Logistics for a Major League Tournament.

Performing well on-field at a large event comes down to a lot of factors. But before you start dissecting game plans, motivating your teammates and thinking about 1st place, you have to get there in the first place!

There are a lot of costs you don't necessarily consider when first weighing up playing a tournament abroad. With my recent experience in planning / booking everything for the CPS in Rome for the team, I figured I would share what I learned for those who may do so in the future. Prices displayed here are for the team of 7 going to the CPS Rome event, of course this will change for different leagues in different places. For example, the millennium series has higher entrance fees and we will be driving to the Belgium / Paris events instead of flying. Some costs such as entry, paint, cars and accommodation can be reduced with more players splitting the bill.

Event Entry: €720 (£85/player) per event  (€2,160 for 3 events)
Depending on the tournament or the division you are looking to play, you may be required to put up the entry for the year in advance to secure your spot in a locked division. Money saving: When it came to the CPS, there was a 30% discount if you signed up to the first 3 events and paid in advance. For the Semi Pro division this was €1,800 +VAT. Don't forget the VAT!: It is important to keep the VAT in mind when looking at entry costs as it's not always obvious.

Paint: €35 / case ~€700-800 total or €100-125 / player.
I was approached by Emboscada paintball, an Empire dealer who was supplying Evil at the event. Fortunately I didn't have to pay any deposits, just had an agreement that we will shoot the paint when we're there. You will find that paint usually has to be paid for at the event, or if you're lucky can be settled after with an invoice.
I've heard a few times that a team will on average shoot somewhere around a case per point played. We're playing race-4 and so if we play 3 preliminaries and get skunked 4-0 we'd have shot a minimum of 12 cases. If we make it to Sunday and play 3 more games that's 6 games which could all be 7 point matches which is 42 cases in the worst case scenario (I'm not sorry). In reality I would expect to shoot around 20-25 cases.

Travel: Flights: £135 / player
I used a flight comparison website, we were late to book as we had only decided late January that we were going to commit to the CPS so to keep the costs down we have had to fly from Gatwick very early on Thursday 6th and return very late on Monday 10th. The flights are with different airlines to get the cheapest combination. I definitely recommend booking flights as early as you can to save on cost. The other pain is getting everyone's passport information after the flights have been booked. Money saving: We have decided to go with 4 hold bags between the 6 of us flying to save on paying for baggage. Of course we will still have cabin baggage which is often ample for casual clothing and washbags.

Travel: Hire car: £355 (£51/player)
We were thinking of just going and using taxi's but I was tipped off by the CPS organizers that it is certainly cheaper to hire a car. I have used AVIS hire cars to get a 7 seater people carrier which will hopefully have enough room for kit bags - if not there will be some kit bags on laps! We have the car from the airport so we shouldn't be stuck at all when we're there. Extra costs: Be aware that these companies may add on an extra charge if your driver is between the minimum age of 21 and 25 as a young driver surcharge. Don't forget you will also have to pay for fuel whilst there!

Travel: Airport parking: £37/car (2 cars)
It's easy to forget that you need to think about the journey before and after the flights - if you're lucky enough to book flights at a local airport at a decent price then you could benefit from loved ones or taxi's getting you to and from the terminal. Unfortunately we don't have that luxury this time round and so have had to arrange for airport parking.

Accommodation: €220
You often have a few choices when it comes to local accommodation. Check out the different prices and weigh up the pros and cons, not forgetting that you will have to travel between your bed and the venue each morning and evening. Some events have local camping, a good money saver but not always supportive of a good night's sleep. Travel hotels are common, try and squeeze as many as you can to save the money. The CPS were very helpful in providing options of hotels but also a camping village with mobile homes / static caravans, which we decided to go for. We got a 6 man static caravan with a +1 on the sofa which brought the bill down to around £31.50 per person! Money saving: Often the tournament organizer will do the research for you and give you some options, if you're lucky they may have also struck a deal with the accommodation. We got a discount deal through the CPS at the holiday village making it very cheap for us.

ID cards: €35
Most major league tournaments require that players have an ID card to participate - bear in mind if you're bringing pit crew they may also need to obtain one. Money saving: You can often prepay online to pick up your ID card at the event so do so where possible.

On-site training: €50 /player
Some tournaments will offer a valuable opportunity to train at the venue during the days leading up to the event. Whilst field layouts may be standardised you don't know the angles until you play the field as it's set up. The CPS got in touch with us as there was another team, Helsinki Cyclone, looking to scrim on the Thursday for an hour. Entry was €30/player and paint is €20/case. 

That's about all you can plan for before you touch down. But be aware that whilst there you will need to feed yourselves in the evenings as well as at the event plus water to keep the team hydrated. You can do this cheaply by getting food from nearby shops and whipping up some food to take with you instead of paying over the odds for on-site food.

Send any suggestions to luke9williams1@gmail.com or message me on facebook if there are any costs I haven't factored in.

2014: The Preason (yeah, that's a word now)

From here on out this blog will be used as my paintball diary with some helpful training guides thrown in. So without further ado let's catch up to now: The end of February 2014. As a bit of fun I'm also tallying approximately how many paintballs I've shot this year.

January

The first week of January was very cold and The Crib (the name I'm pushing to get people to use for my local home ground: Cribbs Pro Paintball Centre) was closed and so 0 paintballs used in the first week.

The site then opened and as I have to work 26 Saturdays of the year, I was trying to burn as many as I can as soon as I can and so for the rest of the month I was just heading up on Sundays. On the 12th I shot 2 cases (total: 4,000) doing some drills and primarily trying to work on my breakout shooting as I expect to be running head down into my primary bunker a lot less this year.
On the 19th I shot a case and then shared another with a friend, as sharing is caring (total: 7,000). Still working on my drills and joining in with other guys playing a few games on the field. 

Photgraph by: Harry Pitchers - ShootrTV

Sunday 26th I was very hungover as I had spent the previous evening celebrating my birthday with my real life friends, my paintball friends and everyone in between. I drank a lot, but as I was committed to the cause I stayed in a hotel next to The Crib and went and shot another case (total 9,000). The wind was very bad though so I was mainly joining in with the other teams playing points. 

Total paint shot for January and the year so far: 9,000 balls.

February

February 1st I had work and so Sunday 2nd was training day. It was the first team training of the year and we got together to work on some breakout shooting drills, some snap shooting and some 2v3 points. We shot 2 cases each between us (total 13,000). The field layout wasn't out yet for our first event at the CPS Rome in March and so we were just practicing our skills. 

Photgraph by: Harry Pitchers - ShootrTV

Unfortunately February 9th was called off due to very high winds blowing the field around like no-one's business. Even the pit area roof was blown down at The Crib, but midweek it was upgraded to accommodate for the Cribbs Cup the next weekend.

February 16th was the inaugural Cribbs Cup event, the Saturday beforehand was used to set up the site so no training again this weekend unfortunately but at least I got to watch the games and help run the day. For a full write up see my previous article. 

I get excited by scrimming

The last weekend of the month: 22nd & 23rd February was a mandatory team training weekend with Reading Entity. On the Saturday we worked on skills and introduced Tom Stafford to the team for the first time. We mostly worked on first shot accuracy, doing snap shooting drills against targets, running and gunning between bunkers and then some snapshooting against each other. Everyone shot a case although me and Andy went halves on another box, bringing this day to 1.5 cases (total: 16,000). We did a very small 'course' drill which I will explain in another article very soon.

Sunday 23rd was a very valuable experience for us as we welcomed The Manchester Firm all the way down from.. well, Manchester, to scrimmage with us. We started out the day working on 10 second breakout drills, where we would focus on 4-5 guns up breakouts to work on our breakout shooting and working out how to shoot people getting to particular spots. I found that both us and them were very aggressive with this and therefore a lot of players got shot out in the short amount of time, often with 2+ players eliminated from each team. The breakouts were very close and we seemed to match each other body for body during these very quick points, with the Firm bagging probably just a few more kills than us overall.

After we had finished the 10 second breakout drills we decided to start the real scrimmage and play points against each other. This was a good experience for me and very valuable as in training previously I would almost always choose to gunfight against my teammates, being pretty confident I would beat them. When I tried that against guys from the firm who I didn't know to gunfight with, I found that was not the way to win the points. I couldn't predict who I could beat and who I couldn't and so from that I personally took away the lesson of not underestimating your opponents when you don't know what you're up against. Probably a very valuable lesson to learn in time for Rome in less than 2 weeks!

Both teams were playing tighter during the breakouts as we did in the breakout drills, which I thought was a bit odd and maybe something to be addressed next time we do breakouts against another team. I did get shot a couple times off the break running guns up into the corner and so the team was fighting on the back foot quite often. We lost probably 75% of the points we played, but there was only a couple points where they rolled us quickly, the rest were drawn out into long points. Whilst we had beaten some of the Firm teams last season at the CPPS, the 5 guys that came down were some of their core members and had been playing together for more than a season, so it was no surprise we got beat when we were giving the new guys some spins.

It's good that we got beat up a bit instead of winning the majority, as you don't tend to see your weaknesses when you're winning, only when you're losing. As a team we realized we weren't reacting quickly to their game plans and that's something we need to keep at the forefront when in the pits between points in Rome. We need to recognize what's killing us and find the best way to plug that hole in our game plan.
That day we shot roughly 2 cases each, bringing the total for February and the total for the year so far to 20,000 paintballs shot.

Oh and if you haven't already, Like & Share my shit!

https://www.facebook.com/CribbsProPaintball
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Reading-Entity/191069664256838
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Sunday 2nd March will be our final team training session before we head out to the CPS in Rome! I will write up the training session and how I feel we are getting on.

Decisions Decisions: Reading Entity 2014

So the new year rolled in after a testing 2013 season and as a team, Reading Entity were not completely sure what direction it was going to take. We did know that we wanted to play a European league whilst also keeping some presence at the premier UK tournament, the CPPS. 

There original plan was to try and play the Millennium-Series in what used to be Division 1 (now SPL2), however as it is a locked division this would mean we would have to acquire a spot. You acquire a spot by being promoted from the next division down, or by buying/acquiring an existing spot owned by someone else that isn't putting another team in. There was potential for us to acquire a spot for no extra costs however as January came round that wasn't to be. 

Domestically we had decided if we were already financially committing to the Millennium we may not have the experienced manpower necessary to also put a competitive team into the Elite division of the CPPS. Therefore we put a team, Entity UK, into Division 1 so that we could give some valuable experience to our up-and-coming players that have been working with us at training and not committing to the European leagues.

As events unfolded our choice was to either play Division 2 (now open division 1 (OD1)) at the Millennium Series, or alternatively, to play the Champions Paintball Series (CPS) in Europe. 

When weighing up the options, we looked at the standard of teams in the Semi Pro division of the CPS and figured them to be roughly the same as what we would expect in SPL2 at Mills, which is where we wanted to be. We factored cost in and found that with entry being just over 1/3rd of the price, CPS was favorite. We also felt that Rome & Belgium may make for a more interesting traveling experience than Southern France and Bitburg. 

The main con to the CPS is of course that it isn't as big as the mills and therefore our results may not have as much weight as they would at the mills when comparing ourselves to other teams or selling ourselves to potential future sponsors.

We felt as a team we need not just the major league tournament experience under our belt, but as much valuable tournament experience as we could get. Therefore we made the decision to commit to the CPS and prepaid our first 3 events in advance, which at it's reasonable price, enables more of our experienced players to also commit to the CPPS as well. I must also say that the service I received from Slava and Natalija from the CPS was very enthusiastic and helpful from my first enquiry, to booking, to asking about recommendations for accommodation etc.

Our competition in Division 1

Unfortunately it was too late to get our spot back in the Elite division as it had filled up by then, but fortunately for us it was announced there is a champions/challengers style promotion/relegation system between the two divisions. We are aiming to move back up to the Elite division at the first leg, but none of the teams in Division 1 are going to roll over and let us walk back in so it should make for an interesting event.

Photograph by Harry Pitchers / ShootrTV

This season we also welcome some new comers to the table: 

Liam White formerly of The Clan is travelling from Glasgow for training and will be playing with us in Europe and the CPPS and will be our go-to snake player.
Tom Stafford hailing from Leeds and formerly of Birmingham Temper and Rival Kidz has also joined us for CPS Rome and beyond.
Adam Budd who was our padawan learner throughout 2013 will hopefully prove himself worthy of Jedi Knight status at the CPPS.
Jonathan Clarke of Manchester Firm will be our special guest for our first event of the CPS in Rome.

Look out for us at the CPPS and see where we place. I'm also trying to find out if there's a CPS webcast for any of you guys who aren't attending Zombieland to watch!

Looking back on 2013

My 2013 season

Preseason

At the end of 2012, I played the final leg of the CPPS tournament in the Race-2 Premier division with Snatch, winning the tournament to also secure a 1^st place victory for the series. That same morning though, I also played with the freshly reformed Reading Entity in the Division 1 Race-4 bracket, where we won every game dropping only 2 points all day.
Coming into the 2013 season I was pumped up. With the taste of a successful event and a successful season still in my mouth, I was hoping to prove myself as a worthy contender in the Elite division of the CPPS.  Whilst the team did well in that final event of 2012, I know that I struggled to keep up, I was getting shot most and I was sitting points. Therefore my personal goal in 2013 was to move my way up the pecking order and become a solid starting-5 player for the team and see how many games we could win.
When the preseason training kicked off I had worked hard, I was improving all the time, my stance was getting less goofy, and I was starting to hold my gun properly instead of implementing ‘the claw’.  I would be at the Cribbs training ground every Sunday, whether it was a mandatory team practice or just me and a couple of randoms going up to practice our skills. The Saturdays I wasn’t working (half of them) became training days.  I was determined to become the best player I could as fast as I could and I knew that this required, that I build on 2 main aspects: technical skills and experience. Whilst there were only so many tournaments I could attend in the year to gain valuable experience, I decided now was the time to work on my skills.
When it came to the team, there was a buzz, everyone was putting their all into getting better. We worked on a combination of personal skills with snapshooting and breakout drills, followed by mid/end game situationals such as 2v1’s, 3v2’s, 5v3’s or 3v3’s. Harry had put together a sick winter training video of us training in the snow. The atmosphere was magnetic and we were all psyched up and ready to prove we can play.

CPPS

Going into the first event, we were confident. On the Saturday we trained against Lucky 15’s and one of the Firm teams and we were winning a lot of points. I was playing on the teabag side with either Harry or Andy following me up. The team was communicating well, we had all learnt the calls and whilst there were errors, we were looking good. 

When Sunday came our first game was against London Nexus. What a draw for your first game of the season! I was quiet and with me that means one of two things; I’m either annoyed or frustrated and I’m holding my tongue or I’m nervous. This time it was the latter, I went out and on the start gate I didn’t know what to expect. I got to my primary and was shooting a lane and to my surprise I heard “G1!” from the side of me. I made a move into the teabags and I made it in clean and at that moment I realized – this is just paintball, this is the same paintball I’ve been playing so much of the past year. 5 guys with 5 guns shooting 5 guys. Don’t get me wrong, we still lost the game, putting only 1 point on the board but hey, we just put a point up against a CPL team. That’s the first time in my paintball career I could say that – that’s the first time in my paintball career I had played a CPL team!

Personally my performance was shaky that first event. The nerves got to me. But as the day went on I was warming up to it. Later in the day we played Snatch, my old team, they had come up to contend in the Elite division as we had and I’m not going to lie, everyone on the team expected to smash them. I expected to smash them. I knew the team and as much as they had many years of experience, I knew they didn’t practice regularly and certainly not as much as we had over the past couple of months. Player for player I would have put us over them 90% of the time. We lost. Maybe we didn’t take them seriously and so played an over-aggressive game. I can’t explain how or why but I was getting shot off the break or soon after reaching my bunker in most of the points – I played better against Nexus! For some reason they were my stump team, not just for the first event either – but for the rest of the series I just wouldn’t perform well against Snatch. I consider them all good friends of mine which made it worse. Were they smug about beating us after I left them for this team? Of course they were. Could I blame them? Of course not, they earned it.

As the year went on – I found my reasons to get better out of each tournament. We put up a lot of points against a lot of experienced teams. We had 2 very close 1-point games against Disruption. We lost to defiance 3-4 after being up 3-1.. That hurt! What’s even worse with that game is that I gave a celebratory fist pump as I headed towards their flag station to put up our 3^rd point. Our snake side was getting a bunch of penalties at bad times; the hotheads of the team were kicking off in the pits; plus our game plans were not all that decisive as we arranged our primaries without much attention paid to what we were going to do next. We were always getting points but we weren’t winning the crucial ones. For me that was fuel for the fire, I would hit the training field with renewed determination, so that we could win that next game-point. But for others, as the season went on, all the hope and the near-misses seemed to be grinding them down.

In the last event of the season we went out to get closer to that elusive podium position, we lost a close game to Durham DV8, the newcomers to the division, which seemed to set the tone as we went out and we lost to Tigers and Disruption 4-0. That really hurt. All season long at the CPPS we were never 4-0’d. To come out and get skunked two games in a row, especially by Disruption who we had come so close to beating the past two times… it sucked. Andy and Dave, the two guys with the most experience, were blowing up at each other in the pits. I went quiet, this time not out of nerves. The team had lost its head and as a result, we had lost games. It wasn’t the losing that made it hurt. It was the hope getting stamped out like a discarded cigarette that really twisted the knife.

Fortunately we closed out a close game with the Firm that day. I recall on the drive home, I wasn’t too bummed out. I realized I had accomplished my personal goal which was to become a solid starting 5 player for the team. I sat about 4-6 points in the first CPPS event and sat 1 point in the final event, but aside from those points, I played every single point that Reading Entity had played that year. 

I have found in paintball as well as other areas of personal development that there are times where you ‘plateau’ or ‘slump’. You go to training and you under perform, you’re not hitting your targets or you simply can’t win a snapshot battle against your team-mates that you consider your equal. I’ve experienced it before and seen it last as long as a month or two; a long time when you’re practicing every weekend. It’s frustrating, infuriating and it can be enough to make people pack up and go home, sometimes to pack up playing. But somehow, fortunately, I didn’t get that feeling at all in 2013. If I felt I had under performed, I trained through it and just carried on and luckily I would see the other side quickly, but I don’t think that works for everyone.

I felt that my game was consistently good, rarely bad but also rarely great.  I need to develop that ability to ‘find another gear’, especially playing the 1 on the teabag side. I was rarely shot out of my bunker in a gunfight, but I was also rarely taking risks. I was a very solid survivor, but not one consistently causing a lot of damage.

Super5ives

Everyone preaches about ‘giving back’ and there are many people who give back more than they got from the paintball community. Those people do it for the love of the game and whilst I love the game, I started a fun / starter / scratch team, The Cribbs Commandos, to play the Super5ives for my own selfish interests of getting experience organizing a team and coming up with my own game plans. I also wanted to play for fun as well – knowing that it doesn’t really matter if you fuck it up brings a new dimension of experimentation to your game. At the Super 5ives I would try to force as many game changing moves as I could and be the explosive player that I wanted to become at the top levels. It was just fortunate that as a result, I got to share my experience with some hungry local players and give them the chance to come to a tournament and prove their skills.

The other reason behind this team was that my girlfriend-at-the-time’s brother, Adam, became a bit of a project of mine. He reminded me of myself a year or so in the past; shabby round the edges, a bit of a goof with stance, a reserved player not taking loads of risks, but also willing to learn and determined to become a better player. I had him up at Cribbs training with me a lot and he has come a long way. He wasn’t Entity standard just yet and so I got him to play the Super 5ives whenever he could. Earning him that valuable game time he needed to balance out the progress he was making with his technical ability, with all-important experience.

Fortunately I think we won most of our tournaments in the race division – you could argue me and the Entity guys who joined in were sandbagging, but at the same time we were taking with us players that hadn’t played much tournament paintball before.

Learning the lessons

To round up and look forward; this season the team suffered from hot-headedness in the pits, penalties and sub-par game plans. Whilst the behaviour of my team is something I can only influence, I intend to push the team towards working harder on their breakout shooting so that we can implement more effective game plans. Personally I have been a solid survivor and so when playing the 1 on the teabag side I intend to be a bit more aggressive; trade out with my mirror if we’ve got the body advantage or if he over extends. However I also feel that perhaps my consistently solid playing style can be used in the 2 position now that I have improved my gun-skills massively. In 2014 expect to see me switching between the 1 and 2 on the teabag side, I can’t wait to see how I get on.

The one and only (until next time): Cribbs Cup!

A couple of months back the people behind Skirmish Bristol and my local training field: Cribbs Pro Paintball Centre floated the idea of running a tournament. I thought it would be a good idea but to be honest I didn't expect big things. Maybe 5 or 6 teams could scrape together to have a blast on the field and maybe cause a little bit of promotion. But as time went on I was proved very wrong.

Within just a few days of being announced we had 10 teams signed up for the 5 man tournament and by the time of the tournament we had 8 teams in the 3-man division.

The field itself has been worked on so much over the past year and it was great to see it turn from this small field with old bunkers, no netting and no pit area; into a full sized millennium field with shelter, field-side air station and great facilities with a big crowd of people! 

 

 

On the lead up to the event I helped out with the scheduling, rules and ideas but in the main the driving force behind it was Kayleigh of Cribbs / UKPSF / Ultraviolets / Skirmish Bristol (she wears many hats). On the day I shouted teams onto the field, blew the whistle and timed the games, not that any ran to the 5min time limit, as well as try and keep all I could happy on the pitside.

On the field a bunch of my Entity guys were refereeing, under my man Dave Phillips who was the ultimate. Kayleigh was taking pictures and Harry Pitchers, also of Entity fame, filmed the event, creating a very hyperactive video to capture the day.


The Cribbs Cup was a huge success and it was amazing to see such a blend of teams get together to bash heads: Scenario crossover teams such as Shoreline Rangers, Going Postal, Bad Moji, Evil Twin and Fallen Brotherhood came and showed what they were capable of. Whilst tournament teams there to fight for the win included Cardinals, Collateral Damage, Angels, Snatch, UWE paintball society amongst others.

I had a great time and the day practically ran itself with the teams being organized. The games were great to watch as there was a good mix of experienced, fresh and scenario players seeing what they could do.

I was especially impressed with not only the presence but also the ability of the scenario / walk-on teams. I personally think it's great that old barriers are being broken, where scenario and tournament players have often been at odds with each other. Just because one lot wear camo and play make believe in the woods whereas the others wear ridiculous clown costumes and take things too seriously, doesn't mean that we can't all get together, play some paintball and just have us some fun! 

Tournaments like this and the UWL coupled with scenario events offering mini-tournaments are contributing towards bridging the gap, bringing a rise in the amount of crossover teams dabbling in both sides of the game. Competitive tournament teams such as Disruption and the Sandbaggers competing in the UWL and staple scenario teams such as Shoreline Rangers & Bad Moji competing at the CPPS and beyond can only mean good things for our game. 

We plan on running another one off the back of the success, next time there's a gap in the events - possibly some time in August. We don't want to over do it as we want to keep the quality there which gets inevitably lost when the quantity goes up. My advice to you is not to miss the next one!

Skill Breakdown: Running And Gunning

A hard but important skill to master, Running and Gunning benefits you from the start to finish of your game​

What Is The Aim Of Running And Gunning?
Whenever you want to get somewhere on a paintball field, the chances are your opponent will be trying to stop you. If you can shoot paint accurately back at them whilst moving between bunkers, you have a higher chance of surviving the move if they have to dodge your paint – you might even hit them!

Why Is Running And Gunning Important?
If you can master this skill then it will benefit you when getting G’s off the break, getting you to your next bunker safely mid-game, then getting you all the glory points and female attention with that point winning run through. It’s a very hard skill to master and it takes a lot of work to use it effectively. When starting out, it’s very easy getting into the habit of simply running into your bunkers, but invest some of your time into this skill at every training session possible and it will pay off dividends in the long run.

Stance & Form.
Okay so to start with we’re going to look at your breakout stance. If you’re running and gunning you’re probably going to be starting on the edge of your start gate, anyone running straight to their primary bunker will likely be starting in front of you. Stand in a nice balanced stance – as if your behind a stand up bunker, feet facing forward, legs bent, back straight, head up, looking at your targets (stare through their eyes and into their souls whenever possible).

You will ALWAYS hold your gun in the same hand as the direction you are running

If you are running out to the left, your gun is in your left hand – no ifs or buts! If you are running right, it’s in your right hand. Start with your gun in the correct hand, bottle in the opposite shoulder, stand as far from the gate as you can with your barrel touching it. You need as good a head start as you can especially when there’s a feature in the middle of the field blocking the view of your target.

“10 SECONDS!” don’t look at your barrel on the start gate, don’t wave to that guy on the sidelines you have a crush on, stare straight at the guy opposite. Look at him, stood there with his trendy headband/sandana/beanie combo, thinking he’s a boss. Imagine a paintball leaving your gun and hitting him in his poor choice of headgear, imagine how deflated he will be walking off before he’s started. Okay now focus your ears for that buzzer, because once it goes off, you’re putting your first ball in that smug little face over there.

When the whistle blows, NOTHING but your arms move. You keep your torso still, move your gun across the front of your body in as straight and small a motion as possible, with your head still in the same place and you take your first shot. Now it has left your barrel it’s too late to worry about where it’s gone because you gotta start moving your legs and hauling ass to your primary bunker, shooting the dude that’s stood there trying to shoot you.

To The Training Field
Okay so now you know the situation that you’re going to be in on the field, we need to take that concept onto the training field.

When practicing off the break running and gunning you will mainly want to practice hitting the laners who are standing still / moving the least at the start of the game. This is mainly because a moving shooter is more likely to hit a static shooter than another moving shooter. The purpose is ideally to hit your opponent, but failing that you are disrupting that guy whilst he is trying to shoot you and/or your buddy.

Set up a target where the laner is most likely to be stood, start with your gun touching as mentioned above, move NOTHING but your arms and gun to take your first shot and then start your run. You have to start slow at first as accuracy is MORE important than speed. If you’re sprinting into your bunker but hitting nothing more than the floor, the netting and the back of your team mate’s head then you might as well just be running faster without your gun up.

When it comes to the technique of the run there are different styles, some run with their legs facing the direction they are moving whereas some sidestep their way over. How ever you feel comfortable, keep your torso facing towards your opponent and keep staring at them. If you start to look where you’re going you will instantly lose 100% of your accuracy. Don’t worry about where your bunker is, with practice it will become second nature but for now your peripheral vision will do a good enough job for you.

I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH that it’s important to get your paint on target. When drilling, take your first steps at a walking pace to get your paint on point, then accelerate and then, if you’re feeling like a superstar, dive/slide into your bunker.

Whilst running always keep your legs bent to take the impact. Your waist upwards should be as still as possible as that is your shooting platform. The smoother you can make your steps the more accurate your paint will be down field.

Summary:

• Start with your gun in the same hand as the direction you are about to run
• Take your first shot before you begin your run
• Keep your eyes on your target
• Keep your legs bent to cushion your steps
• Aim your paint slightly past the target in the opposite direction of your run
• Accuracy is better than speed

Skill Breakdown: Snapshooting

‘Snapshooting’, ‘snapping’, ‘the snapshot’ is THE key skill that is paramount to any paintballer, from the guy just starting out to the guys at the top of the pro ranks – everyone who wants to perform well needs to practice this skill more.

What is a snapshot? 

To snapshoot, a player will lean out of cover to take a single shot before returning back to cover. To improve your snapshooting you aim to increase the accuracy of the shot whilst minimising the time and distance by which you leave your cover.

Why is it so important?

Good snapshooting wins gunfights and at the end of the day, paintball is a game where people fight – with guns! In a straight gunfight, the player who stays tighter to their bunker, shoots more accurately and returns in and out of cover quicker has a higher chance of shooting the other player and less chance of being hit. I use the word chance as paintball has so many variables that the weaker player always has a lucky chance of winning a gunfight – it’s just about making the odds stack in your favour).

Often, you will find yourself in a position where your opponent is shooting a stream of paint at you / the gap between you and your next bunker (controlling/dominating). You need to get into that bunker and the chances are, you’re not going to make it running through their paint. If you can snap out without getting hit and get the paint at least close to your opponent, they are going to flinch away from your paint, giving you a small window to get dominance, by putting them in the situation you were in – suppressed and having to try and shoot through your paint.

Snapshooting drills are the best time to analyse and improve your form, which will in turn improve your snapshooting, which will improve your form.. which will – bla bla you get it, but you can see why this drill is key throughout one’s paintball career. If you only ever worked on this one skill, your game will improve – whether you play tournaments, walk-ons, scenario, mil-sim, magfed or pump.

Use of cover

To learn how to effectively snapshoot, you first need to adopt good stance behind your cover. When using cover the easiest place to shoot from is that which allows you to stand comfortably with a straight, mostly verticle edge to lean in and out of. When standing at full height you are ready to move if you need to and you are in the most comfortable position you can be in a game situation. A verticle edge is best as shooting left or right is easier than fighting gravity to shoot over the top of your cover. Also when using sides you can control who is able to see you – if you’re shooting over the top of your cover you can be shot from any angle.


Standing behind cover – toe to head

Feet: have your feet shoulder width apart and pointing towards your opponent. Face your target with your whole body, don’t stand side on as it will put you off balance and make it harder to change hands / sides. Be careful that your feet are not sticking out so that they can be shot.

Legs: bend your legs slightly in an athletic stance so you are ready to react and move if you need to.

Back: when you are holding a gun, you want to keep your back straight and relaxed as opposed to tensing up and hunching over. This helps you stay balanced and keeps your movements on one axis, you only need to worry about moving left and right and your pack wont be sticking out of the bunker to those shooting cross-field at you.

Arms: Bring the bottle of your gun to your shoulder and aim down the barrel. Keep the top of your hopper pointing straight upwards at all times throughout, to minimise your profile and keep your elbow and wrist in place. You should hold your gun with your outside hand, keeping your inside hand on the front grip. Many players get tempted to ‘claw’ and put thumbs and fingers around over the feedneck and over the top of the gun – I’ve been there myself and it may feel comfortable at first, but since I have gone back to holding a gun upright and as it is meant to be held, my technique feels better than ever and I look less awkward and wonky, especially when changing hands.

Head: Keep your head upright like a meerkat, not hunched down like a teenager waiting for a bus. keeping your head upright will keep you more relaxed and also more aware of your surroundings – you don’t want to miss the guy running down the field in your peripheral vision! Plus you’ll be able see where incoming paint is passing you.

To the training field!

So you’re behind your bunker, sitting pretty. You got your legs apart, knees slightly bent, head up, gun up and a target set up somewhere in front of you. You’re ready to snapshoot. Do a quick head check, just peek your head round real quick to visualize your target. Whilst you’re returning back into cover, imagine you can still see that same target through your cover and keep your gun trained on it. Now lean out and shoot at the target before coming back in behind cover – keeping that visual, keeping your gun on it. Repeat this drill just taking one shot each time before coming back in. It is VERY important that you keep your gun up, still pointing it at the target when you come back into cover. This means you don’t have to adjust your aim, as long as your leans are consistent, your paint will be hitting the same spot.

The lean:

There are different schools of thought on the best ways to lean out of your bunker whilst making the shot whether you just ‘edge’ out in a straight line or you ‘roll’ out with just your upper torso. In my honest opinion, you can over-think these things to death, you just got to find the way that works for you. I probably do a combination of the two – If you only roll your torso it’s hard to keep your hopper from hanging out the bunker but if you only edge out you have to move your legs a lot!

Composure:

You may not hit it first time, or the second but that’s why you’re here. Just freestyle it for a few turns until you feel comfortable hitting the target. When you’re ready, start thinking about every single piece of your body, ask yourself these questions in between shots:-

1. Are my feet staying on the floor? I personally had and sometimes still suffer from pulling my inside leg off the ground when I shoot – it looks bad and puts you off balance
2. Am I starting to hunch over my gun? Relax… Keep that back straight and your head up
3. Have I taken a breath since I started this drill? It’s easy to tense up and forget to breath! Remember to keep the oxygen coming in
4. Am I coming out of my bunker too far? You only need to leave the bunker far enough for the tip of your barrel to be past it so you can make a clear shot, don’t give them any more than the edge of your goggles, gun and arm
5. Am I coming back in far enough after my shot so that I’m behind cover and my opponent can’t see me? When training against an inanimate object, it’s easy to get sloppy and only come back halfway, an opponent can read where you are coming out or get a shot on you if they can see part of you permanently sticking out.
6. Could I make my movements quicker? Not as important than the above but once you’re getting accurate it’s time to start working on your speed. The faster you are the higher your chances of survival.

Most importantly, are you composed? If not take a deep breath, relax, picture someone doing yoga on an island in a tranquil pond, whatever works – stop yourself from tensing up, focus on the target, breath out, take the shot.

You want to be relaxed and level headed on the paintball field. I don’t think anyone on the field today stays calm and collected every single point, things happen and you get surprised or intimidated by an aggressor and you start to lose your cool, but the calmer you can remain the closer you become to maximising your odds of winning.



The aim when perfecting this technique, is to minimise the amount of movement and energy required to perform it. When you’re getting it right you will be keeping your gun up the entire time, only making a movement of a few inches and doing it so fast that you only get a flash look at your target and your paint leaving the barrel. You wont need to watch it hit your target, you’ll just know that you blew it up in the face.



Those are the fundamentals behind snapshooting. You will never be perfect, nobody is, but work at it every training session and you’ll see your survivability and your G-counts steadily rise.


Summary: 

• Keep calm, focused and composed
• Visualize your target at all times
• Keep your gun up and pointing at the target at all times
• Be aware of where your body is – don’t come out too far or come in too little
• Minimize your movements
• Increase your speed once you improve your accuracy