Shatnerball Through the Eyes of Tom Kaye

[Tack]

I think the highlight of my day (besides Ratt and I forceing a tank gunner to drop into his tank and surrender near Arramegeddon) was at the Braveheart charge. I went with Bud and the deversion unit into Bedlam and got 10 confirmed Klingon kills off the bat when I stepped out of the trees and saw them just standing there.

I was also the one who announced to everyone who was within earshot that "We got Shattner"! After he charged down the hill. As much paint as he had on him I think everyone on the Borg team that was in the tree line can say without much of a doubt that at least one of their shots hit him. I yelled it so much I think my voice will never get better.

I had a helluva time when I was on the field but hated the crap we had to deal with with poor paint and 1500psi. Hopefully we can get a better set up next year.

[soulegend]

Hey, I missed out on the donut orgy and stayed around watching the pump tourney all of Friday. Could've used some more people around there for the added support. Ahh well.

[chrisj]

Great report!

I am so sorry I missed it.

Chris

[Iceman8446]

Great write up. If ya guys hold it any where near me next year i'm definaly commin.

[SirOssis]

Tom that little essay more than any other thread makes me want to kick myself a little harder for not going. And then hearing about the lack of refs makes me wish I had drove over and grabbed a refs jersey from Forest. Oh well, just like the Cubs... wait til next year.

[HellsShooter]

Tom you sumed it all up great. Hope to play with you next year.

[OnyX]

i would like to thank load for the stickers.

yeah we had a blast down there me, hellshooter, bean, mxracer, 2000sabre, dsmpilot were just knocking guys left and right during the shatner game and especially that friday when we were playin open game speedball in the hyperball field.

even though we were outnumbered 5:1 or so and had the worst location for insertion, borg did what they do best and its keep mowing down the feds and the klingons.

was a pleasure to meet the AO crew and especially our general tom kaye, will be looking forward to more big meets with the AO platoon.

[AGD-OfficeGal]

GREAT essay, Tom!

I haven't had time yet to read all the threads and all the posts about Shatnerball, but already one thing is clear to me: despite being handicapped by lousy air fills, screwed up scorekeeping and whatnot, for sheer valor, valiant hearts and having a good time, THE BORG WON!

Marcia

[845]

The borg arent suppose to win, they're suppose to lose but take down 4x as many people as both the feds and klingons combined.

[Roadkill]

[hitmanng]

I want to say I had a great time mostly due to the opertunity to meet my AO friends.
But I could tell the Borg were doomed from the first 5 minutes. I am not sure what happened but from the outset noone seemed to have clear objectives. The initial push on Mancows base was fun but was set up like the british in the civil war. One well placed player took out 10-15 of our men.
Also the paint and air was going to be an issue. In a tourney you may play 15 5 minute game or 75 minutes of play time against a fixed 75 targets. Here we had hundreds of targets for 8 hrs. I shot a case in less than an hour. I was not really interested in shooting $800.00 in paint so had to slow down. Luckily the air fills or lack there of helped.
The objectives where not set out early in the game and never really explained to the masses. It seemed like I helped take bedlam 4 times for no apparent reason than it was there.
The rules were not even close to followed as far as insertion sites etc and it seemed like they changes throughout the day.
I also cannot believe we had close to 400 people on the field. I have played in a number of big games and if we ever broke 200 I would be very surprised. In the final battle Shatner had 400 easy that is how they came down in waves like 4 times. We were lucky to have 100 left. Oh well.

I did have fun but unless I have a guaranty of a better set up from the SPPlat people before next year, You will see me at the Viper events and the MXS events not Shatnerball, it just wasn't worth the money.
Maybe Mother and Pacman can run it next year. Nice try and the registration process was great, but it was kind of a let down on the field of play.

I do want to say I enjoyed meeting everyone and think no matter how play was the hard work that everyone put into it and the publicity we obtain for paintball made this event well worth it. Not to mention over $500,000 for charity.

Hitmanng

[JJBrookshire]

Thank You Tom

Tom,
Thank you for the incredible essay. I am forwarding this to Shatner and will let you know of his reply. To everyone, please email me your comments. I will answer a few of the most common complaints here but will wait until I get more input and have a plan for next year before going into more details.

As for the air: I was under the impression that CPX handled as many as 1000 players per day on a regular basis and never thought they would have so much trouble with air fills. It turned out the compressor had a clogged filter which limited the air fills and overworked the electrical system resulting in power outages. Next time there will be more air capacity than needed.

As for the paint: Originally we were to have multiple brands of paint available with $20 per case going to the charity and players buying directly from the manufacturer/distributor. This idea was completely overturned by one man after I had announced the location was to be CPX and many people had registered with that in mind. This one man is the president of Brass Eagle which owns the majority of CPX (see www.BrassEagle.com - Investor relations for the press release from Nov '99). His name is E. Lynn Scott and he can be reached via email at [email protected].

For next year, we will require potential locations to submit "bids" for the event in a similar fashion to an Olympic event. For a location to be considered they must agree to multiple paint brands and show they have the ability to handle the number of players.

[Dayspring]

[cough]Skirmish[/cough]

And guys, just remember, had we played by the REAL Borg rules, after the first 5 or 6 are taken out, nobody else could get shot, AND every player we eliminated would join our side. So we got handicapped from the get go

[rjvemt1]

what kind of gun was shattner using?

[SeeK]

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