Speedball players breaking out at the start of a game
Highest governing body
List of paintball leagues
First played
June 27 1980 Henniker New Hampshire
Characteristics
Contact
No physical contact between players
Team members
Varies depending on game format. 3 5 7-man teams common in tournaments
Category
Extreme; Indoor or Outdoor
Ball
Paintball
A woodsball player firing at opponents from behind cover. Note the stock and sights for woodsball style play.
Paintball is a sport in which players eliminate opponents by hitting them with pellets containing paint usually shot from a Co2 or compressed-gas powered paintball gun .
The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association estimates that over 5.4 million people played the game in the United States in 2007 with over 1.5 million playing at least 15 times.
Games can be played either indoors or outdoors and take various forms which are generally divided between woodsball played in natural wooded terrain and speedball played on open level fields with artificial obstacles.
Rules for playing paintball vary widely. The most common form involves two opposing teams seeking to capture their opponents flag and return it to their starting position but other objectives may include eliminating all of the other teams players or to completing some other objective such as eliminating a specific player defending or attacking a particular objective or capturing objects of interest hidden in the playing area. Depending on the style of paintball played a game can last from seconds to hours.
