Got asked to do an AMA about my time as a semi-pro paintballer

For Beginners

I'll start by saying, I got out of paintball about 15 years ago and a LOT has changed since then but this is what I knew and how I lived during my highschool years.

I'll start with a couple beginner makers. Shown in green is an old school autococker style maker. These are great guns for beginner to intermediate players looking to jump into some random paintball games or to play some scenario ball type games. Autocockers are very accurate markers. They aren't as fast as the professional electronic aided markers you'll see in the world cup matches but they're a good place to start. They operate like all other markers and are easy to modify. They require practice and control to fire. Pulling the trigger fully gives a good release of the bolt to keep the paint from breaking and spraying your barrel. And they're like a woman. If you give it a good solid stroke, she'll be happy and shoot straight and true for you.

Paintballs in any marker typically leave the gun between 250-300fps. Yes it'll cause welts. It kinda stings but it's a great sport! GO DO IT!!

Also for beginners

This is the Tippmann A5. Primarily used as rental guns along with its cousin the Tippmann 98 custom, this is generally what most places used to use as their loaner guns for anyone looking for an afternoon of paint and bruises. Typically run off of CO2 rather than a compressed air system, it's reliable and fun. At the time you could pick one of these babies up stock for about 200 bucks. The model shown has the 'boom barrel' on it as I used to call it. Gives the paintball a backspin allowing it a range of about 150 feet before it dropped off. It sounds like a damn cannon when it goes off though. Can easily be modded to look like an AR-15 if desired. You can place all kinds of fun mods on it to make it how you want it. Shown has an extended air hose on it so you can wear your CO2 tank on your back or belt so it doesn't get in the way of the cosmetic mods. I owned one of these in my early EARLY days of playing. I had mine modded out to have a CAR stock on it, foregrip, boom barrel and laser site on it because why the fuck not!? I left my CO2 bottle attached to the gun itself instead of carrying on my back.

Speaking of air... lets talk air!

Here you'll see an HPA system vs a CO2 system. Why does the difference matter? Are they interchangeable? It matters for how cleanly the paintballs exit your marker. CO2 is less stable than a High Pressure Air system (also comes in low pressure) and you're more liable to get chop out of a CO2 system. CO2 is a lot cheaper though and for the weekend player or bachelor party, that's all you need.

My high pressure tank when I played held 3500psi and I could typically get about 3 games worth of time out of my tank. My CO2 tank would run dry for me by the end of a single game before I had to fill up. HPA systems are also pretty pricey and not all markers are set up for HPA. The regulators don't like it if you don't set them up properly. I think my HPA tank ran somewhere around $150 bucks or so. Honestly can't remember that well.

Advanced guns for serious players

This gun shown is one of my all time favorites. I've been told they don't even make this anymore. This is a Bob Long Dragon Intimidator. It's a great gun with an electronic trigger board on it. Why do you need an electronic trigger? Various tournaments have set standards for how many balls can exit your gun in a certain amount of time. When I played we were always restricted to 22 rounds per second. No matter how fast you pull the hair trigger, only 22 balls per second would be fired. It's great gun that at the time was approximately $1200 bucks. It's also a very finicky gun. Prone to breaking, at least mine was. Give it love and it will show you love in return

The Shocker!

Probably not what you're thinking. This marker made by Smart Parts was one of my other favorites along with a marker by Angel and one by Dye that I owned. Each one at or around about a grand per marker. The shocker is a favorite of a lot of teams. Minimal moving parts its a highly reliable gun. Electronic, runs HPA... a great place to go if you're looking to pwn some noobs or start down the path to paintball immortality!

Other things you'll need...

Hoppers are a vital part of any paintball marker. It's what holds your paint as you enter the field of battle! Shown we have an Odyssey Halo electronic hopper. Mine at the time ran me about $150 bones. Standard plastic hoppers (shake and bakes) do the exact same thing mostly. They feed the paintballs into the gun so you can shoot. The difference is the electronic hoppers help keep the flow of paint steady to your marker and reduce the chance of paintballs getting stuck in the feed tube and forcing you to shake your gun. Hence the term, Shake and Bake. During a recreational game or a woodsball/scenario style game you'll often see people slapping their hoppers or shaking their guns. It's because the paint got stuck. This baby reduces the chances of that happening and assists you in slinging long ropes of paint.

Barrel kits

Paintballs like real bullets, come in varying calibers. Typically the size of a paintball is standard across the board, but environmental conditions like heat or humidity can cause paint to swell or constrict. Having a good interchangeable barrel system like what's shown here can make sure that your paint has the most snug fit to exit the barrel with. This reduces the likelihood that your paint will bounce in the barrel or get stuck and explode when it gets hit by the bolt.

Mask

You must have a mask. This is an unavoidable truth unless you're a Gotsdanged moron. I wouldn't want a paintball traveling 275fps to smash my eye out... no thanks! Buy a mask. It might just save your eyesight especially if you're like me who apparently liked to recreate bad pornos by getting gogged in the face by an enemy paintball. That's terminology for getting hit in the goggles by a paintball...

Clothing

Okay, this sounds like a fun sport. Do I need to buy hundreds of dollars worth of special paintball clothing? Hells to the no! If all you're doing is getting drunk and playing paintball in the woods on a camping trip, go by your local military surplus store and spend 30 bucks on an old set of BDUs or something or play in a T-Shirt and shorts. It's your life, live it how you want.

I had a couple jerseys like this that my team's sponsor bought for us. Arms have padding, there are other areas of thin padding to help when you're sliding across the ground trying to take someone out. Also, it makes it look like you know what you're doing...

More clothes

Between my jerseys and my pants, my clothing alone was roughly a $500 dollar setup. Remember my shit was customed for me. The pants are nice because they protect your lower body better for doing a lot of sliding and being on your knees alot (cue BJ jokes). It also provided extra support for me since I was a backman, I carried 12 fully loaded pods on a belt.

A pod is a separate container that held 200 paintballs. Do the math. 12x200. That's a lot of paint. My job after the game started was to stay low and throw as much paint down field as possible at the enemy to allow my guys a chance to move up and make close range shots. Because of that, I had to refill quickly and often.

Beercans... Doritos.... mmmmmm

When playing speedball, typical style for tournaments, you have a lot of inflated objects or bunkers to hide behind, shown are a Dorito and a beercan. The shapes are fairly obvious, but it also allows for instant recognition when you're communicating with your team for callouts. An example you say? "1 behind the beer can! 2 behind the center Dorito! 1 crawling down the snake!"

The Snake...

The snake is a name for any long string of bunkers placed together on one side of the field. It allows players the ability to attempt to move unnoticed down the field. Or you can get your ass shot the fuck up hiding back behind this as EVERYONE tries to take the snake! Some of the best kills I ever got were pinning people down on the snake and shooting them point blank.

There's a small overview of some of the basics of paintball as I remember it. I'll answer as many questions as I can for whoever has them. Please remember that I stopped playing 15 years ago after my sponsors at the time dropped my team. They figured that we should play paintball rather than study for finals to finish highschool.

If you're interested in paintball and want to chat more, hit me up. It's a great sport to get into but it's expensive as fuck to take seriously... During any given team practice we'd shoot anywhere between 10-20 cases of paint at $80 bucks a case. Sponsors are great and terrible at the same time...

Please excuse any spelling mistakes that I might have left in here too... I'm on my 4th beer and 3rd cigar... Hope you enjoyed it... if you didn't, don't be a douche... if you did, I'm glad. It was fun to remember those times! Thanks! And if by some miracle this hits the FP, there won't be some gayass FP Edit about OMG I made the front page! I promise!