Bring your best strategy & fight it out at Mini Tank Battlefield
By Mandy Shelton
On 66 acres just north of Hico on the Erath-Hamilton county line, Robert Valdez runs Mini Tank Battlefield, a new type of paintball experience in which participants take the field in single-seater, double-tracked armored vehicles fully equipped with paintball guns.
Valdez starts each session with a briefing inside HQ, adorned with armor unit crests reading tous pour un, un pour tous and ventre a terre, along with other memorabilia from his time as a real-life tank commander. He stresses camaraderie and protecting your brothers in arms. “Don’t follow each other. You can’t protect your wingman by being behind him. You can’t shoot over him, and all you’re doing is making him the target.”
Valdez then escorts players to the motor pool and his fleet of six miniature tanks imported from England. Teams with more than three players are allowed to have scouts: players who roam the combat zone on battle-ready All-Terrain Vehicles. Scouts are not technically capable of taking out tanks, but the mythical paintball grenades have been rumored to explode in engine wells.
Mini Tank currently offers a selection of three battlefields. The Battle of the Bulge gives the German team the high ground, while over in Vietnam, participants ditch the tanks and play classic infantry-style paintball.
On the Fury field, named for the movie, Americans and Germans alternately defend and attack a strategic crossroads. As anyone who has seen the 2014 Brad Pitt vehicle can attest, the Germans won that fictional battle but—as everyone else who has a basic grasp of history knows—lost the actual war. On the Mini Tank battlefield, it was truly anyone’s game.
Calvin Sleeper, originally from Hico, visited Mini Tank Battlefield on the occasion of his 40th wedding anniversary. His wife stayed home with the grandkids, sending Calvin’s son Tylor and older brother William to play along. Tylor and William Sleeper gleefully formed an axis of power as the German team, leaving Calvin to fly Old Glory solo.
The group’s fourth, a Sleeper cousin, missed the rendezvous as brother faced brother (and son) on the Western Front. Instead of letting ze Germans double-team him, Calvin drafted a new recruit to Team America: a magazine writer whose idea of a tactical maneuver consisted of—sigh—spinning her tank around in panicked little circles.
With an absolute liability as his wing-woman, Calvin took the field to bravely face the German squad. Valdez laid out the rules of war: “Ten shots on the tank or yourself and you’re supposed to be considered dead. But nobody abides by it. They all keep shooting until they run out of paintballs or they give up.”
One of the best strategies Valdez has seen came from a woman who fired all 100 of her allotted paintballs at her husband, threw up her hands, and yelled “I’m dead,” thus protecting herself from pigmented retaliation under the agreements of the Hico Convention.
Calvin Sleeper learned early on, when his wing-woman failed to provide adequate cover during the first skirmish, that the helmet only protects against taking an intact paintball to the face. It does little to staunch the splash of paint that follows. His teammate learned in time that paintball bruises can last up to a week after impact.
But giving up was not an option for the Sleepers, and when the battlefield lay quiet, not a single red-white-and-blue paintball rested undisturbed in its chamber. We happy few returned to the motor pool, not entirely sure who had won but in a celebratory mood nonetheless.
“They all just go out there to have fun,” Valdez said, acknowledging that Mini Tank Battlefield holds a special appeal for “military guys that are older who can remember those good times.” For his part, Valdez is having fun too, and said he lives to bring joy to tankers young and old. He also loves to impart the lessons learned from his own military career, such as “the feeling of working together with your wingman and protecting each other.”
Valdez has retired twice: once from Fort Hood as First Sergeant, and again from the DPS in DFW, where he was a police officer, firefighter, and EMT at the airport. Mini Tank Battlefield officially opened last year, and the business reopened as soon as outdoor activities were given the all-clear by the state of Texas pandemic response orders.
“There’s no stranger-to-stranger contact,” Valdez said. All battles are by appointment among friends, family, and colleagues. Even then, social distancing is a smart strategy, as Valdez puts a moratorium on close-range attacks. “No shooting within 15 to 20 feet of each other,” he said.
For the business set, Mini Tank offers a team-building activity that does not involve trust falls or any other type of touchy-feely, germ-spreading activity, but families who have quarantined together might also benefit from a day shooting paint at each other. The Sleepers have vowed to return, and by the start of September, Tank Commander Valdez had already booked his group of combatants for Thanksgiving Day: a family reunion.
If you go
You must have an appointment. Contact Robert Valdez at minitankbattlefield.com, 817-689-5658, info@minitankbattlefield.com, or even on social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram).
Wear closed-toe shoes and long pants that can withstand paint! Helmets and neck protectors provided. Ditch the elaborate hairdo unless you want to spend time detangling your Elsa braid from your helmet.
The latrine is…a latrine. Be comfortable with porta potties or be able to hold it for an hour or two.
Tanks are accessible and hand-operated—once seated upright, drivers do not need to use their legs.
The site is BYOB, but only after the battle: no drinking and tanking.
Check your map app: make sure it is leading you to Mini Tank Battlefield at 3155 Private Rd 1481 in Hico. From SH 220, watch for the county line and head northeast on CR 3243 for about a mile. You’ll know the gate when you see the ghoul in a flack helmet on your left.
