From Pumpplayer.com
Today, July 14, 2003, will be known as the day that the pumps decended on Paintball Long Island.
I arrived under steel grey skies. Thunderous rain was looming. I took my gear bag and went to register. Immediately I saw Hans standing in front of me in line to register. We met up with a few other pumpers at a table. The guys that showed up were Hans, RIOTv2 and Jackal411 (both members of the Wild Gease NY), j5sk8, (ref at the field on his day off), Rob, Mac, Jonny and myself.
Eight in all. Eight little pumpers swimming in a sea of semis. The semis were mostly walk on rental players but with a few high end guns mixed in for good measure.
The firepower was mixed as well, Myself and Riotv2 both sported comp pumps. All the others sported some type of stock rigs, either strict or modified. Phantoms mostly but with a couple of Sheridans (PMI-1, Illusion and Sniper converted to stock class feed).
We started off trying to figure out what to play, a little skeptical of playing with open class players, as while many of us were seasonsed players in our own rights, few had played together before. Luckly for us, with as many staff and former staff playing with us, we were given use of the hyperball field.
We played quit a few games with varied results. It seems that we have inadvertantly divided the teams with almost all of the back and middle players (Jackal, Riot, Rob and myself) on one side and all the front players (Mac, Jonny, Hans and j5sk8) on the other. So when the back/mid team hung back and long balled, we won, and when we got froggy and tried to make moves, we got took. Oh well. I think that the final total of those games had the running team beating the back/mid team by a game or two.
In between games we hung out and bs'd. With probably close to 50 years of paintball expience between us, there were many stories to be told. We tried to get some of the semi guys to try a pump. Many of us had spares that we were more than willing to loan out. Alas we have no takers.
But we also heard during this time, and on the field, while we were playing amonst ourselves, were some rather derogatory comments regarding our choice of markers, all of which could basically be explained in two words, Pumps Suck.
At the lunch break the sky cleared and we decided to mix in to an open class game. There were about 24 guys in total, in one group, so all the pumpers, and four semis, went on one side, with the other team being all semis.
Now I would like to digress a bit at this point. If you recall, earlier in the day we played amongst ourselves. Now besides being hella fun, this also had another interesting effect. It allowed us to get a feeling of how well we played together and allowed us to learn to work together.
So the first two games when we mixed in, had us on a medium size woods field with a clearing of man-made bunkers in the middle. Since Riot boasted of being intimatly familiar with the field I followed him. The result was a slaughter. We broke through their skirmishing forces and went at them in the middle clearing. I took a guy in tower through a tiny hole in the plywood. We then decended on them slicing through them like a scythe through wheat. j5sk8 bunkered a couple of guys with his VSC as they cowered in their bunkers. Once we breached the hill on which this clearing lay, the rest was gravy. Their one flag defender was outflanked by a 12 year old kid who I sent to get him. We gave the flag to the kid (it was two flag format) to run to our flag station. Man was he beaming afterwards.
The next game we switched sides. We had the side with easy access to the clearing. However, the clearing was a static defense and we saw in the last game how much of deathtrap it was. So we exchewed it, going around it and meeting the opposition at the bottom of the hill. The resulting firefight saw Mark and I trading shots with a few guys, the others went up to the left, to outflank them. This worked and we won again. One of my favorite qoutes from the day came from that game, where, Hans, while I was auto-triggering a particulary well dug in opponent, screamed, "Ogre did you bring a semi on the field?". I just cackled under my mask and continued.
Towards the end of the game I took a little spill, twisting my ankle a bit. Thus, in order to avoid aggravating the injury, I called it a day.
Walking off the field that game I was gratified at the looks of our shellshocked opposition. They had no earthly idea what happened, where we came from, or how a group of pump players trounced them so badly. I think we lost a total of four guys in both games. One kids was muttering to himself "I never lost both games like that before". Of course no one dared deride our antiquated markers at this point. They were too busy trying to figure out what happened. Respect was earned.
So a fabulous day of play. Was had by all. Could someone who stayed on after I left post what happened after the second game when we mixed in with the rest of the people at the field.
Ogre
