Tournament Time

Being the tournament baller on this blog, I feel it is my duty to inform those of you who may not know about the different styles of tournaments there are. There are three main types of tournaments: three man, five man, and x-ball. Three man is usually for the start-up teams or teams that just can’t seem to find enough players to play in a five man. Five man is a little more advanced in nature and has a different sort of strategy associated with it. X-ball is…well x-ball is a different game all on its own.

Most local fields host the occasional three man tournament that will usually be limited to rookie or novice players (there is no real definition to these terms, however). There is a system of points given during a game that can vary from tournament to tournament, but the max amount of points in each game is always 100. Rules about the person carrying the flag can vary also. A wide variety of competition can be found at these tournaments, but these kinds of tournaments are usually targeted toward people trying to begin playing in tournaments.

Five man tournaments are usually a little more advanced and are a lot more competitive. The same basic rules apply to the point system. Usually local fields will not hold five man tournaments because of the staff and organization it requires because of the number of people involved. In five man it is a good idea to have one or two back up players to sub in for people. This is because the games are so fast and physically demanding with the number of people.

X-ball can be argued to be a completely different game altogether. Sure there are still paintball guns involved, but the point system is completely different and there are additional rules that do not apply in the other styles of tournaments. There is a 20 minute clock that counts down the round. The teams play as many games as they can in this time or until one team earns seven points. Each game counts as one point. The other glaring difference is the sideline coaching. Coaches can be on the side of the field yelling out positions of the other team and telling players when to come out to shoot. This makes for an extremely competitive game that fastest and hardest to play of all of the kinds of tournaments. Oh, I almost forgot; Clocktapus says "it's called X-ball because there is a big X in the middle of the field".