SharpshooterBy: Rob "Tyger" Rubin
Photography: Michael Nevuex
Monday November 19, 2007
Whenever you get to a rec-ball field, people always talk about the "sniper"-type guys. It usually starts when someone claims to be a "sniper," and they tell all sorts of lies about how they "killed" a dozen guys with the last five balls in the gun, or how they left their "ghillie" suit at home or something.
Pardon the bluntness, but most of these guys are bald-faced liars.
I don't like the term "sniper" in paintball terms, even as a term of convenience. Mainly because in paintball, I maintain there's no such thing as a sniper. If somehow you had a paintgun that could shoot, oh, 500 feet farther than anyone else, then you might have a point. But because of range, mission and field restrictions, "sniper" is a term, not a position.
THAT BEING SAID, yes there are sneaky SOBs on the paintball field who own ghillie suits, who could sneak up on deer and tap them in the nose. And there are hundreds more who don't have ghillie suits but have done that for fun, or practice. And there are people who are military trained as snipers. Take it from me: Most of the paintball people who call themselves "snipers" would never make it through the first week of training.
So even though I'm going to be using the term "sniper" in this article, it doesn't mean you're a sniper. It's a term that's a lot shorter to say than "sneaky guy in the weeds who's wearing the weird camo suit and picking guys off one at a time." There, I said it, I feel better. Move on? Move on. Good.
I want to first talk about camouflage. The fabled "ghillie" suit is the standard wear of the sniper-style player, and in fact it almost defines them. If someone comes to the field looking like a shaggy bush, you pretty much know what they're going to be doing on the field of play.
There's one thing I want to hit about ghillies, and that's personalizing them. There is no such thing as an "off the rack" ghillie. You either make it yourself, or you get one pre-made and you mod the hell out of it. Why would you do this? "C3".
Color is very important. Any ghillie that's perfect in summer is going to blow chunks in the fall. Green in a brown woods is almost as conspicuous as wearing a yellow jersey. So the real sniper players mod their suit for year round-play, or they might have "fall," "summer" and "spring" setups ready to go.
Comfort is key to playing well. If you're sweating under your ghillie hood and fogging your goggles up, you're not going to be comfortable making it into position. Vent your suit out for air, make a sleeve a little longer, small things you'll need to do if you want the suit to fit you well.
Concealment is something you should do all the time. Add leaves to your head net, and if you leave cover, ditch the leaves. Think of your camo as a constant "work in progress" while you're playing. You don't need to do it, but consider that your camouflage is the only thing you've got that will hide you in some places. You better make sure your camo is happy.
If you decide to make your own, there are a lot of resources available on how to do this. One word of caution, however. If you make your suit out of burlap, string, or anything made of frayed cloth or fabric, use a fire-retardant on your suit. There are numerous injuries and deaths every year from people being careless in a ghillie. Everything from walking past a campfire that popped an ember to dropping a cigarette onto a ghillie suit can cause it to burst into flames. Safety first: Use a fire retardant on your suit if it's flammable.
One more thing about ghillies. Some fields do not allow them at all. Some fields have special rules regarding the ghillie players. When you get to a field with your suit, ask about special rules. It's your responsibility to find out the rules, not theirs to tell you. Plus, you don't necessarily NEED a ghillie to do some of the things I'm going to talk about. Do they help? Yes, if you do it right. But are they needed? No.
I want to touch on other gear that a sniper player should have, other than a funny costume. You can get away without the ghillie, but there are a lot of things you really should have. We'll start with a radio. A hands-free radio is vital if you want to stay in touch. FRS radios are stupid-cheap these days, so there's no excuse to not have one.
Second is your paintgun. In all honesty, you don't need to buy another gun. If you like your current marker, there's no need for you to get another one. You're not going to buy more range by buying a "sniper gun." All paintguns are regulated to the same speed, meaning that 300 fps out of my paintgun is the same as 300 fps out of your paintgun. Simply put, your gun shoots just as far as mine. So you don't have the fabled "sniper range."
"What about hop-up barrels?" Yes, backspinning the ball will buy you more range, but anyone who's ever been shot at by someone with one can tell you that accuracy is out the window. The backspin does some wicked things to the ball in flight, including making it drift left to right. This is assuming the paint is perfectly round. If there's a dimple, it can end up anywhere! If you want to suppress the opponent at long range, backspin barrels are fun. If you want accuracy and range, you need to relearn a lot of shooting technique.
Other gear that's good to have is knee and elbow pads. These, along with a good pair of gloves, will make all that time you spend sucking dirt a lot more comfortable. Not to mention they'll keep the "skin shine" away. Then there's the other stuff you should stash somewhere too, like squeegees and swabs, and all that good stuff. It's like playing normally, but not.
Now that we have that covered, let's talk about tactics and techniques. A lot of people think that the only way to play the sniper role is deep in the woods, in a ghillie; just set up and hide and wait for opponents to come by. This is not only boring as all hell, but it's also wasting your time. If you want to go camping, get your tent and make s'mores. If you want to play paintball, sometimes you need to get aggressive.
A technique I've been introduced to thanks to Spec Ops is a highly aggressive sniper move. A guy literally sprints a trail, dives into the scrub a few seconds before the other team sees him, and sets up in seconds in thick cover. Try to imagine a front player on the speedball field able to crash the opponent's 40 unseen. That's what this guy is like. It takes guts and a lot more speed than I have, but if you can do it you can obliterate a team before they know what hit them.
Most of the time, I find that I'm introduced into a shootout "already in progress." So it becomes part stealth, part psychology. Knowing how most opponents react makes your job easier. Most opponents get tunnel vision. They play, and they don't bother looking side to side. So it becomes my job to exploit that. Depending on if I have the time, I can either low-crawl or stalk along a flank and take them out.
Crawling and stalking are the two best ways to move and maintain some amount of stealth. You may have seen some players crawl a snake on the airball field; they'd get their tails blown off in the woods. For starters, they move way too fast. Second, they have their butts WAY too high in the air. It works for them, but in a woods game, you'd better be flat.
A good crawl is almost like rock climbing on the ground; your forearms and shins are on the ground, and your weight is spread out. Think very thin thoughts and hug the ground. You're pushing off with the inside of your foot, or your toe if you have something to push off of. And you're moving SLOWLY. SSSLLLOOOOWWWWWWLLLLYYYY. If it takes you five minutes to go 50 feet, you're going too fast. There are other techniques, such as the leopard (move left arm and right leg together, then left leg/right arm, repeat) or tiger (hands and knees, more like the speedballer mentioned before) crawls for example, but if you think you're spotted, you better be ready to become one with the planet.
"Stalking" is a little different. If you've ever seen a cartoon villain sneaking up on someone, it's a comical version of the stalk. It's where you basically are rolling your weight from foot to foot. Instead of normally walking, you're GENTLY placing your heel or toe on the ground, and then rolling your weight onto that foot as you gently put the rest of your foot down. When you do it right, it literally feels like you're rolling from foot to foot.
How you move is dictated by the terrain, the time limits, and what your overall goal is. If I have five minutes to flank the other team and I'm lucky enough to not run into a group of counter-flankers, I'll do a stalk most of the way, ending it by getting into position on my belly. If I have a little more time, I'll tiger crawl the first part, then get lower as I get closer.
Another thing that dictates your movement is noise. Paintguns make a lot of noise when you shoot them. If there's a bunker full of guys shooting at my teammates, I can darn near sprint at them and they'll never hear me. It's why I love it when my opponents are in a shootout; all I need to worry about is not moving too many branches.
Finally you need to concern yourself with the terrain. If there's a nice and easy trail to the bad guys, they're already watching it. If they're not, they deserve to be shot. You're going to have to make it through some of the really bad stuff to get to the other team. But the more you move out of the way, the more motion you create and the more likely the other team will see you. If you can move with a gust of wind (meaning everything is moving), that will mask your movement enough so you can make your goal.
Somewhere around here you may be thinking that by comparison, turning lead into gold sounds easier than all this. But that's part of playing the role on the field. The sniper style of play is not mindless; you have to be thinking the whole time. What's my opponent doing? What's the noise level? Can I make that spot? Will that cover really be thick enough? If you're not making decisions constantly, you're toast.
One thing I hear a lot about is two-man sniper teams: a spotter and a shooter. In the real military, this is how they do it. The shooter is usually the more experienced of the two, but the spotter plays a vital role on the team. For starters, in the real deal the spotter carries the M-16 so they can fight their way out of a bad situation.
For some people, in paintball, this works just as well. If you have a lot of faith in each other, and you both can move like ghosts in the woods, you can create a great team. The spotter's role is important, in that he can keep an eye on the rest of the field while the shooter is living "in the scope." Plus, he can watch the shooter's shots and help him correct for the next one.
So how do you practice this stuff? Going out and doing it is one way, but practice is the better way. And a lot less painful too, as the welts get pretty bad. So I want to include some drills you can do to practice. Just remember, practice as you play. Wear all the gear you'd play with, as well as all the safety gear. (If it's not comfortable now, it won't magically get comfortable during gameplay.)
The first is a stalk drill. Start about 100 feet away from a friend, who is facing away from you. The object of the game is to stalk up to your friend and tap him on the shoulder, while in full gear. If your friend hears you, he signals and the drill ends. If you make it, you're either very good or your friend is deaf. The idea is to learn the range at which people will start to hear you, so you can learn how close you can get to your opponents without alerting them.
Some situations require you to get almost too close for comfort, like when the opposing team runs past as a group and starts attacking your base. Knowing how close you can get is important, as this is where you start picking people off from behind.
The second drill is a little more complex. The setup requires three targets; I prefer plastic soda bottles for a lot of reasons. You start 250-plus feet from your friend, or at least out of the visual range of your buddy. You radio to your friend that you're ready, and he begins a timer. You now have 30 minutes to shoot all three targets.
Your buddy is standing near the three targets, and he's actively looking for you. He doesn't have a paintgun, but he's going to look for you the whole time. If he spots you, he points your position out and yells that he sees you. If he's pointing at you, or at least close enough, the drill ends. In a real game, the other team would dump half a hopper into the area they think you're in if they know a "ghillie guy" is there. Best case, you have to move for real cover and your stealth is blown. Worst case, you get so many welts you look like you lost a fight with an octopus.
This is not meant to be an easy drill, but it does emulate what the military does in the real world. The exception is that they have to crawl a lot further, and they have a few hours to complete the task. In paintball terms, the games are a lot shorter so the drill is, too. Just being able to take out one target is impressive; any more than that and you've got it made.
The last drill is meant for the sprinting sniper type I mentioned earlier, and is almost more like conditioning than a drill. The idea is to simulate the first 30 seconds of gameplay. Start in one flag station in full gear. At "go," sprint as hard as you can up the field. Your goal is to get as far up the field as possible, and find a hole to dive into before the other team gets there.
It sounds easy until you try it. Sprinting in a ghillie, even a lightweight one, is not as simple as it sounds. It snags, grabs, and otherwise will do everything in its power to get you tangled on something. And it's a genuine skill to run in one of those things. Not to mention the first time you try it, you'll get your lungs handed to you by a teammate after you hack them up.
All in all, the sniper role is very specialized, and not for everyone. You need to have a lot of patience and be constantly aware of your surroundings. For some people, you try it once and figure it's not for you. But if you can do it, you can become a vital asset to any scenario team you play on.
|  |
|
|
