before i go on this rant (and rant i will) id just like to point out that this is entirely my point of view and nothing to do with topcats paintball.
that was without a doubt the biggest missed abortion of a big game ive seen from any promoter/site for the 3 years ive been balling. as has ben mentioned above, i realise that were environmental issues ,what with the tweeting birdies etc. but right from the word go bg2k5 was one big let down after another.
at the outset it looked like it was gonna be a really amazig scenario with lots of effort put in from the guys at warped and eveyone involved with some genuinly good ideas (getting the fuel for the convoys was imo a great idea. then having to get the peices for the bridge to get em across the "river" etc. all good stuff). promises of a great pleayer party with an outdoor bar etc.
but having to move the site threw a huge lump of the born stuff into the airconditioning. making 300 paintballers camp in a regular camp site with families and kids in it (not to mention the little chav larva riding their mopeds off road (read small bumpy bits of grass) round the tents at 7 in the bloody morning.) was just stupid. we were told " sorry. theirs no player party so your gonna have to make your own entertainment" one minute. an the next we are told " everyone has to keep the noise down. the forestry comission are threatening to call the game off unless you all shut up"
then there was the 3 mile trip from the campsite to the gamesite via a fleet of circa 1970 coaches. until we got to the hell that was the "staging zone" (rofl) this consisted of a huge marquee with some rented fold up tables and mud. LOTS of mud, possibly all of the mud inthe world.
infact i have a sinking feeling (non deliberate pun left in) that the guys from warped hired some firehoses and earth moving equipment just to churn the floor up a bit before the game. (shouldnt have left it all coiled up by the northern half of the staging area btw, bit of a clue)
call me picky but if your organising an event this big, its not too much to ask that you provide us with somewhere clean(ish) and above all DRY for us to set up the hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment that you know damn well we are going to bring. i dont know if any of you hae ever tried to take the ram out of an angel (bret THANK YOU)when the table you are working on is getting lower by the minute cos its sinking into the mud (did i mentionthe mud? oh, i did....)
as it is. ALL of my kit is filthy, my cleats are well and truly shafted, and i snapped the handle off my jt rollbag trying to drag it though the quagmire at teh end f the day. i know that your gonna get filthy at a game like this. but i just dont feel it needs to happen in the safe zone. i dont know if you guys know what happens when you mix 500 gallons of water 70 tons of clay and 700 paintballers for 7 hours. but it closes resembles what happend when you give puppies curry. now imagine trying to set up in this. i guess the topcats were lucky tho. we managed to bag 2 tables (30 meters apart but beggars cant be choosers. not that it helped to coordinate teh team tho) a lot of people were having to set up in the mud.
someone above mentioned hot guns. it woouldnt surprise me in the slightest. the chrono was right next to the exit for the game. and everytime you went nearit you had a marshall yelling at you that you couldnt go back on feild through there. at no point during the day did any of the marshalls attempt to get me to chrono my gun (275 fps in case you were wondering lol)
tho when i lent a mate of mine my speed to try it out. he was pulled out of the game by a marshall who said, and i quote " that angel is ramping. you cant use it here. i shoot angels for a living and i know ramping when i see it. i want to check your gun." my mate dulyhanded it over. the marshall blew a hopper load of paint and then gave it back and said "play on". as my friend was tryig to get cover he wasshot literally 2 seconds after the marshall said play on, and the aforesaid marshall promptly eliminated him. if the marshal wanted to try the gun surely he could have just asked?
im not gonna say anyting else about the game apart from the fact that previus big games suffered from skirmish lines. where you would just get 2 lines of people throwing paint at each other all day. this being the case whose great idea was it to put a bloody great river in the middle of the feild. we all knew the game was gonna be skirmish line. you didnt need to enforce it.
the feild itself was also tiny, with player at saturation point (literally every 10 meters or so) and not much in the way of alternative routes to get places. but thats a different rant for a different day.
much love and props etc to the guys at warped. i know a lot of this was out of your control, and i know you tried to make the best of a really bad job. i just cant help but feel you would have pissed a lot less people off if you had just cancelled and reshceduled (sp?) rather than try and rush something together at the last minute.
like i said above. this is my 0.02p (actually its more like 20 quids worth....) and has nothing to do with the views of my team etc etc blah blah you get the idea.
2am?!! damn that took a while to type. im off to bed
EDIT:
i forgot to add my congratulations to the bitter drinking monkeys fromthe cold part of town. less than 100 points in it
ill bet your all shagging your whippets tonight and waving your flat caps with glee
