YAPP (yet another paintball post)

My girlfriend and I went paintballing last saturday, and had a great day playing and rest of the day watching pros play.

We went out with group called "Friendly Fire", and or "Too Much Phun". They run every first Saturday to SC Village, and third Saturday to Tombstone Paintball park. I usually try to avoid SC Village, but considering the last time I went there was a long time ago, I'm considering going with them next month.

A quick aside about why I like FF. Friendly Fire is $20 admission, BYOP (bring your own paint), free entry to the raffle (and you can buy more tickets at less then a dollar a piece) I usually by $20 worth of tickets, and get somewhere between $30-$100 worth of gear, free lunch and I'm not talking about no shitty "continental breakfast" free food, this is a jumbo jack, two 1/2 liter bottles of water, soda (name brand stuff too!), and candy (nutter-butter, famos amos cookies, etc.) Plus, there's always extra water and soda. Free CO2 fills ($6 at tombstone for a 20oz!), free marker tech (alone worth the $20!!!) I know the tech, and he's no dummy. And a fun day of ballin'! The last one usually costs extra =) This is EASILY the best deal in paintball.
I. Shit. You. NOT.

Anyway, for more info on FF, comment on the post. I get the e-mails.
Oop, almost forgot, there's a photography crew there. They follow you onto every field and take whatever pictures seem like good ones to take! At the end of the day, they post all the pictures they took (in small form, like 50 to a page), you look over them, ask to see a few full sized, and either buy them, or don't! Oh, the options! They do photo-quality print outs in 5x7 and 8x10, trim them for you, and will even provide frames if you want. Friendly Fire is kind of based around bringing in people new to the sport in a friendly environment. and for pretty frickin' cheap at that! You come out, you pay a bit of money, get the chance to win some paintball gear (they raffle off a marker every time), and get some pictures to commemorate your outing! Ok, enough shameless plugging!

Back to my day... The group was rather small, which I like, but it verged on too small... If the group is too small, you have trouble on larger fields. We played a larger field, and it actually didn't go so badly, because I was still able to control where everyone was (another benefit of smaller groups), and was able to get some good barrel tags, and look good doing it!
In one case we were on back trenches, and another pump player was occuping (occupying?) behind a set of spools, firing to the right and left of the field. I was on the right, and instead of battling with him, I saw a blind spot, right in front of the spool he was behind. I used his cover as my cover. remember kids! always wrap around your bunkers!!! I dropped down into a trench, and ran to the center of the field, and cautiously got out of the trench and made the run across the 30 ft road to the bunker without being noticed. I began to cut around the bunker to check for feet, when I did, I saw a player sitting to the side of the spool in a trench. I shot him out, and heard from behind the spool, "are you out?" and the response from the dead man, "he's right there!". I snap around the right corner knowing he was firing to the left before his friend called me out. I see his back two feet from me, and must reign in my eager Phantom MAETH, and inform the player that he is out. It took a couple of times to convince him of that fact.
In another instance we pushed them back to their first bunker line on boxes. My girlfriend covered me while I ran in to take the last bunker. I couldn't resist buying the picture that was taken just before my run, it will follow. I ran to the last bunker, careful not to overrun it, because you can't really take a long bunker wide without being able to lay paint. I hit the corner of the bunker, and pop out autotriggering a group of three at my feet. I get back in because of a player 6 feet ahead with some cover between me and he. It takes two shots to gog him, I then run down the bunker line to the corner, and approach the last enemy low behind a board covering the trench-type bunker he was in. I popped up above the board once I got there, and let the player know that he was now out. Again, I had to tell him a few times. Afterwards the guy told me that he was confused why someone from his side of the field was telling him that he was out, and then he saw my band flying out from behind my head. (Bands are used to seperate the teams, one side ties orange bands to the back of their masks, and the other team doesn't. The teams: Bands and No-Bands) And the peasants rejoice.
We later played town. For those of you who may know the field, we were on the side nearest the back speedball field There were about 8 of us, five took left and myself, my girlfriend, and another (pretty skilled) player took right. The 5 were a group of 5, and didn't want the likely possibility of getting owned for being underpowered on an important side of the field break up their group. Fine. More elimination for us. We had little trouble taking the right side, and were soon at their 10. Perhaps the No-Bands had the same problem with the same side. Should have selected more skilled players. We began working our way toward the left side of the field from their starting point to take them by suprise. Well, the (pretty skilled) player took the far side, and jumped the gun. He unloaded a hopper in the general direction of a group of 4 of the opposing team. I think he hit one of them, but as a bonus, our cover was blown! We began battling with the players in a couple of houses who were also battling our teammates on the other side of them. To properly explain the tactics involved in the following manuver please imagine 9 square houses set up in a 3x3 pattern (as it would appear from above. Just three rows of three boxes (houses) forming a square Now remove the bottom middle box. I was in the bottom left house, in the bottom right corner (door), when I see across the open space (empty bottom middle space) an enemy in the window of the house across mine (the bottom right house, window in the bottom left corner of the house, another window in the left middle of the house). We fire at eachother a bit, and when he gets in his window I exit my door into the empty space, and run toward the side of the house in the center of the 3x3. I see his barrel stick out the window, aiming at the door where I was. Once I'm at enough of an angle, I run towards the center window of the house he's in, quickly check the other walls of the house to see if I'm safe to hang in the window, and pop through the window facing the player in the corner. He is crouched down leaning out the door aiming at the door I was at. I think he saw something out the corner of his eye and ignored it to pay attention my door. I say "Hey player, you're out." He turns his head to see me, looks back at the door, and puts his marker up and walks off. I enter the house and move to the door joining the bottom right house and the right center house. I slice the pie on the door, and see a player sitting with his back to the wall between two windows, with his marker in his lap aiming in my general direction. I took him by suprise, but since I could see down the barrel I shot him in the mask before he could react. A split second after I shot him before he could react, he reacted. He put his empty hands forward showing me his palms and said "I surrender!" yeah. You can't surrender if you're already dead! :P
I'd been thinking about reffing for Tombstone for a while, but had just decided I should do it. Everyone there knows me (or rather knows of me), and I'd like to do my part to make sure everyone has fun. aaaand... you get free admission for a month, and two cases of (mid-grade) paint! That's worth about $100 to me. I'm probably going to ref this Saturday. Rest assured that you all will know my thoughts afterwards. Update: I will be reffing this Saturday. So if anyone is reading this, look for the ref with the grey profiler and the black 100th monkey hat

Ah yes, after paintball... We went home, got cleaned up and headed to Main street to check out the NPPL Huntington Beach Tournament. When we got there, I called my friend and he got us VIP behind the main field. We had front row seats to see Infamous get totaled. It was nice. Afterwards we had dinner at Wahoo's on Main. Got the Bonzai burrito, it was good stuff. I look forward to going there in the future. Had dinner with my friend, his brother, who was in the tournament, and some of his teammates.

All-in-all, a kick-ass day. Oh yeah, my girlfriend is getting pretty good. I'm proud.