The X-Ball Saga....cont...Chapt 23

[TJ Lambini]

What don't understand is...

What costs do Millennium have?

Fields? Nope, already set-up for Millennium play.

Judges? Nope, I understood that one X team per-event would ref tha rest.

Prizes? Nope.

Scoreboard? Nope.

Commentary? Already being done gratis.

So my question to the Millennium comittee would be quite simply, what am I as an X-Ball team captain getting for my money?

I suspect the answer will be '**** all', but couched in very long terms...

 

[manike]

But TJ you are getting to be part of X-ball. Part of the Elite... isn't that worth the cost?

Maybe it costs more just to be elite?

I must admit I was wondering similar things.

It does look like you could play X-ball on a regular field at the end of the day with some more bunkers thrown in, but then when would the X-ball teams have chance to walk and plan the field?

They also need staging areas set up for the field etc. It does require a bit more than a normal field.

So I think there is a legitimate extra cost there... not sure about the other points though.

 

[Robbo]

I need to make something clear after just having got off the phone from Nial, what I posted regarding the meeting on Sunday was not a cast iron record of what the Millennium were going to do, it was what was discussed at that Sunday meeting and was not meant to pre-empt any decisions to be made by the Millennium committee.
As most people know, the X-ball meeting was Sunday with the Millennium board meeting yesterday and today to finalise matters.
I apologise if I gave anybody the impression this was all a done deal coz it's not and I think I tried to make that point in the initial post but perhaps I did not make it well enough.
There is still some work to do and decisions to be made by the Millennium and I for one, am glad, I ain't got all them problems to deal with as obstacles seem to be springing up all over the place at the moment.
What started off as a promising opportunity is now negotiating its way thru a financial minefield.
Good Luck Nial and Laurent is all I can say !!
Robbo

 

[Beaker]

Understood Pete

Here are a couple more comments regarding the cost thing.

On the subject that teams can't afford a full league, can they actually afford a possible "half" league any more? As I see it the scenarios are:

Full Xball:
a buy in amount, covers entry fees per year
any (non sponsor covered) costs split between full 10man+ roster
Paint usage is boardly similar, possibly even less
full 10 man rosters mean we play Xball the way the US do

Half Xball
entry fees to Mill Pro (7500E for 6 events)
Buy in figure to half Xball
Paint for both events
Teams will probably only take 8 or 9 players to each event otherwise 3 players are taken just for 1 Xball game, thus increasing cost per player and also meaning we don't play Xball in the same way, kinda defeating the object.

If you totalled up the cost per player over the year of a full Xball season compared to a half/half approach perhaps it might come out a bit closer than some think.

However, if the Millennium board want a large figure in one up front then yeah, I can see only the 3 being able to consider it. But perhaps if that was spread out over a year on the larger rosters, it might be possible.

 

[manike]

I think it was Craig Miller I was speaking to (but I am not certain) and he was on about the Pro teams shooting more paint playing a game of X-ball than they would normally at a tournament...

Certainly when ever I have watched X-ball the stack of empty paint boxes was impressive

 

[Beaker]

It would also depend on what the final format was period/time wise.

 

[Ronnie H]

beaker yes it is affordable thomas and Myself work it out to be £33.3' per player per xball game + paint

what a lot of ppl forget is that a lot of teams have not played x-ball in this preposed x-ball league, its a bit hard to suddenly say to a lot of teams, "come rugby league", although u have spent 10 years playing rugby union (diffrent rules diffrent number of ppl on the pitch). i like most of my team spend most of my money on playing paintball, we dot get any finacial help, X-ball would cost us a small fortune. I dont know if any of my team could affrord to play an x-ball only league with up to 3 games per weekend. we use under 20 boxes of paint a meillenuim even if we make the finals belive it or not. when we won up north we nearly came away with more paint then we used.

dont get me wrong, i want to play xball, but the way it has been preposed, suits my team, we can play milenuim and we can play x-ball 2. Everyone is happy, the cost will be afordable, those who dont want to play x-ball dont have to, a xball league could have meant the end of quite a few teams like it is in america.

i understand pete argument about being left behind, but we dont see it as bieng left behind. Whos to say that we wont like x-ball least this year we have a chance to establish x-ball, not rush in throw all our eggs in a basket that is has a whole in. After all we would need to take on 3 more players and a pit crew (we would have to pay for the pit crew in flights and accomidation) now we can get other teams to help us pot up ect.

the millenuim sieres is well established we all luv playing 7 man so why give it up?

we have as a team given this all a lot of thought, and are happy with the way its panned out, now we have a choice rather than having to go x-ball cuase everyone else is. i will play were the competion is, but it all comes down to enjoyment. There is no point in paying 5 + grand a year to not enjoy playing paintball.

i understand petes point of view i agree with it only if "x ball is the furture" and i am not 100% agreed on that from what i have seen. call me a synic but i watch so much paintball and dont find it a great game to watch, i see xball has potientail but paintball to be good to watch, but is still sunday league. yes x-ball could well bring it in to the premire division. which like all of you i would luv to see.

im sure the flamming will start, but if u are in my postion, u have to agree. i look forward to playing my first x-ball game but, why throw away the years of trying to compete at 7 man. Which who is not to say wont be the new rubgy union, over taking professional rugby league (which was surposidly for TV like xball a more flowing game)

we did offer to play the england squad at x-ball but they declined so we will have to wait to portugal before we can actually play x-ball.

 

[TJ Lambini]

This half and half thing just makes no sense to me...

Put your captain's hat on: OK, I'll pay to enter Millennium, then after a hard day's play I will pay to play another long, draining game, which will adversely affect my chances of doing well in tomorrow's Millennium matches. And for what? No prizes are on offer for Euro X teams, there is no real incentive other than to win a place in the US finals at Orlando...in which, especially if Russian Legion have gone over to NXL, my team will get absolutely devastated cos the best of the best have been honing their skills against each other.

If this half and half thing happens and tha Legion go to tha States, I'd be amazed if Nexus and Tontons don't focus their attentions on Super-7s, where the prizes are bigger and the standard of competition higher. Joy Division will do the same.

This could go bad for the Euro scene real easy...

 

[Robbo]

Originally posted by manike
I think it was Craig Miller I was speaking to (but I am not certain) and he was on about the Pro teams shooting more paint playing a game of X-ball than they would normally at a tournament...

Certainly when ever I have watched X-ball the stack of empty paint boxes was impressive

Si, OMG, u r not questioning our little Stateside, omniscient, college boy are ya ?
Now this I gotta see

<-----Bucklin up seat belt and preparing for one helluva long and bloody battle

Pete

 

[manike]

The trouble is I can't definitely remember my sources. But I do have a different theory to Chris about paint consumption.

Pete do you know how much paint the England Team went through at IAO X-ball?

Chris how much did the college teams go through? (although again I don't think they are very indicative of how a pro tournament would be played and how much would be shot).

I vaguely remember the number of '34 Cases' being banded around as an average figure. I'm not sure if that was what an American team normally uses or what they use when playing X-ball (so the X-ball figure may be higher yet). But I'm sure it was someone from Pro Caps who was telling me they got through more than they do normally.

Now as compared to a 7 man team in the Millennium series that seems like a lot to me. I don't know how it stacks up against the 10 man series in the USA though. The most a 7-man team I've played in has done at the Millennium is around 26 cases I think, and although I wasn't counting (and thanks to our many paint sponsors it was hard to tell at the World Cup 10 man But I doubt we did anywhere near that, and we made the semi finals).

I do think Chris's discussion on play time and paint used is flawed.

Now in any normal event the game play time may be longer, but you have people on the field not firing all the time, some being sneaky, some waiting and some eliminated.

The eliminated players in a normal event will, in my opinion, spend more time eliminated as to the total game time available than they will with X-ball. In X-ball one of your eliminated players rarely has more than a minute or so of game time before the game is over and he is back playing. That's very different to normal ball.

With X-ball everyone on the field seems to be shooting non stop (unless playing college X-ball ). There is much less sneaky time, waiting play, and as soon players start being eliminated then it's often a quick game till it's finished. So all in all more people shooting more of the time...

What I am getting at is that with a normal game the paint fired per minute of person play time possible is substantially lower than with X-ball. And I'm pretty sure this showed when they looked at paint consumption at the X-ball events also.

manike