Don – Maldon007 – debuts his Pump Party blog today (following a bit of editorial delay due to technical difficulties).
Enjoy Don every week right here, or over on his daily blog BigPumpin
You would think “pump paintball” is just when a player happens to be using a pump action marker instead of a semi right? Well then why do they call it “pump paintball”? When a person plays paintball with an Eclipse markers, nobody calls it “circuit board controlled solenoid operated electropneumatic ram paintball”, no its just regular paintball, played with an Ego.
I mean you could make some assumptions as to their playing style, knowing an ego was being used… my guess would be (begin run-on section)- They are on an x-ball field, pushing their gun into the bunker like a criminal trying to get a key imprint on a block of clay, often inadvertently shooting said bunker as they excitedly gyrate two fingers against the trigger in the effort to activate whatever cheating program infests the marker’s tiny computer before the gun even clears the bunker & has any chance of hitting an opponent they know the exact position of because his coordinates are yelled to them by a sideline “coach” who is strangely NOT cheating by doing this. Once this hailstorm of paint begins, the scattered “cone of uncertainty” tracer fire will be used to guide the shooter’s chicken wing braced gun back to somewhere near the target from the initial impact zone some 80 feet or so from the intended victim, who of course by now has ducked back in having been alerted to the incoming fire by the deluge of paint falling in the grass off to his right, as well as the older gent screaming his bunker’s position into a pink megaphone just off the field. Then, with a burst of PCP induced strength, the pre-teen pro-in-training will rush his enemy while selflessly ignoring the many painful hits he receives on the way, vanquishing this foe with a meager 20 to 30 balls spread judiciously over his back & head region, only to immediately begin a violent argument as to who has the most hits… or the more painful ones… or who the ref SHOULD have seen cheat first… or… well really its hard to tell what the argument will be about, but it will be something. But that’s not some different kind of paintball, its not “ego” paintball or something… that’s just regular paintball but played stupidly, pump is different.
Pump paintball is (begin metaphor section) a separate breed from other paintball animals… like if tournament ball is a thoroughbred & woodsball might be a mule, then pump paintball would be a zebra, cause it CAN have relations with those other similar species but the product will be a sterile mutant. Or say rec play is kickball, scenario would be college hoops, then think of pump play as cricket… or maybe water polo I’m not sure, I just know it’s a little eccentric & looks down it’s nose slightly at the others. And if the whole sport of paintball was a Chinese buffet, big games would be General Tso’s chicken (mainly since there’s a general in there for no reason what so ever & it’s authentically Chinese about as much as the scenarioist’s silly hand signals are right from the delta force handbook). The top tournaments are obviously sweet & sour pork (cause it’s sweet playing big tourneys, but getting killed every time out, as most teams do, can sour you on the game & because, like deep fried pork, too much of it is bad for your colon).
Then there is the egg foo young of paintball… pump. It’s a stick-to-your-ribs kid of game, with no need of miniature corn cobs or shinny red sauce to make it palatable. It’s authentic, its classic, it takes you back to better days. It requires skill to prepare, a hearty man sized appetite to enjoy, and a minimalist’s attitude to truly appreciate. Pump play is the heart & soul of paintball, even if paintball thinks it has left pump behind. As the poet, Carl Sandburg said (paraphrasing) “We gave the Chinese bullets, they gave us egg foo yong”, I think the connection is undeniable
Anyone that knoes Don knows that spell check got a serious workout! Seriously though, great job and excellent read.
Pump is to Chinese as Chines is to Ninja.
Therefore Pump player = Ninja ?. Great read Don, just enough sarcasm to make me snicker, yet enough underlying truth to make you think. Ironically enough Team Trigger Happy EVOLVED to a mainly pump based team.
Gutbrother said: “The other thing to take note of is that there is generally less confrontational friction in a pump game because quite frankly the player gets hit 1 or 2 times instead of 15 or 20 times by the wide eyed newbie without a clue who was startled and could not stop pulling the trigger because he panicked into seizure mode.”
Agreed, but I think whenever there are less paintballs in the air in general, you will have less confrontations. More paintballs equates to more crap, in general (I realize that’s not always the case). That’s why at our field we encourage low paintball consumption. We’ve found out that our customers enjoy themselves more with less paintballs in the air and that is good for business. Also, becasue we promote low paintball useage, we probably have the biggest pump following of any other single field in Canada.
Right on …… Absulutely……. What did he say? Pump paintball is different. That does not mean that a semi player, aka ramp cheatin, spray and pray hoseballer is not a poor person or bad player, they are just a semi player. HEY I play both pump and semi depending on my mood. Its just that I feel, like many veteran players I suspect, that semi’s and especially those electro concoctions have taken something away from the game. Anyone can pull the trigger three times and let the marker rip away at ludicrus speed, raining out a wall of paint that can’t be crossed without cheating, ending up in a standstill that is determined by who runs out of paint first.
It takes a different, if not higher level of skill to manually load each round and hit your target (yep amazingly the one that is actually moving) with less than 1000 rounds. The other thing to take note of is that there is generally less confrontational friction in a pump game because quite frankly the player gets hit 1 or 2 times instead of 15 or 20 times by the wide eyed newbie without a clue who was startled and could not stop pulling the trigger because he panicked into seizure mode. Nuff said.
Ironic no?… a scenario team full of pump guys… called Trigger Happy.
That is a well written, entertaining article Don! I did not know you had it in you!
Hope to see you on the 4th of April at the CFP Pump meet!
Frank~
Don you rule!!!!!You make Trigger Happy Proud
Nice job Don, looks like you have a lot of time on your hands!
Nice read Maldon. Glad you finally got “published”
There should day a national event for the “pumpsters” that is as big as D-day.
But I think that it would be more enjoyable for people if it were mil sim style pumps and not the K-mart special.
Wouldn’t that be kick ass; everyone running around with shotguns and blasting each other dead in the chest.
WXM
So to summarize…I’m a cricket playing zebra eating egg foo yong because I haven’t played with a semi in a few years?. Not sure I can relate. “Sterile mutant”? Maybe.
Great read Don. I think that many of us pump players do look down our nose a bit at the semi crowd, even further down our nose at the ramping and full auto crowd. In the end it is just paintball. It’s the equipment of choice for the type of game I like to play (for quite a while now), and therefore I’ve probably lost a little understanding of people and the other equipment they choose to play the game with. I think it’s a natural human characteristic to think what you have chosen is better than what what others have chosen, otherwise why would you have chosen it in the first place? It must be better. We all need to justify our choices to at least ourselves and if someone asks, we’ll justify our choices to them. I don’t think pump players are any different in that respect than any other paintball player. We probably just get more people wondering why would be silly enough to purposely handicap ourselves when we don’t have to. Of course we know it’s not really a handicap. It’s just different. And it’s fun. So I’m going to keep pumping!