Top 10 Ways To Improve Your Game
We're often searching for ways to improve our paintball game. We've made a lot of mistakes and developed many bad habits. Although we aren't a top pro team, we certainly can share some of the experiences we've learned from. We hope these ideas can help you to become a better player and enjoy the game more.
Note: These are listed in no particular order.
- Paintball to barrel match
- Increase your communication
- Get to know your marker
- Learn to load while shooting
- Watch for shadows and other telltales
- Learn to optimize your target profile
- Be more patient than your competitor
- Ask for help
- Exploit their weakside
- Don't over react
1. Paintball to barrel match is very often overlooked as an important factor in accuracy. We regularly get emails asking us what is the most accurate barrel for a certain type of gun. It comes down to a lot more than a brand and model of a barrel. You need a good match between the barrel bore and the paintball diameter. Having the right fit will make your shots more consistent and result in you having the ability to know where your paint is going to land. It may also help you to overcome environmental factors - such as high humidity.
2. Increasing the communication between you and your teammates is one of the key elements to effectively movement and growing as a team. Learn keywords that mean something but won't give your intentions away to opponents, e.g. Yelling, "Tie my shoe", meaning you're reloading, or yelling, "Fire Truck", means that you're going to move up to the next bunker. Either your mouth should be communicating where your opponents are, or your ears should be hearing your teammates communicating information at all times. If you're in stealth mode for a scenario or sniper movement, you could use hand signals or a throat mic for communication.
3. I'd rather have an affordable, reliable marker that I know will put one paintball where I want it to go vs. a high end marker that can shoot a huge spray of paintballs downfield. Get to know your marker inside and out. Know how the bolt and trigger work, know how the air charges and where a paintball is most likely to chop. Know how it's affected by humidity, cold temps, or different types of cheap field paint. That way when something goes wrong, you know exactly what's happening and your downtime will be minimal.
4. Learning to load while shooting helps you in several ways. The biggest, in my opinion, is that you learn to keep your eyes downfield. It keeps you aware of changes both to your opponents and your teammates. It, of course, also helps you to maintain control of your lanes with uninterrupted marker fire. It's easy to learn, just start practicing the motions with an empty gun/pod in your bedroom at night.
5. I've been able to eliminate people and anticipate what their next action was going to be by seeing an opponent's shadow behind a bunker. Run some dry drills for this with your team. Have a person stand behind a bunker and recognize their shape and movement. If you train on this long enough, you don't even have to think about it. This may sound obvious but when you teach yourself to be more observant of this you will definitely notice an improvement in your game.
6. Don't come out of your bunker more than you need to. All you need to have in view of the opponent you're shooting at is one eye and your barrel. Granted, there are more things moving, but get your mentality to think - eye & barrel. Keep practicing this and you'll become a much smaller target. Keep your elbow, shoulder, and as much of your hand tightly tucked.
7. One of the most common questions we get submitted to us at Wolfpack Paintball is about how to perform as a good sniper. By far the most important factor is to be more patient than your opponent. Most people love the idea of playing a sniper, but rarely do any of these people have the patience. It's really all about sitting and waiting for an opportunity by letting your opponents make mistakes and taking advantage of it. I've won several battles, be it one on one or similar, where I stopped shooting for a while causing the less patient opponent to leave their bunker exposing themselves to a quick snap-shoot.
8. Asking for help can be one of the most difficult things for a lot of people to do. It could be an ego problem or a shyness issue. If you need help or want to ask someone how to do something, just do it. Start a conversation about something you need help with or don't understand. You'll learn at a much quicker rate and soon people will be asking you for help. The most important part of this is listening.
9. Learn what side of the bunker your opponent prefers to shoot from. This, undoubtedly, is their strong side. Do they only shoot right handed even when shooting from the left side of the bunker? They'll have to expose more to defend themselves from the left. If you move to bunker them, approach them from their weaker side. It can make all the difference in the world.
10. I learned early on that freaking out because an opponent made it up to a threatening bunker can cause your whole team to lose focus. If everyone on the team starts to shoot and focus on that player, the rest of the opposing team can move up and make eliminations. If someone moves up on you, assign a person to suppression fire until you can move to eliminate them. Meanwhile, the rest of the team needs to focus on their lanes and maintain opponent movement control.
Share your ideas or comment on this list on our Team Facebook Page.
Posted by Redwood on July 8, 2014
