The Wild World of TB!

So this has got to be some of the most stupid shit that I have had to write about in a long fucking time. I was trying to push the site to more information but for fuck's sake, with shit like this you have to talk about. I will apologize now and if profanity offends you, then well you better just log the fuck off now, because this has got me plenty pissed. Moreso because these fucktards are part of the reason I am not writing for PB2X since they started some kind of campaign when I took them to task on PBNation quite some time ago on this. What is it? Well let's get to it shall we?

Now as I said before I have crossed swords with these numbnuts before, but this time it is in regards to a game at West Point. Yep, you heard it West Point. Seems that the cadets put on scenario games and this year they had a Battle of the Bulge game set up. The NCOIC of the cadets puts up this post in a pre-emptive thread to just let people know where he stands on things:

One and only warning

If I see a Swastika you will be asked to leave. No debates. No refunds. It's a military post and that is the call I am making as the NCOIC of the team. I will not budge. Spread the word! I have enough smoke, machine guns, Artilery sims to "Keep it real". If you need that symbol for realism, you need to think about why you are really playing. If you are butt hurt over this, PM me.

That is all...continue the Smack!

Seems simple right? a simple request? Oh no sir not for SS Brigadefuhrer Deckmann(yes that is the rank that this dude gave himself along with all kinds of neat sounding German medals and awards. Such as: Knights Cross,Iron Cross 1st Class,Ostfront Medal,Close Combat Clasp Bronze,Infantrie Assault Badge Silver), he has to get all bent out of shape with this response.

this is pretty interesting. i know its totally legit for a private field to ban a symbol but is it legal under the constitution for a govt entity too? i dont think it is. At least not for civillians. not like i run around with a Nazi flag or anything. Is the soviet flag also banned ? The soviets raped and murdered millions of my people i find that offensive

no flaming please Its a citizens responsibilty to question its govt

Anyhow im looking forward to the game and plan on abiding by any rules.

GO Germans!

Can you believe that this dude is a former Marine? Well I say former, I sincerely wish that he was an ex-Marine but that is just me. His people? yep, he claims to be of German decent and is just honoring his family's contribution to the war effort. Regardless that the men he is honoring were enemies of the United States Armed Services and killed quite a few American fighting men, no he wants to honor them. Guess Veterans Day has a whole new meaning for these turds. So of course, with his post, people start bantering back and forth. but let me post some of the jewels from Adam, ok?

I suppose. but denying a US citizen to play a WW2 game because of a small symbol on his uniform doesnt sound Constitiutinal. i could see not allowing citizen paintballers at all ,but to allow some and not others due to a symbol thats protected under free speech doesnt sound legal. no i wont be taking this to the supreme court lol. just an interesting situation. I know the Army can have the cadets/soldiers do whatever it wants pretty much obviously.i imagine you guys know alot more about the legalities to it than i do.
anyhow whatever see you guys at the game

We will make sure we do not have any Swastikas exposed on the base.

and

Originally Posted by lilmatt87 View Post
Then use your right not to come . It has been put out no swastika's ....... You are a guest of the Army's so stop whining stop *****ing and stop looking for a loophole . It is done. If you feel so strongly then do not come your slot will be filled. Start acting your age. The word is NO swastikas so it means none on the base. Leave the shirts or coats or pants (gear) that might have one on them at home and stop being a child.

posted by Blackangelss Yeah ok. You might not care about your own rights but i do.I stated over and over i didnt really care i was curious if it was legal.What if they said no religious crosses next or something like that. Im done with this debate.You can feel free to do whatever the govt tells you to, I wont. Dont blame me all the pc crybabies are the ones who make it so you cant allow a German WW2 Uniform at a WW2 game. Like Germany is the only country to ever commit a warcrime.

And then we move to this thread, I hate sending them bitches Traffic but it seems the only place that Josh will fucking post this to is PBNation.

http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=2790905

And yet again that ass clown, is back on their screaming about Soviets and everyone else not getting banned. And why are the Nazi's getting picked on? Boo hoo, poor Nazi's right?

And here is just one of many threads with a lot in it between me and the Fuhrer, there are others of course where I had to start educating them on the history and the fact that most of his arguments that he uses are trademarks of holocaust deniers and neo-nazi's.

http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=1997296

I just don't understand how he can't get it? Oh yeah that's right I forgot, he get's it, he just can't admit to the world how much of a neo-nazi he is. He thinks because he was a former Marine that he can't be one, I guess in reality it isn't that far a leap from nazi indoc to Marine indoc if you are succeptible to that sort of thing. In fact, back in the day of 2007, I created several fake accounts on his 'teams' website and interacted with them as a fellow 're-enactor'. :D

http://ssblackangel.forumup.us/index.php?mforum=ssblackangel

And let me tell you, SS Brigadefuhrer Deckmann, takes this as serious as say some people take being a special forces paintball team. I would go so far as to say that some if not most of his 'team' lean towards the National Socialist way of thinking, if you get my drift. If not, well they act like classic Neo-Nazi's, that make it easy enough for you? But hey I will let you all be the judge of these. To me, SS Brigadefuhrer Deckmann is a prime grade, USDA choice cut of Punk Ass Bitch, but that's just inspector TB talking.

As for West Point banning the swastika's? I say bravo, good job, so forth and so on. Carry on!

Man, I tell you reading these old issues has really made me miss doing Scenario News. It has also made me realize how crappy the magazine world has become with games and articles about Scenario News. If the economy were better, I might even try to re-launch the magazine, but the paintball market is in the toilet, so who the hell would sponsor that much less buy ad space? Well I handed the reigns over to Nudi as editor and I started writing my own column, this would be a column similar to what I do here in my soapbox and you can see that even in July of 2004, I spoke in generalities and I did piss some people off. It is what coined the phrase, "if the shoe fits, then just go on and walk that motherfucker off!".

Editor: This is a new monthly column for Lawrence ‘TB’ Wright so he continue to bring his unique opinions on paintball to scenario players. He has told me he will use the column for education as well as opinion. Anything he may see or feel needs to be discussed will be covered here. Please be aware anything he may say does not refl ect the opinions of Scenario News, Blitzkrieg or anyone else. These opinions are his and his alone. You don’t even have to believe them if you don’t want to, but if you want to argue with him, then by all means him at tb@scenarionews.com. I’ll be sure to print anything you send in so he’ll always have new things to write about.

This article will I am sure, offend some people. So why am I writing it, you ask? Well because there is a disturbing trend in scenario paintball and it is starting to concern me. The trend is commanders being paid in some way to command at games. What do I mean by that? Well, I will detail the trend and then we will talk about what I think we can do or should do about it.

All promoters want good commanders, but good commanders aren’t always easy to come by. This may be because of several reasons: location, time of year, whether they have command experience and if they want to command. The reasons for commanding are different for different people, but it seems have realized it is now a way to get paid. There are some promoters out there paying their commanders money and others getting their commanders prizes and goodies...all of that for people already comped into the game and sometimes given paint. This has lead to motivating people who really shouldn’t command scenario games. Commanding is a serious business and people pay good money to travel and play these games.

When you put some yahoo in the commander’s position because they want a free ride, then you are hurting those players. Now this doesn’t always blow up into the promoter’s face, but when it does you better hold on. There have been games held where a whole side turned on their commander. Others where certain teams performed a coup and changed sides. Some people not fit for command have walked off the field and left the game leaving their side to fend for themselves. I’ve had to sit and watch as game directors ‘helped’ a commander along since they obviously didn’t know what they were doing. This is unacceptable in today’s scenario game, or at least to me it is.

Let’s also mention another disturbing trend: propping up commanders with capable XO’s. Everyone knows commanders should run the show, but what happens when you take a commander and make him a puppet for people to rally behind when in reality another individual is running the show? They are putting together the plan, recruiting the teams, and even leading them on the field while the ‘commander’ sits back and thinks, “Yep, I’m doing a great job.” This has happened as well over the last few years with good and bad things coming from it. The good being the game may have went off without much of a hitch and the bad because it encourages more and more of this nonsense.

When you put someone in command who isn’t there for the right reasons, you cheapen it for those of us who do it because we truly enjoy it. We take the aspect of people’s fun serious and we want to win. But winning is not everything, because for someone to win, someone else has to lose. Getting people to have fun when you are winning is not the mark of a good commander, maintaining their fun while you are losing is. I get told all the time, ‘TB, this is a business and I have to treat it as such.’ My response has become, “Then treat it like a business before we step on the field, because once you cross the line and monkey with the game, then you cease to be objective.” If you will do things to ‘even the game’ then you will do things to even it up for the other guy. And there are some people who need more evening up then others to help them out.

I have a very good idea of what I think makes a great commander. I base this off the leadership schools I attended while in the Marine Corps, practical experience as a leader in an Marine Corps unit and my experience as a manager of people in the civilian world. I have also commanded a scenario game or two in my time. So whether I am qualified to the opinion of what a good commander is may be debatable, but remember I am known for voicing my opinions. So here it goes: TB’s list of what makes a good commander.

1. Desire: Desire is important, because without it there is nothing to keep you going. You must want to command people, to be in charge of the overall plan and to make people want to play for you. You have to inspire people to go that extra mile and that comes as they see your desire for the game.

2. Knowledge and Judgement: These are both important things because without them you will not be able to form a battle plan, or know when to change it. No plan, no matter how elaborate or intricate survives first contact. The smart commander realizes this and can adjust on the fly or have back up plans in place.

3. Communication: This is a big one! Without this, commander’s intent cannot be conveyed to the people under your command; they in turn will not know what actions to take and when to take them. You have to be able to have people understand what you want from them and bring them to the conclusion you know what is best for them and what the overall plan is. This cannot be done without effective communication.

4. Realistic Expectations: What is meant by this, is you realize you are not in the military and you do not have highly trained, disciplined operators working for you. You have Billy and his dad who just came out to play some paintball...not sign their life away and run all over the field. It is game to more people than not, so you have to keep that in mind. You cannot let the realism get you down. You are role playing and sometimes it only goes so far.

5. Strategical Intelligence: This is not a video game. You do not get a second chance to save the game and start over. Just as in the real world, your actions or inactions have consequences. Those consequences can be of a dire nature and can keep you from winning the game. You need a strategy and then be flexible enough to adapt your strategy as neccesary to the game conditions. You should be knowledgeable in terms such as fields of fire, ambushes and bounding overwatch. These will serve a good commander well in the fact you can discuss with your leaders on the field what needs to be done and where.

6. Tactical Intelligence: This is needed so the commander can talk to his operations people in the field. The commander sets the strategy, his commanders in the field take that intent and implement it with a tactical edge. You have to understand that way of thinking as well (tactical vs. strategical) so you can help plug any gaps you may see in their intent. It is your battle plan after all, with the objectives you set in the beginning. Knowing is one thing; doing is another.

7. Tact: This is another big one. You have to work with everyone in the game, from the newest player to the most experienced. You must let everyone know they are important in the grand scheme of things. Why? Because they are! I have seen one person (no matter their experience level) win games and lose games. Be sure everyone is working for you. This is done with tact and it is a trait lacking in more than a few commanders (myself included).

8. Confidence: This is probably the biggest one in the group. Know this: commander eliminations affect morale. Know this: if you aren’t confident in your plan you cannot inspire others to act. Want to destroy the will of the other side to fight? Then destroy their commander’s confidence. On the flip side of that coin: you should never let something get you down. Never let them see you sweat. If something doesn’t work the way you wanted, then you wanted it that way. You get held down, fight your way back out. People in your base and you have to hot insert? Then go after their base. Your people should think you have it all in hand, and you should (at least on the outside).

There have been great commanders over the years. People who really liked taking charge and saw to it their people had fun. There have also been some horrendous commanders who have left their people to their own devices while they fiddled and Rome burned. In the next few issues, I will go more into the art of leading people in a scenario game. And whether you agree or disagree, I am sure you will take a few things from it and make yourself a better commander...or at least decide if you should be one.

I am so sick and tired of hearing about the gray area and the advantages that supposedly come with being in the gray area that are 'BAD' for the sport. Yes, you have seen me rant on gamesmanship vs sportsmanship, the 'spirit' of the rules and more in the past few columns here on wotb, however it never seems to get any better. In fact, more and more people are chocking up more and more instances where everything that isn't in the rules is working in the gray area. Let me say that again, the newest trend is that if it isnt spelled out in the rules then it is gray area and you should not do it.

As someone who understands, reads and lives by the rules in scenario paintball, it is very disheartening to see so many people simply write off a failure of their ability to read, comprehend and use the ruleset of any given scenario to people playing in the 'gray area'. The time has come again for more lessons from the firelight and a peek into the mind of TB.

What is the gray area really? I mean what is the purest explanation into what it is in the use of people outside of scenario paintball? In most places (football and business) knowing the rules is known as having a competitive advantage. In fact you can see it now-a-days in the current political contest that is going on. As much as I dislike Obama, he was able to over-come Clinton's advantages all through the use of knowing the rules better then she did. He got that reputation and knowledge from the Chicago political landscape that he comes from. However as we can see, competitive advantage is rewarded in football, business and even politics, so why is it so championed against in scenario paintball?

Because too many people assume that scenario paintball is nothing but an extension of cowyboy and soldier 'warrior-mythos' and nothing could be further from the truth. Scenario Paintball is competition, just like anything else. You can dress it up and say that it is just about the hanging out with friends, but the reality is much different. Some try to paint this rosy picture, yet they have awards to be won and a winner and a loser. You cannot subject human nature to the competitive nature of a game and in the same instance expect them to curb the basic and raw emotions that come from the simple game of a winner and a loser. No one wants to be the loser, no matter how much they want to pretend that they want everyone to have fun. Again reality is that, while they are winning then they are having fun and expect the people across from them to just find out some way to take the losing in a fun way.

You want to do away with true competition in scenario paintball then you have to do away with the things that make scenario paintball what it is. Some people have taken to giving more awards, thinking that if they make more then more people will get them or that it might make some people think less of awards and simply quit trying to win them. If you want to do away with competition then do away with them. Don't lambast that it is because of sponsors and such that awards are won, I won awards long before anyone but scenario players cared about scenario. When there was still only 3 national promoters and a handful of regional promoters. And there were awards before that, there were awards in the first handful of games and it created teams to try and be better then other teams. In fact one of the most award winning teams out there (Joint Fury) battled it out with teams like Blitzkrieg, Air Assault and the Strike Eagles in the Wayne Dollack games of old. And they are still around, aren't they? Well out of all of them, JF is the only active team but that is where the heritage comes from in awards. And those guys were ultra-competitive and while they were friendly off the field, on the field it was all business.

So what happened? Well like the current incarnation of just about any school sponsored sport out there, the whiners came to power. Rather then test their mettle and either get better or get relegated to a supporting role, they decided to influence rule changes either by economic means, appealing to a sense of fairness, or trying to justify a rule limit by using the term 'realistic' in their arguements. It happened in youth football as more and more parents didn't want to be faced with the possibility that little johnnie sux at running the ball. So instead of teaching little johnnie to be a better running back, they limit the weight of the defensive line, or they make special rules regarding everything from set formations to even not allowing blitzing by the defense. They change the rules to their advantage in an attempt to 'level the playing field' and in the end they create the monster of people 'using the rules' to try and re-establish competitive advantage.

And the wrong in this equation is the whole damn leveling the playing field to start with. Not everyone is Johnny Unitas or Joe Montanna and not everyone is a TB or Hawk nor is every team a Thunderstruck or Joint Fury or Odyssey or Knightmare Tango. And some people just need to accept that and either be happy where they are, get better or move on. I am not saying that you cannot play with me or the game, I am saying quit trying to once again dictate to me how to play the game in a manner so that you can beat me with your competitive advantage. Some people out there don't want to run missions, works for me. Some people don't want to be at every insertion or shoot more then one case a game, again works for me. But don't resort to making rules to make me play the way you don't want to. People who want to work harder then others should be giving the damn rewards.

You can sit and bitch about people buying their awards with the use of night-vision, high-end guns, high-end communications and paint sponsors, but the truth is that you don't want to make the investment in time, money or effort to counter any of those advantages. Instead you would rather justify them out of existence or make some attempt to make people feel bad or look less then sportsmanlike by using them. There is a huge difference in mandatory laws/rules and voluntary rules. Just because you think that dead-man walk's are lame doesnt mean I have to think the same. Just because you think that the medic should have to stand in the open while you shoot them doesn't mean that they have to. And the story goes on and on. It seems that the 'gray area' arguement only gets used when someone gets taken by someone else in a way that they were not expecting.

Here is an example. Take Viper games for example, he has orange drop boxes that have supplies for both sides. Most of the time, of the first 4 missions that you start the game out with, 2 of them are supply drop boxes. You start the game with your OS cards but no supply cards. So you can get your medics, sniper, demo and so forth, however until you get your orange drop box and return it to your base so your commander can open it, you can't use those os types. Back in the day (just a few short games ago), they would be placed in a area that was near your base but far enough that you had to hustle to get them. The purpose of course was to provide an instant gratification reward for running the mission, as well as gaining some points and showing people the simpleness of running missions. So what does all this mean? Well there used to be the ability to get the other sides drop boxes. Used to be you say? How is that possible and where did it go?

Well it was possible because people didn't classify that mission as being super important, while the other side classified not only getting their own drop boxes but attempting to deprive the other side of theirs. And it worked for several games, in fact so good that the other side was at a significant dis-advantage because while they had less bandage cards, sniper shots and more, the side who hustled had twice as many. I am sure that right now, some of you are thinking oh my god, that is so un-fair TB, everyone should have access to the same supplies. Guess what? They did, they however chose not to worry about it, they chose to hope that the other side wouldn't dare to dream to take their supplies and gain an advantage, that is being unsportsmanlike, right?

Wrong, that is playing the damn game. That is taking advantage of the situations and exploiting them, that isn't gray area, that's playing the damn game. But how did all that get fixed? Well in other promoter's games, they simply made it so only a select few could collect the drop boxes. Then when the commanders made the people who were fast enough and disciplined enough to get there the people who could get the box, they simply changed it to you had to have the right mission card to get the box. So unless you had the enemy's mission card, his box was useless. So then to combat that, the smart commander then set up a group of people to protect the box from the people sent to get it. What happened then? Well the box would be taken off the field and they would be denied the supplies right? Well for a game, however at the next game, there were no more orange boxes and you could buy whatever you wanted or you started with supplies and bam the playing field is leveled again right? In Viper games, what did he do? He didn't do anything like the above, the boxes are still available to whoever gets there first, but as a bone to the whiner's he now incorporates into every commander's meeting that the boxes are important and that Thunderstruck will take their box if they dilly-dally. In effect, while not changing a rule or adding a new rule, it does a similar thing in the fact now that commander nows a play out of our playbook. And to be honest, that doesn't seem fair to me, but what the fuck can you do?

So tell me what is the gray area there? Is it the team who wants the drop box more? Or is the commander willing to take information from the game director about a side's tactics before the game even starts? Funny how some think the first one is wrong yet the second one is ok. And that is because to them, who the gray is putting at a disadvantage is what is important. I have had many times where I would have a ref call in a game clarification question and got 2 different answers. One was called in that a player had a question and got one answer, the other was called in TB had a question and got the exact opposite answer. And most of the time if TB asks, the ruling will be in whatever is most dis-advantageous to me. That is just the nature of the beast, and I accept it. I don't like it, however I accept it. What I don't accept is people claiming that every move I make is in the gray area and that is why I am successful. Guess what, most of life is a gray area, and how you move in it is how you succeed or fail.

In the beginning of this article, I asked what the gray area meant, here is a definition of the words: A gray area is a term for a border in-between two or more things that is unclearly defined, a border that is hard to define or even impossible to define, or a definition where the distinction border tends to move. There is no talk of something negative or bad, no that has come from the people complaining and belly-aching that Gen 3 night-vision is unfair because the game is set in WWII or that high tech communications is unfair because it is a game set in WWI. Guess what guys, in the real world not everyone is the US Army. Meaning if that US Army is the best fighting army out there and they are taking on the Iraq army, who is not. Then guess what? In most battles the US will win because of the 'competitive advantages' that it has over the Iraqi army. But you won't see the people pretending to be the Iraqi's want to play that game, now would you? Well I know of a few who relish that kind of game, since what do you have to lose if you don't win? And yet you have everything to gain by playing from the disadvantaged side, take that from my personal experience in life, the Marines and scenario paintball.

So the next time you throw out they are just playing the gray, take a few minutes to look at why that is negative thing. Breaking a rule isn't gray area, it's breaking a rule. Using a rule to your advantage isn't breaking a rule, it is developing a competitive advantage and the smart player on the other side of you will figure out a way to gain his own advantage or test you on yours. Maybe I might give some more examples in further articles as I have seen and played with some of the best 'rules-lawyers' out there.

Intelligent aggression, what is it and what can it do for your paintball game? Better yet TB, who the hell was Brigadier General Steve Ritchie and how can yet another Air Force Fighter jock affect Scenario Paintball? Well we can’t get there until we get to who Steve Ritchie was and how he approached his military career.

As some who read the John Boyd piece may know, I used to want to be an Air Force pilot. And unlike what most people think about me, I am very well read and whenever I want to do something I have to be best at it. I will study and learn to be better. This is how I learned about Intelligent Aggression and General Ritchie. General Ritchie is the only Air Force ace from the Vietnam War and a recipient of the Air Force Cross the second highest honor that can be given to an Air Force officer. But who was he more than that and why, intelligent aggression?

General Ritchie was born and raised in NC and was the star quarterback at his high school, even though he broke his leg twice. He also became the starting half-back for the Air Force Academy as a ‘Walk-On’ meaning he wasn’t recruited but just went out and did it. He was always described as a ‘jock’ and had the intensity that being in the sports programs of the 50’s and 60’s bred with people like Vince Lombardi and Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant as heroes. However a highly illustrative example of his capacity for extreme but ‘intelligent aggression’ came about from an incident he had in high school.

It seems that General Ritchie was not the huge football jock since he was the quarterback, weighing in at only 160 and one day in the locker room he got ‘bullied’ by a 200 pound full back. The full back ridiculed him and made fun of him in front of his team mates and in the words of General Ritchie “It was the type of situation where either I had to fight him or give up. And I gave up. I knew he would have ripped me a new asshole. And so I gave in.” However he did not forget as he then went on a weight training regime and went from 160 to 190 pounds and bided his time. At a sweets shop in 1960, well that was when his ‘intelligent aggression’ came into play.

As he sat at the bar, that same half back came up and started to bully a friend of General Ritchie’s. Here is what the general had to say about that: “I got up to walk away from him and he jerked me around. I’d had enough; I laid into him and he never got a shot off. I just fired into his face five or six times, knocked him to the floor, jumped on him and just started beating him, holding him down and beating him till they pulled me off of him. And two years earlier, he had called my bluff.” As a matter of fact, in a study of their aces from the Vietnam and other wars, the Air Force determined that a background in school yard fighting was the childhood of most of the pilots who became that good.

But what is ‘Intelligent Aggression’? Some people think that is in the thoughts of Freud and other psycho-analysts that this is the mark of inferiority complex and over-compensation (like I have never heard that one, right?). However to the poker players out there you may be familiar with the terms wolves and lions. Lions will use intelligent aggression to make their times of when to take your money and when not to. The wolves simply and mindlessly attempt to take the pot over and over, and while they are aggressive they aren’t being aggressive and smart. Because most people will tell you that as aggression increases, intelligence decreases. But that isn’t always the case now is it?

In the realm of General Ritchie however, “Intelligent Aggression” paid off in spades. To quote Sherwood in the book Fast Movers; Ritchie was described by his peers as being a “jock” and by General Robin Olds, who admired him greatly, as being "brilliant" but thinking himself "God's gift" (cocky and egotistical). According to one of the intelligence officers of the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Ritchie was often lacking in self-discipline, with a personal trademark of using too much Old Spice Cologne (Ritchie's retort was that the pilots' locker room was too odoriferous.)

Professionally, Ritchie was a gifted and dedicated flyer who constantly maintained his skills by flying every two or three days. With consistently high performance evaluations, high scores in pilot training courses, and achieving a thorough understanding of the weapons systems he used, he earned opportunities to place himself in the forefront of USAF fighter pilots, where he became known for his "intelligent aggression”.

Now what does this have to do with scenario paintball, you might ask? Well just think about it, do you know any players who might exhibit this kind of behavior? Intelligent aggression should be the hallmark of the consummate scenario paintball player. Mindless aggression is unfortunately the norm these days and all it does is allow people like me to step up and over the wolves in scenario paintball. Lions tear the mechanics apart; they tear the rules apart, see how it all goes together. They do research on teams, players, promoters, hell even markers and special weapons. They take their time, they instigate reactions and they prevail in the battles. Much as General Ritchie did.

He was actually the youngest instructor at the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis AFB and taught many tactics. He was known to spend 18+ hours on the ground preparing for a mission. He would approach it from every angle; he would pre-prep what he would do and how he would react. He planned for every contingency, and then when in the situation, he would make the situation how he wanted to be using his intelligent aggression to win the day. In fact of his fifth MIG kill he had this to say: “My fifth MIG kill was an exact duplicate of a syllabus mission, so I had not only flown it as a student but had taught it as an instructor at least a dozen time before I did it in combat.”

That kind of mentality played him well over the years however and his philosophy of the fight is what has been part of my repertoire for quite some time. But here are his basic tactical principles:

1) It is better to live to fight another day then to press a bad situation.
2) Always employ maximum surprise in any engagement.
3) Don’t quit the fight until you are absolutely certain that your opponent is destroyed.

So I leave you with these thoughts and maybe another person to research and try to piece together another part of how I think and the people who inspired me in my Marine career as well as what I have tried to do in paintball. But just remember, that when you think I am just being a toothless aggressor, there just might be more behind that stance.

I am sure that some of you wonder who the hell John Boyd is; well that is simple. He is the man who is credited with helping the US Air Force develop the F-15 and F-16 fighters. Without going into a lot of detail as you would have to be a person interested in dogfights and the evolution of the Air Force after WWII. But by Vietnam, the generals in the halls of power had decided that there was no need for a fighter in the sense that so many people think of. They saw the fighter as a platform for weapons that you pushed a button and you killed the enemy. They felt that learning the art of dog-fighting was not something that any American pilot needed to know. Col. John Boyd felt differently and he proposed and showed those in power that indeed the ability to out fly your opponent was needed. In all he is credited with bringing the loss ratio of Vietnam 1:1 to the current loss ratio of 105:0. But what does any of this have to do with the ground pounders or even scenario paintball?

Well I was introduced to John Boyd in my high school days as at that time I wanted to be an Air Force Fighter Pilot. I had it all set up as well, nomination to Air Force Academy (based on my family’s political connections) was a shoe in, so I followed all of the maverick pilots at the time, like Chuck Yeager and of course John Boyd. Imagine my surprise when I joined the Marines and became a Marine that John Boyd’s many lessons also applied to jarheads and was in fact part of the foundation for the Marine Corps Maneuver Warfare Concept championed by Commandant Al Grey in the 90’s. It is here that I got a real taste of John Boyd and his unique outlook on things.

Col. Boyd was famous for not wasting energy, meaning that he didn’t waste time on BS and politics. He got right to the heart of an issue, decided he wanted to win and then built the fastest and best way to do it. As you have heard me preach about before, he wanted consistency and he wanted to provide the American Fighting man with those abilities. He never wrote a book on military strategy however several of his articles have been read and put into place by some of the most successful commander’s in the field. The ‘End Run’ play of Desert Storm and the ground invasion of Iraqi Freedom were all done with Boyd and his tactics in mind. And you can see how successful they were, right?

So what does this have to do with scenario paintball, you may ask? Well I am attempting as I have stated before to show you how you can take military thought and convert it to use on the scenario paintball field, as I do. Military tactics do not work, however military strategy and tactical forethoughts, do work. So instead of taking a field manual (FM) and simple taking out rifle and bullets and putting in marker and paintballs, I am going to show you the why’s and how’s and then how they apply to scenario paintball. You don’t need to practice every other weekend, you don’t have to have the newest 90 pound marker or the neatest mil-sim uniform. And you damn sure don’t need to know the tactical positions as defined by Special Ops. All of those things look good on paper and they work at the tactical level, but guess what? Scenario paintball isn’t tactical and the more you try to make it be that, the more people like me will beat you; consistently.

I am going to be speaking of a few things, so I will define them now, the sword and the swordsman. In the real life aspect of things, the sword was an airplane and the swordsman was the fighter jock. However in this sense of things, the sword will be a team of players at your disposal and you the commander will be the swordsman. This will work quite handily if you can follow along with me. If you can’t, well sorry I can only do so much.

The Sword

The sword in this sense of the word is the scenario team that will be performing the action. Now as I am speaking about this from an operational standpoint, you are not the unit leader, you are the overall commander and you will use the team much like a swordsman would use his sword in combat. The sword in this case has to be like just like its real life counterpart and in a lot of ways is just that. You have some swords that are designed for cleaving, others for lightning strikes, others for thrusting and still others for slashing. This is actually where Special Ops got the dagger, broadsword and saber, however rather then try to put individuals in each position, this is a team level. You have heard of run-and-gunners, or mission running teams or even interdiction and recon teams. While being strong in one of this is a fine idea for some teams (based on the team members expectations), having the ability to do them all is much more effective and useful in the scenario paintball area of operations.

For you tactical people, this is where tactical practice and such come in, because you must be able to tactically transition from a run-and-gunning team to an interdiction team. But to be successful with that, you have to build the strategic smarts to know when to transition or rely on the swordsmen to guide your team to where it needs to be. Much like the generals of old, you cannot be a one trick pony, even if you are the best at it that there is. It is better to be a ‘jack of all trades’ then a ‘master of one’. However you don’t have to practice to be the best sword on the field, you just have to be able to subjugate your desire to be the man to your teams common goal, be that assault, defense or flanking. If you do that, and you can communicate then you can beat teams who practice over and over again. Does it help if you can do that? Sure it does, but if you don’t have the chemistry then no amount of practicing is ever going to allow you to be the rapier that you need to be to consistently be THE team on the field.

Now some would lead you to believe that the iron mace or bludgeon is the ultimate weapon or that my team is that since some of the reputations that we have developed is that we simply break through and go head-to-head with other teams on the field. There is a time for that thought, but most of the time we simply employ the tried and truth method of establish a base of fire and then flank for the success. But if you really know my team then you can see that they are light, fast, precise, agile and deadly. And a player like Dave Cilio is a rapier in the truest sense of the word, right? This allows one to use E-M theory when one describes my team and any other team that strives to be a rapier style unit. E-M theory is short for Energy-Maneuverability and it denotes that you need to be agile more then anything. Agility is the key here and how are you agile in a scenario paintball event? Simple, you have to be fluid enough to move around, to know when you can’t bash your way through that you need to flank or go deep. You may have to break contact even when the advantage appears to be yours because mission accomplishment (winning the game) takes precedence over the holding of un-needed territory.

The Swordsman

In this sense this is the commander, the general or the field commander, and this person has to be above having just a tactical mindset. This person has to be able to see the forest for the trees, he has to understand the missions, and how they fit together, how the game plays out before he can put his rapier to its most effective use. Simply having access to the best team doesn’t get you a victory. This has been evident in the few losses that we have been the recipient of, not that we weren’t the better team, but the person in command didn’t know how to use what they had in their hand. They tried to use the rapier like a broadsword or a claymore. They forgot that there is more to the battle then simply bashing your way to winning. To be a great commander, you either have to have a large amount of natural talent, be very lucky or be a student of history.

Col. Boyd was a student of history. He read any books he could get on military history, philosophy, tactics, strategy and more. He walked with the Spartan army at Thermopylae, and he stood on the hilltop with Hannibal as his hordes crushed the Roman army at Cannae. He rode on journeys with Grant and his attack on Vicksburg and Stonewall Jackson with his Valley Campaigns in 1862. He was with Rommel and Guderian in the Panzer attacks that brought about the famed blitzkrieg. It was here that he learned the concept called Fingerspitzengefuhl or ‘fingertip feel’. That is what some could call the subtle control of the point of the rapier, that certain feeling of knowing where to place the point of the blade to do the most damage or to pull back and use a defense. You can see the efforts of a commander who has mastered that in the fact that the other side never seems to regain any momentum or if they do it is short-lived. When it is being employed against you, you simply feel like they know what you are doing even before you do. How do you learn that? You read von Clausewitz and Machiavelli as he did. And of course, you have to be able to read and understand (at least in relation to scenario paintball) the Chinese military genius Sun Tzu.

You have to study war because in essence you are in the war business, albeit a paintball war, but it cracks me up when mil-sim teams use the word paintball war and think that all it means is an L shaped ambush or a dynamic entry technique. Where are the mil-sim strategists that have read Patton and Hart and seen how those strategies apply so much more to scenario paintball then military tactics? I have yet to meet them, that’s for sure. For I feel that if I had, then I might not have the command record that I have and commanders would be a lot easier to recruit unlike the current trend that scenario paintball has seen of celebrity commanders or people who have no freaking idea how to command. Where is the school of thought beyond the small unit tactics that so many people employ and fail with when they go up against a master strategist? I study war because I want to myself, my team and my side to prevail on the battlefield. I study the history of scenario paintball for the same reasons. I read team boards and posts that have nothing to do with any game I have gone to or will attend to get an idea of who the movers and shakers are and what they are capable of. That is the level of commitment that you might want to make if you truly want to be a capable commander. But let’s look at what Boyd learned and I am going to quote a website here:

Let’s start with what he knew best. Picture two pilots in identical airplanes: two physically identical swordsmen wielding physically identical swords.

Picture the Red Pilot closing head-to-head with the Blue Pilot, over the desert at 30,000 feet and each at 500 miles an hour. The aircraft blow past each other in a blur.

Fight’s on!

Both pilots nearly snap their necks on the break, literally turning in their chairs under the G-load of the initial turn. Each must keep sight of the other. To lose visual on the opponent almost certainly is to lose your life, and this is the only life you’ve been issued.

Each pilot observes the other. That’s step one.

Now, Red breaks one way and Blue the other. Their relative positions allow some options and remove others. Each pilot must assess where he is, where the other man is, where he is heading and at what speed, and likewise where the other guy is heading and how fast. From this he builds a mental picture of the three-dimensional battle. Pilots call this Situational Awareness, or SA. SA is powerful Kung-Fu. Good SA will keep you alive. Bad SA is rapidly fatal.

So each pilot must orient himself. That’s step two.

Next, each pilot must make a near instantaneous decision as to what he will do next. Will their relative positions allow an offensive move, or is the situation so desperate that he is forced into the defensive?

Each has observed, each has oriented…now each must decide what to do next. That’s three.

Once that decision has been made, there is nothing left to do but carry out that decision. Each of the pilots must act. Action in this case may mean a climbing roll – the high-G yo-yo – to increase the separation for the shot. Perhaps the only answer is a Split-S out of the fight to recover lost airspeed, or a desperate Break in the opposite direction to avoid the gun sights.

Whatever the action is, whether thrust or parry, Boyd realized that it is only here; in the fourth step – Observe-Orient-Decide-Act – that physical combat occurs. Being “a good stick” will help you here, yes. But Boyd’s breakthrough was to realize that there are three mental steps that precede the physical application of a warrior’s skill, and that these mental steps are not as important as the physical talent. They are far, far more important.

Observe.
Orient.
Decide.
Act.

Then Observe.
Orient.
Decide.
Act.

Then Observe…
It’s a cycle. It’s a loop. It’s called by its inelegant acronym: The OODA loop.

Now here’s what blew my mind, as I am sure it blew John Boyd’s mind on a level I can not and will never fully comprehend:

The winner of these battles is not necessarily the fellow who makes the best decisions. More often than not, it’s the guy who makes the fastest decisions.

Agility. Speed. Precision. Lethality. Fingerspitzengefuhl: fingertip control.
It seems counter-intuitive. So let’s first go back to the Green Spot.

Red and Blue are closing at 1000 miles an hour. Fight’s on!

Blue breaks left. Red does too. Both pilots observe, orient, decide, and act. But Blue is faster. While Red is still orienting himself, building the situational awareness he needs to decide and plan his action, Blue has already chosen a maneuver and executed it. This renders Red’s previous orientation useless: Blue is no longer where he was a moment before.

Red must re-orient so he can make a new decision. Blue sees the confusion and delay. He’s already oriented. He decides and acts again. His advantage increases. Now Red is confused and at 500kts he is flying pretty God-damned quickly into full-on fear. This confusion and fear cause him more hesitation. Out of rising panic he commits to an action that may have been appropriate two Blue cycles ago, but which is now – no other word for it – obsolete. Blue is now cycling so fast that he maneuvers for a position where any course of action Red may take will result in his fiery demise. He’s below and behind him – out of sight – not anywhere near where Red expected him because he has been observing, orienting, deciding and acting at a much faster pace.

Should Blue make a mistake he will observe it before Red can, re-orient himself, make a decision to correct the mistake and commit to the new action all before Red is even aware that Blue has blundered. Red, on the other hand, may be making superior judgments… hell, Red may be making a string of perfect judgments, but that won’t save him because his perfect moves are in response to a situation that no longer exists. He’s doomed. Blue is cycling faster, correcting any errors before they cost him anything, re-adjusting and re-calculating at a much higher tempo than Red. And every second he gets further ahead.

Boyd would say, “He’s inside Red’s decision loop.”

Think about that for a second! Inside his decision loop. To Red, Blue appears psychic, magical, and demonic: able to read his mind, anticipate his every move. Blue owns the initiative, and he will never give it back. The more this goes on the more rattled, confused and demoralized Red becomes. This slows his ability to orient, it clouds his decisions with fear, and it paralyzes his actions with second-guessing and ultimately reduces Red from being a deadly man in a deadly machine to floating tumbleweed with no SA: out of airspeed, out of altitude and out of ideas. And out of the fight too, because that fight is over.

The OODA loop works. And not just if you happen to be a supersonic fighter pilot battling for your life. OODA works if you are a businessman who wants to corner the market from his competition. OODA works in the same way science works, because it is nothing more or less than a superior way of thinking about a problem. Now let’s get out of the air and back on the ground.

In the days leading up to the ground war in Operation Desert Storm, Gen. Schwarzkopf had planned his attack using conventional Army wisdom: a frontal attack against the enemy’s strong point, where the traditional American strength of overwhelming firepower could be brought to bear.

Firepower. Got a nice ring to it! Certainly sounds more American than Fingerspitzengefuhl. You put our guys and their guys’ toe-to-toe and slug it out. Boyd had been preaching to largely deaf ears all his professional life. It was a fight to get E-M Theory accepted because no general in the Pentagon wanted to face the fact that all of the expensive American aircraft up until that point were – as dogfighters, anyway – actually inferior to the widely disdained Soviet models. Boyd and his Acolytes (men like Thomas Christie, Ray Leopold, Chuck Spinney, James Burton and Pierre Sprey – brilliant patriots all) fought tooth and nail, for years, against almost unbelievable bureaucratic resistance to bring war-winning aircraft like the F-15, F-16 and Sprey’s A-10 Warthog to the battlefield.

But this was a fight over weapons. The real war was over doctrine. Top Brass had – with good reason – been raised on the idea of overwhelming firepower as a way to win war, and to be fair, the original plan would have resulted in victory. It just would have been a much bloodier one. But Boyd and his reformers had an ace in their pocket in the person of then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who read and believed in Boyd’s ideas of maneuver rather than attrition. How would OODA perform, not in air-to-air combat but rather in a clash of entire armies on the battlefield?

Conventional wisdom called for massive force applied to key areas of the enemy front line. But Boyd had read of Patton and Guderian, of armored thrusts that moved so quickly that counterattacks converged on a vacuum. Boyd saw how speed and agility might sow so much confusion in the enemy – who had, after all, a very sclerotic command structure – that they would be swinging at shadows. Boyd summoned Sun Tzu and his idea of water flowing downhill, forces taking the paths of least resistance, hitting the enemy not where he was strongest, or even where he was weakest, but rather hitting him where he least expected it.

Surprise would substitute for firepower, and speed and the enemy’s confusion would be the defense. They would get inside Saddam’s decision loop. Each cycle would find him more out of touch, more reacting to obsolete intelligence, more demoralized, more desperate. And so a new plan was devised. Using the Marines as a feint, Schwarzkopf swung his entire army off the map, to reappear like a mirage in the enemy’s rear, a resurrected Stonewall Jackson: unexpected, brutal, deadly… and then gone. They would have bagged the entire lot, too: the whole Republican Guard, likely, if they had not stopped to protect their flanks, Old Army style, against an enemy that no more expected them to be in that desert as to be on the moon.

Still, it worked. It worked spectacularly. It worked even better in 2003, where, without warning or aerial assault, US armored columns moved with exquisite Fingerspitzengefuhl, bypassing pockets of resistance, moving around and past them like water flowing downhill. Tanks are fatally vulnerable in cities. It’s suicide to place them there. Ask anyone. But that’s what US commanders did. They marched an entire armored column right through the heart of Baghdad so quickly and unexpectedly that their guns could be heard over Baghdad Bob’s televised assurances that the Americans had been held at the border hundreds of miles away. To the Iraqi command American armor seemed to materialize out of thin air, and to disappear as quickly. That is a terrifying quality for such a deadly foe.

They went where they were least expected, where their presence threw the enemy commanders into a paralysis of confusion and fear. Gen. Tommy Franks, that old-school artilleryman who had taken in firepower and attrition with his mother’s milk, put on a show of precision fingertip control that will be studied throughout history. He got inside their decision loop. And the worst-case – 10,000 casualties we feared we might lose taking Baghdad – evaporated away in the mist of the following morning. No one will ever know how many American lives John Boyd has saved in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. But it is a large number. And it is perhaps the most fitting monument to a man who is all but unknown among the nations whose children – on both sides – were saved from attrition warfare. - http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000172.html

Now think back to the last scenario game you played, did you see the OODA loop in action? Did you see Fingerspitzengefuhl: fingertip control? Did you see maneuver warfare? Or did you see attrition warfare? Most scenario games and commander and team leaders simply see it as the doctrine of the FM’s that they like to read and that is that you need overwhelming firepower to win. Guess what, that may work 60% of the time but massive firepower can be beaten on the paintball field. Those powerhouse teams that dump loads of paint can’t last, they aren’t agile enough to move where and when they need to move. Their super guns don’t help when they aren’t on the field. When they don’t know the strategy of the game or the commander’s intent they cannot do anything more then just that conventional wisdom of set up a frontal attack and then beat it into submission. That didn’t work at the Living Legends game as two of the biggest gun teams on the field were on one side and while they threw themselves and their massive amounts of paint and super guns still could not dislodge the people on the other side of them. That is Fingerspitzengefuhl; that is fingertip control at its very best.

Boyd was known by a lot of names, the one I identify with more then any is “Genghis John’ because of his confrontational style of interpersonal discussion and how he reacted to people and situations. And his colorful reputation and his eccentric conversational attitude led to him referring to his office at the Pentagon as the ‘thunder and lightning shop’ in direct contrast to the ‘business as usual’ mentality that he felt ruled the roost at the highest military building. In fact he was known to stand in his doorway, gesture and scream, “Out there-business as usual! In here-thunder and lightning!”

I am going to close for now, simply because I probably lost the majority of you about 1000 words ago, but for the people who made it here I hope you pick up some books and read. I hope you re-read this article and apply the things that John Boyd looked at and rather then just do a quick word substitution really look at the ‘strategies’ and how they can be applied to scenario paintball. I will be doing a more in-depth article on the OODA and John Boyd’s outlook on grand-tactical and strategical levels of warfare and how they fit into scenario paintball. And I am still looking at doing a real command and control course, not like that one being offered up by Engler at EMR. While it may be nice, I don’t think it will teach the next generation of commanders how to really and effectively command at the operational level. It seems to just be a more fancy way to repackage the age-old adage of tactics that so many have done and are doing. And that my friend is why me and people who subscribe to my philosophy of paintball win a lot more then we lose. Yes I have lost and been on the losing side, but in 175 games I have been on the losing side roughly 20 times. You do the math on that but my ratio is pretty damn high, so when people listen and a side ‘gels’ and uses strategies like these, they win. Just that simple!