Paintball Tanks are commonly used for scenario paintball games. Not to be confused with the high pressure cylinders used to power paintball markers that usually contain compressed air or pressurized CO2 (even propane now). Paintball tanks referred to here are basically a paintball scenario game prop meant to act along the lines of a real armored vehicle such as the U.S. Army M1 Abrams main battle tank. These props are often commonly referred to as Paintball Armored Vehicles (PAV) because the majority of them do not resemble real tanks.
In general Paintball tanks fit in to one of three families. The 'heavy tanks' are automotive based machines which are typically the largest and heaviest being built on an automotive chassis. The 'medium tanks' are typically built on just about anything that moves under it's own power that is smaller than a car. The 'light tanks' are commonly referred to as PUG's (or sometimes Walkers) and are a light weight shell that is 'worn' by a player, these are 'human powered vehicles' of a sort. There could be a fourth category of paintball tanks in purely prop tanks that do not move at all and may be used as a bunker during a game or as a field publicity piece that is not used during games.
Heavy tank:
File:BC-Kursk-05 panther-paintball-tank c3 0013.jpg
Medium tank:
Light tank:
File:OA BotB 2005 German-PUG 0023.jpg
Of the three tanks a player may encounter on the field the medium tank is probably the most common. Being built on anything that moves it is not uncommon to see golf carts, ride on lawn mowers (even professional landscaping mowers), ATVs (of all types from the typical four wheeler to the rarer multi wheel 'Argo style' vehicles), go-karts, wheel chairs and occasionally a true tracked vehicle such as a Cushman trackster. Some highly skilled individuals have gone as far as completely building their paintball vehicle from scratch.
Among the Heavy tanks Heath Riley is the owner/creator of possibly the largest paintball tank currently being used with his 1 to 1 scale replica of a WWII German Tiger I Tank. Heath's tank is roughly 12 feet wide, around 8 feet high and 22 feet long (not counting the barrel) and has been compared to driving a 1 car garage around. A close second as far as size goes would be the Black Hearts Tiger which is slightly smaller than Heath's both of which are larger than Dawn and T.J.'s Panther pictured above.
The light tanks have been championed by Todd Meyer with his PUG design and despite their small stature and light armament this section of the paintball tank family is quite possibly the closest to their real life counter parts when it comes to the way they are used tactically and strategically in paintball battles. This is due to the fact that like real tanks PUGs can usually go anywhere on the field since they do not have to worry about running over a paintball player hiding under some leaves the way a medium or even more importantly a heavy tank needs to worry.
Paintball tanks may be armed with anything from a single paintball marker to many paintball markers and an air cannon or even multiple cannons. Markers are usually used against the players of the opposing team, while the air cannons are used primarily against the paintball tanks of the opposing team. The markers can pretty much be any marker available. The air cannons on the other hand can be a bit more ambiguous. In the early years of paintball tanks the 'tank cannon' was simply a PVC cannon that shot a load of paintballs that were typically a special color to indicate they were a cannon load. These days the use of such paintball loads has declined and Nerf Pocket Rockets seem to be the most common projectile used for tank cannons. These Nerf cannons though are hardly the only version of a tank main gun out there. Due to the nature of the people building these vehicles, many different types of projectiles have been used over the years (Hostess Twinkies being among the more comical forms of tank or cannon 'ammo'). Although most field owners and scenario game producers will only allow paintball or Nerf firing cannons. Relatively new to paintball tanks is the formal adoption in some locations of 'marker based' cannon. This is a paintball marker that uses a special color paint like the older paintball load cannons but unlike their older cousins these are nothing more than a regular paintball marker that only shoots a single paintball at a time. Due to their very nature these newer marker based cannon are considered by many to be the safest form of tank cannon available.
Paintball tanks usually have special rules to adhere to for each event. These rules change from field to field and from scenario producer to scenario producer. For example some places will not allow PUG style tanks and some will not allow the automotive heavy tanks. Speed limit rules are generally considered among the more important rules for paintball tanks, especially the heavy tanks. The variations of rules that concern paintball tanks is really only limited to the number of fields out there that use paintball tanks. Anyone interested in building their own tank or taking their tank to a paintball event should check out the tank rules for that event first.
Additional information about Paintball Tanks can be found here: [1] Although extensive the information on Armored Fist is only loosely organized.
Paintball 'Tankers' themselves seem to be found at the Warpig Tank Forum more than any other single place online: [2]
In regards to the pictures I used for this Wikipedia entry, I only used pictures I've taken myself over the years. Of those I picked ones I felt seemed most appropriate to show the varieties of paintball tanks. Sorry if I could not show everyones but that's what Armored Fist is for ;) - T.J.