How to play Paintball Games

Elimination & Team Elimination:
Pretty Standard, you tag the opposing player, they are out. You can play team vs. team or every man for himself. Last man or team standing wins.

Ace:
Each player starts with a designated number of paint balls, usually 10-20, if you run out of paint or are tagged you are out.

Capture the Flag:
You have two even teams, each defending a flag. The objective is to get the other teams flag and take it back to your base first.

Cops and Robbers:
You give one team an item they have to defend, like a flag or a hopper, and the other teams goal is to retrieve that item and get it back to the starting point. You give the "robbers" a couple minutes head start and then the "cops" take pursuit. If the robber carrying the item is tagged they must drop the item and they are eliminated. If the robbers hold the item for a certain amount of time take out all of the cops they win.

Black Hawk Down/Storm the Fort:
You will want to stick a highly outnumbered team (at most 4 players) in a very easy to defend area, like a fort or a foundation. Then the other team will aim to take it over. It is a fast exciting game for any number of people.

Checkpoint:
You divide into small teams, generally the smaller the better (two to three players is perfect). Your goal is to obtain an item from each checkpoint before your opposing teams. At each checkpoint you will have one item for each team to take and whoever gets all of the items back to a certain area first wins. Of course you will play with standard elimination rules so if your whole team is eliminated, you loose.

Cat and Mouse/kick the can:
You can play this paintball game two ways. With both versions will have at least one defender of a certain point or object. The difference is the other players either aim to kick an object (like a can) or all reach a certain point or area. Only the defenders have guns and their goal is to eliminate the other players before they all reach the point or before the object is kicked over.

Fortress:
One team starts off with players in a Fortress or building and in the surrounding area. The other teams goal is to eliminate all of the players inside the fort, the players outside don't matter. The defending team must keep at least one player in the fort and eliminate the attackers.

Assassin/Protect the President:
You will have one person who is designated as the target and one who is assigned to take him out. Depending on how many people you have playing you can have another assassin, otherwise everyone else will be bodyguards for the target. The guards must remain in close proximity to the target unless the assassin starts shooting, in which case you can send them out in small numbers (usually either one or two). You can either give the target a destination that they must make it to or just go until the target or assassin(s) have been eliminated.

King of the Hill/Defend the base :
You can play King of the Hill paintball basically however you want, but the most common way that I have seen is to get a certain player or number of players from a team on top of the hill (or any other area predetermined by the teams) that is defended by the other team. It is also pretty common to set a goal to capture a flag from a hill, have both teams trying to get to the hill first, or to hold the hill for a certain amount of time, but this paintball game is very customizable.

Raiders:
Raiders starts with one paintball team in an enclosed area, or an easily distinguishable area with solid defence positions. The other paintball team starts outside of the area and needs to "raid" the area within a certain amount of time and hold the zone for a certain amount of time without it being taken back over. If the raiding team does not take control of the defence position in a certain amount of time, then the team that was originally in control of the area wins the paintball game.

Iron Man/king on the forest:
In this paintball game your goal is simple, see how long you can hold a small designated area. You will is to tag your opponent, before he tags you. Whoever wins stays in the designated zone and the loser leaves and send someone else in. You see how many opponents you can go through before you are eliminated. This in a never ending game, usually played with few people.

Over the Bridge:
This paintball game requires a bridge and a divide or creek to play. Two even teams start on opposite sides of the divide and the goal is to get a player across the bridge. You can also play where one team defends their side of the divide and the other team has to take it out, very similar to King of the Hill or defend the base.

Predator:
One player is the predator they get a certain amount of time to go out and hide. When the given time is up the rest of the players go hunt them down. If the predator tags you, you are now a predator as well and your goal is now to take out the hunters. The predators can either be eliminated by any hunter tagging them, or you can give them an advantage by making it so they have to be hit in a certain place or a given number of times.

Civil war:
You line up two even teams directly across from one another in an open field. Each "soldier" gets 3 paint balls and alternate shooting as a team. The team with most players left after all rounds are shot win. You can also play to a last man standing scenario where you have unlimited paint and you alternate shots moving closer until you can't take the pain any longer.

Tucker Stoffers

Paintball Propellants

The two most used forms of propellants for paintball are CO2 (carbon dioxide) and HPA (high pressure air).

CO2 is widely criticized since the introduction of HPA. There are arguments about CO2 causing a large number of problems since it gets so cold when changing from liquid to gas and can cause everything from o rings breaking to trashing your solenoid when it leaks into your marker. Another issue is the poor accuracy, when fired what is used is the gas in the tank, so if you fire to rapidly it will take some time for the liquid CO2 to evaporate and refill the tank pressure that was lost. With the constantly changing tank pressure your velocity will also be constantly changing creating the potential of huge losses in accuracy.

High pressure air, HPA, doesn't have to change from a liquid to a gas it is generally more consistent and therefore viewed as the superior propellant. Another advantage to HPA is how much easier and cheaper it is to fill. With a compressor that can go up the required PSI you can fill your tank all day or if you are out in the field it is very common to have a fill station. A fill station in most cases is a SCUBA tank and the proper receiver for the nipple on your tank. There are arguments against it of course as well. One of the main points is that it is stored at a pressure around 5X higher than CO2 and that you have to have a gauge on your tank, this means that the tanks are going to be more expensive and generally heavier. HPA is about 80% N2 and you will hear it referred to as Nitrogen as well. Back when HPA was first introduced it was used in a higher nitrogen base of up to 100% which you will not see very much today, but the name nitro stuck.

Most markers today will shoot CO2 or compressed air, but most high end markers only recommend compressed air.

Paintball Markers 101

There are a three basic types of paintball markers electropneumatic, pneumatic or semi-automatic, and pump. Your pump markers are called so because you have to manually pump or cock the marker before each shot. This is the origin of the sport. Pump markers really died down with the introduction of the pneumatic markers, but have been steadily making a come back with die hard players and people looking to get out of the speed ball direction that the sport is taking. The pneumatic guns came out in the early 90's and took over pretty much every aspect of the sport. The pneumatics automatically re-cocked the marker after each shot creating a semi-automatic effect. Automag and AutoCocker pioneered this field and where the leaders int he sport until the introduction of the electropneumatic later in the decade. There are ways to upgrade to a partial-electropneumatic through kits and upgrades like the e Blade keeping them competitive, but the day that you will never see a pneumatic in speed ball play is fast approaching. With casual players they are still very popular, but as electropneumatics are becoming cheaper and more available it is generally out of preference than necessity. What most people are using today are going to be the electropneumatic markers. With this style an electric trigger tells a solenoid to release your CO2 or HPA into the bolt driving it forward and firing the paintball. These are most common now, especially in tournament play as they can produce a very high rate of fire (upwards of 30 BPM).