Make sure FF_ON…

Friday we went on our corporate outing to Chilli Paintball Pits to shoot each other as a teambuilding exercise. I had never had the good fortune to play this sport before, and let me tell you all I’m sure as hell going again.

Going in, I had no idea what to expect. I knew that getting shot with a paintball “stung a little” but it was nothing to be concerned with. The man informed us of their rules about being dead and getting paint-checked when you weren’t sure if you were hit, and when masks were to be worn (at all times).

Our first experience was your standard capture the flag setup. Now, I am no dummy, I know to keep your head down and keep covered at all times. I also know that a paintball can’t kill you, but when you hear shots ringing against brush and barrels around you it gets Antonio The Adrenaline Man at the bellows. I unfortunately got pinned to three barrels and in somewhat of a firefight with a guy that was behind some trees. He got shot by my teammates, and in the process of checking I got nailed in the shoulder. Not a kill shot, but by the rules I was still dead.

After awhile, I realized why I always gravitated towards Quake servers with the FF_OFF flag set. I inadvertantly killed three of my teammates during the six games. The first was because of rules confusion. We had just got done with a round that ended in a draw, and the object was to get your opponents flag and raise it up this flagpole. This game, apparently, the object was to raise YOUR OWN flag up the flagpole.

The game started, I made it up to the front with the initial charge. I saw a guy dart down in front of the flagpole, and our flag start to raise. I also saw shots coming from our side in the vicinity of the guy. I couldn’t see his armband but I figured if people that had a better vantage than I did were shooting at him, he must be the enemy. So I shot his knee off. You can stop now before you point out the obvious mistake this was. So I was embarrassed, oops. I once again took one in the opposite shoulder to finish that round off.

The two other incidents happened during the Castle round. We started on opposite sides of the castle, basically in view of the other side. A bunch of us had the bright idea of raining in shots at the enemy, hoping to kill them on their charge. My friend Nelson is about 6’5″, and he was running right in front of me, also doing the same thing. In the middle of his charge, he stops and stands straight up and I shot him in the back of the head from about 7 feet away. Ouch.

Later on in the round, I had pressed up to the castle with a semi-important member of our section. He and I took the bottom level of the castle, which had turrets to shoot out of. At this point the yellow flag had been raised, so we were working against the clock. About four minutes later, I hear him yell “shit” and walk out with paint on his goggles, apparently someone on the other side is a crack shot and shot him through the crosshairs.

I stayed down there for awhile, trading fire out the crosshairs. Eventually, I heard some scuffling outside the wall of my turret, so I prepared to shoot dead whoever was coming. The guy wheeled around the corner and shot at me, and I shot back at him. It was then that we both realized that we were on the same team, but his shot didn’t break on me so I wasn’t dead. He, however, was gutshot and proceeded to give me a hard time about it. To my logic, if you know a teammate is in the castle, identify yourself before darting in there. I don’t count that one as entirely my fault.

I got sick of being holed up, so I decided to make a break for the upstairs, fully expecting to get my back shot off. I was wrong, and I made it to the top without getting dead. I lowered their flag, and then kept the castle for the last eight minutes until one of my other teammembers showed up. We were going after our flag when the time expired, but thanks to our suppression fire we kept it a draw. I consider that a bit of redemption for the friendly fire incidents from before.

The whole event was a rousing success, everyone had a great time. I woke up sore and bruised from the shots… apparently paintball uses many non-karate muscle groups. The actual shotmarks don’t hurt that much, and I really want to go again.

Maybe we can have a dojo outing!