thats a shame, so is there no scenario games at all now? Are walkons still a thing? Whats happening in the south?
im from the basingstoke area, so i used to play at southampton paintball, which was in wellow, romsey, i used to play at the super 5s ran somewhere near romsey i think? think the guys name was mitch? is that site still there?
Shame its where it is, there were some pretty awesome events. resident evil at the bunker, carentan at the training site in salisbury, did a D day event some where ahhh the memories!
Kitch had the Super5ives, and sold the name to Chris Malton (formerly Soton University paintball society - now paintball & airsoft retailer) and Chris ran the Super5ives tournaments based at Ambush Botley for a few years.
There was tournament with a different name somewhere in the area, but I wasn’t familiar as my interest was purely pointed at scenario. (It May have been Kitches prior to the Super5ives name, or another)
Chris shut down Super5ives events as they became unviable due to the expense.
Scenario does still exist but with the split to magfed specific some players wanted limited magfed / paint capacity / a bit of tactics and some went magfed, some stayed with themed scenarios but not gun limitations.
There were politics and egos, so some would go to or avoid an event due to personalities.
Someone might have wanted to ‘take over’ and would deliberately clash dates and others would try to balance the calendar
There were the glory days of scenario, and a mix of team run games and the great big games. We at TFD caught this at just the right time with our events - Takhur Ghar etc
Then more would see the opportunity to step up and run their own game, filling the calendar making a buyers market or a monopolisers challenge.
We then had the rise of alternate locations - the bunker, NvS relocating to Swynnerton (with coloured paint allowed due to Warps cleanup), clear paint opening up other venues such as Copehill, Sennybridge.
Military sites were hit by more things kicking off in the east and events getting their dates cancelled / postponed and organisers losing money and players losing the specialist interest
And the economy took a hit so people were more careful at picking the game they will put their disposable income into
These do still go on but at a smaller scale
The walkon community’s still go on, and in some cases took the players who will play locally rather than travel to a major event
Martello of Pups & Paintball put together a scenario games collective (or cooperative - I keep calling it the wrong one) to bring back some of the old one day scenarios run by the old names of local teams - partly to bring back the old days, partly to inspire the next generation.
Martello has put together an isolation bundle of PBM magazine back issues on the magazine shop website which would let you see what’s been happening in the last couple of years
Paintfest at NPF was one of my favourites (we also ran a free mini game in their kill house for the last few years, but that’s been shutdown (they announced their wouldn’t be a 2020 game even before Covid happened)
NvS is still going
There’s the woodland masters (I think it’s Holmbush)
There should also be scenarios at Mayhem, campaign, some of the skirmishes etc
MagFed specific games have dropped off, but there still may be some
People have also been doing overseas specials such as an island in Croatia or trips to mainland Europe games
Other than the current lockdown, paintball is still going on out there but you may need to be lucky enough to get the right tips