Secrets to Stealth

Table of Contents

I do not promote myself as a Paintball sniper. A "sniper" is something that can't exist on a Paintball field under the normal rules and regulations of the game. Now a good shot, a skilled crawler, and a great seller of the onfield swindle I am, but I'm not a sniper. Real snipers shoot a closed bolt rifle in order to kill targets at range with the creed of "one shot, one kill". They shoot a high-powered round designed for great range. In some cases they can hit targets almost a quarter of a mile away. They work in teams of two, one man is a spotter of incoming enemy; the other is the actual shooter.

In Paintball terms, this is unrealistic. First you have to chrony in under the limit of 300fps at outdoor fields. This totally eliminates any range advantage you might have unless you intentionally crank up your gun. After you eliminate that, a lot of the sniper's power is eradicated. However, you can make up for it in terms of outdoor Paintball if you play the game correctly. And how you play that is by using stealth.

So let's define stealth. For the sake of this article, it is the art of remaining unseen by your opponents while moving, or maneuvering yourself or them into range of your paint with the objective of eliminating them. I also want to point out something about understanding your opponent. We're people. People can be stupid. Oh sure, there's the smart cookie out there, but people can become predictable if they're allowed to. Under that principle, a lot of this makes perfect sense once you think about it. Now how do you play stealthy? "Don't say anything." Well duh. But in the modern game field, with woods being pruned to make speedball with trees, how do you do this? Well, let's start with the very basics. Movement and maneuvering.

movement

A lot of people assume you need to start with camouflage in order to sneak up on people. I can assure you this is not the case, as I can tell you stories and stories of people wearing bright jerseys sneaking up on opponents unseen. You do it by knowing about movement. Camouflage is completely ineffective if you're moving where people can see you. So you need to start by looking at how you move.

When you're actually sneaking up on someone, the first thing they will probably do is hear you coming. A player my size at a full run can sound like a thundering herd of elephants to someone behind a bunker. So you need to not make much sound. It's impossible to make no sound; at the very least you will breathe. But you can do things to minimize your sound output.

Understand the sounds around you, and use those sounds to mask your own. Anything works. An airplane overhead, a quick breeze that kicks up the leaves and rustles them, your opponents shooting at your team, all of these are good. I crawled up on a base one time while they were focused on shooting my teammates in front of them. They shoot, I move. They stop, I stop. I did this until I got most of them out, and my team could move up the front door.

Choose your line carefully. Your ideal path is dry dirt, hardpack, clear of leaves or twigs. And when you find these conditions, you will quickly find that this trail will have dozens of people covering it. Everyone takes the trails; you'll have to do better. Choose a path with minimal ground cover, or at least cover you can either brush away or step onto or into without making too much noise. Tall grass isn't very good, as it rustles very loudly. Tree cover is better, if you can avoid getting whipped by a tree limb in the process. Mud isn't good, as it makes such a lovely noise when you step out of it.

maneuvering

Now, about maneuvering, I did promise to touch on that. Stealthy movement can take a few forms under our definition of what stealth is. The first is probably what you'd expect, slow movement by crawling or stalking. Crawling in itself is deserving of its own article, and also comes in handy when you play snake bunkers on concept fields. Stalking is when you remain standing, but step slowly and cautiously as you move up the field. A technique for this is to walk by gently placing your heel on the ground, and rolling your foot down to a normal position. By rolling your foot down rather than just placing it, you can gently walk over leaves, twigs, or other noisy things.

The other way to maneuver is to do so VERY fast. Remember my definition of stealth, remaining unseen by your opponents! If your opponents are in front of you, but not shooting at you, you may be able to quickly crawl under some basic foliage into a bunker before they spot you. Or, if your teammate gives you cover fire, you may be able to dash to a bunker before your opponent can get back out and shoot at you again. This may not seem like the "Ninja stealth" you'd expect, but unseen is unseen in my book. Playing speedball in the woods last year I would get up and dash for a bunker just after a teammate did the same on the other side of the field. With their focus on the other side of the field, they usually never saw me make my position.

mean green threads

Camouflage is the bugaboo of high-end Paintball, it seems. I like my camos. I own several sets for various conditions. I have Foxwood for spring and fall. I have Advantage and Realtree for fall and some spring. I have Tiger Stripe for green wooded fields. I have woodland for the catchall, and even there I have several sets of woodland for deep summer or general camo. I have OD Green for catchall days or big games with terrain features that vary. I'm making some pullovers from some Natgear I got years ago. I have my "frog-o-flauge" as well as plans to make my "Camouflage of Ra" and "Wolf camo" too. Then there's always basic black. And, if you need to know, I own three ninja uniforms too. So there. Nyah.

Camouflage works in two basic ways. Tim Schloss explained it to me some time ago. Aggressive camo works by fooling the mind into believing it is a part of the natural background. Woodland, Tiger Stripe, Foxwood, British DPM and other "blobby" camos work in this way. Passive camouflage works by fooling the mind into believing it is a part of the natural scenery. Anything photo-realistic like Advantage, Image, Realtree or Timber Ghost works in this way. There's a lot more to it than that, but for lack of an easier way to explain it, this works.

So what camo should you wear? Talk to a local bow-hunter or small game hunter in your area and ask them what works. They work in the same 'range' as we do, and they'll know best. But, buyer beware, a lot of guys are sponsored or are product loyal, so ask around. If all else fails, go with the basic: US Woodland if you're on my side of the pond, British DPM if you're on the other side of it, or what your local military surplus store has in stock. Hell, paint your body in camo colors for all I care and play naked if you want to (although PGI doesn't recommend this - Ed). The idea is to vaguely match your surroundings.

When I went to England in 2000, I played in St Albans at Wargames. I've never played there before, but I did my homework. I hit up websites, I looked through the old mags, I even talked to a few English friends to ask them about general color schemes of England. I finally settled on my Foxwood pants and cap, and an old Venomwear jersey in gray and mustard yellow. Why the jersey? Well, I was bragging, and I was playing the part of "loud obnoxious American" to the hilt. It worked for camo, too. At least once or twice in the day I managed to make a massive flank unseen and surprise the other team completely. Now if it weren't for that bright red hopper I used on that Tippman, I would have been set.

I want to address one more thing here. Ghilley suits. The "rag suits" that the real snipers wear to make them look like a walking bush. They work, but if you wear one you're a cheater. Don't argue with me, you're cheating. Before you go to P8ntballer.com and start to flame me, look at it from my perspective. First of all you're wearing a padded suit. I don't care how stupid you think my ears and tail look, they're not padded. A suit made up of burlap straps may as well be a neoprene suit under pillows. Paint not only won't break on it, I had a guy shake his suit out in front of me and I watched four balls flop out of the folds.

Second, the rules of scenario games say if you 'feel' a hit, you're eliminated. But, come on, if you can feel a paintball striking you between all that padding your skin is more sensitive than the princess who slept on the pea! My only option to eliminate you is to solidly hit your gun, or your goggles. I can respect players who dedicate the weeks it takes to build a true suit. I can even give props to the guys who shell out the $500 to $1000 to have one professionally made for them. But come on guys. Admit you're wearing a bounce factory and get it over with. I'm sick of unloading a hopper at one of these "shaggy bushes" and having nothing break. There, I said it and I feel better.

shooting your load

Shooting is probably the most important skill. But it's not about what you think. Your long range shots are few and far between, your main goal is to set up scenarios in the game that you can ultimately control. The more factors you control in a given situation, the more likely you will get the results you want.

Knowing your paintgun is a skill more important than accurately shooting. Whatever gun you use, know its limits. Play to its strong points, don't let yourself get caught in its weak points. Know your effective range, know your extreme range, know your reliable rate of fire. Knowing the practical aspects of your paintgun of choice brings you some control of situations. If you know it can shoot most effectively at 100 feet, and you know how it likes to drift paint, you can easily shoot at that given range and control zones with ease.

What else can you control? More than you think. You can control your shooting angles. You can control your opponent's movement within that, or several other angles. You can control how many shots you take. You can control where your opponents can go to. You can control your own cover, and when you break from it. You can even control, to an extent, what your opponents think.

Paintball Dave's runs a scenario game every year at their outdoor field in August. As such, I dressed for hot weather, and played in a t-shirt and elbow pads. At one point I spent a good portion of an hour crawling up to a position near my opponent's base. I set up a shooting lane of many trees near a trail I had seen players walk down as I was setting up. I took down three players from my one spot before I was spotted.

I chose my position based on what I knew, and could predict of my opponents. I controlled my angle, I controlled the situation, I controlled the options for my opponents. And by only taking one shot at a time, I also controlled their flow of information to my location. They couldn't spot me because they never had a fix on my position based on noise. This goes back to what I said earlier about people. They are predictable, and even sometimes stupid if they're not required to think. In this case, the other team assumed that a trail was safe, and I controlled everything after that assumption.

At another scenario game, I knew that they would have reinsertions after five minutes. I took a few players and we made a lot of noise, attacking a fort from the side. We got eliminated, and ran back to the reinsertion point. By knowing the rules, I set up my opponents. They believed they had eliminated everyone from the side I was on, and shifted to protect the other flanks being assaulted. Using a stalk and a crawl, I quietly made it back up to the same spot with another player of mine, and we methodically eliminated an entire wing of defenders who never bothered to look back towards us.

We controlled most of the situation. The defenders never saw it coming. We controlled what they thought (the side is clear), we controlled their communications (by shooting the furthest back players first, they couldn't see our progress up their lines), we controlled their information (selecting shots, one at a time), we even controlled how they could react (we corralled them into a series of trenches, trapping them from escape). The only factor we couldn't control was time, as it ran out before we could really make a good push.

selling your story

Ok, so what's the point of all this storytelling? It goes back to what I was saying earlier. I'm not a sniper. I'm a good shot, a skilled crawler, and a great seller of the onfield swindle, but I'm not a sniper. I'll control situations, I'll play the clock or my opponent's head, I'll take what's given to me and use it to my advantage, but I'm not a sniper.

Recently I obtained a few new jerseys. One for Palmerized, one for PPIG, and one from an online ebay bid. The first is black, the second is the Animal Paintball green lightning bolts, the third is an old style "Camobak" JT jersey. Out of all three, the camoback is probably best suited for woods play. So I was thinking of getting something special for it. I was tempted to bid on the "Sniper" tab for the JT jersey, but I stopped myself. It would be too cliché. It's too bad nobody makes a subdued tab that reads "Expert Bullshitter", but what can I do?

Sneaky Pete's checklist

• Use the sounds around you to disguise your movement
• Carefully choose the terrain to move through
• If you're working with someone, make sure they provide adequate cover
• Research the field of play before you choose your attire
• Know the most effective accurate range of your marker
• Know your marker's reliable rate of fire