07/18/09 - Fortress

Played at “Fortress” with the folks from Tunka.com and BlackLight Company. Field is National Forest south of Nederland, CO. Named "Fortress because of three large rock formations in the northwest corner of the field. Otherwise mostly pine trees and little other cover. Pump markers only. Since it was only my second paintball outing, and playing with experienced pump players, I was in over my head.

A guy named Bill arrived with a vehicle packed with markers. He lent me an old Tippman SL-68 pump gun - a solidly constructed, reliable pump gun design that provided the basis for Tippmann’s recent reissuing of the SL-68. I also discovered that my CO2 tank had a leak and there was hardly any pressure left in it. Bill offered me one of his spare tanks. Thanks Bill!

Equipment problems really nailed me this game – namely my mask. First couple games, my glasses inside my mask fogged so bad I couldn't see anything. I didn't contribute much to these games. I was eliminated fairly easily.

Kills: 0
Deaths: 2

Third game, I pocketed my glasses and tried to go without, but my goggle lens was so coated with sweat, I couldn't see that well at anyway. To compensate for blurred visibility, I decided not to run around, but rather defend the flag. I settled down in an ambush position about 30 feet behind the flag and waited.

Just by listening, I could tell the opposing team was breaking through. Soon I saw a couple moving blurs walking into the clearing with the flag, both talking quietly to each other. I took my best guess at aiming and released a couple rounds as fast as I could. Apparently I nearly hit one of the guys and surprised him quite a bit. He yelled to his buddy and they ran in opposite directions taking up cover at my two o’clock and eleven o’clock. I fought back as best I could, but couldn’t see a thing. Even so, I’d picked a really nice ambush spot with strong cover. It took quite some time of trading fire before their crossfire eliminated me.

Kills: 0
Deaths: 3

I was grumbling just a bit back in the staging area about my goggle problems. One of the guys was nice enough to lend me his goggles – with thermal lens, and rigged CPU fan. One of the other guys suggested a sweat band to prevent sweat from running onto the goggle lens from the inside. I improvised with a red bandanna in my gear bag. Between the sweat band and the CPU fan, I had no real fogging problems with this mask. Day is saved! This is a nice bunch of guys.

I’m a bit sketchy on game order at this point. I played one game at the center of the defensive line. I was moving forward from cover to cover. I found you can actually tree-walk during the early stages of breakout without the need for constant crouched-running. Eventually, I settled down and just scanned some clear lanes of fire.

I spotted a pit about three feet deep and figured it would make a good ambush spot. As I slid into it, I took fire from the right. I dropped down and tried to shoot back. I didn’t get much chance and was hit soon after going to ground.

Pump guns are tough to get the hang of. You really need to work the rhythm of pump-and-shoot to maintain a good rate of fire. My opponents were putting out a lot more shots than me, and I was obviously outgunned. I had to hand it to the guy who took me out. I never even saw him. He told me later he'd been working on approaching me for quite a while before he saw me going to cover and figured he would lose his clear shot.

Kills: 0
Deaths: 4

After that, we played a couple games of Alamo/fortress. 4 defenders, 8 attackers. I was on the attack first. Objective was to eliminate the defenders with a set time limit.

I went right hand approach with two other guys to probe one possible rock formation. It was deserted. We heard exchange of shots to the left rock formation and moved to flank those rocks. I moved forward to the hill's base to try and spook the defenders into shooting and giving away their position. I drew rather intense fire. As I was trying to shoot back, I stuck my elbow out while aiming and took an elbow hit. Have to remember to keep the elbow tucked in while shooting.

Kills: 0
Deaths: 5

Second game, I volunteered to defend. I got put in a forward position. I settled into a bowl in the rocks seated with feet forward. I found that by simply leaning forward and backward I could come in and out of cover. I tried to keep a low profile and look for incoming players. About midway, I started trading fire with one of the attackers. Another defender to my left was splitting his fire between my guy and another attacker as well. So we managed to keep the front well suppressed. A few balls came close to hitting my head, but my cover was pretty good. I saw no need to do much about the front attackers except shoot occasionally to let them know I was still there.

My main concern was the trees to my left flank. I saw a guy moving up that way and warned the others. But it was otherwise quiet until the final five-minute push. At that point, the fire at our positions grew more intense. The guy in front of me managed to move into the trees to the left without my noticing. We I pocked my head out to check the flank, he nailed me dead center in the goggles. Then he moved up to my position and took out a fellow defender from behind. We lost.

I don't think I did too much wrong on this one. I couldn't move from my cover really, and I kept people busy long enough. In the end, and good shot took me out. I think I did far better as an Alamo defender this game than in my first paintball outing.

Kills: 0
Deaths: 6

Note: the rollerblading kneepads I'm using felt a little silly at first, but after several games (and this last in the rocks) they're kind of the star players of the day. Kneepads are NICE.

Next we had a normal capture the flag game. Two of the experienced hotshots on our team took off to left flank and left us remaining 3 players to sort out the middle and right flank. Someone vaguely said that someone should "defend the tape" to the right. So I decided to do it. I moved up and started shooting at 2 guys moving up middle. They were outgunning me. I got excited and decided to rush forward and try and flank them. I ran smack into an enemy flanker in cover who started shooting at me from the front. I scurried for cover and the other two guys joined in shooting at me. Three-way crossfire and I was taken out easy. Quickest death I’d had all day. Doh!

Kills: 0
Deaths: 7

From this, I learned that my typical instinct of running off into the woods and solo-ing is kind of stupid. It just makes me easier to kill.

Next game, we actually formulated a plan. One experienced runner would run up and around the far right flank and go for the flag on his own. The rest of us would do a strong push right up the center - with a primarily defensive focus. So we rushed forward as far as we could hoping to gain lots of ground, so we could fall back a lot on defense.

I had two guys to my right and one guy to my left covering left flank. Me and the guy to my right eventually encountered about two forward enemy players. With good cover and a combined crossfire, we convinced them to fall back. The guy to my right managed to take one down, and I heard the guy further right take one down too. I spotted one guy hanging back by the flag. So we had accounted for three enemy.

Then I heard the left flank guy shout that two guys were running the tape and going to hit us from behind. I abandoned my position and sprinted back toward the flag. I couldn't find the flag and didn't know where it was. As I stopped to get bearings, I saw an enemy guy running our left flank. He started sprinting and I did too. We ran parallel to each other from about 40 feet away for about 50 feet and then I stopped and started shooting first. He dropped into cover and I kept shooting at him as fast as possible. I got a lucky shot on his arm, and he was out. My first kill!

Another guy came up to support me soon after, but our flag was safe and the enemy was down at least 3 with another guy still at the flag. Clearly, we were going to win this one. Eventually, our extreme flanker rang the horn (the enemy flag), and that was it. Convincing win for our team. And I was feeling pretty good.

Kills: 1
Deaths: 8

I learned from this that using your teammates works very well. Especially when they, and the enemy are better players than you. But on the other hand, there was is time to abandon the position and go help elsewhere as fast as possible. Even if that flanker had taken me out, I would have kept him busy long enough for my teammate to arrive and engage him. I think I played this one well making good use of cover, providing supporting fire, and responding to threats.

Overall, a good day of paintball. I'll have to fix my mask problem, it kind of spoiled the first three games. I resolved to make that first priority over everything else in future games. Kneepads were an awesome and saw a lot of use. The Tippman SL-68 pump gun I borrowed was reliable and effective once you learned its unique rhythm. But I can’t say I’ve caught the pump-bug. I think I like semi-auto better.

This game was on a whole new level from the first game I played. The first game was against a bunch of casual guys playing a couple weekends each summer. There were some pretty tough players there, but mostly newbies, and casual players. The TUNKA guys, by contrast, were obviously dedicated paintball nuts who played almost every weekend they could manage during the on-season. They knew their equipment and how to use it. The handful of Blacklight Company players there were a part of an organized competitive scenario/woodsball team. I was completely outmatched.

I found that the bold and aggressive tactics I had employed my first game simply did not work against more experienced players. Up against fellow newbies, a lone flanking runner who doesn’t bother to shoot may not be noticed at all. But the vets at this game weren’t having any of that nonsense. They knew that flankers are bad news, and weren’t about to let me get away with it – especially not when I was presenting such an easy shot. Without combined fire and isolated from my teammates, I was continually pinned down and clobbered by enemy crossfires. If you try to flank without supporting fire from your mates suppressing the enemy, you’re going to get blasted. It took me all day to figure this out, pull my head out, and start sticking with my teammates. Once I joined the fire line, my usefulness increased a lot.

The Tunka.com crowd was a great bunch to play with, and shooting the breeze around lunchtime and after finish was a nice way to end the day.