If you’ve never played Camp Blanding’s urban combat training facility, then you’ve missed one of the greatest scenario venues in the country. This isn’t your backwater field’s plywood town - we’re talking straight up urban assault in concrete buildings up to four stories tall. And for those of you with tunnel rat fantasies, there’s a (dry) sewer system that will allow you to get your CQB on subterranean style.

Registration opens for Battlefield Blanding on July 1st, and it’s for a great cause, so make your travel plans early and meet me in Florida in September. For an event like this, the price is right, and the chance to clear rooms with the best in the business will make the trip worth your effort.

It strikes me as inspiring that even in the midst of the current financial crunch, paintball events in my neck of the woods are springing up left and right. I don’t want to make those of you in other parts of the country jealous, but I could play a great game just about every weekend. Where I live, in the foothills of western North Carolina, there are half a dozen great fields within 100 miles, and when I expand the range to include eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, South Carolina, and parts of Virginia, I have no trouble finding top notch scenario and big game action. I don’t know if it’s the teams, the promoters, the field owners, or the local economy, but I’m wishing I could clone myself, because I can’t be in two places at once. While I’m at D-Day in Oklahoma, I’ll be missing what promises to be an excellent Indiana Jones themed game, and the weekend I return, I may try to hit a 24 hour game only an hour from my house.

Case in point, on the first weekend in August I’ll be attended the Mil-Sim Invitational at Command Decisions. This event will mark a new path in tactical play, and I want to be on hand to launch this new venture. Later in the month (August 16), on the other send of the state, Black River Paintball will host their first Super Game, a GI Joe vs. Cobra event that will be revolutionary, but in a different way. Get this, for $45 a player, those who attend will not only get entry, air, and a ticket for the prize raffle, but they’ll get a PCS camouflage jersey and pants! All the GI Joe players will be sporting digi camo, and all the Cobra players will have urban. And there’s more! Every player on the winning team will take home a marker. That means, if Cobra wins, and they have 300 players on their side, 300 people will take home a marker, matching jerseys and pants, and possibly other prizes - all for $45. This is unprecedented. Visit the game’s site to find out all the details, and if I’ve perfected my cloning technology by then, I’ll see you there.

If you’re not rolling to D-Day, you should really consider heading over to Adventure Beach for the next MPP game.  I love playing this field, and MPP always puts on a good show.  It’s like chocolate and peanut butter - two great tastes that taste great together.  If you want to get the insider scoop on this expedition, you can throw down some ideas in the game forums.

I’m back from Challenge Park, Living Legends, and it was an absolute blast - big smiles, all around. I had never played CPX before, only drooled over the videos and stared longingly at the photos, so I had to take this opportunity to get out there for a game, and what a game! With 600+ players, many of them members of some of the country’s best teams, the action stayed competitive, the terrain kept me on my toes (especially the mud), and getting to play with some of my far-flung friends made the trip well worth it.

Being able to stand on stage with the likes of Jim Lively, Rene Boucher, Wayne Dollack, Craig Miller and Blue was a true honor.  Most of the assembled group were players who have had a direct hand in shaping paintball by creating a tournament scene, developing the concept of scenario, or inventing something as essential for today’s game as constant air tanks.  To be included with a group like that - it blew me away.

The game itself was a blast.  My article on the event will go into detail and include a slew of great photos by Bruce “Camera Guy” Smith.  If you’ve never played a game at Challenge Park, slap one on your calendar, because that’s a field that is well worth the trip.  I spent a good portion of my weekend in the woods, taking and retaking some of the same ground, from both sides, but it’s the action in Bedlam that I’ll remember the most.  That’s an incredible urban field, and I got to be a part of two sweeps to clear the town of pesky Russians, and a couple of failed attempts on Saturday to gain a toehold into the field.  If we had gotten in there we would have had a chance, but it’s pretty darn hard to sweep from the woods into the town when the streets are teeming with enemies.  Hats off to all the players on the red team for a weekend of stand-up, competitive paintball.  The scores ran quite close, but the Russian performance during final battle was the last nail in the Marine coffin (and I still have the marks on my neck to prove it).

One of my best memories from the weekend was being handed a photo recon mission to run - a mission I thought would be a breeze, until my team informed me that our target, a giant Tiki head, sat in the middle of an enemy-controlled woods.  Teams Bad Karma and Hellions ran escort for me as I tried to snap three different pictures of this statue while taking fire from three directions.  My escort formed a perimeter, placed themselves to take hits for me, and had a medic ready to heal me up.  By the time I had three shots, we had come under heavy fire, and only one escort remained to book it back to base at my side to turn in our pictures.  Fun stuff!

Thanks also to my new buddies John and Taylor from Argent Force, old friends Krazy 8, Monty, and MOATI from Special Ops, and to Krusty, Pogo, T-Devil, Swammy, and Hopsing from the Psycho Clown Posse for keeping me fed and hydrated and for taking some of the heat off me.  You guys draw more attention (and ammunition) than I do, which pulled enough guns off me to make some moves.  At one point I was pinned down, only yards away from a mission site, when I saw Krusty on my 9 trying to lead a charge.  Of the 10-15 players with him, probably less than five followed his lead, but I knew that as soon as they made their move, they’d draw enough attention for me to make mine.  Mission complete.  Thanks Krusty.

I’ll try to get some pictures posted when I get the CD from Bruce.

My next event will be the Smoke & Mirrors game in Virginia, and after that MPP’s game at Command Decisions, then Oklahoma D-Day and Elite Weekend!

Wolf Creek Paintball cranked out a successful one day scenario event based on Clear and Present Danger. Set in Colombia (a large South American country - not an island, contrary to popular opinion), this three ring circus had Colombian soldiers facing a Drug Cartel and the U.S. Special Forces in a sometimes confusing but always entertaining paintball throwdown.

Evidently scenario teams in the Mid-Atlantic region are a little slack on the registration tip. At the last minute the numbers for the game shot up from around 70 to well over 200, and for even the most seasoned producer this can cause some problems. The worst would be to run out of paint or air, and while that didn’t happen, they did run a little low on rounds, but no one got turned away empty handed. Barry, the field owner, did an admirable job of keeping the lines moving, and while the game started a little late, the delay wasn’t unexpected. If the field opens at 8:30, how are you going to get 200 people through registration, get them chronoed, give a briefing, and be ready to play by 10:00? The 10:45 start time impressed me enough, and aiming for 11:00 from the beginning probably would have been more realistic.

On the field, I got a chance to role-play, something I hadn’t expected going into the game. As it turns out, role-playing was integral to this event. Out of the gate I negotiated a treaty with the Colombian government to unite our forces against the American invaders, and unite we did, all over the other team. What I didn’t know was that Ferg was running around sowing the seeds of dissension, and as fast as I set up allegiances, he broke them down and turned the sides against each other. I have to admit, I couldn’t have done it better myself.

Seems like lately I end up by myself in the worst situations. My squad for this adventure, Temporary Team Tango Alpha2, had all the best intentions of using radio communications to coordinate movement, but some technical glitches combined with my eagerness to jump in the thick of things, and I’d turn around to find myself backed against a tapeline, last man standing against a marauding squad bent on base conquest. Going out in a blaze of glory can be fun, but the lumps on the side of my head are still tender. Thanks a lot Americans!

Overall, I liked Wolf Creek. The field owner is a genuinely good person, and the teams attracted to the event showed a strong sense of sportsmanship. Sure, the rules could have used some clarification, but I got the feeling that the producer and staff are open to an honest critique because they want to continue to grow and develop a solid reputation. I had refs telling me that I could and could not insert in various locations, and had I know that the final battle was headshots only (a bad idea that leads to painful overshooting), I would have been in there to the last. Wolf Creek has wonderful potential, and I got a kick out of the fact that the geographic center of North Carolina falls on a paintball field.

While I took plenty of pictures, Dorain from the Black Knights snapped some really excellent action shots. There are about four or five on his slide show that are magazine quality pictures.

No awards, but the Drug Cartel squeaked out a victory with a narrow margin of 50 points. Nice to be on the winning team, even though it doesn’t really matter. Despite falling on my face twice, I had a great time.

If you’re looking for a game and you live close enough to make the trip out to Adventure Beach, sign up for their Invasion of Japan game in early April.  I’ve already heard that several prominent South Carolina teams plan to attend, and this is one field that you have to play if you’ve never done it.  (If you have played Adventure Beach, you probably already made plans to attend.)  Click here for more information - Invasion of Japan

I’m looking forward to slinging some paint with all the teams who attend MPP’s game this weekend at Paintball Charleston. This will be my first trip to the field, and I’m psyched to test some new terrain. If you see me at the game, say hello.

I’ve added another date to my calendar - the Dollack/Viper collaboration at CPX near Chicago, Living Legends. Two of my teammates from Black Cat All-Stars are slated to come, so we’ll have to see how much damage a squad of three can cause. If you haven’t set your calendar, try to make this game, as it’s shaping up to be one of the best events of the year.

I’m especially psyched to see my far-flung teammates again and to hang out with some of the great industry people I’ve met on my travels.

I’ve updated my calendar with a few more confirmed dates. I’ll be playing “Clear and Present Danger” at Wolf Creek Paintball on March 22. This is a new field (to me), and I’m psyched about checking out some new terrain and hitting the field with a bunch of players, some of whom are subscribers to this blog! We’re putting together a team for this event only, and it should be a blast.

I’ve also added a confirmed date to cover the Platoon Leader Real Mil Invitational in August. Now, admittedly, I’m not the most mil-sim guy, but I will be toting a Tacamo Type-68 in my kit bag this season (more about that in a future post and press release), so I might be able to put together enough mil-sim gear by August to give it a shot. It sounds like a radical departure from your typical scenario game. Here’s more information. It’s similar to what Full Clip and Sonny Lopez are trying on the west coast, but on a different, more realistic and military-oriented scale.

My next confirmed major event is the MPP game at Paintball Charleston. Can’t wait for that one either. MPP puts on an excellent show, and I’ve heard plenty about Paintball Charleston to get me psyched.

Finally, I’m taping an interview for Blast Radius Woodsball Podcast tonight with the host with the golden pipes, Wayne. We’ll be discussing tactics, sponsorship, and Wayne’s upcoming trip to Australia. Wayne and I came up with the idea for the trip together, but my financial and work situations aren’t going to allow me to explore the scenario world down under - at least not this year. Next year, it’ll be a whole new (paint)ball game.

So Call of Duty has gone down in the record books. For those of you who have never played a theme day at Line-of-Fire in western NC, it’s a great experience, inexpensive, and one you should book on your or your team’s scenario calendar. The props and missions that the staff of Line-of-Fire put together are often more creative and fun than those put together by much larger-scale producers. Expect a game that kicks off around noon (or before) and ends by six, and the field gives away a nice set of prizes - this time that package included shirts, hoodies, cases of paint, a sweet NXe gear bag, and an Sim-5 marker.

In this theme day the SAS took on a terrorist faction bent on using nuclear weapons to further their agenda. In a set of missions based heavily on the popular Call of Duty 4 video game, the SAS rescued hostages, disarmed bombs, bugged computers, retrieved secret codes, and eventually defended two missiles on a launch pad. What makes these theme days stand out for me is the details. On a mission to assassinate a political target, the SAS soldier had to retrieve a sniper rifle along with 20 rounds of special blue paint, then shoot from one window, through another window, and hit a mannequin.

At the same time the terrorists had a mission of their own, to interrogate a hostage and capture the evidence on film. They not only had to secure the hostage, but they also had to get the pistol, an excellent Tiberius 8, and the camera, then put it all together to get the mission points. Simple to understand - hard to execute and fits with the storyline, those are the ingredients of an excellent scenario mission.

I had the honor of leading part of the first mission of the day for the SAS. We had to learn the location of a hostage, find a stretcher, then put two and two together and get the hostage back to our base. I located the stretcher on the airball field and led a charge to retrieve it. Not only did my crew have to deal with defenders on the airball field, but we also took shots from the second story of the enemy base, making finding good cover a difficult task. I pushed up the tapeline, got the stretcher, and passed it back to my man David who ran through fire, snatched it up, and delivered it to our base.

At the end of the first half, SAS and terrorist side had tied in points, but the second half didn’t go so well. While I ran wild during the opening set of missions, I might have well have brought a folding chair out to the deadbox for the second set of missions and just parked my butt in the insertion zone. That’s how much time I spent there. Good job terrorists - you shut me and the rest of the SAS down pretty darn effectively.

The final mission of the day, worth double points, forced the terrorists to kick over a hornets’ nest, figuratively speaking. To score the points they had to take the Spankr (double barreled rocket launcher) and hit the side of the new missile silo building. Then their leader could enter with his briefcase containing the launch codes and set off the two smoking nuclear missiles. To score points for the SAS, all our team had to do was keep the terrorists out. The mission started with a bad omen - our .50 cal mounted machine gun went down about .4 seconds into the half hour time period. Fortunately for the SAS, the terrorists had a similar problem with their rocket launcher. Turns out that dropping it isn’t so good for its reliable operation. The terrorists got one of the mortars instead, but even with the defenders firing the last balls in their hoppers at the end of the time period, the terrorists never made the final push to get inside the bunker.

The SAS scored 300 points in the end and saved the world, but the terrorist team still came out as the victors with a score of 1100 to 1000. Hats off to the Owens who scripted and ran the event and all the good folks at Line-of-Fire who do what they do to make that one of the best places to play paintball.