Setting

About an hour from where I grew up there was an old mining town that had long since been abandoned. This wasn’t the type of ghost town that you read about in the stories, but there were a handful of houses, a couple of sheds, and a barn or two. Surrounding the buildings, there were trees, fields, a creek, and rocks. The field was large enough for a group of about 40 players to play comfortably with 20 per team.

The field was eventually shut down, due to safety concerns, but for years, almost every weekend saw large groups of paintball players heading out to play.

The game

I had already been at the field this particular Saturday morning for a couple of hours. There’d been some good games, and some less than good games. The day though, was great for paintball with the warm sun, a light breeze, and lots of people who really just wanted to have fun. The game today was a limitation, with whichever team had a player left claiming victory. The game previous to this one, had ended in a stalemate. Two players at work themselves into the rafters of the small house with a perfect view of the front and back doors. Anybody who tried to enter the house was immediately hit. The game had been about eight on two, but after five of my teammates were shot while trying to get into the house, the last of us waited out the game until someone called time. Since the last game ended with a lot of sitting, players on both teams were anxious to get going and to play hard.

What happened

The two teams started at opposite ends of fields on either end of where the houses were.

At the call of “game on” the two teams would rush forward, some trying to take the houses, while others tried to go around the sides in the trees. On this particular game, I ran with the group away from the houses, hopped the creek, and headed for the trees. On the outside edge of the field, there was a long row of trees with a fence going down the middle. There was also an open road next to the trees that formed the field’s boundary. Players to go into the road, but not past it. As I started inching my way up the trees with one teammate, I looked up the field and saw three opponents doing the same thing coming toward me. I wasn’t sure if they’d seen me, yet, so I ducked behind a tree and waited for them to come. When they got within range, I started firing, and managed to eliminate one of them. They quickly realized what was happening, and ducked behind the trees closest to them. My teammate and I, not wanting to give up our advantage, proceeded to do a picture-perfect leapfrog the trees towards her opponents. As we got closer, they started firing my teammate returned fire. While they were distracted, I was able to move out into the road, get an angle on them, and eliminate them both.
At this point, my teammate and I had no idea what was happening on the rest of the field. We’ve heard lots of shots, but we were unsure whether our team was winning or losing. We decided that rather than heading towards the middle of the field, we would continue along the tree line and try to flank our opponents. Apparently, the three players we had eliminated, were the only ones who had gone up the side of the field, so we had an open path all the way to the back of the field. Our location, by this point, was approximately opposite from where we started the game. At this that corner, there was a small shed, and as we went around it, we met up with a player from our team, who done the exact same thing on the opposite side of the field. Now as a group of three, we decided that we would proceed directly toward the houses in the center of the field. There was another small shed near the houses, so we aimed for that.

The conclusion

As we neared the shed, we saw an opposing player on our side of one of the barns by the houses. My teammate, who had just rejoined us, was quick to dispatch of him. We then ran forward and took his place in the barn. Looking out the window, we saw that our team had been decimated by the opposition. From our new location within the barn, though, we had potshots to take at three or four of the players on the other team. The opposing team, though, quickly realized what was happening, and back into the houses. At this point, we guess that it was approximately three on five, with our team having three. Not wanting to have another stalemate, we decided not to attack the house that had the rafters. Instead, we retreated and ducked into a ditch that ran beside the houses. This ditch eventually fed into the creek, but on this day, it was dry. We were able to advance forward, and come toward the house at a different angle. As we approached the house, we saw the other team move out of the house, and it appeared that they were trying to flank us. We knocked off two of them as they tried to get past the ditch, and then they settled down behind some brush and returned fire. My companions stayed in the ditch, and at that point I ran into the second house, and had a slightly different angle on the remaining players. As my teammates distracted them with fire, I was able to shoot one of them, and then, as one of the remaining players returned fire, I heard a satisfying smack is one of my paintballs collided with the middle of his mask. My teammates, meanwhile, had eliminated the final player, and we were victorious.

Why I remember this game

The memorable part of this game was not that we won, but if the journey we went on. This was a moderate size field, and over the course of about 10 minutes, we had run several hundred yards, come into contact with multiple distinct groups of players on the other team, and had somehow managed to win. This was one of those games, that simply went right for us. Throughout my life, I have played many games of paintball that did not go right for me. That’s why games like these, where everything seems to fall my way, are so great to remember. They simply don’t happen very often.