BDCHS Advanced Reading discussion

Name:Carson Owen
Title:Scenario Paintball: Tips, Tools, and Tactics From the Trenches
Author:Don Grubish
Rating:5 out of 5

Summary: The book is about paintball, but not just the sport of paintball, but it is about a specific type of play and that is scenario play. Scenario play is generally played in the woods or in any type of military simulation. Scenario paintball games can be anything from re-enacting different battles (for example, they have a D-Day event in Oklahoma every year) to having any imaginary scenario or objective that your team needs to complete. For example, you could take over a building and then defend it from the other team for five minutes, or take out another team’s “cannons” (any tube-like object that is a specified cannon) and then placing a “dynamite” charge near their base or in their base and waiting for it to go off meanwhile defending it while you wait for it to go off, etc. Overall, this book teaches you about different scenario games, tactics, and tips for different styles of play.

Setting: Scenario paintball takes place all over the world. In fact, there is a big scenario event in Germany held every year. This book focuses mostly on events in the United States.

Characters: This is a non-fiction book, so there aren’t really characters in the book.

Plot: There really isn’t an official plot, but the author tries to get across tips and tactics about scenario paintball.

Problem/Solution: The problem is how do you survive in paintball. The solution is, depending on the strategy, the author lists many different tactics. If the problem is that you are just walking around and you don’t know where the enemy is, then the solution/tactic is to go in a semi-check formation so on the left is only one person and that is the heavy machine gunner, in the front is the point-man, the first person on the right is the utility man, the second person on the right is the squad leader, and the third person on the right is the runner. When ever you see an enemy, act like a door-hinge, so if there is an enemy in front of you, the heavy machine gunner moves to the left, if necessary the runner will run to the left with the heavy machine gunner and then the utility man and squad leader go to the right while the point man stays back and covers them while they move. In general, this book gave a lot of examples of problems in scenario paintball and then gave a lot of solutions and tactics to deal with those problems.

Theme: The theme is that anyone can get a tactic and get better at it if you know what to do.

Did you learn anything from the story?: I learned different tactics and tips for playing scenario paintball. I knew some of the tactics that he talked about, but I learned a lot more. I also learned more ways to make a scenario game fun other than just “capture the flag.”

Did you like the story?: Yes, I liked the book. It is interesting and pretty easy to read if you play paintball or even if you don’t play paintball he sort of explains it along the way.

Overall comments: The book was good and I want to read the next one by this author on advanced tactics.