Unusual paintball equipment

February 5, 2005 1:02 PM

Special Ops Paintball's Razorback Mechanized Tank, made from an Israeli reconnaissance vehicle, can fire 30 .68-caliber paintballs per second, launches Nerf rockets, and has space for a driver and three gunners, all for just $42,000. Julius Tank looks more like a truck than a tank. I've never met these two tank crews, but after taking on similar vehicles, I know how humbling it is to watch 30 of your teammates get eliminated in mere seconds after one of these bad boys arrives. Luckily, they can be defeated by any medium-sized Nerf weaponry.
posted by bugmuncher (11 comments total)

What bothers me is that when I was a kid (cue cantankerous old man voice) we had these awesome Nerf Bow & Arrow sets that were simply amazing in terms of distance, power, and accuracy. I got ridiculously good at sniping my siblings from across the back yard while hiding in the bushes. I don't see anything at all on the Nerf site that would hold a candle to those. I can't help but baselessly suspect hand-wringing mothers and lawyers as the reason for this fact.

A damn shame, whatever the case.
posted by Ryvar at 1:21 PM on February 5, 2005

Ah, here we go: Nerf Bow & Arrow
posted by Ryvar at 1:38 PM on February 5, 2005

You go to war with the Nerf tank you have, not the Nerf tank you want.*

(*Flowers and candy thrown by natives, up-armoring, and body armor not included in $200 Billion price tag.)
posted by orthogonality at 1:48 PM on February 5, 2005

I wonder if there are paintball RPGs to take out a monster like this. Or at least paintball hand grenades in case anybody's feeling sacrificial.
posted by alumshubby at 2:10 PM on February 5, 2005

(once again, cue cantankerous old man voice) Whatever happened to the simple pastime of running on foot, while toting along a janitorial spray bottle filled with the gifts of Mother Nature?
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:13 PM on February 5, 2005

I should probably add something about my experience playing against a tank at William Shatner's SPPLAT Attack in 2003.

There were about 75 of us advancing toward a 3-foot high stone wall in front of a field. Perhaps 30 opponents were on the other side of the field.

Suddenly the tank rolls up. I don't remember if they had one or two gunners; I really didn't care because the only smart play was to charge the wall and use it as cover. I couldn't see the tank, and the tank couldn't see me. I could see a bunch of my teammates holding their hands up to signify they were out, as they walked away.

A bunch of us thought it might be a good idea to shoot paintballs at the windshield so that the driver couldn't see us. It worked for about 10 seconds. Then the driver turned on his tactical windshield wipers.

Eventually someone hit the tank with a paint grenade, and it drove back to the starting point.
posted by bugmuncher at 2:27 PM on February 5, 2005

damn, paintball has changed

i know it's a technically a "nerf" gun not a paintball marker, but but still... damn!
posted by quin at 2:59 PM on February 5, 2005

alumshubby, there are grenades in paintball but I'm not sure they would be effective on these monsters.
posted by fenriq at 5:11 PM on February 5, 2005

Fenriq, it depends on the rules of play.

Some systems allow grenade hits to "disable" the tank, so that it can't move, but can still shoot. Other systems may only allow antitank weapons like nerf rockets, or dynamite.

An airstrike can probably take out a tank, too. (Airstrikes are called by a team leader and told to a referee, who then runs to the location of the strike and calls each person there out.)

It all depends on who is running the game.
posted by bugmuncher at 5:27 PM on February 5, 2005

Paintball tanks? Airstrikes? What's next, a paintball nuclear ICBM?
posted by c13 at 6:18 PM on February 5, 2005

ICBMs can happen, too, but they're hard to coordinate. I was at a game where one detonated but nobody knew about it until a few hours later. We weren't supposed to die from it (and as it turns out, the people that set it off tried to make it look like the other side did it, so they set it off on their own side, at a place where nobody was within the blast radius of several acres.)

Much of this stuff doesn't show up in every scenario game. It depends on the story behind the game.
posted by bugmuncher at 6:25 PM on February 5, 2005