The following is an uninformed, ill advised, badly conceived opinion by me and doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of The Ford Report, Their Sponsors or anyone other than me for that matter. Frank Connell and Chuck Hendsch  will likely beat me up for this editorial, but other than my own safety being put in jeopardy, nobody else is likely to be harmed by this editorial.

So I noticed in a press release on Facebook that the All Star Game at the DC Challenge this weekend was going to be using a new format called “S7” by the NPPL. One of the questions I asked Frank via text message after reading this was whether or not ramping in some fashion would be allowed in this new format, assuming it became the new format for the entire league.

Those of you who’ve known me for a few years know that when the PSP enacted their 15.4 bps ramping back in 2005 (I think?) I was one of the loudest voices against it, going toe to toe with Chris Raehl over on P8ntballer.Com. My main point of contention against ramping was that it diminished the skill I’d developed over the years of shooting fast in semi-automatic.

At it’s most basic form, Raehl’s argument was that at least with ramping, game officials had some control over how fast people were shooting, which in the interest of safety should be controlled at least to some extent. Realistically, both Chris and I were both right, but 15.4 bps became the law of the land in the PSP, while the NPPL stayed with semi-automatic.

In the years since those heady days, I’ve gotten older, slower, and less interested in demonstrating skill as having fun. Part of that fun for me is sticking with 15.4 bps ramping, because I like to shoot fast, and I like to think I’m disciplined enough to tote that kind of firepower out onto a scenario field without hurting someone. It’s kind of like owning a Corvette or something similarly overpowered. You don’t necessarily have to use it, but it’s nice knowing it’s there.

Now, you’ll note in the disclaimer above, you see that I’m describing this editorial as “uninformed, ill advised, and badly conceived”. The reason I say that is because I’m a retired tournament player, which is a nice way of saying ‘old’. I haven’t played in a tournament either local or national level in several years now. The genuine experts like Chris Raehl and Paul Richards will tell you that I don’t know what I’m talking about, because I don’t play today’s game, and they’re right.

However, despite the fact that I’m old (relatively speaking) and out of touch with paintball’s tournament side, I am a thinker, and seeing that PR from the NPPL about the new “S7” Format took me back to the days when I did know what I was talking about in the tournament world and I remembered how the team(s) that I was associated with would always make a point of hitting up the NPPL field at Central Florida Paintball towards the end of the day to play a game or two on that field using our PSP-spec ramping guns. Because the NPPL believes in human sized bunkers, laid out in interesting ways, playing those fields with our quick guns was a lot of fun! Don’t get me wrong, X-Ball is fun too, but in order to be a good X-Ball player, it helps if you’re tiny, fast, and young. With the NPPL field layouts we were playing, you could be a little older, slower and bigger and still get yourself a good game in.

So what’s my point? Well, Frank tells me that this new S7 format will not include a rule change to include ramping in any form. He tells me that ramping is a diminution skill, and he’s right. In a perfect world for me, it would include the 15.4 bps ramping of old with the NPPL’s superior showmanship and human-sized bunkers. However, I’m humble enough to realize that tournament paintball isn’t what it was even 3 years ago, and me and some of my buddies on the South Beach Pimps signing up for an NPPL event in their master’s division isn’t going to tip the scales in favor of allowing enhanced modes of fire.

And realistically, the sport side of paintball will probably be better for slowly phasing out enhanced modes of fire. It takes a certain amount of skill to learn how to walk a trigger effectively, and to do so while moving, sliding into a bunker, or even reloading on the run takes more brain power than I’m willing to expend these days. If you can do all that, then you got a chance at being the next Frank Connell, Chris Lasoya, or even Alex Fraige.

I’m used to using the ramping, and out in the woods having that horsepower on hand when I need it is comforting for me. Because of the 15.4 bps ramping out in the woods, I can devote my brain not to walking a trigger, but moving around, talking to my teammates in the middle of a firefight, and above all, having fun.

That’s what it’s supposed to be about, right? I’ll see you out in the woods…I’ll be the one with splash anodized walker!