How to Use Inflatable Paintball Bunkers

Video Transcript

"Hello this is Rob Rubin and you're watching Expert Village. Something you may have noticed throughout this entire series is that where we are playing is on a speed ball field that has inflatable bunkers. A lot of people are used to playing in the woods on barricaded type fields that have palates or wood bunkers or nice solid pieces of stuff to hide behind. When you play air ball fields the rules change a bit as far as how to play your bunkers so that is what we are going to cover in this episode. The first thing about air ball bunkers is they move. They're quite movable and you can do this all day with them. I don't recommend it but you can. What this means is you can get a lot more use out of your cover. Instead of just standing behind it if you need to get tight, you can actually press into the bunker and get a lot more use out of it. You can actually change angles on the field by angling the bunker one way or the other. You really don't want to do it too severely because if you do the referee may accuse you of carrying the air ball bunker with you as a shield but a little tweak, it helps. Actually one of the funniest things I have seen was in a tournament, way back in the day, one of the air ball bunkers started to deflate on the player as he was playing behind it. He actually held the bunker up and he kept on playing. He held one hand up like this and kept on shooting. When he let go of the position he let go of the bunker and the bunker took off and deflated, it was just completely gone. One of the things you will notice about air ball players is they take longer barrels on the field with them and you might be thinking why would you do that it's too long for air ball? Well not necessarily. Some air ball bunkers are not as inflated as this one and you can actually press the barrel into the bunker and basically wrap the bunker around the barrel. It makes you play a lot tighter because you are still behind cover and the cover is actually forming to fit you. It is very handy. When you are playing on air ball fields something to notice is that the air ball fields are tethered to the ground. If you are playing in doors they may have a way to put sand bags underneath it or weights of some kind. If you are playing outdoor air ball fields it will be staked into the ground but they don't all have the same retention system so be careful. The sound of an air ball system being hit by paint balls is very unique, you never quite forget it. A lot of new players find it intimidating when someone is just pounding your bunker but you can put that to your advantage. You put your hand on the air ball bunker and you an actually feel which side the balls are hitting, whether it is on the right, or the left, or to the center. Use that to your advantage. You can feel all the paint balls being pounded on the right hand side then switch hands and come up on the left hand side."