Homemade Speedball Field (in progress)

[Sinnet]

Well, a couple of friends and I were bored today, so we decided to take a trip out to our woods field and build a small speedball field on the side, having started to play it recently.
Now, we don't quite have enough bunkers yet :D but in a week or so there'll be plenty of cover for a good 3-man game.

we decided to make it 100'x50'... is that near ordinary for a small 3-man field?

any advice/input is appreciated
thanks




pic of the field from a corner

[Sinnet]

pic from one end

[HoppysMag]

lol i can probibly hide behind that cone...:D all i say is tall bunkers in the back and make them small as you get towards the middle... thats how i like it... it keeps the lanes of fire open... you want enough bunkers that you can make moves but not so many that you cant run with out tripping over them... obviously simitry is a big deal. every bunker should have a counter part on the other side...

[Top Secret]

Where'd ya get those nice orange bunkers from. ;)

[Sinnet]

actually, some friends of mine got the orange ones...

they have their ways :D

[Gitaroo Man]

lol nice

[Ken Kaniff]

Just finished my flipping field but I sucked hard when I played.

Oh flip yeah it's good, though.

[BajaBoy]

good start, ill post some pix of mine.. its really nice.. town is thinking about letting us open it and crap (its on town property) then nezt summer i get to make money by sitting on my but up at the field.. riden around a atv.. (there use to be a tball field in my nhood.. but now the middle school put up alot of nice baseball field about 10mins away so no one was using it.. and i mean we all said why not? lol now theres one speedball field and a good good woods corce... (no brush.. its all big trees .. and not really deep in the woods so its well let)

[Sinnet]

sounds cool baja...


yeah, we definitely need some more stand-up size bunkers on our field to give it some actual shooting lanes. Right now, I think it would be hard for anyone to move past the first row of bunkers, the whole field is one big shooting gallery :rolleyes:

[BajaBoy]

sinnet, old xmas trees work great.. look around if you and your niebors dump them in the woods.. also go to a big store like walmart a&p.. ect. and get pallets from them (there was a thred on this b4:) ) i would have done it but my dad owns a ware house so i have over 60 bunkers in all.. (look for plastic pallets there awesome)

[paintbattler]

haha..you stole thoses barrels??

[rudy]

lol i can probibly hide behind that cone... all i say is tall bunkers in the back and make them small as you get towards the middle... thats how i like it... it keeps the lanes of fire open... you want enough bunkers that you can make moves but not so many that you cant run with out tripping over them... obviously simitry is a big deal. every bunker should have a counter part on the other side...

I respectfully dissagree, shooting lanes are one thing but the way you are talking is camping heaven that is the absolute worse type of feild you could design. I have seen many feilds designed like that. and I hate them, why cause all a player has to do is go to the first bunker in the back and sit and play it shooting and seeing the entire feild. in fact the best way to do it might be that. 2 equal teams and the one who moves will get beat unless there is soem angle advantages given to the middle. I prefer to make the back players work for thier job. in my feild back player need to be up 1 or 2 bunkers behind the front player to serve him well. a back player who goes to the first stand up wont help much. In your field design you punish a person for being more aggressive. you force him to play smaller bunkers and move farther while the camper gets hight advantage, sight advantage, and probably a bigger bunker on a field like the one pictured. Not only that but due to the design people will be forced to shoot more paint because the average play will be farther apart. which means more bounces less accuracy. so not only is it the least rewarding type of field it is also the most expensive to play. Its fields like that, that cause me to be unable to afford to play the sport as much as I would like. Yet it seems to be the more popular design of feilds

[HoppysMag]

well iv played at speed ball fields like the way i described, and i think all it does is make it that much more exciting... with the back guys covering the front guys as they come under more fire wth less bunkers... but i quese its all preferance eh?:D

and also fields make them that way cause well if you shoot more it means more $$$ for the field... but as i said its all preferance.

EDIT: i dont mean like tiny bunkers i mean you have a bunker in the front ( mid field) that is mabey chest high. im not talking super low just if you make the bunkers too big in the front ( mid field) i think that slows the game up by restricting what you can shoot at... and as for rewarding guys in the back... your not cause i mean balls coming from the far end of the field ( even from mid field) are easyily seen and dodged... and also your not rewarding them by giving them big bunkers cause the other team has big bunkers too... and they can long ball too... but yet again all preferance :D

[Snakebite78]

my field :) :) :)


http://www.automags.org/forums/attachment.php?postid=423804

[rudy]

you are definately right its preference and obviously a difference in definition or interpretation of several words and I in my expirence have found that people pretty much cater the words exciting and skill to whatever they like and or excell at. Its much more complicated then that you need to break down exactly what your calling exciting and why you consider it so. To me exciting is a higher energy level, more challenging, phyically and mentally. I know about the money it adds I also know the other reasons they make them that way. some just dont know any better then to copy what they see at a tourney or another field. others understand it keeps newbies happier, in addition to the paint consumption. ALso just a side note I play regularly at 3 different fields, all are owned by back players and designing the field the way you suggest makes thier job easier they forget to challeng themselves though. now how physically challenging is it really to only have to move to the first set of bunkers and be able to play the majority of the game from there? how mentally challenging is it to be able to view most of the field bcause the fireing lanes are pretty much the whole field. There is not much room for the element of surprise and many tactics. other then keep the paint on the other team to keep them down and hope for a couple lucky long hits while the front slowly and cautiously move if there is even an advantage to doing so. Now lets take a field and cut off some firing lanes lets force back players to have to move into positions that will allow them to better cover the front players. lets make is critical that a team has good communication because no 1 or 2 players are going to be able to view the entire field and keep players down. make it so back players cant see the other back players the whole time. make bunkers further up the field have more angle advantages so if players move up they will be rewarded. but space the bunkers far enough apart that crazy blitz runs wont be the way to win. also its good to make several key areas in a field. many fields I see often only have 1 really key area and 2 secondary key areas. as paint ball has become more advanced it seams our tactics and fields have become simpler. Sometimes I wonder if they should even call it speed ball anymore

[Reo5th]

You are so lucky to have that land Snakebite. That field is awesome. Me and AngryMan just finished our field - it has a tree house right about the 50. such a great spectator area. I'll take pictures monday so you guys can check it out.

[Sinnet]

how big is that field snakebite? looks pretty big... around 200 feet long?

also, do you have many problems with bunkers being knocked over or it being hard to get behind bunkers on the other team's 40?

[Jonno06]

lol,he didnt steal them,hes BARROWING them:p

i want my own PB field!!!!!!

[Blennidae]

OK, its official, I hate snakebite78 ;) Man thats a nice personal setup.

Sinnet, the only suggestion I might have would be to mow the lawn. Grass looks pretty tall.

[Sinnet]

heh, it's actually not a lawn.... well, it's a long story, but i'll tell it


all the land we play on is behind a church in our town. It's owned by a really rich guy, who wanted to develop it. But, because parts of it are marshland, the EPA shut him down. So, because he can't do anything w/the land, he lets us use it for paintball purposes. It all used to be forest, but a lot of it was cut down, so what you see is weeds growing up out of pieces of wood that pretty much cover the whole place. But yeah, we plan to weedwhack it at some point.

[845]

X-mas trees do work awesome. Me and my friends made a whole fort out of them for paintball. It was bull dozed before we could play attack and defend though. You need to make a snake EVERYONE loves the snake. :D Just lay the orange cones on the side. If you need more just do drive by construction sites reach out the windows and pull em in. Most of the times the construction guys dont even care.:)

[Sinnet]

well, the orange cones are used for marking the corners...

they're about 1' tall, you'd hafta be a smurf to use them as a snake.

[HoppysMag]

well for my definition of exciting is balls flying over you head, always haing a place to go but having to dodge paint to get there...:D but im descriping this all from a rec stand point where nothing really matters as long as we have fun... but still i see where your coming from about not making it too easy for the back guys...

[pumpamatic]

Dang, I wish I could get some pics of the fields I've built. I'm with Rudy though, on the speedball field I've built, you crawl the snake and see a whole different world. There's so many blind angles, it's like I'll shoot out one man on the tape, and not seeing it, charge up field only to be suprised when someone pops out. It's great though, it makes it easy to move on those people who just shoot the whole game. Although front men are normally screwed and there's not a whole ton of teamwork going on, but I think that's just the people I play with. Still makes a great field and gives anybody on it a lot to work with.

[Snakebite78]

our fields have come a long way, that field is proboly around 225-275 feet long, and man it is nice. We just put up a sweet middle section and were working on hankin down some of the tall marsh grass right above the field in the pic. We jsut got 21 bails of stray adn were probobly gonna get 30-40 more soon. Were talkin about a snake or 2 adn some more bunkers. Wish you guys could be there, anyone who lives in ohio near akron, come on down. :) :D :) :D

[shartley]

Hmmmm Ever wonder if we send shivers down the spines of *organized* paintball fields? ;)

I think it is great that so many are not only making their own fields, but making them as good as, if not BETTER than some of the paintball parks I have seen. :D

Good job guys and keep up the good work! After all, all you guys got me and Kim hyped up again to make ours. :D

[j.t.]

Sinnet, where in Maine do you live anyways? I live in the Scarborough/Portland area. Any chance that field your building is close by? Id be glad to help out:D

[Sinnet]

hey JT... we're in cape elizabeth... not far from you at all. we actually just finished building the field, and we're playing on it thursday if you want to come... pm me about it.


we finished the field off with 2 stand-ups and some more spools and played on it (2 on 2) for the first time yesterday... it's great!

by the way, i'm awaiting authorization for ICQ w/you

[ANTi]

dude...you kow what you need...those like large tubes that you can crwal through...those are awesome...you also have to have some kind of like hypernball spyder thing in the middle...cause those are really fun to use...a speedball course in the woods near me has one and its a lot of fun...they also took barrels cut them in half stuck those in the ground and used some of those as bunkers...

[Sinnet]

actually anti, a friend of mine's dad owns a plumbing/construction company, and he said he can get us some hyperball tubing for free :D

[AdrenalineMag]

rudy, ever heard of paragraphs? and you are wrong for the mostpart (but every1 hgas their opinion) shooting lanes are part of speedball. im a back player and ive been hit by front players, its not like i just sit in back and lay paint on everyone. one of my friends, a front player, can smoke alot of back players by snap shooting. in practice he got me 3 times in the same string of shots, nice!

by the way, youre field is nice man, but mine is better :D ! then again i got major hookups, we got 33 55-gallon drums for free, and more on the way

[rudy]

AdrenalineMag before I even get into a response you need to make yourself more clear where all people have opinions some are backed by more reason then just a personal expirence. So please tell me where I am wrong, what has brought you to that conclusion other then your a back player and you dont like to be challenged. and then we can discuss this better.

Look nobody cares if you teamate can smoke back players maybe he can just aim better it doesnt in any way prove that I am wrong. and I never said that shooting lanes are not part of "speedball". they should exist and they should be part of the tactical game. they just shouldnt compromise most of the field. and they should be something you are awarded for getting too, not given too you as soon as the game starts at the first bunker. ask your self honestly what takes more skill turn around and shoot go to the first bunkers on the field or move up and get to a good shooting lane. then as your team gains ground your shooting lane becomes useless and you need to move to another.

My field isnt nice untill you play it other wise its just rotted logs piled up in a forest. Play it once and you will either hate it cause its different or love it for its playstyle other then the fact we are limited by supplies and the owners dad who wont let us clutter his property much almost every bunker is placed and designed to encourage people to be aggressive and use the most skill while not spending tons of paint.