Paintball is an interesting game. Unlike any other game, we can play anywhere. What we play on an airball field can be taken into the woods, or a junkyard, or even into a town setting. It's the latter that we're going to hit this month: doing it in an urban terrain.

I've never been a fan of urban styles of play: not because I don't find it fun; I just find it painful. Years ago while playing a field in Wisconsin, a friend of mine took one to the side of his face. Back in the day, JT Whipper Snappers didn't have the face protection the masks offer now and he had a hickey that made his girlfriend wonder for weeks. But I'll go mix it up in the buildings. I happen to like themed fields like the bombed-out city at Hollywood Sports, which is all building-to-building stuff.

Urban play can take many forms, including everything from an old auto bone yard to glitzy Hollywood sets.
But I want to talk about what is probably the most basic way to play urban terrain, building to building. One thing that you'll find is that there is no way to take a building with a 100-percent success ratio. It won't happen. No matter how cool your "SWAT" fatigues look, you will not be able to do it perfectly every time.

The true key to success is being prepared for the urban play environment. If it's paved, it will hurt to play on unless you have knee and elbow pads. Trust me. I've got the scars on my knee from an incident involving gravel, a themed street, and a baseball slide. Speaking of pads, use them. I recommend neck guards, a cap of some kind, and anything else you can think of. Some think it's "weak" to wear that much padding. I think it's just a sign that you don't want to get unnecessarily injured. No problems with that.

Now, on to the urban sprawl.
For starters, let's look at any given field that's building to building. Off the top of my head, I can name four like this within a few hours drive of my house, and all of them share a few common things besides buildings. Most are clear cut, meaning the fields are kept to grass and not overgrown.
In this case, playing a building field isn't much different from playing any given airball field, except you can get into the bunkers as well as hide behind them.

Buildings are BIG structures, usually. So you can go from one side to another without any problems.

Once you're inside a building, don't stop moving around. On more than one occasion, I've held off numbers usually would never have had a chance with because I move around in a building. Two shots out the left door, two shots from the right side of a window, back to the left door, then the right door, then the window again… Mix it up. You have unrestricted movement in a building, for all intents and purposes. Take advantage of it.

If that doesn't work, move to the opposing wall of the building and kneel down. In this case, it's like playing a loose bunker. You can control more angles of the field without exposing yourself unnecessarily. I like to do this in order to snapshoot from windows. It gives me more room to breathe, and also offers an opportunity for me to slide to a doorframe or wherever if the window angle is too much.

The defender is set up and waiting to do the same thing. At best, you'll trade you for them. At worst, you'll get shot a dozen times point blank because you just scared the blazes out of someone by magically appearing in front of them in a window frame.

But here's the freak show item. The cocking rod is gone! Okay, it's not gone. It's gone internal. The new hammer is longer, and inside of it is the space where the cocking rod once would have stayed out past the back block. Now it resides inside the hammer!

Even if you can't get up close to the building, you can play mind games with a defender in a building. Shoot a few balls, then stop. Stay on your position, and when you see movement, put a ball in there. You want to let them feel it's safe to come out the window again, so you can put paint on them. You'll get more eliminations by letting the other team run into your paint than any other way.

If you're working a field of buildings, use the boundaries to move around the field. Depending on the boundary itself, you may be able to work in an alleyway, a room-to-room scenario, or some cover outside the actual town.

Keep an eye in the buildings, and look up. You can also use any natural cover on the boundaries like trees, scrub brush, and so on. Just realize that you may not be able to see inside a darkened building, but the occupants can see out just fine.

Now the fun part. Driving. When you're going to enter a hostile enclosure, it's called "driving a building" or "driving through a building." It's a very messy affair, and not a pleasant thing to do from either side of the equation. Even the most highly trained members of a SWAT team drill this over and over, eventually getting it down after hundreds of dry runs.

Ideally, you want at least two people entering a building. Four to five attackers are actually better, but if it's all you have, two will work. Realize that since two people can't usually make it through a door at the same time, the first one in has to be gutsy and trust his partner totally.

It's all about knowing your role, trusting your teammate completely, and then doing your job. You want to set up your move by standing against the wall with everyone lined up, ready to push into the building. The lead attacker is the one who decides the moment.

The first one in the building is at the most risk, obviously. But the job of this player is to check the area right inside the doorway, sweeping the barrel toward the inside of the room. So if the door is along the right wall of a room, the lead man steps in, sweeps 90 degrees to his left, makes sure it's clear of bad guys, then sweeps 45 degrees to face the opposing corner.
At the same time, the second in is pointed straight ahead to clear everything, from the back wall to the corner of the room. The second will enter the room as soon as the first steps to the side, but he's over the shoulder of the first before he does this. If you need to, put the barrel literally on his shoulder so the muzzle tip is past him.

If you have more in your group, the next in the room will sweep the room as he enters, and ideally the last in line is watching behind the group. That's the idea. The reality is that the first guy enters the room, causing the defender to panic and start shooting. In the chaos that follows, paint is shot in anger and it can be a mess. Here's one thing that I can recommend, however, if you're going to take a building like this. If you've got one, a paint grenade is a great tool for clearing a room. You want to throw it in so it hits the opposite wall, and bounces back toward the door. That way, you get the maximum coverage of spray with minimum exposure. Just toss it in like a hook shot, hard enough to set it off, and bring your hand back fast while keeping your body completely on the other side of the doorway. It's not the ultimate answer, but it certainly can make taking a room of a building easier if it's already been "softened up."

I'll be the first to admit that it never quite works like that. You're lucky to get an organized move through a doorway, let alone a well-choreographed dance of paintballs and players moving like a well-oiled machine. But I can dream, can't I?

Urban settings offer a nice break from the woods style we're all used to.