Old guys … It is time to return to Airball !
This opinion is likely to ruffle some feathers but please hear me out . I know that the current trend in paintball right now is to return to old school 90 ’ s paintball . You know … In the woods , playing mech , slower games , and bringing long lost players back to the game . It is absolutely amazing and I 100 % support that . I am not trying to derail that initiative . Truthfully , I love that paintball is going that route …
However , I played World Cup this year and it was not at all what I expected . Before I get into that , let me paint my recent tournament experience … The last tournament I played was Chicago NXL in 2019 with Destiny Midwest . I was repeatedly sent to a meat grinder of a bunker and if I made my bunker , I did not last more than a minute . Before that … I had not played a tournament in … 15 years ? So , to saying that I was going into World Cup blind would be exactly accurate .
At World Cup I was playing 3 man novice . Basically D5 . My only goal in my head was to make my bunker , stay alive and take someone with me when I leave . I can proudly say that I often made those goals happen . On a few games I was even the last person out on my team . We did not win a single game . We had some bad calls against us , some teams were obviously sandbagging and all the other usual common excuses . They are all true , but the ultimate truth is , if we played better and had been practicing as a team , we could have over come all those excuses .
That is not the point of this little ramble though . The point is , I HAD FUN ! I mean , yes , it is paintball , so I always have fun , but this was really , really fun . You see , I was not expecting to . Not like I did anyway . When I walked away from tournament paintball all those years ago , I had stopped having fun . My opponents had become young teenagers in high school . They were tiny . The bunkers had shrunk to these tiny little inflatable bunkers that I could not hide behind and they were so far apart that a small kid with wheels and a fast gun could tear a field to pieces . The “ gunfighting ” I was used to was over and a new game with a new style had been born . I did not feel like there was room for me in it anymore . There were other reasons as well , but they are not relevant to the story at hand . Regardless , when I look at pictures of airball fields today from over head or from the side angle shots of the fantastic photographers we have today , it looks exactly the same as when I left .
World Cup though was a wake up call like getting a zinger in the armpit . I mean the realization hit me so hard it was painful . This was NOT the same game I had left all those years ago . I could barely see the other side . The bunkers are HUGE ! Even my fat 50 year old butt can get behind them .
094 paintball . media magazine