Communication - The Voice of Authority
On the combat lines you will generally find two general way of communicating: Hand signals/radios and those who shout commands out. Which form of communication is better? Let’s look at both, for a second.
Silent but Deadly: Our woodsball/scenario players, like the players you might see in the SpecialOps videos, frequently use hand gestures and goggles with radios, some built-in. They do this so they don’t give away their position until they have to. In this case it presents them with the element of surprise. That can make or break a game in some rounds. In an open field, for example, where the tall grass is the only cover available, noise is you enemy when waiting or sneaking up on the opponent. Many players may not even move unless the wind is blowing to create some background noise.
Shout, Shoot and Scoot You will also find that on speedball fields, players will more often shout out locations of opponents, or to tell team mates to move forward. In this case there is less obstacles to hide behind. In many cases the other team is in front of you, unless you’ve let them sneak around - which happens to be bad. With the lack of cover you become easily visible, so shouting becomes more practical, though it can be distracting. Speedball also involves a lot of shooting, so it’s not likely that your cover will be safe for long.
For the player that has never gone from one type of paintball to the other before, in either case, this can be a really new experience. I suppose if you’ve bounced back and forth when starting off in the game it would not be such a difficult transition. In some cases, though, players will be deterred from playing anything other than the methods they prefer. If one wants to play any field, adaptability is as important as knowing how to communicate appropriately with your team mates.
