Friday, April 20, 2007

Is BPS BS? - A look at ROF in the woods

A lot of jawing goes on between speedballers and woodsballers over the importance of BPS. However the argument that always perplexes me is that Speedball relies only on the amount of paint an individual can throw, their BPS, ROF whatever you want to call it. Now I’m not going to pretend like there was not a period of my paintball career where just the very utterance of inflatables made me cringe, but after being around the sport more I realized that there were times where a higher ROF was useful in the woods. However that brought me back to a question I’ve debated since I’ve been playing paintball….is BPS BS?

In the beginning as I stated earlier I thought that shooting a whole lot was what the tournament players did to make up for their lack of skill and strategy. That by covering such a small field with as much paint as possible the would had a higher chance of winning and that’s all the game was about. Eventually I learned that there were 15 bps caps and so it didn’t matter if your gun could shoot 200 bps it was going to be capped. After watching people play, and playing more myself I slowly began to see that we shoot a lot of paintballs in the woods too, it just seems like less because the games are longer and there is so much ground to cover that we are not in constant battles. As I played more and more woodsball I realized that if I shot one ball at a guy he would pop up and try to shoot me again, and if I shot 5 balls at him it would take him longer. So the more paint you sling at someone the less willing they are to move and I don’t think anyone will argue with that.

Later down the line I was a general at the Gorilla game at PVM in Ohio. As the 5 star one of my biggest objectives was simply not to die. Well I chose to set up fort in a tower which ended up being the enemy’s objective which led to waves and waves of men trying to take it from me. I sat in the tower and the first few waves almost killed me. I was trying to pick them off while they moved and kill them with single shots like I do when I sneak up on people. Quickly I realized that this was not going to work and that if I really wanted to hold them off for the remaining two hours, I needed to slow them down. So I started firing more and more which not only did it slow their movement almost to a halt but I got many lucky shots which resulted in forcing them to retreat and re-enforce.

Since than I’ve encountered other one on many situation and understood that BPS could be a useful tool and since then have kept it in my back pocket just incase I got into a bad situation. Think about all the many scenario games we have all played. When on defense its good to have a high ROF to better slow the enemy down, or if you see a large group of people running at once you can use a “spray and pray” approach to the issue. Also if you’re a dagger running out in the middle of the open it is nice to be able to scare people down when your moving. I’m sure we could think of more examples if we tried, but I think ya’ll get my point.

So in conclusion BPS is NOT just for speedball. Just to clarify I have a Marq 7 with four eyes, Tadao board and tons of bells and whistles it can shoot as fast as the hopper you have (so over 30 bps) yet even so I have it capped at 14 because while I do think bps is useful there is a limit. There is NO reason to have greater than 15 as think about it 200 rounds at 15 rounds a second and you can shoot for 13 seconds before you need to reload. If your using HPA especially with a Tippmann you might not be able to shoot more than 1000 rounds on a tank anyways. So with the increase of BPS comes the need for finger control even more than using something that can shoot 5 bps.

So with that in mind try to find the balance, know when you just need to use one or two shots and know when it’s ok just to unload… just make sure you have some full pods!!!

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Outlaw – ignorance is no excuse : Mini Post

So I’ve been blessed to live in an area with more paintball fields in driving distance than I know what to do with some of them are even BYOP and free (not outlaw however) I have indoor scenario and air ball fields, and many people to play with. So I normally don’t play outlaw games yet when I have there are a few things to keep in mind. First of all MAKE SURE you know who owns the land and where the boundaries are the last thing you want to do is wander onto someone else’s land with guns. Second make sure you have WRITTEN PERMISSION to be using the field or at minimum an email with a phone number where the owner can be reached. The final tip and the most ignored tip is just because the land is public land, or hunting ground, does not make it ok to play paintball on. Call the local parks department and ask, the 2 minutes on the phone could save you and your friends some serious money from fines. Also remember a team with a criminal record will have trouble getting sponsored. So have fun playing, but play by the rules and keep in mind

IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS NO EXCUSE!