Paintballing can be a pricey prospect, but when you transform nearby available landscape into your own customized paintball course the costs fall almost as quickly as the excitement rises. Why wait until the weekend to be a weekend warrior?
Successful Battles Require Successful Planning
To the neophyte, the rock outcropping in the open space behind your house is little more than a jumble of old weathered stones. To your practiced eye however, those stones represent the spirited defense of Bunker Hill, King’s Mountain, Culp’s Hill or the Little Round Top.
Transforming the landscape into a suitable field of honor requires some ingenuity and foresight. Prior to fortifying the lofty peak that has attracted your tactical attention, assemble the supplies you need for success. Typical tools will include the soldier’s best friend, the shovel, as well as tarps, hammers, nails and ropes.
While the hammer and nails will help you secure your plywood defenses, oftentimes you’ll find the space that you need to defend is too large to cover with your available materials. In those instances, you can use your tarps and rope to block off critical holes in your line by tying them off between trees on your front. Using rope gives you the flexibility that you need when dealing with those annoying trees that simply don’t want to cooperate with your defensive ideas.
Be on the lookout for castoff material that may serve as suitable building materials for your new bunker. For instance, those old Nitto Tires that have been collecting cobwebs in the storage shed will be perfect for forming a rampart in your defenses or, if arrayed to your flank, can represent obstacles in the underbrush that have to be surmounted by your opponent. Other castoff items can include pieces of plywood, chunks of sheetrock, old pallets and sundry items you might find in your garage or outside the back of the nearest painting shop. As a good rule of thumb, if you can hide behind it, it will probably serve your paintball bunker purposes.
The key to a viable paintball strategy is the ability to blend into the natural surroundings, so don’t eschew the materials that Mother Nature has provided you. The defenses of your rock outcropping can always be buttressed through the addition of tree limbs and foliage to afford you that extra moment of concealment to trigger a successful ambush.
Spirited Defense and Strategic Withdrawal
By the time the sun rises on the day of battle, your modest rock outcropping has assumed the mythical proportions of the Siege of Masada in your mind. Unlike the poor defenders in that action, your defending troops won’t need to commit suicide rather than surrender. This is because a properly built bunker offers the defenders a bolt hole from which to escape the enemy’s assault, as well as an egress point for recapturing the heights in the event of catastrophe.
As you begin to fortify your heights, take the time to survey the field and determine which fields of fire will prove the most challenging to the defender’s position. Once these vectors have been identified, locate secondary bunker positions that will support your main defensive line in the rocks while providing the flexibility you’ll need when it comes time to go on the offense. These secondary positions can be as modest as a shallow trench to lie prone in, under the cover of foliage, or it can comprise part of a broader trench network that will unify the entire battlefield.
The number of available bunker ideas is only limited by the imagination of the person building it. To stimulate your imagination, the briefest of YouTube surveys will yield dozens of ideas that are tried and true methods of constructing a great paintball bunker.
Take your Place on the Field of Battle of Your Choosing
The great battlefield commanders of history have always used the natural terrain to their advantage against the enemy. Whether it was the strategic placement of the English army at Agincourt, or the propensity of armies to disappear into the ground during the trench warfare of World War I, making the terrain work for you has traditionally been a precursor to victory for the great captains of history. Transform the terrain into a tactical paintballing zone and earn all the accolades of history that you deserve.
