Paintball

[Mayvik]

This weekend I went to my first full-fledged scenario game, Red Mars by Fledgling Scenarios in Agate, CO. The schedule was registration/air/paint/chrono opening at 4PM Friday, a Tiberius sponsored pistol duel competition at 5pm Friday, real chrono opening Sat 6:30 AM, game time at around 9:30AM Sat, play through midnight or so Sat, game on again Sun AM with final battle early Sun afternoon. As this was my first real scenario game I made sure to read up on the rules and GRSP before hand so I had a pretty good idea what was going on. I played on the Red team, with no special role. I'm hoping some other MCB'ers who were there can chime in and contribute (especially any on the Green side), since after I've written this I feel it's pretty negative and it's based on my experience alone.


People: 10+/10 This is an easy one. Overall I was VERY impressed with the players at this event. From what I saw there was all around good sportsmanship, no real cheating that I saw (there were a couple of "dead man talking" guys but I guess that's to be expected), people were all friendly and there to have fun. The pistol challenge went pretty well (aside from technical issues I'll talk about in "Organization" below) and people were shaking hands, congratulating on good shots, etc. Definitely a nice change from SoCal, the agg capital of the USA. It was great to meet a couple of fellow MCBers, Mstrtal and hmudd13!

Location: 3/10 Wow. Agate CO is about as close to BFE as you can get. There's no town there to speak of aside from a school, post office, and a couple small houses. Not even a gas station or a quick stop; the nearest civilization is 10-15 miles away. The "paintball field" is literally cow pastures, complete with prolific "landmines" of the stinky variety which I thankfully managed to avoid. Aside from a couple of small copses, there were literally no trees or bushes to speak of on the field or surrounding it. The pond with land-bridge was a nice, except the surrounding terrain made it either impossible or danger-free to utilize, depending on which side you were on. Unfortunately the lack of vegetation and flat land provided no wind break at all, and there were 15-20mph gusts regularly blowing along the field toward and away from each team, making long-balling either prevalent or virtually impossible depending on which side you were on. Normally I wouldn't hold weather against an event, but on the first night I was told by a regular that it's pretty much always windy there. The only thing I actually liked about this field was that parking/registration/air/paint/chrono/crappers were all very close together, so it was quick and painless to take care of pre-game minutiae without trekking back and forth to the car for an hour. I guess it's reasonably close to Denver (~40 min drive @ 80mph) which is about the same drive I was used to in CA.

Vendors: 1/10 From what I saw, there was a whopping 1 vendor...no local stores, no companies (I figured at least Tiberius would have a rep there since they sponsored the pistol duels..), etc. To top it off, the one vendor was the guy with the lawn-dart paint "grenades"! Being a douche, I went up to the table and nonchalantly asked the guy what insurance thought about his product, and his response was a "gee, I dunno" shrug. I asked him about safety if people got hit in the noggin with them, and he did have foam tips (about 1/8" thick) which would go over the impact point of the "grenade", that he'd give to a buyer, however he wouldn't install them himself. After seeing these in person, they are cool but no way in hell would I allow them at my field or event for safety's sake. I also let the guy know that the dude in his video scared the crap out of me..I guess it's a friend of his who's an actor...and that many people have busted his balls about the video. Aside from paint and air (4500 air and CO2, no 12 grams that I saw), I didn't see that the producers had anything else available in terms of misc supplies such as o-rings, parts, etc. I also didn't see a spot to purchase common things you might find for sale at a field like barrel bags, squeegees, grenades, etc.

Paint: 9/10 The game was FPO, and they used Origin Signature Series tourney-grade. I found the paint to actually be a little on the large side, which was good, it was a pretty solid fit with a Phantom barrel and no detent rings. The fill was thick and goopy, almost too thick to the point where it was difficult to clean hits between insertions by the time you got to a dead box. $65/case, so not exorbitantly priced, and the case I bought seemed uniform, fresh, and no breaks in the 2 bags I opened. The shells seemed to be pretty solid although somehow I managed to get a break inside each hopper of the Ditto Deuce, making for a sloppy mess due to the thick fill.

Field Setup: 3/10 I was hoping based on the descriptions that the extreme lack of natural obstacles and flat, open terrain would be overcome by the producers, and that there was going to be a significant amount of man-made cover. I hoped poorly. My end of the field was extremely sparsely populated by small plastic bunkers (~2' high by 2' wide by 4' long) and a handful of inflatables, which were completely inadequate when a large charge (or tank) rolled through. Being solid, the plastic bunkers provided adequate cover from a very limited angle, but it was very easy to be flanked. Most of the "cool" man-made cover such as the village and a large tire "fort" was held virtually uncontested by the other team, and I only got to step on about 1/3 of the field. Perhaps the producers placed most of the cover in the middle, expecting it to be contested for most of the game, and perhaps my team was just not aggressive enough at the very beginning to take and hold the important points, but I was very disappointed in the field layout.

Organization: 5/10 I'm torn on this one. Friday night was pretty much a disaster from my standpoint; originally I wasn't sure I was going out as I thought I had to work that day. Turned out I had the day off, so I headed out early to arrive around 3PM. I figured that would give me plenty of time to assemble each of the 5 guns I planned to use over the weekend, do any last minute tech, and be ready to pick up my paint, register, pre-chrono, etc when it opened at 4, and be on the road home by 6 after the pistol duels. I left at 7:30 PM as the sun was starting to set, and the paint truck had yet to arrive, nor was there a chrono set up (because apparently the producers figured no one could unofficially chrono without field paint ) Another comment about paint, is that if you paid for paint while registering, you were given a typical tear-off coupon style ticket, which you'd then exchange for one case with the guy manning the trailer. While the tickets were numbered, it wasn't obvious that they were recording in the computer that "X buyer bought Y cases of paint"; losing that 1" by 1/2" ticket would be a pricy problem, especially overnight. The pistol duels went reasonably well, although they required the use of their Tac8's (presumably due to being sponsored by Tiberius), and they only had 2 available. There were quite a few technical difficulties, and the ultimate match of the winning player vs Psycho, one of the Fledgling guys, didn't end up happening because one of the guns went down. They also had spectators calling hits instead of event staff, which created a lot of confusion, and could have caused impropriety as many of the spectators were team mates of people participating in the duels. Saturday seemed to be running very smoothly on the other hand, there was a minimal line for paint/air/chrono, nothing more than you'd expect to see at a regular field. The game itself seemed to be run OK, ref coverage might have been a little light but I'm not sure what to expect at this sort of event.

Overall Experience: Considering the fact that I bailed halfway through the first day, I'd say that I came away from this experience very disappointed. Really the biggest contributor to this was the awful field and layout coupled with the one-sided play; after so many futile charges through open territory, I just got sick of racking up bounce-welts from the other side's wind-assisted longballs, and felt that doing something else with the remainder of my weekend was more valuable to me than continuing to play. I only participated in a couple of missions, which were "take and hold" or "take", however they were basically a group of us getting shot up trying to achieve something instead of a group of us getting shot up just trying to move up the field. I also found there was a lot of waiting around, be it waiting for a mission, standing in the field trying to figure out what pointless target to attack, or just walking back and forth to the insertion point. I'd like to think that the field setup only seemed as bad as it was because the teams were just poorly balanced, but I don't know if I buy that, and even so the producers could probably have done a better job setting the field up to be resistant to one side getting rolled. I'll probably give scenario ball another shot, but if this is a typical experience I can confidently say that scenario games are not for me.

[Harbinger[TG]]

Pics of lawn dart grenades?

Great write up BTW.

[Mayvik]

Thanks!

Grenades of Doom Thread:
New grenades

[BLC_Misfire]

I've played at a few of the Fledgling games over the past few years (not this one though).

I would tend to agree that there is a ton of open field at the Agate site. They do what they can in setting up man-made stuff as it is an actual cow pasture that Hangernaid has gotten the use of for 2 games per year. So it must all go up and come down within a 3 day period.

As for the wind, nothing to be done about it. You're on the Eastern Plains there and it's a fact of life. It sucks, I know but Jim worked his *** off to be able to get any field in Colorado. So he has what he has. I honestly would like to see more in the way of man-made 'terrain' but knowing the limitations Jim has to work with, I think he's actually done pretty well. (Remember, I can only go by what I've seen in the past, I was not at this particular event.)

As far as lopsided play, if you ended up on Flip's team, I can't say I'm surprised. Because you guys ended up going against Black Light Company, Shadow Company and the Dirt Hogs (I'm sure there was at least one more team, but those are the ones I know for sure.) That leaves 10th Mtn. (Flip's team) and the Renegades that were for sure on the other team. 10th Mtn. is fairly small, and the Renegades are not what they once were IMHO. While BLC and Shadow Co. are 2 of the most aggressive, 'thorn in the side' teams that you can come across right now. (They recently put together a team that took first in the Utah SPPL Regional Rookie division.)

It may be time for Jim to look at splitting the teams a bit differently now. It sounds like this one was way too lopsided for it to be fun.

I was glad to hear that the paint was good. There have been issues with it in the past being seriously out of round and small. Jim has always favored the very thick fill paint though. It always seemed more like paste then paint.

Unfortunately, scenario games are hard to come by in Colorado. It's a real shame that your first one was such a downer, and I'd encourage you to try again. If interested, check out the Tunka site and the Black Light Company site (forums are here). Black Light has gotten a good rep for hosting some fun byop games in the National Forest. I have coordinated several games at a field in Greeley, but gave it up for a few reasons, including wanting to spend more time playing since my daughter is getting into the game. Right now, I'm kicking around the idea of another 10-round tube game (ask HMudd about the last one, he was there but couldn't play).

Hopefully, you'll have a better experience in another Colorado scenario.

[Mayvik]

Cool, thanks for the links! I'm not giving up yet, but next time I'll definitely plan a little differently (pump with that much wind was pretty useless) and hopefully the teams will be more balanced. Sounds like the team makeup was the biggest contributor to the field setup issues (i.e. we just sucked too much to get any good terrain).

10 round tube game sounds fun! As long as I don't have to slide through any cow pies, that is

[Mstrtal]

Just got in from driving back from the train station. Will post my own thoughts when I have had some sleep.

[velvetelvis]

The organizers of Red Mars should really think about refunding some money. Not only did the whole thing suck, but it was obviously heavily weighted towards one team and was an absolute fiasco in terms of logistics.

The key areas where they failed miserably are too numerous to mention but a few of them were:

No coordination with local fire authorities to allow for nighttime pyrotechnics
Food and Water was a horrendous mess - hygeine was a health hazard
Field safety would have had the insurance company up in arms
No vendor participation to speak of - no local shops involved
Field layout was pathetic - these guys don't have a clue
Only 2 weapons available for pistol match - c'mon - you know backups are a must-have
Attitude - the organizers must really be in love with themselves - @ssholes!
Scenario? What scenario - this was glorified rec-ball, but boring and frustrating.

All in all I would have to say that this was a ton of anticipation just to be let down because some d*uchebags didn't do their homework or have enough brain cells to figure out how to do what they were trying to do.

Advice to event producers: Next time you want to feel important and waste everyone's time perhaps you should throw a sh*tty concert or bridal expo. Wasting everyone's time, money and energy is not only an @sshole thing to do, it's also bad for the sport, the local shops and the players. You should be ashamed of yourself. I hope you cry yourself to sleep in the basement of your parent's house where you most likely live.

I would bet the ranch there won't be another Red Mars. I just hope this fiasco doesn't turn too many people away from the sport or keep real event promoters from doing a real scenario game.

[BLC_Misfire]

For the players that were dissatisfied, you may want to make sure you voice some constructive criticism on the Fledgling board. Coordinators cannot get better without good input from players (I know it helped me a lot, although I've operated at a much smaller level).

Just do your best to think through your complaints and say them as clearly as possible and without animosity. Reading the response on their site, you'd think the game was a huge success.

[Mstrtal]

Yes there where a few problems. As has been said above you should inform the event producers as to what you where unhappy about.

I talked with Psycho about a few things.
The ref problem stems from the fact that all the available scenario refs decided to come to the event to play. What refs they could get where unfortunatly undertrained. For all that they did try and those few (other then the Ultimate who was kick ***) I did have a problem with where more then willing to radio in and ask questions. Not perfect but its something.

The field itself as has been mentioned is not a regular paintball field. It is a working cattle farm that was at one point in the past a paintball field. Not the ideal place but it was a place to play.

The bulk of the players who go to Fledgling games seem to me (and I may be wrong so If I offend I apologize) to be DDay and Milsim regulars. I talked to quite a few (aside from my friends who have played scenarios in the past) and what many consider scenarios are still a fairly new concept for many of them. This is something that Fledgling is still trying to work on with their player base.

Not saying it was perfect but Fledgling is still a newer company that has some kinks to work out. All and all they did a good job with what they had. I have a feeling that they are going to get much better and expand.

On the vender thing. Well they did give away 5 grand in prizes at the end. Thats got to count for something.

[ScrapIron]

Mayvik, I have to agree with you on most of your points.
I only wish you had been there for Sunday and final battle.
I felt the teams were lopsided, aside from the few teams like Sun Spiders, Badger Battalion, Mag Dawgs, 10th Mtn, and CPF, (None of which had a huge # of players). Mother's red team was given alot of scenario players with no team affiliation and other walk ons.

I do disagree with the tire bunker being uncontested. I blew that area w/ a pipebomb twice on Saturday and once on Sunday. Each time I eliminated the handful of players there. The problem there was two fold.
1. The Refs were lacking in both quality and quantity.
2. When I would use a pipe bomb to clear out the tires, the red players were too hesitant to advance and keep the area held.

My main problem was the lack of refs and their lack of experience with scenario play.
I only counted 8 field refs, and when I spoke to Le, he explained that this was the first scenario that most if not all of his field refs had ever done.
I actually heard over our base ref's radio, a call from another field ref for rules clarification. That field ref's question was "If a medic is shot can he heal himself?"
My initial reaction was disbelief that one of their refs didn't understand such a common and simple rule from the GSRP (no a medic can't heal himself - but a 2nd medic could) but I guess I should at least be happy that the dimwit took the time to call in his question.


Velvetelvis, aside from pointing out the need for back up pistols on friday and the need to check with the fire dept on setting off pyros, your post was pretty unnecessary.

Food and Water was a horrendous mess - hygeine was a health hazard

You're camping for christ's sake, what more than port'a'johns and concession stand food were you expecting?

Attitude - the organizers must really be in love with themselves - @ssholes!
Scenario?
What scenario - this was glorified rec-ball, but boring and frustrating.

Way to keep things specific. Maybe some day a group of magic pixies will open a scenario company and produce games to fulfill all of the undefined expectations of whiney players everywhere.
Or maybe you think you could do a better job?

I'm not saying RED MARS was the greatest scenario I've ever been to, but it certainly wasn't the worst. I had fun, made new friends, and got to shoot people...

mission accomplished.