Ok, well without having played an oldschool woods tourney I wouldnt know, but I consider the options between the 2.
First off, I think the fun potential in Woods is higher, I mean thats why I play ball for fun. On supair theres only so many combinations of blow up bunkers and rules that can be done, but baisicly at the end of the day the tactics are all pretty much the same, and the baisic play of any feild all ends up the same. It would be like adding another ball into a game of footy, the baisic idea of the game of gettin the balls into the goal stays the same...
Vs Woods, where it may not always be on even playing feilds, bunkers and barricades might not always be almost perfectly identical, and the potential to change tactics and play is much higher than supair,
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Point 2, Location and availability.
Although not much of a player factor, the cost of supair bunkers is pretty steep, plus the need for a decent ammount of feilds in a tournament, its a pretty heavy investment for any site to be able to set up a tournament on a decent scale. So unless a site is going to make it worthwhile with enough turnover to make servicing, setup and take down the bunkers why would they bother to run a tournament? This leaves a few people / organisations who actually put the effort in to make this commitment, to buy the equipment and set up the tournaments, this leads to a very limited tournament scene baised int he UK, especialy since travel expenses to some of the locations can be a large factor for some teams. This also leaves out a HUGE player base, how many teams do you see playing with tipmans?
vs Woods, Any site in the UK could run a tournament. And could probably get a much larger turnout if you included the punters. I think a lot of the average punters would if given the chance take part in a woodball baised tournament, they can use tippys, turn up with a few mates and call it a team. The sites could offer a large discount on the paint to the punters and pro players could bring their own. The baisic costs of equipment, eg supair bunkers are negligible as most sites will allready have the markers ready to play, and no time wasted setting up and cleaning down the bunkers at the end of the day.
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Finally, cost vs Prizes.
Now the average sup-air tournament is pretty expensive, most players can see this. Unless at a site you have to pay for catering, the Air, marshals, rent (on the feild possibly), toilet facilities, the prizes of course, probably a few extra things. All this has to be covered in the enterence cost for the teams, top this with travel expenses and you end up having a pretty expensive payout every tournament.
Now at a woodsball park, most of these costs would already be covered, most sites have catering facilities (limited as they are) Air compressors, marshals at hand, toilet's. All this is taken off the initial cost. That would leave you with the cost of prizes and the marshals to be covered in entry costs.
Needless to say, this along with the potential for more teams in the form of punters could lead to a much cheaper tournament for all, with still good prizes and a good days ball.
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The Holy Grail!
TV coverage, now every baller has discussed it, and everyone has dreams of getting paintball onto TV. But I believe that woodsball or scenario would be MUCH more apealing to put on TV due to people who don't play supair can more easily relate to it. Not much to say here, apart from that I think covering a tournament in the woods or on scenario land would be much easier.
Now overall in this post, its pretty obvious im more of a fan of woodsball baised tourneys, however I still think Sup-Air is a very good solid format to play, and currently the division of leaving supair to the "elitests" of the paintballers leaves out a huge player base in the UK. Should more advertised and organised Woodsball tournaments be introduced, involving the punters would bring the 2 sides of paintball together, as the supair side could be advertised to them at a woodsball tourney. I believe that it would bring the whole paintball scene in the UK forwards by a huge ammount.
