Originally posted by Manning26
Thank you Pete, I understand what you're getting at now. I remember Eric Felix writing an article similar to this a few years back, even though his was supposedly over codes. I remember him saying how his 'mates were too lazy to commit to memory his complex code system. His team was cats, and the opposition dogs, or something like that, anyway the codes indicated how many players there were, and where precisely they were on the field. I would consider that to be the foundation for what it is we're talking about now. Eric's idea was geared more for the woods, it mostly dealt with shifts of power from one tape line to the other, finding weaknesses to exploit with bodies. Is it me, or was it easier to push in the woods? Anyway, Eric's want for better communication, I think, carries over to what we're talking about with these plays, and I honestly think that this is what he was leaning towards.
Pete, I see what you're saying about all this now, it's going to take an extremely dedicated team to refine this further, and only after they start crushing everyone will the rest of us decide that maybe we should do it too. I have another question though. In your time with the All Americans isn't this almost exactly what you guys did, or did you just set up the angles, wait for the positive body count, and then go on the offensive? All I recall is you saying how much time you spent walking the fields.
Thanks for putting up with my ramblings, Bud.
P.S. Did you ever fid out about that Russian team,"Street Fighters?"
Hey Manning, Let me tell ya something, when I played for the All Americans, I did mention in the magazine a few times that we walked fields for hours on end but I omitted to mention, that once that whistle blew for 'Game 'on', all that field walking was useless (well pretty much).
Alright, we had established our primaries during the walk but that was (in general) the ONLY practical bit of information we took from that prolonged field prep.
It was just there was no sophistication in paintball then, we walked the fields because we ‘thought’ we had to but there was no real practical design in what we did on the back of that field walking.
Any other interpretation on what we did is complete bull****, believe me.
As for Eric Felix and his codes, Eric was known by most of us pros at the time as a guy who had disappeared up his own ass in terms of trying to understand and prepare for paintball.
True, he could play a good sometimes great game of paintball but he attempted to structure paintball in a way that was completely inappropriate and more importantly, impractical.
He made things so damn complex and here I agree with Micah's principle of 'Keeping it Simple'.
His training drills could well have been crafted by a choreographer, the complexity of which, sometimes beggared belief.
His communications package, although sophisticated and comprehensive, was unusable because of its complexity.
Imagine trying to think of what to say or listen to some series of coded commands during a game with paint whizzing past your earholes at 200 mph, it was basically useless.
So I am definitely NOT saying that anything Eric did is somehow similar to what I am proposing, Eric had never conceived (at that time) the notion of set-plays in a team sense, he had more an idea of how to choreograph individuals in certain situations and even at that level he lost himself in it all.
As for people’s interpretation of what The All Americans or in fact what any top teams were doing at that time (mid to late nineties) is generally wrong.
People used to think we trained drills, knew what we were doing and everything on the field of play was either pre-ordained or trained for, it wasn’t, far from it in fact.
It was basically an anarchic series of events (the game of paintball) that we were slightly more skilled at in dealing with than most others, that is all.
Communication in the sense I would be advocating its use is just a one word call which would initiate a series of moves culminating in the take-down of an opponent, the forward acquisition of real estate or the winning of a game by means just mentioned.
So really, there is no real communication as such other than that first world command in its strictest sense.
Eric’s ideas on playing would only make my philosophy virtually useless, as players would be spending more time trying to work out what to say or maybe understand what was said, instead of just playing the frikking game.
Robbo
