well it's Monday, the first day of March and the first day after a tiring weekend of travel, paintball and team bonding. Blackthorn Speedball took it's first road trip of the season; heading to Flagswipe paintball's indoor paintball facility in London, ON. We took off from Kingston on Saturday morning, originally planning to be 6 people in a van full of gear, but we ended up being 7 + gear due to a conflict in rides. It made for some pretty tight quarters, but we were off to London. To be quite honest with you, the ride was pretty boring, but the team joking and conversation kept the drive from being unbearable. The rest of our team was heading up the next day ... at least we got to sleep!
We arrived in London fairly early, finding a motel was quite the experience, but a suitable one was found and rooms were acquired. Once we dropped the gear in the rooms, we found a place to eat nearby and made our way over ... 2 pizzas and a pitcher for only $20.00 was worth the deal and the atmosphere was nice and laid back.
After eating, we headed to the field, there was construction that still needed to be done ... you're thinking construction with paintball ... what are they upto? Well in fact we were helping with the setup of Grid Fighters for the trial. What's grid fighters and what trial ... do I have you really confused yet?
Here's the breakdown, straight from the creator of the series:
"This new format gives you plenty of action. You fight for the "Grid" and to control it.Like hockey, 5 players will be on the field of play at all times and will be allowed to rotate with the rest of the roster in the players pit.
Once hit,you run off the field and let a new player on the field. At any given time your allowed to run out and rotate with a player as well.Out of paint? Gun problem? or if you just need to of change the game pace. The ability to rotate will make or break your ability to control the flow of the game.
Unlike other forms of paintball, while you are gun fighting with a opponent ,you need to be aware of the players re-entering the grid. Players have the ability to re-enter by running out by 3 different openings in the runway ,keeping the opponent guessing which one it will be. The runway allows a faster rotation of players and spans the end zones of both ends of the fields. This unique ability to respawn creates non-stop action and flow.
Like football the scoring system will be unique and unseen in any other paintball format.To keep it simple for spectators and allowing them to follow the match easily ,electronic goals are set in the end Zone 5 goals per side (there is a red side and a yellow side).The goals (which are small targets 5 inches in diameter) become illuminated when you shoot a paintball into the goal. The only way you are able to get to an area where you can shoot the goal is to push into your opponents zone but eliminating players and controlling the grid. While using "grid fighting" skills, the opposing team needs to be kept deep in the defensive zone so more targets can get hit. goal is set at a unique angle that only allows it to be hit from a small area on the grid
The game consists of four five minute quarters and you can score a maximum of five points (for the five goals)per quarter. Players are also limited to 2 pods of paint and the contents of their hopper. All markers shoot in semi automatic with no firing modes allowed.
This format will allow any player to shine as it gives the ability to focus player recognition on stats rather than popularity. The Grid fighters will track player performance and stats like ALL major sports and lends itself well to fantasy leagues. Imagine being a your player who no one as ever heard of, climbing your way to the top of the leader board. This format allows individuals as well as teams to shine, regardless of what gear they wear or what gun they shoot"
So that's how the game works, what field setup was needed? we had to assemble the runways at the end of the field, it's quite the task, but we got it done. They left the field at close to 3 AM, we left a little earlier since we needed the sleep before the game the next day and we still had some gun teching to do.
We went back to the motel, teched a little, and decided we were hungry so back to the sports bar we went and after a $20.00 pizza and beer deal we finally got back to the motel and to bed by 1:30AM.
The next morning my cell phone went off at 6:30AM, the rest of our players were in town and needed to know where we were. We gave them the name of the motel and by 6:45AM they were at the doors to our room ... it was time, it was the day we were going to play grid fighters.
We were playing against central ontario freeze, a PSP D3 team made up of strong players that have been playing a long time together, I recognized several as having played at CXBL events at GZ over the summer and was quite impressed that we'd be playing them.
We took the field and kept to within 2 at the end of the first quarter, it was hard, exhausting and my players were having a blast.
We started the 2nd quarter strong and kept the score close until about halfway into the quarter, then we started to loose some of our guns with technical issues and we ended up being short of loaners ... we ran out of guns and started to run out of players. Freeze capitalized on it and took up most of the real estate and a jump in the score ... needless to say we were kind of out of luck in the pits and were unsure what to do next. We started swaping guns between dead players and those waiting to jump in and tried to hold off freeze, it wasn't working so well and we were starting to take a beating, eventually ending up held up in our own runway with freeze players posted on our doors just waiting for us to exit.
We pushed them out of our zone and away from our gates, but the lack of spare players and functioning gear, we were running out of steam fast. We came out beat up and having lost, but we didn't loose our smiles, it was a great day of paintball that we are looking forward to doing again.
We started the long drive home back to Kingston and enjoyed listening to the Canada vs. US Olympic men's hockey gold medal match on the radio ... it's really hard to follow who's going what when all the names are North American, but it was great... GO CANADA!!
We made it home probably around 8pm, tired and some of us were hurting, but we will not give up ... we're coming back ... stronger and better than ever.
more info on Grid Fighters will be released soon, we can't release photos or videos until the official series trailer is released by Mr. Beaudin.
Please note: as we travel around this summer, we will be posting up more and more on our blog. Keep track of what we're up to here on the blog ... you never know when we'll add something!
Thanks,
Mitch
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