Reposted with permission from Funception.com
College kids are always looking for fun things to do while on a budget, right? A big group of friends at one point in my college career decided to all invest in wrist rockets and split the cost of a big box of paintballs. Once they were acquired, we had an activity for days on end and it didn’t necessarily matter if the whole group was available, or just a few people! Flexible AND fun for literally any time of the year.
What is Slingshot Paintball?
As college kids we were far too cheap to invest in actual paintball guns, or going to a paintball “experience” with all the guns, gear, and obstacles. Going to a specialized venue was at least $50 a person in our college town. Paintball guns vary in price but good ones are definitely pricey, and you go through far more paintballs with the actual guns. With paintball guns, you have the hassle of keeping CO2 canisters pressurized and handy as well, and with all of these materials, where do you store that all in a tiny college apartment?
We now have established that we were poor and space-constrained, but still wanted to have fun with paintballs somehow. One of our friends had the brilliant idea to just do Slingshot Paintball instead (@friends I can’t remember who had the idea, so apologizing for not giving due credit in advance).
Slingshot paintball is essentially finding a natural landscape with great terrain for a paintball game/capture the flag game. Tall weeds, lots of trees, hideouts, etc. made for a great location. We would then play capture the flag in our chosen venue and use our wrist rockets to launch paintballs at the enemy as they raced to find a flag hidden on each side of the venue.
Since you can’t load and shoot paintballs quite as fast with this wrist rocket slingshot method, we hid the flags in pretty tricky spots to be able to give us more time to defend. As well, we made rules that you couldn’t shoot someone if you could easily touch them. (Direct shots are painful. #bruises, so reverting back to traditional capture-the-flag tagging rules here.) Once a person was touched or hit, we didn’t have a specific “jail”, we just added them to your team. They don’t tell you where the flag is, but they are in charge of helping defend or attack as you search and find the opposing team’s flag.
What do you need for Slingshot Paintball?
- Wrist Rockets (1 per person) – $8.00
- Protective eye wear – $3.00
- Literally any paintballs – here’s a random 2,000 ct. on Amazon
- Some sort of bag, sweatshirt pocket, etc. to store your ammo
Total Cost: $15.00/person -ish
Pro-tips:
- Protective eye wear is no joke. Wear some glasses/goggles/whatever so no damage comes to your eyes!
- Wear clothes that can be stained by paint. You never know what is actually “washable paint” when it comes to paintballs
- Long sleeves, long pants are always good for paintballing. Again, preaching protection
- A legit bag or carrying pouch of some sort is helpful to carry your ammo. The sweatshirt pocket method works, but if you are sprinting your ammo may be scattered at a moments notice out the big pocket holes
Finding a location is probably one of the most important parts of Slingshot paintball. In the picture above, we found a great field with tall weeds and wide open space where we could crouch down and hide, but also see long distances. We thought it would be great!
Plot twist: this field was an allergist’s worst nightmare. Within the hour our eyes were streaming with tears, you were finding opponents by hearing their sneezes and we swear one friend’s throat was getting scratchy enough to change the sound of his voice. We ultimately called it a day so that we could go find Zyrtec as quick as possible and wash our eyes out with clean water.
Moral of the story: think of all possibilities in your venue, including potential allergy minefields and swarming mosquito swamps. My favorite location to this day was up a small canyon in a grove of trees in the fall. A bit cooler weather, tons of landscape and area to run around in, and tree cover to hide behind. Falling leaves masked the flying paintballs, and crunching leaves under feet could help you identify the oncoming enemy.
Slingshot Paintball – Target Practice Edition
Aiming with a wrist rocket sometimes takes a bit of practice to get super good. If you’ve played a few capture-the-flag rounds and people are getting tired of the running, or if you just want to focus on developing better aim, a target practice is another fun time with wrist rockets and paintballs.
Grab a few bottles, cans, etc. and set them on a ledge. Have everyone take turns at aiming and firing towards the objects. We did this often off the deck of my apartment towards a few old signs to see who was the most accurate. Again during the fall, aiming at pumpkins is a fun fall-themed activity and this variation of painting pumpkins can be an entire experience in of itself!
Target Practice Pro-Tip: Again, you don’t know what paint will actually stain, so make sure whatever you are shooting at, is able to be sprayed off as soon as possible after (before it dries), or that it doesn’t matter if there are paint splashes after the fact. Again, up a canyon is another great option so that you aren’t vandalizing property with excessive paint explosions (say no to stupid ideas people).
Find a good active group of people, and play any of these variations on your next free weekend from homework. Gets the blood pumping, lungs working, and laughs rolling. Cheap, and easy to plan as well!
Backyard Buffs 