Re: 1:1 FMAS

>I think it is important to realise that paintball and laser tag and all

>these games bear very little resemblence to reality. It is just a game!

>Training, tactics etc really don't work with either game for the simple

>reason that the rules are completely different, as are the
ranges/accuracies.

I beg to differ here.  Having played paintball for years now, with well 
over 200 days of playing, training, tactics, and etc make a _huge_ 
difference.  They are not necessarily the same tactics you'll find on a 
modern battle field, but that doesn't make them any less.

What you may be confusing here, if you haven't played enough to
understand 
it, is that normal infantry tactics and training are less effective than

they are on a real battlefield.  I've personally handed a group of
rangers 
their ego's for several runs until they adapted and started using the
same 
tactics I did.	They returned my ego to me, bruised as it was, by the
end 
of the day.

Small groups, not large.  Fire and move, cover fire, volume fire, all
work 
well, but one good charge has made or broke a team before.  Position is 
key.  Stealth is a beautiful thing for the old codgers.

Best team I ever saw or played against were local SWAT members, but that

was on a city and tree course (mock city, in the middle of a large 
forest.)  They were experienced paintballers, but less so than many in
the 
tournament...  It was the training, and most importantly their teamwork 
that carried them through.

As to accuracy...  No, you don't hit at a 1000 yards, or with any sort
of 
wind.  But a good friend of mine has a...  How do you spell the camo
that 
snipers use, geelie?  Guile?  anyway, he made one, and it works _very_ 
well.  The problem there is that most games only last 15-30 minutes,
which 
isn't enough time to truly move in that thingand properly use it.  The 
silencer was very helpful as well, until they outlawed them.  :( 
(bloody 
bastitches who converted them for real firearms use...)  However, when
we 
play the occasional 24-48 hour game, he and a few others have been named

MVP's for good reason.

Laser Tag is something I only messed with a couple of times, and noted
that 
there's really no penalty for doing stupid things.  So stupidity tends
to rule.

Paintball, on the other hand, has the most important biological
stupidity 
penalty next to death... Pain.	Those things _HURT_ at close range, and 
they don't feel like a love tap from any other range.

>But physical fitness (and the ability to move quietly in the woods) is 
>pretty key.

Harumph.  Size means more than physical fitness.  12 year old kids are
the 
bane of my existence.  Good 12 year olds, who have played for a while,
will 
kill you dead.	It's the smaller target, the ability to fit into cover
that 
would block my left foot, and the ability to be standing behind a bunker

that I have to crouch down behind allowing them to move easier and
quicker 
(they don't have to get their fat behinds up off the dirt).  True,
they're 
usually quicker, more agile, more energy, more in shape, etc.  But those

only make it hurt worse when they laugh at you in the kill box.  Still, 
brains and sneaky beat youth and fitness, even in this game.

Silent movement is a relative concept...  The masks pretty much cover
the 
ears (for good reason, having had califower ear from a close range shot 
THROUGH the mask) and impair your hearing.  The masks also hamper your 
sight, impairing or blocking peripheral, and fogging (Invest in an 
anti-fog, double layer lens mask.  And still expect fogging.).	I've
been 
in the middle of a patch of leaves, in white jeans, in the fall, prone,
and 
blew away three good players before the ever knew I was there.