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Frequently Asked Questions
Introduction
Paintball! It's recognized as one of the world's most exciting outdoor participation sports.
Paintball is played in over 50 countries by millions of people, of different ages and lifestyles. Whether high-school students or homemakers, professionals or retirees, all paintball players share in common a love for adventure and a strong competitive spirit.
At big games, you may encounter characters like "Birney", in the photo to the right, who had multiple lives. Birney appeared at Raymond Gong's Top Gun 10th Anniversary, N.J.
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(Photo by Jaime Martinez)
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The Game
TippmanTippmann Model 98 semi-auto,
JT USA head protection system.
Photo by Jessica Sparks
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Paintball is a combination of the childhood games "tag" and "hide & seek," but is much more challenging and sophisticated.
Paintball is a sport played by people from all professions and life styles. It is a sport where women and men compete equally, and where age is not dominated by youth.
Physical size and strength are not as important as intelligence and determination.
Like a game of chess, being able to think quickly and decisively is what makes you a star.
Paintball also is a character-building sport. Players learn the importance of teamwork and gain self-confidence while developing leadership abilities.
Paintball is an exciting sport, and above all paintball is fun! It's a chance to shake off your day-to-day responsibilities and rekindle your spirit of adventure.
Once the adrenaline starts pumping, you can't help but love the thrill of the game!
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How is it played?
Although there are many different game formats, typically a group of players will divide into two teams to play "capture the flag."
In the two flag game, each of two teams starts from its own home base. The object of the game is to capture the other team's flag and carry it back to your home base.
In the one flag game, there is a single flag placed at an equal distance from each of two teams. The flag usually is in the center of the field. The object of the game is to capture the flag and advance, carrying the flag to the opposing team's home base.
Paintball is usually played outdoors. Indoor play sites are becoming more common, usually in more urban areas.
Arena ball (also called speedball) is paintball played in an arena (indoors or outdoors) where spectators can enjoy the excitement.
The number of players on each team can vary from four or five per team to over 500 on a side, limited only by the size of the playing field.
For safety, paintball players always must wear approved-for-paintball goggles and head protection systems to protect the eyes and face during a game and while in other areas (such as the target range or chronograph area) where shooting is permitted.
While you are trying to capture a flag, you also try to eliminate opposing players by tagging them with a paintball expelled from a special airgun called a "paintgun" (also called a marker).
Games have time limits, varied by the number of players and the size of the field. For smaller games of up to 25 on a side, the games usually have a time limit of 15 or 20 minutes. For games with more players, time limits may be 30 to 45 minutes per game.
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Arena ball at SC Village, Southern California.
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With teams of one to five players, games usually are from 3 to 10 minutes.
Referees on the field start and stop games, enforce the rules of fair play, and control the sport's safety. Paintball play sites have a referee staff and may run several games at the same time on different parts of their play site. Each playing field has a marked boundary. A player who goes out of bounds is eliminated from that game.
Between games, players take a break to check their equipment, reload paintballs and have a snack or a soda while they share stories about the thrills of victory and the usually-funny agonies of defeat.
Win or lose, everyone has a good time and there's always the next game waiting for you!
Safety
A barrel plug is to be inserted firmly
into the muzzle of the paintgun.
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Paintball's superb safety record compared with other sports is largely attributable to the attention that has been paid to safety concerns from the very beginnings of the game. High strength goggles are always a requirement at any field as well as barrel plugs and chronographs.
Barrel plugs are an internationally-accepted safety item for paintball. Barrel plugs are required in all non-shooting areas and whenever a referee requires that plugs be inserted.
Chronographs are also mandatory for paintball. These devices measure the velocity at which the paintball is leaving the barrel of the marker. The international speed limit is 300 feet per second (fps). For indoor or other close range play, the speed limits are lower. In tournaments, penalties for exceeding the speed limit have cost many teams a trip to the finals--tournament directors have no sense of humor when it comes to enforcing safety rules.
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Referees enforce safety and playing rules, as well as start and stop every game. They tend to chose brightly colored outfits, and players are generally not allowed to wear uniforms that resemble ref clothing. They are also called judges or marshals.
What are Painballs?
A paintball is a round capsule with colored liquid inside it. A paintball's thin outer shell is usually made of gelatin. Paintballs are similar to large round vitamin capsules or bath oil beads. The most common paintball size is .68" in diameter.
The fill inside a paintball is non-toxic, non-caustic, water-soluble and biodegradable. It rinses out of clothing and washes off skin with mild soap and water.
Paintballs come in a rainbow of colors, such as blue, pink, white, orange, red, yellow, green, and other bright hues. The outer shell of a paintball may be a color swirl, or two-toned. The inner fill may be a different color from the color of the outer shell.
When a paintball tags a player, the thin outer layer of the paintball splits open, and the liquid fill inside leaves a bright "paint" mark. A player who is marked is eliminated from the game. Usually the mark must be the size of a U.S. quarter to be considered big enough to eliminate the player. Smaller amounts of fill that marks a player is called splatter and usually do not eliminate the player.
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Flags & Armbands
A flag as used in paintball is generally a rectangular piece of cloth about 24" x 12" in size. Players wear colored armbands to distinguish one team from another.
In tournament games where each team has a flag to protect, usually a team's armband color will match the color of the flag they are protecting. In recreational games, the two flags should be of contrasting colors, or one should be patterned or striped, so that the flags do not look alike.
"The two flags should be of contrasting
colors, or one should be patterned or
striped, so that the flags do not look alike".
Photo by Jaime Martinez
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Markers
These ladies won a stockgun tournament and three Phantom
stockguns from Component Concepts at Top Gun, N.J.
Photo by Jaime Martinez
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Paintguns, also known as Markers, come in a variety of shapes and styles, from simple to sophisticated.
Stockguns are powered by small 12-gram CO2 powerlets that have to be changed after 15 to 25 shots. Nearly all stockguns are pumpguns.
With a pumpgun, each time a player wants to shoot a paintball, the player must first must cock the paintgun by using a pump and then squeeze the trigger. The pumpgun must be recocked before the player can shoot again.
Pumpguns may be powered by 12-grams, or by larger, refillable CO2 or compressed air cylinders that supply hundreds of shots per fill.
Semi-automatic paintguns are generally powered by refillable cylinders. With a semi-auto, the player first must cock the paintgun in order to shoot a paintball. Then the mechanics of the paintgun will recock the paintgun so that the next time the player squeezed the trigger, another paintball is shot.
(In contrast, with a fully-automatic system, the mechanism is cocked once; then, if the trigger is squeezed and held down without release, the mechanism will continue to shoot until the trigger is released.)
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The First Game
The first game of paintball was played in June, 1981, near Henniker, New Hampshire. Following, from The New, Official Survival Game Manual, by Lionel Atwill (National Survival Game, Inc., 1987), is a taste of that game, and a look at the three men whose genius created a sport played worldwide today. If you find a copy of this book, treasure it, because it's hard to find. Note that the equipment (particularly the goggles) shown in the photos in the book is not considered safe for use in the sport today.
Charles Gaines, Hayes Noel, and Bob Gurnsey get the credit for inventing paintball. The books introduction, by Gaines, talks about how the game was invented:
"One night during the spring of 1976 or 1977, Hayes Noel and I were grilling a king mackerel and drinking gills and tonic on the patio of a house in Jupiter Island, Florida. While we were grilling and drinking we talked, as we often do, about play. We both believe in play. Specifically, in this ginny conversation, we began to construct from an idea of Hayes's a form of play that might contain the childhood exhilaration of stalking and being stalked, might call on a hodgepodge of instincts and skills and might allow as wide a variety of responses as possible to this rich old question: How do I get from where I am now to where I want to be?
"Well, the Survival Game was conceived in utero that night---conceived as a lark, as something that was fun to think about. Somehow we kept thinking about it, discussing it, always in the context of other forms of fun, in New York City, on Martha's Vineyard, in a duck blind off the New Hampshire coast with Richie White and Carl Sandquist, and in dozens of places with Bob Gurnsey...."
Another gentleman, George Butler, located the Nel-Spot paint marker in a forestry equipment catalog. These markers were used to mark trees and cattle. One thing led to another, and another, and The Survival Game was born.
Gaines commented about the games rapid growth: "All of it happened, I believe, because the Survival Game extends itself naturally into a number of universally interesting metaphors. Playing the Game can actually show you in its own terms who you are, and there is no more interesting metaphor than that. The Game can also be seen as a metaphor for the efficacy of teamwork, for universal cause and effect and for the manner in which consequences evolve from sequential decisions. And some people will even tell you that it is a sure and ugly metaphor for war. We don't believe that is so, but I am not out to argue the point here.
"The Game may be interesting because of these various metaphorical extensions, but it is not fun because of them; it is fun simply because it is fun. Conceived as a lark, it is a lark to play--an intricate, demanding and thrilling child's play which, like all the best games, can never be played perfectly. Play like that for adults is always in short supply. With this book you can have fun reading about the Survival Game. Then you can have the great good fun of going out and playing it."
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Roots
The book's chapter, "The Roots of the Game," describing that June, 1981, first game, opens with a quote: "A mans fate is but his disposition."---Menander (343-262 B.C.)
Menander was a Greek comedic dramatist. The quote was appended to the letter inviting people to play in the first Survival Game. The Game's founders, Charles Gaines, Hayes Noel and Bob Gurnsey, suggested that those who were invited should "ponder that thought as we determined our strategies."
Atwill, who wrote the book, states, "You may view that notion as a comic crock. But if you find even a glint of truth in it, you will agree that the dispositions of the men who conceived the Game have bearing on what the Game is about, and their initial concept should influence how the rest of us play the Game today."
At the time, Charles Gaines was (and still is) a writer of novels, non-fiction, and screenplays, including the novel Stay Hungry and a nonfiction work, Pumping Iron (both about body building). Hayes Noel was a very successful New York stock and options trader (and still is very successful in that industry). Bob Gurnsey lived in New Hampshire at that time, and was the president of the National Survival Game, Inc., a company no longer operating. All three are risk-takers. Atwill wrote that Gurnsey raced cars, Gaines had scuba dived in the open ocean in the company of a hooked marlin, and Hayes, when jumped by New York thugs, responded "by shrieking obscenities and damn near beating one to death with a convenient garbage can."
The games roots, wrote Atwill, "started in 1976 with a cape buffalo, one of those big, mean things with horns that roam Africa. A friend of Hayes's had returned from a safari on which he had hunted a buff. He had told Hayes of the excitement, of the surge of adrenaline and of the heightened sense of perception that came from the danger of facing that animal. He swore he could smell and hear and taste and feel more clearly in that environment of fear. It was a sensory high, a drugless high.
"Hayes and his friend were walking through the woods when Hayes heard the story. Hayes suggested that, as a lark, they try to recreate some of that feeling, that on their way back to the house they stalk one another as a hunter stalks his game. As they did so, Hayes recognized something of what his friend had told him. A tingle. A feeling of being particularly well toned and alive.
"Later in the year, on the sand of Jupiter Beach, Florida, where they were vacationing, Hayes told the story to Charles. ... The problem, they saw, was creating the illusion of a dangerous atmosphere, for few people would risk true danger for a sensory reward. Then they started talking about Hayes mock stalk, and their dispositions began to shape the conversation. Gaines argued that in such a situation, a country boy could outsmart a city boy, because a country boy knows how to hunt, knows the woods, and knows, in short, how to survive.
"Not so, argued Hayes. The skills to survive on Wall Street or in the subway could be transmuted successfully to the African veld or the New Hampshire woods. Suddenly, an intellectual discussion of sensory awareness turned into a debate--a challenge. Competition. Fun."
The argument went on for a few years. The Nel-Spot marker was located and tested on a volunteer, Shelby, Charles son, who said it didn't hurt much. The invitations for the first game drew 9 people, plus Bob, Charles, and Hayes. The 9 each paid $175 each to cover equipment costs, and incidentals such as food and adult beverages.
They arrived at Charles house the day before: "Bob Jones, a novelist, staff writer for Sports Illustrated and an experienced hunter; Ronnie Simpkins, a farmer from Alabama and a master turkey hunter; Jerome Gary, a New York film producer; Carl Sandquist, a New Hampshire contracting estimator; Ritchie White, the New Hampshire forester who had told Hayes he could cut his neck in the woods; Ken Barrett, a New York venture capitalist with lots of hunting experience; Joe Drinon, a stock-broker from New Hampshire and a former Golden Gloves boxer; Bob Carlson, a trauma surgeon from Alabama and a hunter; and myself [Lionel Atwill], a writer for Sports Afield, a hunter and a Vietnam vet, who had had the unpleasurable experience of leading reconnaissance missions in Vietnam in 1968, a decidedly poor year."
The prediction the night before the game? That the hunters would do well, and that the city boys were worth less than a case of beer. Atwill had the most respect due to his Special Forces experience.
The large field had 12 flags on it. The object of the game was to capture all the flags, and it was "every man for himself" (not at all like today's two-flag team game that usually is played with each team having its own flag).
For more game details, read the book, but in summary, the first player to dye was Barrett. He surrendered to Gary. Simpkins hand marked Gurnsey. Dr. Carlson shot five people, one being Noel when Noel had three flags and was headed for a fourth. Atwill "hurled a moldy onion" at Gaines, charged and tagged Gaines in the leg--but the ball bounced off. The tables turned, and Gaines tagged Atwill.
The winner? Ritchie White, the New Hampshire forester. "No one ever saw Ritchie, and he never fired a shot. He crept through the woods from station to station, gathering flags as easily as a schoolgirl gathers flowers."
Atwill wrote, "The play was less than spectacular compared to some Games I've seen since, but there was a spirit to that first Game that will be hard to capture again. The weekend bubbled with humor, honor, fun and obnoxiously friendly, yet intense, competition. Those feelings, I believe, reflected the dispositions of the founders of the Game."
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