Paintball Strategy

If you're an inexperience player who's looking to accellerate your skillset, or a seasoned veteran, there's likely going to be some information that will be useful to you in this section. Here we will talk about some strategies which are unique to paintball, some which are taken straight from a real world battlefield, and a few which are somewhere in between.

TEAMWORK
Paintball is a team based sport so as you can imagine, being able to function as part of a cohesive team is absolutely crucial to success. Without good teamwork, failure is almost guaranteed. Many of the strategies we will discuss further on, will rely heavily on teamwork.

COMMUNICATION
Communication goes hand-in-hand with teamwork. Experience shows that a team that has excellent communication can defeat opponents that are vastly greater in numbers.

Communication or "comms" can take a variety of forms, from spoken words, to hand signals, to on-field manouvres. The most typical form of comms in paintball though are simply spoken words. They are typically called out from player to player while on the field, but sometimes can be communicated via 2-way radio (more common in woodsball games).

Regardless of the setting, when using spoken comms, it is important to ensure that they have some kind of code to them so they are not easily understood by the opposition. If the enemy can hear your comms, they can adapt and alter their plans to work against you more effectively.

Coding your comms isn't very difficult, the simples code can be used just so that during the chaos of the game, the opposition can't quickly decipher your plans. Here is an example of some comms coding you can use...

Imagine that the paintball field has an invisible grid on it. The 3 columns running up and down the field will be called 1, 2, and 3. The 3 columns running side to side will be called cold, warm, hot. Immediately this allows us to communicate coded grid references to other players to tell them where the enemy are.

Yelling out "COLD-THREE" tells the other players that there is someone in the far right hand corner of the field. "WARM-ONE" means there is a player on the left hand side, half way up the field.
Of course these are not totally specific but you can make additions to the calls to help team mates centre in on the location.

For example "COLD-THREE-TRIANGLE" means that a player is in the far right hand corner, at the triangular barricade.

Just as it is important to communicate where the opposition are, it is just as important to know where the opposition isn't. Notifying your team members of players who have been eliminated will save your players from laying down suppression fire against players who have already been eliminated from the game.

Yelling out "G-ONE" signifies that one player has been eliminated (i.e. one player gone). When a second player is eliminated by someone else, you would then yell "G-TWO". Telling your players how many are gone, and where it is safe to move up to is vitally important and will help your team progress up the field.

These codes are very brief and are more suited to use in a speedball match, where instructions are simple, and the opposition doesn't have long to react even if they do intercept what you're saying.
In a woodsball game where it's likely that you will be using 2-way radios to communicate with team members over several hundred meters, it's important to have more sophisticated codes in place.

You can have a standardised set of codes which mean something to the people on your team only, but if they are intercepted by opponents using radio scanner equipment, the codes will be useless. Here are some examples.

ALPHA = SQUAD 1 
BRAVO = SQUAD 2 
CHARLIE = SQUAD 3 
DELTA = HEADQUARTERS

CODE 1 = UNDER CONTROL
CODE 2 = ENEMY SPOTTED
CODE 3 = ENGAGING ENEMY
CODE 4 = REQUIRE REINFORCEMENTS

TANGO = ENEMY PLAYER
OSCAR-MIKE = ON THE MOVE
SIERRA-ROMEO = SITUATION REPORT
FOXTROT = FLAG STATION

So with this example some radio transmissions from a team playing capture the flag might look like this...

"Alpha this is Delta, Sierra-Romeo - over" 
(Squad 1 this is HQ, give me a situation report)

"Delta, we are CODE 2, repeat CODE 2, 4 Tango, Oscar-Mike, Foxtrot" 
(HQ, enemy spotted, 4 enemy players, moving to the flag station)

"Roger Alpha, go to CODE 3. Next Sierra-Romeo in 2 minutes" 
(Unterstood Squad 1, engage the enemy, I will get another situation report in 2 minutes) 

Of course these are just examples and you can make yours as simple or as complicated as you want, just as long as everyone on your team knows what the codes mean!

50 - 50 FIREFIGHTS 
As well as team based skills and tactics, it is important to have finely tuned individual skills as well. Train your eyes, reflexes and shooting skills for those one-on-one encounters on the paintball field.
It's often during these one-on-one engagements that one person will find themselves behind some cover, and the opponent behind some cover somewhere downfield. Once they spot each other, it's very easy to get suckered into trading shots at each other. Essentially at this point, it is most likely going to be a lucky shot which causes one player to get hit by the other, not skill. This is why we call it a 50 - 50 firefight. They are things you want to avoid if possible because they have an uncertain outcome.
If you find yourself getting caught up in a shot-for-shot match against an opponent, try and get a team mate to flank the opponent. Even if he can move to a slightly better angle while you're being used as the distraction, the opponent won't notice someone moving to his side, and will become easy prey for your tactics.

INTERLOCKING FIELDS OF FIRE 
Interlocking fields of fire are a defensive measure used to counter forward movement from one or more opponents. The basic theory is that two players will turn to face inwards and begin firing in a cross formation. This will effectively create a wall off fire which is very difficult to penetrate.

The benefit of this strategy is that it only requires two players in order to establish the interlocking field of fire. The downside is that it can require large amounts of ammunition, and is limited by any obstacles throughout the paintball field.

THE FLANKING MANEUVER
Flanking has been the key to winning land battles since the beginning of time, and it is no different in a game of paintball.

Simply put, flanking is when one group engages another group on the field. While the opposition is occupied with the current engagement, a flanking element is sent to move around to the side to attack their exposed area.
Remember that for a flank to be very effective it relies on the opposition to be occupied sufficiently so that they are unaware that they are being flanked, or for the attack to be sufficient enough so that they cannot reposition themselves to be able to counter the flanking maneuver.