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The Importance of the Pre-Game: Unit Structure |
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Sunday, 02 September 2007 |
One aspect often overlooked about the scenario paintball team is what happens before the whistle blows, before you air up, before you get your gear on, even sometimes before you put gas in your truck the day prior to leaving. This is called the Pre-Game.
The Pre-Game is the meeting the commander of a team has with his fellow team members before they go on any kind of a paintball outing. Many things are covered in this meeting from travel arrangements down to what radio channel and privacy code your team will be using. It can take anywhere from 5 hours to just 5 minute meeting right before you go out. For this articles sake and to cover all aspects of the Pre-Game we will use the longer version of the meeting that would happen most likely at least one day prior to the outing. The main aspects that we will be covering will be travel set up, unit structure, gear issues, basic strategy, and communications.
The next part of the Pre-Game is unit structure. This is deciding unit sizes, the make up of the unit, and the unit’s titles. This is always done with some idea of a basic strategy already in place. This is a very important element to make the team as successful as possible. The time and thought that you put into this will pay huge dividends in the end.
The overall strategy of the team as well as how many total people that are going to play will determine the size of each unit. You can not have more people in a unit than are playing. This is common sense. But this is also why teams should not have a cookie cutter format for unit size. If a team thinks that the smallest unit can only be 5 people and 7 people are playing then what do you do with the other 2 people. However, if this plays into the basic strategy of your team then you are going to be just fine.
Strategy also plays a huge factor in deciding unit size. If a team that likes to run a strong side attack with the majority of their forces, leaving a small amount of defenders behind they are not going to divide their units into a bunch of small units. This would not fit the team’s strategy that well. However, if a team uses small mobile squads to harass the other team then they would not group their forces into a large group. A lot of common sense is used in this.
When deciding unit size a team should take a step back and look at how many people they have and what they are planning on doing strategically before they decide on how to subdivide into groups.
Once you have established the size of each unit you need to decide the make up of the unit. This is another very important aspect to planning that can sometimes be over looked. The big thing here is equipment and skill. These two dynamics will decide how a unit is put together.
First thing is first, the equipment does not make the player. But it sure does help a lot. This is why people buy paintball guns instead of renting them every single time. When deciding on the make up of the unit, look at what equipment each player is using. Do not put all of the flatline/apex equipped players in one group (unless that is the teams strategy) or all of the rental players in your group together. Try to mix it up. A couple of rental players with a couple of flatline/apex equipped guys and then mix up the rest of the guys as well. However tempting it may be to make one super group it is not entirely practical (once again unless that is your teams overall strategy). Each squad should be relatively balanced equipment wise so that they can all fend for themselves and complete tasks equally.
Skill is another component in the make up of a unit. There are two types of players, superstars and role-players. Some people are just really good at paintball. These are the team’s superstars. Everyone else in the team is a role-player. The role-player’s job is to support the superstar so that tasks can be done. This is teamwork. Once again it may be tempting to put all of a team’s superstars into one all-star group but this is extremely impractical (unless this is your team’s strategy). A team should be divided evenly in skill so that each group is capable of fulfilling any task it is asked to do.
Team make up is such an important factor to performing well. The time taken to do this correctly will more than pay for itself when it comes time to play.
The last part about unit structure is each units name/title. This is also a communication aspect but it can also be addressed here as well. So each unit is organized by skill and equipment to sizes that make sense for the amount of players present and the teams over all strategy. Now how do they differentiate between each unit? This can be as simple as Defense, Offense 1, and Offense 2 or can be as complicated as using random words from a preset list and changing what each unit is called every 10 minutes to keep the enemy from figuring out which is which. However a team does it, as long as they can remember each name and be on the same page they will be a much better team.
This is a Special By:
Josh Goedl
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Last Updated ( Friday, 16 November 2007 )
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