Occasionally you get surprised in paintball. Usually, they are nasty ones like the bush you just stepped around has more bad guys in it than a Quentin Tarrantino movie. Paintball Kingdom in Marshville, NC provided us with plenty of surprises and almost all of them were pleasant and welcomed. When you pull up to the site, the first thing you notice is that it’s someone’s driveway. You overlook the building to the left and focus on the rickety, long (huge) Chicken Coop in the back, thinking “What the hell have I gotten myself into?”

CQB Heaven!

We arrived before they actually opened at 10am and got our gear ready and then walked into the Coop (probably 60 -70 yards long and 20 yards wide) and was pleasantly surprised by the possibilities. Yes, it actually was an old industrial, warehouse-like, chicken coop with open sides and chicken wire on the outside, with sawdust floors in the regular barn stalls. I was hoping the barnyard aroma was the sawdust and not me contemplating getting shot! Inside there are plywood walls separating the stalls into rooms, filled with computer props, desks, tables, barrels, ammo crates, and an occasional severed head on a pike. Perfect for Close Quarters Battles! This was a CQB paintballers dreamscape. Granted, everything was covered in paint from a thousand paintball battles, but then I started thinking about how many places the bad guys could be tucked in to. Okay, I didn’t actually wet myself, but I could feel the welts forming all over my body all on their own. This was going to be extremely painful, or extremely fun, or both!

How Much For That Marker In The Window?

The next surprise came when you go into register and pay. Okay. I saw the old Chicken Coop and it looked fun and playable, but it was still pretty rough looking. Some of the chicken wire sides had gaping holes in them and the netting for the dead zones didn’t look all that secure, so I expected to see a registration desk in an equally cruddy looking, barn like, scene. I walked into the door of the office and there was a clean, full scale paintball shop, the walls covered with as many, if not more, guns than any paintball shop than I have ever seen. Not only one of the biggest variety of paintball markers, but camo, jerseys, airsoft guns of every shape and size, and even real custom and antique firearms. We even picked up a few smoke grenades there. One of our guys had some major repair work done on a gun and they have a huge selection of accessories. The air conditioned shop was clean and professional as any in a major city. Not exactly what I was expecting for a farm in the ‘suburbs of greater metropolitan’ Marshville.

Expensive and Affordable

Paintball Kingdom is family owned and operated and the sign-in process was smooth and very friendly with everyone in the family helping. We had sixteen of our team there that day and while everyone registered and waivered individually, it went smoothly and quickly. The cost was bit higher than usual at $25 for a day of play, but you can bring your own paint, so our whole day only cost us $25 each.

Into The Breach!

Once the team was (finally) ready, we headed straight for the Chicken Coop. Paintball Kingdom has a speedball field with a full sized wooden castle and wooden tank in the middle as well as a couple of medium sized wooded fields, but everyone had their eye on that CQB area. You chrono your guns to below 240 fps for the interior play and it is plenty fast enough for as close as you will get. Instead of clearing entrenched bad guys S.W.A.T.-style, we separated into two teams and clashed in the middle. The battle was intense. It was a lot like playing speedball in an enclosed area, using the walls and stalls as bunkers. The chicken wire allowed a breeze to come through and the roof and structure of the building provided shade to cool it down some. Using the smoke and paint grenades to clear rooms was a blast, but in the narrow width of the Coop, the smoke was as much a hindrance to us as the enemy. The interior windows and holes in the plywood walls allowed for you to be shot from unexpected directions. And they are all unexpected directions!

Uh… My bad.

At one point, we ran a strong left side assault up the side of the warehouse-like building and I realized we were being flanked on the other side. I moved over and surprised a couple of contacts taking out one or two just before the muzzle of a marker swung right around the wall I was behind, to point about 6 inches from my chest. I surrendered so fast the sound of my speech won’t catch up to me for another week or so! Five seconds later, the owner of the muzzle (Camo Ken) was surrendered by one of my teammates (Rotty) from an opposing window. In less than 8 seconds, 3 players were out in a 15 foot area. That’s as close and as ugly as it gets. I would have liked to try some S.W.A.T.-like room clearing games for the experience, but after playing CQB all morning, we opted to move to the wooded field to play.

Multi-Cam Everywhere!

Outcast brought a contingent of Rogue Cell to join us that day, all the way from Raleigh, and provided us with some much needed OPFOR, giving as good a smack-down as they took. These are some great guys who play very cohesively together and often spanked us in the CQB area. “Rerun” from Rogue Cell demonstrated and allowed us to try his new Airbow (a compound bow that shoots paintballs). Talk about major cool. Takes a bit of getting used to, but aside from its effectiveness, it just looks awesome! One of our newest recruits, “Moody”, showed us his paintball shotgun and our point man, Rotty, fell in love.

Who Would Jesus Shoot?

There was a church youth group of about 40 (fairly young) kids there that day and we tried to split up and integrate with them in the woods, but our tactical gear and automatic weapons intimidated them a bit too much and we separated off into our own teams to play amongst ourselves to let them enjoy there day more. Even though our weapons were still chrono’d at the CQB rate of less than 240 and theirs were at open field rate of 280 and we could only fire in semi-automatic modes, they weren’t all that comfortable with us in their midst. I can’t say I blame them. Most of them were under 5 feet tall and here we were, over 20 adults in full multi-cam with tactical vests, mil-sim weapons, remote lines and radio headsets. To a 12 twelve year old with a rental gun and a sweatshirt, we were probably scary as hell. I don’t like looking at some of these guys and they are on my team!

Don’t Tap on The Aquarium. It Disturbs the Fish!

Teams need to remember that just because they don’t mind playing with, and against, walk-ons, it doesn’t help the sport or the field if you scare off newbie players from ever coming back. We often offer to play where the numbers are 3 to one against us to make it more even, but from a kid’s point of view, that doesn’t diminish the pain or the fear level. Yeah, it’s kind of fun in a sick way to intimidate them with all the fancy gear, but remember, we all have jobs to afford that stuff. They are usually in elementary school or junior high. If paintball has a future, they will be it, so do what you can to not scare them, encourage them and make it fun for them. The field needs them to come back and we need the fields to be there to give us a place to use our fancy gear. Do the math Sparky!

Catered by Camo!

Paintball Kingdom took orders for pizza, but “Camo Ken” Helfing on our team, sponsored the outing by providing a Bar B Cue picnic and free paintballs for everyone and we ate like kings in our “kingdom”. Thanks again Camo!

Kickin’ It At The Kingdom

The day was a huge success as recreational days go. We got in some adrenaline pumping CQB, got to work against, and with, some great players from Rogue Cell, had an excellent picnic and experienced a new field and paintball store. We will definitely be back to Paintball Kingdom. If you want to get up close and personal and break out of the ordinary hide-behind-a-tree scenario, check out Paintball Kingdom in Marshville and tell them Team:Tango Alpha says hello!

For More Information, contact:

Paintball Kingdom
http://paintballkingdom.com/
2407 Ansonville Rd Marshville, NC 28103
(704) 624-4115
smoke@paintballkingdom.com