Spork - Going Out - Tank Paintball

Tanks! Mud! Blokes! Grr!

Q: What’s more fun than driving a tank cross-country?
A: Shooting paintballs at another tank while you’re doing it!

Why did no one think of this sooner? Once you’ve got a couple of large steely beasts to shred up the countryside with it seems only logical to want to pit them against each other.

That’s the line of business an enterprising company called Armourgeddon have gone into in the wilds of Leicestershire. Furnished with a fleet of ex-British army FV432 armoured vehicles they’ve converted their death-dealing Rarden autocannons into a paintball cannon firing paint-filled ping-pong balls. Ingenious! Now not only can you hair round in the mud in a gnarly tracked monster, but your crewmates up in the turret can join in the fun by frantically splatting enemy tanks.

Our instructor, and behind him the
interior of our tank

So it was that I recently found myself strapped into one of Armourgeddon’s big green monsters. In front of me were two steering tillers and an oversized accelerator pedal. Yank back on one of the tillers and the tank turns that way, put your foot down and the engine roars as it steps up through the automatic transmission. They’re surprisingly easy to drive, and you get the distinct impression it’ll go anywhere you point it. During the first part of your day you learn the ropes on a course of turns, dips, and hills. Then it’s time to button down the hatches and try driving around the tiny square of outside world in your periscope! If you want to know what that’s like, try painting the inside of all the windows in your car black, except for a tiny patch right in front of your eyes…

Some footage of the tank duel.
Look out for the paintballs splatting aginast the tanks!

The rest of the crew is made up of the gunner and loader seated up in the turret, with a friendly (but highly competitive) instructor running the show. Due to the FV432’s military role as a personnel carrier there’s even room in the back for a passenger.

Everybody gets to try all the different jobs, from driving to aiming the gun and loading the ammo. Once you mastered all the different jobs involved in handling your warmachine you get to take on another crew in a one-on-one tank duel. It may be only paintballs, but the view from your periscope of another tank swinging its turret towards you and unleashing a hail of fire in your direction gets the adrenaline pumping. The trick is to reload as fast as possible after each shot, and try to get in some good hits before your driver floors it and makes you a moving target for the inevitable return volley.

Smiling for the camera. And why not!

As far as paintball goes, it’s both more fun and less painful than the footslogging version. Say goodbye to the bruises, thanks to a handy layer of armour plating! The only potential casualty is your shoes if you turn up wearing footwear that isn’t suitable for the muddy world of tank driving.

Unsurprisingly, all this mechanised shenanigans doesn’t come cheap. A 90-minute session will set you back £75, or if someone really, really loves you there are gift vouchers available. Your passenger can ride along for a very reasonable tenner, but then they don’t get to see much on the way either. Not a lot of windows in a tank, see.

Verdict: bloody good fun, and certainly a better way to spend your Sunday than the Hollyoaks omnibus. Now if you’ll excuse me, I just have to nip off to eBay and see if anyone happens to be selling a tank…