I just got back from a birthday trip (not my birthday; my friend's) to Boston Paintball, where I played (surprise!) paintball for the first time ever. It wasn't full-fledged paintball, though; they had some strict rules and they weren't using the really painful paintballs. It was indoors in this big room with all sorts of bean-bag "bunkers" you could hide behind. Some were in the shape of right triangles (called "Doritos" by the people there; i.e., "there's one behind the left big dorito."). Others were cylindrical. We all got helmets and wore especially thick clothing as protection.

Some guys had REALLY fancy guns, with custom paint jobs, double barrels, scopes and laser sights. The people running Boston Paintball separated those with rental guns from those with special guns in order to level the playing field, but a rental person was allowed into the non-rental game if they wanted to. We ended up playing in all the games.

The game started off with each team crowded behind a barrier of netting on either side. As soon as the ref said "go," you had to spread out across the bunkers -- you weren't allowed to stay behind the net. When a lot of people got playing -- sometimes we had ten or more guys on each team -- it got really crowded, really loud, and really chaotic.

I'd say the best part was the teamwork involved. Before the game started people told their friends "okay, we'll go to the big left dorito first, then you cover me while I move up..." Once the game started, everyone was yelling out enemy locations and requests for covering fire.

The other three people "at the party" (for lack of a more appropriate phrase) all got bruises, but I pretty much stayed behind the bunkers the whole time and thus came out perfectly alive, with no real bruises and only four or five hits. The more experienced people we were playing with, even though they were clearly verterans, were still really nice to us. (You can tell they're veterans from the *literally* eight bottles of refill paintballs strung around their belt, the mohawks, the special helmets and guns and the fact that they carried their equipment on IN TWO OR THREE SUITCASES.) Also, they weren't really way way way better than us -- we could hold our own against them.

In conclusion, it was really fun, but I would NOT want to try serious paintball. I've seen some of the giant bruises that can cause. ;-)