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Making the Last Ball Count
The best round of woodsball I've ever had took place recently. We play in a fairly spacious wooded area with plenty of fallen trees, brush, stumps, and changes of elevation, so visibility is pretty limited. If you know the area, you can move about nearly undetected.
The teams were seven on seven. I was shooting my trusty 98 Custom with the 32 Degrees Whisper barrel. I had my camos on, ready to creep through some underbrush and snipe some enemies.
On the break, two of my guys got greased almost instantly. It seemed that the other team had started almost at the fifty yard line, a lumber road that cuts the field in half and is framed by fallen redwoods. I slipped out the back and narrowly avoided being the third one downed.
Looping around through some puckerbrush, I spotted the two enemies they had sent to flank us humping it down a narrow trail on the lip of the gulley that marks the out of bounds. It was a roundabout trip, but if you make it all the way down that trail you wind up directly behind the opposing team's base and the game is in the bag.
Doing my best "paratrooper over the side" imitation, I slid down the enbankment in their direction, Tippmann cocked and ready. They were so intent on flanking us in record time, they didn't notice me until I popped up and starting spraying from about thirty feet away. I got the one in the front immediately, but the guy in the rear was able to make a dive behind a stump. I was left pretty much high and dry, with only some sparse ferns for coverage. I knew I had to lay some serious paint to keep my enemy behind that stump until I could reach more favorable position, so I laid on the Response Trigger like a madman and pinned him down (we have a rule against sky-shooting). I hopped a log and then it was trading paint time.
Do you ever have those days when you feel like you can do no wrong? Every little break seems to go your way. It was like that this time. I refilled my Empire Reloader and popped up to fire, and felt a paintball slam directly into the grill of my JT Spectra Flex 7 mask. No break! It ricocheted harmlessly off the soft plastic and I was then able to goggle the other guy with a well-placed shot.
Peeling off back up into center of the field, I came up behind the guy with the Angel, laying waste to the forest with pod after pod of paint. He had already offed another one of my teammates, and had killed me a few times already that day, too. It was very sweet when I put a single shot directly between his shoulder blades.
Charging up the logging road in the center of the field, I saw a my previously bunkered teammate heading towards me... until he was shot down by a sniper I hadn't even spotted. I ducked behind a tree and creeped forward, looking for the tell-taled flash of a pair of goggles or a glint of sunlight off a gun barrel. None of those appeared, however, but the sniper soon started plugging away at me. I was low enough to avoid getting hit, but I had to seriously open up the Response Trigger and spray a thatch of berry vines where the sniper was hidden in order to get him. I ran through all of my paint, but I did get him on the hopper.
I had now taken out four of the opposing seven all by myself, and I could hear the last enemy, already duking it out with the rest of my team near their base. I went back through the trail near the gully and came up directly behind his position. I had no paint left, but I thought I might be able to get him to surrender if I charged him. He already had two of my teammates holding him down, but he was shooting a tuned-up Autococker and had plenty of paint in reserve. Forget the charging idea!
I scrounged around on the ground for an unbroken paintball. I found one that wasn't water-logged... though it wasn't exactly round, either. Never the less, I popped it in the loader and crept forward, taking aim. I had a completely clear shot at the side of a crouched, unaware player, but only one chance of making it.
I think it was the single best shot I ever made, considering the circumstances and the pressure. The ball hit him right in the side of the head, breaking in a violet smear in the hair above his ear. We had won.
Afterwards, I got many a slap on the back and high five from my teammates and the guys on the opposition. I'm known for being more of a one-on-one type of player, in the sense that I usually get waxed but manage to take someone with me. That time, however, I was unstoppable.
And people wonder why we love this sport.
__________________
Like my diamonds? The Devil himself gave them to me...
Last edited by jalora : 04-29-2003 at 01:52 AM.
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