Paintball Articles/News

The Paintball Sniper

Being a paintball sniper requires patience and a lot of practice. Thought needs to be put into several things before going into the woods. Preperation should be made to figure out a way to break up your visual form or appearance so you can't be recognized by someone scanning the horizon and picking out a simple hopper. Some scenarios allow a certain number of people to wear ghillie suits. Although, building and maintaining a ghillie suit is an art in its self.
The need to see distances should be helped by bringing binoculars or having a high power scope on one of the rails of your gun or marker. Most experienced snipers prefer a dot type non-magnification site while shooting but like to search for threatening enemies with a scope. Several guns are equipped with two or more accessory mounting rails.

The Paintball Sniper

A paintball sniper must also understand movement and how to be quiet. The biggest give away for a sniper is movement. The ability to sit in one spot for a long time is commonly too much for the typical paintball player to do game after game. A player may go into the job with good intension's just to find its the most boring position to play and not be able to stay with it.
Understanding your first shot is key. A gun that has any first shot drop off will seriously hurt your efforts. That first shot had better be a kill. Chances of giving your position away are exponentially increased with every shot. Knowing where that first shot is going to hit separates the want-to-be's from the true paintball sniper.
The distance you shoot from should be determined by several factors. Finding high ground to shoot from helps your distance to fire and gives you an advantage of visibility. Increased visual ability can help you choose your target, decide which target to take out first and how many you'll need to eliminate. If you think it's to your advantage to start far off you'll also have to consider if the opponents bunker down far off from receiving fire vs. them being a lot closer and in better range to snipe one at a time.
Of course what paintball sniper article can go with out talking about the Flatline barrel. Although its accuracy is disputed, its range is definitely superior. Many paintball snipers use a Tippmann A-5 with a Flatline barrel for one simple reason. The A-5 Flatline is very fast to change. A sniper could shoot long distances with the Flatline then when close battle calls for it, the barrel can be changed out to some thing more accurate. The A-5 is also a good gun for close up fighting. The rate of fire is excellent and with a E-grip can be used on full auto.

If your interested in building your own ghillie suit, check out that link. Or here for more info on being a sniper.

(Redwood 01/14/07)