and got things done There were issues of wiping by the enemy that we witnessed, but no doubt, people on our side wiped too. Our squad played a relentless and brutal second day, brought it every hour and left everything on the field. In the end the score was something like 20000 - 600 or some equally pathetic spread.
We went to the game with high hopes and expectations, buoyed by the bravado of teams who said they were somebody. We got our asses kicked and watched as many people gave up when the going got tough. Even this I can maybe let slide. No one enjoys being shot up day in and day out, but this is a risk we signed on for when we committed to the game. It was after the game when the excuses began to flow that I really became angry and that is an anger I have sat on for years. We lost because the other team was better, because they took advantage of opportunity that we failed to capitalize on, because we compounded our errors and because people on our team did not have, within them, the skills, determination and grit to earn a win. Excusing this away afterward always angered me. It was not done by everyone, but the loudest voices were the voices of rationalization. This anger that was fueled again at NJNAM 09 (with some of the same characters present) and one that I think is not helped by the PC movement, the one where participating is winning and everything is friendly. Trying to insulate oneself and others from Losing is a terrible idea. You don't learn anything from getting a purple-thanks-for-coming award. That just teaches you to show up. You also don't learn anything by expecting the win on a silver platter based on your 'record,' 'name' or sponsor-list. Life, paintball, whatever, doesn't owe you anything. I have seen what hard work produces. You want to see hardwork? Find a game that Dave Cilio is playing, find Dave and try to keep up. Try. And after you have been run ragged, outmaneuvered, outshot, base-dropped and destroyed the other team, tell me that you still think it is fair that a 15 year old who did such-and-such deserves to be rewarded or told they are the best? If you tell some little kid he is the best, he is going to believe you and then you know what happens? Stagnation. 0 personal growth. Why get better when you are already awesome?!
MVPs are Earned on Game-day.
The few times in paintball I have won an MVP I didn't even know it was happening. Two of those awards have been at fields in foreign countries where I knew NO ONE and did not speak the language the game was being conducted in (Russian and Finnish aren't my forte). In Finland, I didn't even have a gun since it was held up in customs. But I lost myself in the game and ran my heart out as a medic and at the end of the day I got a nice trophy and some recognition for those efforts and that was awesome. However, I also didn't go to those games expecting to win anything. I just went to play and it just so happened that my style, effort and commitment got seen and recognized. But having also Generaled, I know that there are anywhere between 5 and 50 people at a scenario event putting in that same level of effort. It is bad enough to have to try and single out one of them if no clear 'best player' emerged. To further insult them by handing it out to someone who didn't do any work OR to hand it out to someone who was just a lapdog for the general all day is ridiculous enough. Now we want everyone to feel like they accomplished something. And this is somewhere where I agree with the 'denizens' of the TB world. I have run with Dave, with Tack, with Barney... I know what the top players are capable of and I know how much they put in to it and when they receive recognition it is recognition that they earned through deeds done on the field. Dave dropped a base in the middle of the night after falling off a cliff and slicing his leg open! MVP EARNED. In blood.
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| You're all Dead! Now... take me to the ER. |
... and at those same games I have seen other ppl emerge from their cars halfway through the morning expecting that they will get an award because they talked a lot of shit on the forum or because they just feel they are awesome or because they graced the field with their presence in the 11th hour or for a dozen other reasons. Every kill they make they run back to the general and recount the story while the game is in progress. If you have to tell someone you're the MVP, you're not the MVP.
'Promoting the 'Sport''
Now I differ from many in the TB camp because I don't mind that people encourage others to play the hobby/sport. Yes, I understand the difference between a big game and a true scenario and I understand that by upping the numbers, you water down the 'gaming' experience and put more money in the pockets of industry, field reps and producers. I get that, I get the business motivations behind it as well as the desire to have a mentally stimulating game that is held in by the true scenario players. But I also think that if we want to reach any point where paintball has enough credibility to actually have sponsorships, media coverage outside of paintball specific press and wider acceptance, then for the time being, bringing more people into the hobby/sport is good. It generates revenue and public interest and that in turn can foster research and development, investment, new products and most importantly, genuine interest by non-paintball-focused tech companies (which is where we need to go anyway to get better quality 'scenario'). So I have no problem with people promoting the hobby/sport... but I do have issue in how they do it. Getting friends and coworkers to come out and try it is one thing, even using social media (youtube/facebook) to advertise paintball. But having loyalty oaths is something out of Catch-22. Claiming to be the one voice, or the one way doesn't jive with me. I hate absolutists. I really cannot stand them. The world is a giant gray mess. People sell absolutes because they are comforting and easy to understand.
This concept that everyone is a winner is an absolute type of idea. And it's not true and it's harmful and it robs credit (and thus incentive) from people who do real work on the field, people who are knowledgeable and skilled and can teach other players to (GASP) BE COMPETITIVE. That's right. Competitive. As in winners and losers, boys and girls. So yes, I am against PC movements in general, and especially if they are absolutist and/or exclusionary and/or don't tolerate dissenting opinions. People like to blame my generation for being lazy, coddled, entitled etc. First up, we aren't all that way. And secondly, if some of us are, its because the previous generation made us this way. Trying to protect and insulate kids from loss and disappointment is something I understand. Nobody wants their kid to feel like a loser or be disappointed. But we don't live in Utopia. We live in a painful, unfair, miserable world. So a generation of boomers coddling their kids and catering to every whim is as much to blame for those kids feeling entitled as are the kids themselves to blame for their lack of motivation and personal accountability. We have a generation that has been insulated from consequences and is now blamed for not taking accountability, while at the same time these protective movements remain ever-pervasive and shield individuals from the marginal suffering and discomfort of first-world problems (like losing a paintball game or overhearing someone say a bad word).
This concept that everyone is a winner is an absolute type of idea. And it's not true and it's harmful and it robs credit (and thus incentive) from people who do real work on the field, people who are knowledgeable and skilled and can teach other players to (GASP) BE COMPETITIVE. That's right. Competitive. As in winners and losers, boys and girls. So yes, I am against PC movements in general, and especially if they are absolutist and/or exclusionary and/or don't tolerate dissenting opinions. People like to blame my generation for being lazy, coddled, entitled etc. First up, we aren't all that way. And secondly, if some of us are, its because the previous generation made us this way. Trying to protect and insulate kids from loss and disappointment is something I understand. Nobody wants their kid to feel like a loser or be disappointed. But we don't live in Utopia. We live in a painful, unfair, miserable world. So a generation of boomers coddling their kids and catering to every whim is as much to blame for those kids feeling entitled as are the kids themselves to blame for their lack of motivation and personal accountability. We have a generation that has been insulated from consequences and is now blamed for not taking accountability, while at the same time these protective movements remain ever-pervasive and shield individuals from the marginal suffering and discomfort of first-world problems (like losing a paintball game or overhearing someone say a bad word).
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| And that makes me bad for paintball. |
Kids need to learn to drive through suffering, overcome difficulty, lose and get back in the saddle.
Paintball is an EXCELLENT opportunity for them to do it. It gets them off their fat asses and away from the TV. It teaches teamwork, strategy, honor, stalking, shooting, courage, friendship, decision-making, risk-reward analysis. All kinds of awesome skills, both direct and indirect, can be gleaned from paintball. And yes, maybe even everyone could and should play it (don't worry, they won't). But if you want to use it as a life-educator (instead of simply recreation) then for god sake it has to mimic life. I am personally for setting up deliberately lop-sided games to test resilience. This can't be done yet, but if I get this field built in Italy, where they have no expectations, expect to see some creative weighting of teams. Teaching everyone that they are just inherently awesome for showing up is detrimental, not to paintball, but to persons. You are not inherently awesome. Ernest Shackleton was awesome. Neil Armstrong was awesome. Michael Jordan was awesome. Cause they OVERCAME SHIT. And you know what else, MJ LOST A BUNCH.
Here's a little quote from him I like: "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
That's right. He lost. Imagine if he showed up and every time he lost people were like "Oh that's okay, the important thing is that you tried." No. No one (at least certainly not enough ppl, thank god) said that to Michael. Not even Michael said that to Michael. He probably lost sleep, stressed and hated himself, esp after missing those game winning shots. You know how I know that? Cause he knows it was twenty six. Not 'a couple', not 'several', not 'a few dozen.' Twenty six. And he can probably tell you the games, the score, exactly what was going on when he failed. And you know what, he kept going and improved and became awesome at basketball and is now a legend. You starting telling everyone their awesome and they'll start thinking they are legends inherently, and then the rest of us won't have anyone too look up to because the good players, the actually legends, will go put there effort into something else where Men are Men and Women are Women and we're not all singing kumbaya in the safety zone around the big binder of loyalty oaths. If you want to do that, go start an activity called 'singing kumbaya in the safety zone at paintball games around the big binder of loyalty oaths.' This is a sport/hobby where the object is to outwit, outmaneuver and shoot your opponent, even sometimes in the face. It's pretty awesome just the way it is. Don't mess with it by trying to litigate or dictate the equality of winners and losers. Life isn't fair. Part of learning to live is to learn how to use the cards you are dealt effectively. Telling everyone that just 'how you play the game' is important is childish and juvenile, even if it comes from a place of good intentions.
E-Celebs and 'Sponsorship'
I talked about real legends, people who are good at the game. So let us segue here into the E-celeb bit. We already know sponsorship really doesn't mean jack in paintball. They are great and fun to have, but they do much more for the company than the player and have become less and less about skilled players and more and more about lotteries and/or self promotion. This is not bad or evil to say, it is just the truth of paintball sponsorship. There are still great companies out there supporting good players and bad alike and I not trying to attack that system. It's too big and proliferated to think anyone could make a dent in the system, and it makes economic sense for a company to 'sponsor' someone they know, like and trust, or someone who makes them look generous and awesome, regardless of that player's skill. Little companies do it. Big companies do it. It just is and I'm just calling a spade a spade. But unless a sponsorship is paying your bills, your plane tickets, your car payment, your mortgage, I really don't care about whose billboards you're whoring for. There is Sponsorship, which would do all these things for people who have a demonstrated skill and prowess for the game and therefore 'earned' a sponsor. Dave (player) and Barney (player/commander) are two of the few scenario players I can think of who I could see being legitimately sponsored/comped significantly. The issues is that they both have full times jobs and lives beyond paintball so even they are not 'fully' sponsored. Most everyone else out there preaching to high heaven about their sponsors is little better than this:
They know it. You know it. I know it. No one wants to say anything about it because that's just the way things are but we all know they get a discount on the products in return for promoting them... and that's it. The deal may be a little sweeter here and there, but that is the basic gist. If they have a youtube channel or a blog with significant reach, then they might even get stuff for free. This does not mean they are a good player, good for the hobby/sport, or even a good person. They get 'sponsored' because they harassed a company with how awesome they are, know someone who knows someone, impressed someone at a single game and/or have social media reach. The problem is that reach is both fleeting and has no reflection on their skill as a player. If you have been around for awhile and woken up to things, then I don't have to tell you much more, but if you are new to paintball and 'impressed' by people walking around preaching about sponsorship, don't be. There was a time when I too was immensely impressed, but paintball sponsorship is a vehicle for the industry to sell more stuff. And unlike Redbull supporting this guy....
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| Bitchin'! Redbull sold me this spacecapsule for 15% discount and i might get 20% next year if I get my friends to buy it too! |
This is less of an issue in Speedball because I think speedballers are much more in tune with the industry and probably less prone to the fantastical self-aggrandizement and imaginations that people in scenario/mil-sim so easily buy into. Why? Probably because speedball remains focused on competition... in which there are winners and losers... in which hard work is rewarded and anything you say can easily be decided on the court. Your smaktalking can be validated in a matter of minutes in front of spectators and if you aren't as awesome as you say you are, everyone will know pretty damn quickly. In addition, companies sponsoring speedball teams incur higher cuts to their margins. The cost of playing speedball competitively includes gear, training, practices, training camps, managers and coaches, much much more than just mask, tactical vests and cool looking 'woodsball' guns. With greater cost comes the desire to ensure the sponsorship is money well spent, so speedball teams with a laundry list of high end sponsors are more likely to be talented and well trained than a scenario player with a similar list who 'gets excited' about their products in public instead of using them in tournaments streamed live and watched around the world. Just remember that the scenario player listing all their sponsors probably still pays about 70 - 80% for their stuff and isn't being flown around the world on any company dime, and is incurring next to no cost to the sponsor. And also beware of the self-sponsorship. If I start a company called Awesome Industries and then use that company to sponsor myself and my team, there might just be a conflict of interest there. Just sayin'.
There are always a few exceptions, but those are reserved for either extremely skilled players or for extremely good self-promoters.
If you have been in paintball long enough to love it and have decided to stay with it because you derive satisfaction from playing, good. If you haven't reached this point of Zen yet, I will warn you that if you get obsessed with sponsorship, you will only get frustrated, even more so in the world with Youtube. Self-promotion works two-fold. One, it helps the individual feel important and validated, and two, it generates reach, which is turn can be parlayed into discount/free stuff. Again, none of this has anything to do with paintball skill. I would advise young/new players to avoid eating at the trough of the self-promoters, not because I have anything personally against them (I don't bother to care), but because for your own personal development as a player, you will not learn anything and you will only feed the problem. You should go out and find players who are much better than you. Here's a hint, most of them don't have a youtube channel. Go out, find those players, and play with them, talk with them, LISTEN to them, watch them.
Here's some basic tips to help you out:
Your gun really doesn't matter. Keep it clean and shooting between 250 and 300.
Your mask really doesn't matter so long as it protects your eyeballs.
Your camo style doesn't matter if you learn how to move (so long as it isn't fire-engine orange... which could be a detriment).
Your style of play should be acquired through watching others and trial and error, not pre-determined or adhered to by agreement in advance. You hamstring yourself and your ability to grow and change.
Always be open to changing up your playing style and challenge yourself annually (Recommendations: pump play for a year, play with your non-dominant hand for a year, play with limited paint for a year etc etc)
Whether you are sponsored or not doesn't matter at all and has very little if anything to do with your skill as a player. Don't ever feel diminished by or inferior to a sponsored player unless your experience with them makes you respect them (which is actually unrelated to their sponsors... see how that works?)
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| If I can barrel tag someone dressed like this, you don't need to spend $300+ dollars on [insert latest camo fad style] for this season. |
Trust (just about) no one!
Nothing that any of these talking heads is telling you matters (including me!), this applies to life, not just pb, but we'll keep it focused. If you want to get better at paintball, you have to play with and against people who are better than you and focus on specific skills and techniques. That means you're going to have to lose. No one ever got better watching someone else talk about how awesome they are. Nor did they get better winning all the time. People get better because we go out and problem solve and we figure out how to do new things to win. So stop eating mental garbage and worrying about noise noise noise and just go out there, play, and get your ass kicked really really hard and then figure out what you did wrong.
I've seen Dave drop a base so quickly the other team accused him of cheating and had the game reset... and he dropped the base again in just as little time. That is physical skill. I have watched Barney role-play and General his way to a dozen victories and remain above the political shitshow. That is mental skill.
I don't know what type of gun either of them prefers and it doesn't matter. Just take all those concerns and chuck them. Play with a goddamn slingshot. It will teach you how to sneak and make good decisions in a hurry.
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| This is oldskool. maaaybe 10bpm. And think of the money you'll save on paint! |
The most important thing you can do is learn to lose. To lose with grace, dignity, after a hard fight, and then get back up and try again. Don't ever feel entitled to anything you haven't earned and especially don't let other ppl get away with this ideology. Anywhere in life. It makes us lesser, weaker people, as a whole. You may have to adjust your youtube subscriptions or at least the mental lens you watch with, but it will be worth it in the end if you actually want to improve.
NJNAM 2009 may have been rigged. I don't know. Again, after any game the rumor mill spills excuses on to the interwebz to accommodate the losers and strip satisfaction from the victor (this is why you should probably reduce use of forums as well). What I do know is that at one point Tack, Ricky and I stood with our feet against the command tent/spawn point shooting in every direction while Dave, Norbert, Paco and about 60 people from the other team stormed our base area. Nearly every other player on our team ran from the field outside the tapeline. Fled. Routed. We're not talking a few people. Several hundred running through the tapeline like it was a marathon finish line. And this was the third time that game that Dave and his boys pulled this move. Maybe it was because our General had pissed someone off. Maybe it was because we had 'been given all the walkons to make up for the difference in numbers' but maybe it was just because our team was sucking and couldn't figure out where to dig deep. Tack and Ricky and I stood there with our feet on the tent which essentially made us immortal and took shot after shot until we were surrounded and the game produced called it. We fought both days and night until we were burger meat and then we never played against Dave again. But when the game was over and we had lost as team, the 5 or 6 of us who had stood there surrounded while everyone fled had maintained our dignity. We had fought a losing battle with honor and the excuses were for other people. If you must lose a paintball game, and statistically, that is going to happen to you, then you should not be among the excusers. Be among the ones bloody and ruined at the end who were beaten on the field, but not broken and beaten in spirit who slink away to take potshots on forums. There are no excuses that really justify leaving or quitting in a way that also allows you to 'win' or 'equalize' the events on the field. You can decide to leave, and that is fine, it is a decision, but these come also with consequences and you must be able to live with them. And if you can, fine. I've quit a few things in my life for good reasons and I live with the consequences. But you can't make an excuse for why you quit and then have 'ifs, ands, buts and caveats' to try and cover up the consequences, to try and dodge them. So don't try. If you can't handle loss, don't play paintball. And check yourself, because Life is going to knock you around something fierce.
So I have wandered and drifted in my ramblings and rantings and I probably have more to say or could have done a better job but so be it. I didn't mean to offend anyone, but people really need to become more self-critical. Criticism is healthy. It's like maggots eating dead flesh. It's gross and sticky, but in the end it is better for everyone than gangrene. Trust me. Been there.
So go out there. Play your heart. Play with what you have, don't worry about the next big thing. Your budget for new gear will get you to 2 years worth of games, and you will learn a lot more playing more games than you will playing one game with a new gun. Take your licks. Learn from your mistakes. Don't run your mouth (because then you give your opponent the opportunity to rub it in your face, a satisfaction that I never have allowed any opponent), Don't care about sponsorship too much, and don't eat at the pigsties of self-promotion when you can go out and play/learn from actual masters.
Your homework for 2013
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| I want you to pick a fight.... pick a fight with a total stranger... and I want you to lose. |
Lose a game by a margin of at least 50% of the points while only leaving the field for paint and air for a rental-level or pump gun. It's harder than you think. You'll have to pick your team and event wisely (the game producer has to not bend the rules to buffer a losing team and your team will have to perform terribly). Write me an email when you've done it.
/Rant
Benny Out
Friday, March 22, 2013
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Woodsball World Cup The Highland Skulls
Game: Woodsball World Cup
Location: NY
SPbTV Member: Tooch
Date: 2010
Location: NY
SPbTV Member: Tooch
Date: 2010
Monday, March 18, 2013
Pic of the Day, Mar 18
Album Available Here:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.383123931719918.91803.116893811676266&type=3
SPbTv Misfit's Rocket Rampage at Strat Plus. HD
Location: Strategy Plus, CT
SPbTV Member: MISFIT
Date: 2012
SPbTV Member: MISFIT
Date: 2012
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Pic of the Day: Mar 16
Full Album Here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.399229336776044.94755.116893811676266&type=3
Friday, March 15, 2013
EMR Fall Castle - Scotty
Game: EMR Castle Conquest
Location: PA
SPbTV Member: Scott Hayes
Date: 2010
Location: PA
SPbTV Member: Scott Hayes
Date: 2010
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Suurpeli 2012: The Blue... thingy
Game: Suurpeli 2012
Location: Jamsa, Finland
SPbTV Member: BennyT
Date: 2012
Location: Jamsa, Finland
SPbTV Member: BennyT
Date: 2012
Monday, March 11, 2013
Pic of the Day, Mar 11: Living Legends 5
Fantastic Album of Living Legends 5 Available Here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.421599557872355.97868.116893811676266&type=3
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Pic of the Day, Mar 9
Album Available Here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.431018333597144.99396.116893811676266&type=3
Friday, March 8, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
On Paintball Spies and Spying
I have decided that writing an AAR of most of the games I have attended is a little ambitious at this point. I spent two years on my MA in Sweden and haven't written very much of anything since. The well can run dry. But I have also decided to look at things I have learned in the last few years and share them, so that they might be of use. I've applied the same analytical methods to paintball as I did during my studies and maybe I can glean some insights to share. This is an post about Spying, a controversial topic, and I'll look into where and why it works, problems I've seen with it, and support this with first-hand experiences.
First up, let me just say that I have never been a spy and never will. I have two rules in regards to paintball. The first is avoid paintball politics like the plague. Some would argue that is impossible the more you play, and to some extent I agree. But I have seen too many people who swore they would not make concessions or get involved in pb politik give an inch and lose a mile. They have been drained, betrayed, beaten on and off the field (forums is a whole different post) and had the joy of the game sucked out of them. So yes, there are times when one must get involved, but I strive to keep out of the messes and entanglements, personal grudges and backstabbing that can go on behind the scenes once the lights go down the players go home.
The second rule is I will never spy. And I will get into my reasons later on.
Albany Vietnam Series, Game 2, Albany Scenario Club.
We were deep in the bushes behind the enemy base and there were five of us. We had completed a tapeline run and moved undetected to within a few meters of the enemy HQ, a bunker-tunnel system just on the other side of a thick patch of raspberry bushes, their thorns gargantuan, able to pierce clothes and flesh at will. It was an excellent spot to hide, since it was the last place anyone would want to look. But we were jammed. The two hour mission block was an attack and defend game. There were three flagstations that started off Blue at the beginning of the game. If we flipped them Red, we scored points and they could not be flipped back to Blue. The problem was we had flipped the one nearest our own respawn in the first 20 minutes, which meant the enemy could consolidate around the remaining two, one of which we knew was in their base and the other we had yet to locate.
I checked my watch. We had fifteen minutes left on this mission block. We had lost the first game in the series at the Hornet's Nest a month earlier and the points carried over throughout the three game Albany Vietnam Series. We needed to comeback. We needed those flags.
We could hear the enemy shouting inside their bunkers and engaged with our frontline. But there was no way we could hope to mount a 5-man assault on their base and survive long enough to find and flip the flag stations. It was time for the Ace in the hole.
Background
The Albany Vietnam Series was a three-game event held in succession at Hornet's Nest, Albany Scenario Club and High Energy Paintball during the summer of 2009. One of those rare and fleeting occasions when competing fields in the same area lay aside their differences and work together to make something truly cool for players in the area. The points from each came carried over cumulatively and were tallied at the end of the summer to determine the overall winner. Each field had different objectives and each game was written around a different battle during the Vietnam war. Some of the games had special rules pertaining to props, non-combatants (for example at HEP the VC could walk around without markers and could not be shot) and special missions or equipment (The US forces got to use tanks, the VC had none). The organizers also allowed each team to have one spy. This person could change each game (while I understand the logic of this because maybe the same person could not attend all three, I also have a beef with changing spies during the series and wish we had played the spy cards better), but was an officially recognized part of the scenario. IE the spying would not upset the producers and arouse legitimate complaints. Both teams knew to be on the lookout for a double agent. The US General for the summer was Tackleberry and he tapped me as his XO. In the final game we switched roles. He is more of a go-out-and-break-things kind of guy than strategist. In the end we lost two of the games, the first quite badly and the second by a very narrow margin, but we scored enough points during the final game at HEP to eek out the series victory.
At the game at ASC, our man on the inside was Brendan Quackenbush, a member of Trashtalk paintball, who was taking a big risk. Members of his own team would not easily forgive the betrayal. I don't remember how Tack had chosen him, but Tack and I had decided to keep the circle small. Tack had radio and comms with the line units. I was the XO and had a separate radio to speak only with Quacks. I was the handler and Tack left all the spying to me while he brought the hammer on the line.
I had never handled a spy before, but I had seen the ugliness that came out of Skirmish a few times.
There are several issues with spying that both the spy and the handler (typically command staff) have to negotiate.
The first is whether the spying is legitimately recognized by the game producers. While one could argue paintball is real life and real spies don't care about rules, paintball is also a game and a business. Illicit spying upsets game dynamics, turns the tide of battle and can enrage and discourage paying customers. Yes, I get the benefits, but at what price? Straight play should be just that.
Assuming that spying is allowed/condoned/organized by the promoter, it should be used to its full potential. It is a powerful tool. But I see a few common and recurring problems in this department. I will not get into forum spying, but focus on practical field applications.
Problem #1. The spy sucks.
This happens when you pick someone who hasn't actually thought about what they should do as a spy and/or you don't work out communications properly. The spy either doesn't know what he/she should do, and therefore just acts as an ineffectual member of the other team... or they don't have the means to communicate information to their own team. Trying to arrange secret rendezvous to discuss intel wastes time and is a potential giveway. And once cover is blown, there is not much you can do about it. Spies need to be smart and need to work with smart command. Don't pick from volunteers. Pick someone you know is capable. Approach them in private and hope that they don't turn double-agent on you.
Problem #2. The spy is too eager.
Too often I've seen spies shoot a General at point blank range in the first few hours of the game. We'll call this the premature e-paintjulation in the world of paintball espionage. A general kill is nice, but it is the cheapest and most ineffective use of a spy ever. You have a man on the inside. An assassination sends a personal message, yes, but it does not accomplish very much and again, the cover of the spy is blown. This isn't real-life. You didn't permanently remove Rommel or Patton with your little move. At best you sent them to respawn and if you're really lucky you didn't get lit up by base security. But the General will be back in the game in a few minutes and he will be able to operate with the knowledge that his concerns about the identity of the mole in his unit are resolved. He can focus all his attention on winning the game now and you have neutered your ability to be of assistance. A spy must be patient, level-headed and able to assess the risk/reward of his actions. Protecting your cover should be paramount, even to winning the game, if you want a long and anonymous career as a double-agent. You might love the power and sense of accomplishment that comes from capping a commander in the back of the head, but you can do far more damage via intel and subterfuge than by simply shooting someone.
If you want to contribute to a General kill, coordinate with your handler to take a turn on base-defense and let him know your position. He can send a strike team to that location where they can 'snipe' or better yet 'barrel tag' you unawares, penetrate the perimeter and get a General kill. You will be protected by the Dead-men don't talk rule and have the excuse that you were running to respawn and could not communicate the breach in time. And THIS move can be repeated in a variety of ways throughout the day. (reposition base defenses to create openings, leave your post to take a pee, forget something in your car while on base defense.... if your handler is working with someone like Dave Cilio who can drop a base in his sleep, creating even small plausible opportunities is far more effective than executing the command staff yourself)
Problem #3. The hero-complex/Reward system
This is the biggest problem I've seen with spying. And that is a hero-complex. The desire to be recognized. The spy can truly be an invaluable asset. They can misdirect troops, share intel, complete objectives from within and turn the tide of games. They can and often do become 'the most valuable player' in terms of points scored and damage inflicted. The problem is ego. Spies want recognition. I've seen several of them come out at the awards ceremony or on a forum when the game has played out to trumpet their success. What does this do? Yes, you get your laurels and your 15 minutes, but you also sacrifice the trust you have built that enabled you to be a spy in the first place. Friends will feel betrayed. Generals will frown on you. You may get blacklisted. Not from attending games, but from any future role near command. Even the general who used you may lose trust in you. In short, you've won a battle (the game) but lost the war (your paintball spy career) and burned a lot of bridges in one or two days of work.
Worse, still, is not having prior communication with the command staff when the game is over about what you want done. The commander will know the benefit you have provided and may feel obliged to offer you the MVP or may just do so without informing you ahead of time. The last thing you want is to have quietly done your job, remained undetected, and then have your name broadcast as the spy at the awards ceremony. This also blows your cover and puts you in the same position as the egoist with betrayed friends and your name out there as "A Spy!" The best spy is one who clearly indicated to command that they DO NOT WANT any public recognition. Their service is to be kept secret before, during and after the game. They swallow the anonymity of not being rewarded for the actions, but are satisfied with a job well done and the quiet professionalism of their post. This builds trust with the command, maintains friendships and allows you to keep doing what you enjoy... being a legitimate double-crossing bastard (again, I stress during legitimate spy-friendly games)
Problem #4. Keep the circle small.
Loose lips sink ships. So too do they ruin a spying career. Do not tell your teammates you will be a spy on the enemy team. Do not post it in your team forum. Don't even tell your girlfriend. The only people who should know you are a spy are the general and maaaaybe his command staff if he can trust them to keep their mouths shut. You don't want it coming out later in some off-handed remark or someone reminiscing about "Hey, Jack, remember when you were a spy at that game." Cover blown. Game over. In addition, you don't know who is talking to who during a game. Most games that allow spying will ensure that both teams have an equal number of spies. So keep in mind that someone else on your team is out to burn you. If the General knows, usually his XO will not be a spy. That should be as big as the circle gets and any communication with you should be done in absolute private. This cannot always happen, but it should be attempted. And the General should be suspect of any players lounging around command under any excuse, especially asking about missions. A good spy will not be out in the woods shooting people (He will do this occasionally to maintain his cover), he will be hanging out near the command or a few layers outside the inner ring to glean information and pass it on. The tighter you keep control on your identity, the better chance you have of making it through this game and the next, undetected.
Now there are things that I think spies SHOULD do, separate from the problems and their solutions.
DO #1. COMMS
Once your circle is established, figure out comms. Keep in mind that in some games, other teams will be monitoring comms, so you might need to get Jason Bourne-y and switch frequencies. If it is a smaller game, you should be okay. Bigger games mean more people and more specialization and there is someone out there who would like nothing better than to monitor radio chatter all day and find you. You'll have to figure out a way around this with command. But good communication to your handler is essential. Do not use names. Do not use direct speak about objectives. Develop a code. It can be complex or simple. Get in the habit of joking around on the comms. This will irritate the enemy commander you are serving under, but it can also pave the way for you to say nonsensical things that get dismissed. Use movie references, jokes, popculture, annoying shit, and have a tell, a 'simon says' code word so that your handler knows when you are conveying information and when you are just spouting off. If you can, get two radios or use your smartphone to send SMS. There are dozen ways to skin the comms cat. Figure one out and make it rock solid BEFORE the game starts.
DO #2. AVOID CONTACT
When you get to the game, the plan should already be in place. Avoid your handler and home team at all costs. Talk trash about them. Never go anywhere alone with anyone from the team you are spying for. Establish your cover the moment you leave your car. You don't know your handler. You hate his mother. Don't overdo it. But do nothing to arouse suspicion. Stick to the team you are spying on and keep your mouth shut. No 'knowing' glances or nods. Get your shit straight before you arrive and remain that way until you leave the game (if you are in it for the long haul).
DO #3. Bring a change of outfits.
This is optional. It depends on how well you know the people you are playing with. I attended a game at High Energy Paintball and since we were coming all the way from Rochester, the General, Ed, asked if one of us would like to be a spy since no one would know him on the enemy team. Our player agreed. He drove in a separate vehicle with his gf. He arrived 30 minutes later than us and setup in a different area. We pretended not to know him the entire game. He went out on the field dressed as albert einstein (the game called for a scientist) and in the first halfhour was able to steal a massive number of props and give us a huge tactical advantage. However, he got caught. He went to his car during the game and changed outfits and returned to continue spying. When the enemy general figured out there was still a leak, he lined up his entire team and shot each person in the foot (the enemy spy had to respawn at their true base). This outed our guy again. Again he changed clothes, this time through on a hoody and switching markers to look like a walkon. Again he continued to spy. He was finally outed in the last round because the enemy general recognized his shoes. C'est la vie. The point is once he was burned once, he had alternative and contingency plans and kept going. If you are a known player at a field, don't spy at that field. If you get outed, you blow local trust and it is nearly impossible to reestablish cover at an event where your face, voice, name and gear are known. Spy abroad.
DO #4. Maintain your Cover
Too many spies think they need to thwart every effort of the team they are betraying. WRONG. This will blow your cover. Someone will put two and two together. Do things that no spy would ever do. Coordinate with your handler to stage events around low-point objectives where your handler sacrifices his own units so that you can take a flag stations or retrieve a prop. Do go out and play a bit. Do not hover around the command tent all the time. Alternate between thwarting missions and maintaining your cover by completing objectives for the team you are undermining.
DO #5. HUNT DOWN THE COMPETITION.
The spy is in one of the best positions to identify and out the double agent on the other team. The other spy is your nemesis and part of your primary objective should be figuring out who they are. There are various ways to do this. Your general can line up the whole team and shoot them at the beginning of the game (seen it done, we have a video on the channel of it). But this can cost time off the break and there are ways a smart spy will avoid it. DO NOT go around asking "hey do you know who our spy is?" I've seen this done and the question was a dead giveway and burned the cover of the enemy spy.
Be smart. Talk with your handler. Figure out where your leaks are. Whats going wrong? How does that correspond with what you know. Narrow the field. In a one day game, there might not be time, but 2 days should be more than enough time for you to find the identity of the enemy spy unless they are as skilled as you are.
DO #6. Plausibility, excuses and false flags.
Always maintain plausible deniability. Before you do something against the team you are spying on, figure out an excuse and a good one, to justify it in case you get caught. Try to set someone else up as the spy. Do not loudly declare them either. Share your 'suspicions' in confidence with one or two people. Tell them to 'keep an eye on so-and-so, because...' this way you are diverting resources and also seem genuinely interested in catching the spy. Loud accusations scream guilty conscience. Avoid them.
DO #7. Think long term.
Yea, you might be doing great and feel like you want recognition. But think long term. Maybe it is better to establish a working relationship with your commander and forge a loyalty that can span a season or several years of spying. Think long term. Think ambitious. Even a moderately intelligent and patient person can be a spy for a day, but can you master your ego, swallow your pride and settle in for a 'career of selfless service' as a paintball NOC? Which sounds cooler and more challenging? Which will you be prouder of in the long run... that one time you were a spy like dozens of other people, or that time you played 10 games in a row as a spy and still remain undetected. Need an outlet? Keep a private journal of your games and your work and when you are ready to step away from being a spy, write about and post it up or submit it to a magazine. Hell send it to us! We'll post it.
This is all I've got for now. I'll update this. Let's continue with our expose....
I got on the radio.
"Quacks... come in."
I waited. I waited some more.
"Benny, this is Quacks, I had to get away. MattyLaw saw me on a radio. I told him I was talking with one of the walkon teams." (Plausibility, and talking in private. We didn't have time to work out secure comms, we were just winging it here)
"Okay, listen, we are 5 meters behind your base in the bushes. Where exactly are the flags?"
"There is one in the bunker compound. And the other is off in the woods."
"Can you flip them without being detected?"
"I don't think so... not the one in the base."
"We need those flags flipped. We have no time."
"Benny, How?!"
"I don't know. Figure it out!"
Quacks told Matty he was going to go check on the 2nd flag station since he hadn't heard anything in awhile. He walked over to it and told the guards to push up 15 more meters into the treeline. While their backs were turned, he took a tremendous risk and flipped it. Admittedly, this could have been it for our spy, but it was my first time as handler and his first time as a spy and we got damn lucky that no one saw him. He walked partway back to the base and then sprinted, running inside in a panic to tell Matty that the flag station had been flipped and he did not know how! Matty was incensed. They needed to lock down the compound.
He ordered Quacks to guard one end. Quacks slipped away to do as he was told and got back on the radio.
"Okay... the flag is flipped... but there is still the one in the base... what do I do?"
"Nice... We need to flip that last one. Can you do it?"
"I don't know. Matty is in here. I don't know."
There was less than 5 minutes left. We had to think quickly. Realizing there was no way for my small squad to storm the base, I came up with a plan... Diversion.
"Listen... here's what we'll do... when we get down to three minutes, we will come out of these bushes loud and hard. That should distract the people in the base... While that's going on, you run over like you are coming to help... trip on the flag station... and when you put it back up, flip the stick..."
"Seriously?"
"Serious... it's gotta work. Once they are flipped they can't be flipped back..."
"You want me just to run into it like an idiot?"
"Yes."
".... Benny..."
"DO IT!"
I explained part of the plan to the guys with me. I didn't know if one of them could be a spy, too, so I just told them that in 60 seconds we were going in loud because we had no choice and we had to try. Everyone checked their ammo. I had a box-fed A5 SAW and 700 rounds. I stacked my pods on the ground so that I could reload as quickly as possible.
"Okay... Now!"
We opened up fire like it was the fourth of July. Screaming and hollering, fully cyclic with nothing to shoot at. Two of the guys went right around the back of the base, screaming and shooting to create confusion and the other two bumped up with me to a sand berm immediately outside the bunker system. I got the trigger pressed on the A5 and started dumping rounds. It was on full auto and whammed away intimidatingly. We were quickly surrounded and taking fire from three sides. We continued yelling and screaming, telling invisible allies to go left, go right. The other two snap-shot over the berm while I laid down a steady stream into the gully-approach to the berm. We were burning through paint, but whooping it up something grand. Finally, in the midst of reloading, someone wrapped the berm and gunned us down. Time expired.
Inside the base I heard cursing and screaming.
"Quacks! I told you to watch the flag!"
"Matty, I swear I was. I went over to shoot the guys at the back! Someone must have gotten in!"
Matty bought it. Partly because he never thought Quacks would spy, and partly because in all the confusion it was plausible that someone had gotten inside the system and done it. In reality, Quacks had sprinted like an idiot, tripped, knocked over the flag and set it up incorrectly, and continued on into the firefight. The whole charade took only a few seconds and was disguised as a simple accident. We scored points for all three flag stations and maintained Quacks identity.
The rest of the game we continued to communicate. The Allied team was allowed a tank and we were permitted a LAW. Quacks volunteered to be the gunner in the tank and kept me posted on its location and movements, ordering it into easy ambushes. We murdered it again and again, and we also let it shoot me out several times to maintain plausibility, but we were careful to keep it away from missions and bodies of troops. At night, he used a flashlight and smacktalk to give away their troop concentrations, positions and and movements, hollering obscenities at us out of the darkness and pointing a maglight at us numerous times to draw our fire on to areas where he had gathered players. He even flipped one of our own players to their side, further establishing credibility with the enemy team and we made a big deal for show out of Micah's betrayal and Quacks insidious recruitment to help sell his loyalty.
The next day I approached him about being MVP before we announced anything. Tack and I both felt he had earned it, but we wanted to check with him before bringing on the repercussions from his team. He said he did not mind, so we did award to him. This is perhaps a violation of all the rules I've stated above, but he wanted it and we wanted to give it to him. In hindsight, it would have been better NOT to burn his cover and to use him again in the third game at HEP. Then maybe give him a series MVP at the conclusion of the 3 game tournament if he wanted his cover blown. However, like I said, this was a first time for all of us. I have learned and watched paintball spies for awhile since then and reflected on it and that is what we should have done. C'est la vie.
I personally don't like the idea of spying because I have built up rapport with several generals including Barney and I do not want to sacrifice that trust by becoming known as a spy. This is why I do not do it. I was asked to do so at Skirmish and declined. It is not my style and I do not trust that I could do it anonymously forever. And the longer you do it, the harder the hammer comes down when you are outed. But that said, I hope this analysis can be useful to anyone considering it.
See you on the field
Benny
First up, let me just say that I have never been a spy and never will. I have two rules in regards to paintball. The first is avoid paintball politics like the plague. Some would argue that is impossible the more you play, and to some extent I agree. But I have seen too many people who swore they would not make concessions or get involved in pb politik give an inch and lose a mile. They have been drained, betrayed, beaten on and off the field (forums is a whole different post) and had the joy of the game sucked out of them. So yes, there are times when one must get involved, but I strive to keep out of the messes and entanglements, personal grudges and backstabbing that can go on behind the scenes once the lights go down the players go home.
The second rule is I will never spy. And I will get into my reasons later on.
Albany Vietnam Series, Game 2, Albany Scenario Club.
We were deep in the bushes behind the enemy base and there were five of us. We had completed a tapeline run and moved undetected to within a few meters of the enemy HQ, a bunker-tunnel system just on the other side of a thick patch of raspberry bushes, their thorns gargantuan, able to pierce clothes and flesh at will. It was an excellent spot to hide, since it was the last place anyone would want to look. But we were jammed. The two hour mission block was an attack and defend game. There were three flagstations that started off Blue at the beginning of the game. If we flipped them Red, we scored points and they could not be flipped back to Blue. The problem was we had flipped the one nearest our own respawn in the first 20 minutes, which meant the enemy could consolidate around the remaining two, one of which we knew was in their base and the other we had yet to locate.
I checked my watch. We had fifteen minutes left on this mission block. We had lost the first game in the series at the Hornet's Nest a month earlier and the points carried over throughout the three game Albany Vietnam Series. We needed to comeback. We needed those flags.
We could hear the enemy shouting inside their bunkers and engaged with our frontline. But there was no way we could hope to mount a 5-man assault on their base and survive long enough to find and flip the flag stations. It was time for the Ace in the hole.
Background
The Albany Vietnam Series was a three-game event held in succession at Hornet's Nest, Albany Scenario Club and High Energy Paintball during the summer of 2009. One of those rare and fleeting occasions when competing fields in the same area lay aside their differences and work together to make something truly cool for players in the area. The points from each came carried over cumulatively and were tallied at the end of the summer to determine the overall winner. Each field had different objectives and each game was written around a different battle during the Vietnam war. Some of the games had special rules pertaining to props, non-combatants (for example at HEP the VC could walk around without markers and could not be shot) and special missions or equipment (The US forces got to use tanks, the VC had none). The organizers also allowed each team to have one spy. This person could change each game (while I understand the logic of this because maybe the same person could not attend all three, I also have a beef with changing spies during the series and wish we had played the spy cards better), but was an officially recognized part of the scenario. IE the spying would not upset the producers and arouse legitimate complaints. Both teams knew to be on the lookout for a double agent. The US General for the summer was Tackleberry and he tapped me as his XO. In the final game we switched roles. He is more of a go-out-and-break-things kind of guy than strategist. In the end we lost two of the games, the first quite badly and the second by a very narrow margin, but we scored enough points during the final game at HEP to eek out the series victory.
At the game at ASC, our man on the inside was Brendan Quackenbush, a member of Trashtalk paintball, who was taking a big risk. Members of his own team would not easily forgive the betrayal. I don't remember how Tack had chosen him, but Tack and I had decided to keep the circle small. Tack had radio and comms with the line units. I was the XO and had a separate radio to speak only with Quacks. I was the handler and Tack left all the spying to me while he brought the hammer on the line.
I had never handled a spy before, but I had seen the ugliness that came out of Skirmish a few times.
There are several issues with spying that both the spy and the handler (typically command staff) have to negotiate.
The first is whether the spying is legitimately recognized by the game producers. While one could argue paintball is real life and real spies don't care about rules, paintball is also a game and a business. Illicit spying upsets game dynamics, turns the tide of battle and can enrage and discourage paying customers. Yes, I get the benefits, but at what price? Straight play should be just that.
Assuming that spying is allowed/condoned/organized by the promoter, it should be used to its full potential. It is a powerful tool. But I see a few common and recurring problems in this department. I will not get into forum spying, but focus on practical field applications.
Problem #1. The spy sucks.
This happens when you pick someone who hasn't actually thought about what they should do as a spy and/or you don't work out communications properly. The spy either doesn't know what he/she should do, and therefore just acts as an ineffectual member of the other team... or they don't have the means to communicate information to their own team. Trying to arrange secret rendezvous to discuss intel wastes time and is a potential giveway. And once cover is blown, there is not much you can do about it. Spies need to be smart and need to work with smart command. Don't pick from volunteers. Pick someone you know is capable. Approach them in private and hope that they don't turn double-agent on you.
Problem #2. The spy is too eager.
Too often I've seen spies shoot a General at point blank range in the first few hours of the game. We'll call this the premature e-paintjulation in the world of paintball espionage. A general kill is nice, but it is the cheapest and most ineffective use of a spy ever. You have a man on the inside. An assassination sends a personal message, yes, but it does not accomplish very much and again, the cover of the spy is blown. This isn't real-life. You didn't permanently remove Rommel or Patton with your little move. At best you sent them to respawn and if you're really lucky you didn't get lit up by base security. But the General will be back in the game in a few minutes and he will be able to operate with the knowledge that his concerns about the identity of the mole in his unit are resolved. He can focus all his attention on winning the game now and you have neutered your ability to be of assistance. A spy must be patient, level-headed and able to assess the risk/reward of his actions. Protecting your cover should be paramount, even to winning the game, if you want a long and anonymous career as a double-agent. You might love the power and sense of accomplishment that comes from capping a commander in the back of the head, but you can do far more damage via intel and subterfuge than by simply shooting someone.
If you want to contribute to a General kill, coordinate with your handler to take a turn on base-defense and let him know your position. He can send a strike team to that location where they can 'snipe' or better yet 'barrel tag' you unawares, penetrate the perimeter and get a General kill. You will be protected by the Dead-men don't talk rule and have the excuse that you were running to respawn and could not communicate the breach in time. And THIS move can be repeated in a variety of ways throughout the day. (reposition base defenses to create openings, leave your post to take a pee, forget something in your car while on base defense.... if your handler is working with someone like Dave Cilio who can drop a base in his sleep, creating even small plausible opportunities is far more effective than executing the command staff yourself)
Problem #3. The hero-complex/Reward system
This is the biggest problem I've seen with spying. And that is a hero-complex. The desire to be recognized. The spy can truly be an invaluable asset. They can misdirect troops, share intel, complete objectives from within and turn the tide of games. They can and often do become 'the most valuable player' in terms of points scored and damage inflicted. The problem is ego. Spies want recognition. I've seen several of them come out at the awards ceremony or on a forum when the game has played out to trumpet their success. What does this do? Yes, you get your laurels and your 15 minutes, but you also sacrifice the trust you have built that enabled you to be a spy in the first place. Friends will feel betrayed. Generals will frown on you. You may get blacklisted. Not from attending games, but from any future role near command. Even the general who used you may lose trust in you. In short, you've won a battle (the game) but lost the war (your paintball spy career) and burned a lot of bridges in one or two days of work.
Worse, still, is not having prior communication with the command staff when the game is over about what you want done. The commander will know the benefit you have provided and may feel obliged to offer you the MVP or may just do so without informing you ahead of time. The last thing you want is to have quietly done your job, remained undetected, and then have your name broadcast as the spy at the awards ceremony. This also blows your cover and puts you in the same position as the egoist with betrayed friends and your name out there as "A Spy!" The best spy is one who clearly indicated to command that they DO NOT WANT any public recognition. Their service is to be kept secret before, during and after the game. They swallow the anonymity of not being rewarded for the actions, but are satisfied with a job well done and the quiet professionalism of their post. This builds trust with the command, maintains friendships and allows you to keep doing what you enjoy... being a legitimate double-crossing bastard (again, I stress during legitimate spy-friendly games)
Problem #4. Keep the circle small.
Loose lips sink ships. So too do they ruin a spying career. Do not tell your teammates you will be a spy on the enemy team. Do not post it in your team forum. Don't even tell your girlfriend. The only people who should know you are a spy are the general and maaaaybe his command staff if he can trust them to keep their mouths shut. You don't want it coming out later in some off-handed remark or someone reminiscing about "Hey, Jack, remember when you were a spy at that game." Cover blown. Game over. In addition, you don't know who is talking to who during a game. Most games that allow spying will ensure that both teams have an equal number of spies. So keep in mind that someone else on your team is out to burn you. If the General knows, usually his XO will not be a spy. That should be as big as the circle gets and any communication with you should be done in absolute private. This cannot always happen, but it should be attempted. And the General should be suspect of any players lounging around command under any excuse, especially asking about missions. A good spy will not be out in the woods shooting people (He will do this occasionally to maintain his cover), he will be hanging out near the command or a few layers outside the inner ring to glean information and pass it on. The tighter you keep control on your identity, the better chance you have of making it through this game and the next, undetected.
Now there are things that I think spies SHOULD do, separate from the problems and their solutions.
DO #1. COMMS
Once your circle is established, figure out comms. Keep in mind that in some games, other teams will be monitoring comms, so you might need to get Jason Bourne-y and switch frequencies. If it is a smaller game, you should be okay. Bigger games mean more people and more specialization and there is someone out there who would like nothing better than to monitor radio chatter all day and find you. You'll have to figure out a way around this with command. But good communication to your handler is essential. Do not use names. Do not use direct speak about objectives. Develop a code. It can be complex or simple. Get in the habit of joking around on the comms. This will irritate the enemy commander you are serving under, but it can also pave the way for you to say nonsensical things that get dismissed. Use movie references, jokes, popculture, annoying shit, and have a tell, a 'simon says' code word so that your handler knows when you are conveying information and when you are just spouting off. If you can, get two radios or use your smartphone to send SMS. There are dozen ways to skin the comms cat. Figure one out and make it rock solid BEFORE the game starts.
DO #2. AVOID CONTACT
When you get to the game, the plan should already be in place. Avoid your handler and home team at all costs. Talk trash about them. Never go anywhere alone with anyone from the team you are spying for. Establish your cover the moment you leave your car. You don't know your handler. You hate his mother. Don't overdo it. But do nothing to arouse suspicion. Stick to the team you are spying on and keep your mouth shut. No 'knowing' glances or nods. Get your shit straight before you arrive and remain that way until you leave the game (if you are in it for the long haul).
DO #3. Bring a change of outfits.
This is optional. It depends on how well you know the people you are playing with. I attended a game at High Energy Paintball and since we were coming all the way from Rochester, the General, Ed, asked if one of us would like to be a spy since no one would know him on the enemy team. Our player agreed. He drove in a separate vehicle with his gf. He arrived 30 minutes later than us and setup in a different area. We pretended not to know him the entire game. He went out on the field dressed as albert einstein (the game called for a scientist) and in the first halfhour was able to steal a massive number of props and give us a huge tactical advantage. However, he got caught. He went to his car during the game and changed outfits and returned to continue spying. When the enemy general figured out there was still a leak, he lined up his entire team and shot each person in the foot (the enemy spy had to respawn at their true base). This outed our guy again. Again he changed clothes, this time through on a hoody and switching markers to look like a walkon. Again he continued to spy. He was finally outed in the last round because the enemy general recognized his shoes. C'est la vie. The point is once he was burned once, he had alternative and contingency plans and kept going. If you are a known player at a field, don't spy at that field. If you get outed, you blow local trust and it is nearly impossible to reestablish cover at an event where your face, voice, name and gear are known. Spy abroad.
DO #4. Maintain your Cover
Too many spies think they need to thwart every effort of the team they are betraying. WRONG. This will blow your cover. Someone will put two and two together. Do things that no spy would ever do. Coordinate with your handler to stage events around low-point objectives where your handler sacrifices his own units so that you can take a flag stations or retrieve a prop. Do go out and play a bit. Do not hover around the command tent all the time. Alternate between thwarting missions and maintaining your cover by completing objectives for the team you are undermining.
DO #5. HUNT DOWN THE COMPETITION.
The spy is in one of the best positions to identify and out the double agent on the other team. The other spy is your nemesis and part of your primary objective should be figuring out who they are. There are various ways to do this. Your general can line up the whole team and shoot them at the beginning of the game (seen it done, we have a video on the channel of it). But this can cost time off the break and there are ways a smart spy will avoid it. DO NOT go around asking "hey do you know who our spy is?" I've seen this done and the question was a dead giveway and burned the cover of the enemy spy.
Be smart. Talk with your handler. Figure out where your leaks are. Whats going wrong? How does that correspond with what you know. Narrow the field. In a one day game, there might not be time, but 2 days should be more than enough time for you to find the identity of the enemy spy unless they are as skilled as you are.
DO #6. Plausibility, excuses and false flags.
Always maintain plausible deniability. Before you do something against the team you are spying on, figure out an excuse and a good one, to justify it in case you get caught. Try to set someone else up as the spy. Do not loudly declare them either. Share your 'suspicions' in confidence with one or two people. Tell them to 'keep an eye on so-and-so, because...' this way you are diverting resources and also seem genuinely interested in catching the spy. Loud accusations scream guilty conscience. Avoid them.
DO #7. Think long term.
Yea, you might be doing great and feel like you want recognition. But think long term. Maybe it is better to establish a working relationship with your commander and forge a loyalty that can span a season or several years of spying. Think long term. Think ambitious. Even a moderately intelligent and patient person can be a spy for a day, but can you master your ego, swallow your pride and settle in for a 'career of selfless service' as a paintball NOC? Which sounds cooler and more challenging? Which will you be prouder of in the long run... that one time you were a spy like dozens of other people, or that time you played 10 games in a row as a spy and still remain undetected. Need an outlet? Keep a private journal of your games and your work and when you are ready to step away from being a spy, write about and post it up or submit it to a magazine. Hell send it to us! We'll post it.
This is all I've got for now. I'll update this. Let's continue with our expose....
I got on the radio.
"Quacks... come in."
I waited. I waited some more.
"Benny, this is Quacks, I had to get away. MattyLaw saw me on a radio. I told him I was talking with one of the walkon teams." (Plausibility, and talking in private. We didn't have time to work out secure comms, we were just winging it here)
"Okay, listen, we are 5 meters behind your base in the bushes. Where exactly are the flags?"
"There is one in the bunker compound. And the other is off in the woods."
"Can you flip them without being detected?"
"I don't think so... not the one in the base."
"We need those flags flipped. We have no time."
"Benny, How?!"
"I don't know. Figure it out!"
Quacks told Matty he was going to go check on the 2nd flag station since he hadn't heard anything in awhile. He walked over to it and told the guards to push up 15 more meters into the treeline. While their backs were turned, he took a tremendous risk and flipped it. Admittedly, this could have been it for our spy, but it was my first time as handler and his first time as a spy and we got damn lucky that no one saw him. He walked partway back to the base and then sprinted, running inside in a panic to tell Matty that the flag station had been flipped and he did not know how! Matty was incensed. They needed to lock down the compound.
He ordered Quacks to guard one end. Quacks slipped away to do as he was told and got back on the radio.
"Okay... the flag is flipped... but there is still the one in the base... what do I do?"
"Nice... We need to flip that last one. Can you do it?"
"I don't know. Matty is in here. I don't know."
There was less than 5 minutes left. We had to think quickly. Realizing there was no way for my small squad to storm the base, I came up with a plan... Diversion.
"Listen... here's what we'll do... when we get down to three minutes, we will come out of these bushes loud and hard. That should distract the people in the base... While that's going on, you run over like you are coming to help... trip on the flag station... and when you put it back up, flip the stick..."
"Seriously?"
"Serious... it's gotta work. Once they are flipped they can't be flipped back..."
"You want me just to run into it like an idiot?"
"Yes."
".... Benny..."
"DO IT!"
I explained part of the plan to the guys with me. I didn't know if one of them could be a spy, too, so I just told them that in 60 seconds we were going in loud because we had no choice and we had to try. Everyone checked their ammo. I had a box-fed A5 SAW and 700 rounds. I stacked my pods on the ground so that I could reload as quickly as possible.
"Okay... Now!"
We opened up fire like it was the fourth of July. Screaming and hollering, fully cyclic with nothing to shoot at. Two of the guys went right around the back of the base, screaming and shooting to create confusion and the other two bumped up with me to a sand berm immediately outside the bunker system. I got the trigger pressed on the A5 and started dumping rounds. It was on full auto and whammed away intimidatingly. We were quickly surrounded and taking fire from three sides. We continued yelling and screaming, telling invisible allies to go left, go right. The other two snap-shot over the berm while I laid down a steady stream into the gully-approach to the berm. We were burning through paint, but whooping it up something grand. Finally, in the midst of reloading, someone wrapped the berm and gunned us down. Time expired.
Inside the base I heard cursing and screaming.
"Quacks! I told you to watch the flag!"
"Matty, I swear I was. I went over to shoot the guys at the back! Someone must have gotten in!"
Matty bought it. Partly because he never thought Quacks would spy, and partly because in all the confusion it was plausible that someone had gotten inside the system and done it. In reality, Quacks had sprinted like an idiot, tripped, knocked over the flag and set it up incorrectly, and continued on into the firefight. The whole charade took only a few seconds and was disguised as a simple accident. We scored points for all three flag stations and maintained Quacks identity.
The rest of the game we continued to communicate. The Allied team was allowed a tank and we were permitted a LAW. Quacks volunteered to be the gunner in the tank and kept me posted on its location and movements, ordering it into easy ambushes. We murdered it again and again, and we also let it shoot me out several times to maintain plausibility, but we were careful to keep it away from missions and bodies of troops. At night, he used a flashlight and smacktalk to give away their troop concentrations, positions and and movements, hollering obscenities at us out of the darkness and pointing a maglight at us numerous times to draw our fire on to areas where he had gathered players. He even flipped one of our own players to their side, further establishing credibility with the enemy team and we made a big deal for show out of Micah's betrayal and Quacks insidious recruitment to help sell his loyalty.
The next day I approached him about being MVP before we announced anything. Tack and I both felt he had earned it, but we wanted to check with him before bringing on the repercussions from his team. He said he did not mind, so we did award to him. This is perhaps a violation of all the rules I've stated above, but he wanted it and we wanted to give it to him. In hindsight, it would have been better NOT to burn his cover and to use him again in the third game at HEP. Then maybe give him a series MVP at the conclusion of the 3 game tournament if he wanted his cover blown. However, like I said, this was a first time for all of us. I have learned and watched paintball spies for awhile since then and reflected on it and that is what we should have done. C'est la vie.
I personally don't like the idea of spying because I have built up rapport with several generals including Barney and I do not want to sacrifice that trust by becoming known as a spy. This is why I do not do it. I was asked to do so at Skirmish and declined. It is not my style and I do not trust that I could do it anonymously forever. And the longer you do it, the harder the hammer comes down when you are outed. But that said, I hope this analysis can be useful to anyone considering it.
See you on the field
Benny
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