edweird
03-14-2004, 08:14 PM
First of all as always I look forward to the times I get to travel and play with my fellow AGD zealots. And thus form together as one collective killing machine in the spirit of brotherhood and good times. Nothing will ever ruin a meeting like that no matter what happens with the field, refs, management, or otherwise... that being said the spirit of brotherhood that a "Band of Brothers" themed game was intended to foster succeeded regardless of the multiple tribulations and hardships that the players were forced to endure this weekend. (Mad props to all the Ao’ers I meet out there on both sides and my friends on Evil Inc that invited me out to come some straight up ball at this event right along side them)
By multiple hardships and tribulations I (in the spirit of RedvsBlue) direct you all to my bulleted list of shame.
+ obscene amount of Rule changes
Obviously the promoter and the head ref's were not reading the same scripts when it came to rules of the game. At orientation the promoter (Ben Toricelli) was very unclear and loose with the standing rules of the event. However rules that were made clear by his speech were several times altered by the lead refs and not equally applied to both teams. Rules that follow that line are, gun hits, Tank rider vulnerability, Tank use and availability, Field paint only restrictions... and a couple others I fail to remember at the moment.
+ Air, Air, my kingdom for some friggin Air!
At Orientations we were all informed that a air station was going to be set up on the far side of the property inside the allied campsite for fills. This was true... however there was no CO2 for the entry lvl players on our side and lets just say that the fills from Shatner #1 would of been an improvement. Nah screw it I will spell it out. We basicly had a semi competent kid with 4 bottles of HPA love to serve 250-300 allied players for 24 hours. Within an hour and half the 2 bottles were dead and the kid was trying to do the best that he could with the booster. Sub 2k fills persisted for 4 to 5 hours until I barged my way into the trailer to help the kid out low and behold I found out that the other 2 bottles were not even on and I switched the bottles around. 4.5k fills were back online for about 2 hours(just in time for pre-dinner/night play). Overnight the field failed to exchange the cylinders and when day play was to start back up they were back to filling with the booster (no more than 2.5k) with long downtime to recharge the compressor. At about 11:30 on sunday they started to exchange the cylinders for the first time on our side for the entire event.
+ Event "Paint"
First off all I will state I understand that they had far more walk-ons than anticipated and that Pre-Reg is important due to that.
now that I have that out of the way... the Registration form specifically for the event clearly states "Event paint only: Tournament level paint" $65 per case prepaid $75 per the day of event... Guess what we were sold! Cheap practice "Field/Competition" (as per the Zap website www.zappaintball.com) Tork brand paint. I’m normally pretty cool with Zap's higher end paints such as Chronic and Amp but this stuff was utter crap. First of all it was very swollen and bored at minimum higher than .695. Secondly the Shells were oblong and had a very runny white fill with minor exposure to the elements (stored in the shade under a camper trailer) the balls expanded and turned into soft gelcap. So site some Ao user refrences... Tork was getting stuck and jaming up warp feeds, 90 feed necks, and jamming egg loaders all day long.
Availability of paint was an issue due to the excessive amount of walkon players so more paint orders were made and multiple colors/types of paint showed up on the feild on the middle of the first day. After talking to the promoter about the quality and behavior of the paint he offered to exchange our still bagged cases for some of the paint he had brought in to fill the paint demand. This paint was Nelson Hot Spot (http://www.nelsonpaintball.com/hotspot.html)which is listed on there site as a "Rec Ball" paint and a "Great Practice ball!". To be absolutely frank we found the Hot Spot a far superior product to the Tork and even though it bored out at .682-.685 and was clearly a 2nd's line.
Now that the field paints were covered we noticed that there was some rampant use of non-field paint such as Chronic on the field. tisk tisk
+ Ref's
It was clear that they did not know the promoters set of rules (as fast and loose/from the hip as they were) so in the meantime they enforced the standard recball house rules of the field. (Gun shot's don’t count etc...) Also quite a few of the refs were clearly under 15 years old and about as responsive as a trigger on a classic valved mag. Oh and a class in the proper of use of a handheld crono would of been good as well.
+ Out of bounds? we have no stinkin out of bounds!
If I had a ball of "Tourney level paint" for every time I saw someone walking out of bounds to move to the hill I would of been able to sponsor the AGD scenario team (Evil inc.)I played with all weekend long.
+ Notification, Public Address etc...
Who knows when the game is on? Who knows when the game needs to stop on a saftey? infact who knows anything really?
...
Ill call it a list here since food is on and I’m famished
To conclude this... It was really nice getting comped into the event due to the fact I am active duty military... but the event itself was not worth the price of admission
BTW what was really important was playing some stand up ball with all of ya... Thanks for the good times.
By multiple hardships and tribulations I (in the spirit of RedvsBlue) direct you all to my bulleted list of shame.
+ obscene amount of Rule changes
Obviously the promoter and the head ref's were not reading the same scripts when it came to rules of the game. At orientation the promoter (Ben Toricelli) was very unclear and loose with the standing rules of the event. However rules that were made clear by his speech were several times altered by the lead refs and not equally applied to both teams. Rules that follow that line are, gun hits, Tank rider vulnerability, Tank use and availability, Field paint only restrictions... and a couple others I fail to remember at the moment.
+ Air, Air, my kingdom for some friggin Air!
At Orientations we were all informed that a air station was going to be set up on the far side of the property inside the allied campsite for fills. This was true... however there was no CO2 for the entry lvl players on our side and lets just say that the fills from Shatner #1 would of been an improvement. Nah screw it I will spell it out. We basicly had a semi competent kid with 4 bottles of HPA love to serve 250-300 allied players for 24 hours. Within an hour and half the 2 bottles were dead and the kid was trying to do the best that he could with the booster. Sub 2k fills persisted for 4 to 5 hours until I barged my way into the trailer to help the kid out low and behold I found out that the other 2 bottles were not even on and I switched the bottles around. 4.5k fills were back online for about 2 hours(just in time for pre-dinner/night play). Overnight the field failed to exchange the cylinders and when day play was to start back up they were back to filling with the booster (no more than 2.5k) with long downtime to recharge the compressor. At about 11:30 on sunday they started to exchange the cylinders for the first time on our side for the entire event.
+ Event "Paint"
First off all I will state I understand that they had far more walk-ons than anticipated and that Pre-Reg is important due to that.
now that I have that out of the way... the Registration form specifically for the event clearly states "Event paint only: Tournament level paint" $65 per case prepaid $75 per the day of event... Guess what we were sold! Cheap practice "Field/Competition" (as per the Zap website www.zappaintball.com) Tork brand paint. I’m normally pretty cool with Zap's higher end paints such as Chronic and Amp but this stuff was utter crap. First of all it was very swollen and bored at minimum higher than .695. Secondly the Shells were oblong and had a very runny white fill with minor exposure to the elements (stored in the shade under a camper trailer) the balls expanded and turned into soft gelcap. So site some Ao user refrences... Tork was getting stuck and jaming up warp feeds, 90 feed necks, and jamming egg loaders all day long.
Availability of paint was an issue due to the excessive amount of walkon players so more paint orders were made and multiple colors/types of paint showed up on the feild on the middle of the first day. After talking to the promoter about the quality and behavior of the paint he offered to exchange our still bagged cases for some of the paint he had brought in to fill the paint demand. This paint was Nelson Hot Spot (http://www.nelsonpaintball.com/hotspot.html)which is listed on there site as a "Rec Ball" paint and a "Great Practice ball!". To be absolutely frank we found the Hot Spot a far superior product to the Tork and even though it bored out at .682-.685 and was clearly a 2nd's line.
Now that the field paints were covered we noticed that there was some rampant use of non-field paint such as Chronic on the field. tisk tisk
+ Ref's
It was clear that they did not know the promoters set of rules (as fast and loose/from the hip as they were) so in the meantime they enforced the standard recball house rules of the field. (Gun shot's don’t count etc...) Also quite a few of the refs were clearly under 15 years old and about as responsive as a trigger on a classic valved mag. Oh and a class in the proper of use of a handheld crono would of been good as well.
+ Out of bounds? we have no stinkin out of bounds!
If I had a ball of "Tourney level paint" for every time I saw someone walking out of bounds to move to the hill I would of been able to sponsor the AGD scenario team (Evil inc.)I played with all weekend long.
+ Notification, Public Address etc...
Who knows when the game is on? Who knows when the game needs to stop on a saftey? infact who knows anything really?
...
Ill call it a list here since food is on and I’m famished
To conclude this... It was really nice getting comped into the event due to the fact I am active duty military... but the event itself was not worth the price of admission
BTW what was really important was playing some stand up ball with all of ya... Thanks for the good times.