The Breakout

By Graham Arnold
Part 1/3

Football and Soccer have the kickoff. Baseball has the first pitch. Basketball has the tip-off. In the preceding sports the start, whatever it may be, does not have a great influence on the rest of the game. The final seconds of these traditional sports can have a much greater impact than the start. On the contrary, a point in the popular RaceTo format of paintball is defined by the breakout. Games are changed by a single breakout, and tournaments are won mere seconds after the buzzer. In the sport of paintball eight seconds can change a game.


Why is The Breakout Important?

0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, 5-0. It was as simple as that and the chances of victory at paintball’s largest venue slipped through our clutches like sand through a sieve. The five points went by like a whirlwind leavening us stunned and speechless. With that Raiden won World Cup and the DBS Kidz were confined to second place. Some can say our minds were not in it, or we had a bad game. Maybe those excuses make up a fraction of the problem, but I will save you the sob story. The real source of our loss was the breakout. Raiden executed a perfect counter to our breakout, and we had no answer. They eliminated our outside players and gunned us down while simultaneously making their positions untouched. It boils down to this: they made their positions, and stopped us from making ours. With only five men on the field, it is hard to win against a formidable opponent when you lose two men off the break consistently. With a properly executed breakout then rest of the game is already won within the first eight seconds of the point. Design a breakout, practice the breakout, revise the breakout, practice the breakout more, and victory is only five points away.

Stay tuned for part 2, "Planning the Breakout"