I took a small handful of bb's to the teeth, lips and tongue once. I was playing in a paintball mask with the lower part removed. I pulled an "ambush" on some guys walking down a trail and, forgetting about the additional range of .2 gram bb's, I waited until they were too close and also failed to eliminate all of the players.
The return fire (mostly over the shoulders of the guys I did get) got me in the mouth and I thought "OUCH!... that's gonna leave a few marks." About a 1/2 hour later, I was at my car and remembered to check my "welts". They no longer hurt or even ached and when I looked in the mirror and there was no evidence whatsoever that I had been shot there.
I am guessing that the range was probably around 20 feet or so, maybe less, and the bb's were probably traveling between 320 and 375-400fps.
By comparison, when I take a paintball in the lip (I wear rubbery JT Flex IZE's to accomodate my woodstocked guns) I can feel a little egg there in my lip for about two weeks after the impact.
I concur on the less mess, lower cost of the game and I also agree that it lacks something that paintball brings to the table.
I guess I have "outgrown" my need to take on the trappings of the military and/or "play guns" like I did when I was a teenager. All the extra, relatively useless gear that folks carry on to an airsoft field (from empty ammo carriers stuffed with paper to fake body armor filled with sand to simulate the weight of the real mcCoy) all seems pretty stupid to me.
Give me the pain of paintball and the excitement that that engenders or I guess I would prefer to go for a walk in the woods or watch the History Channel or something.
On a side note, I think that even a semi-experienced paintballer is generally undermatched by typical airsoft play. Even a lumbering herd like myself wowed the airsofters with my relative aggressiveness and willingness to "expose" myself to fire and flank, etc. My teammates would be all "stacked" up like SWAT guys behind barricades waiting for something to happen and I would get bored and start running around to draw fire or charging down their version of a tape line. They would look at me like I was risking death or severe injury and as someone who had clearly lost their mind.
All the military trappings of airsoft definitely get in the way of a good paintball-style game, imho.
And it should definitely hurt more.
