Team Tango Alpha2, at a recent team meeting, has decided to use some of the money it has generated over the past  year to directly benefit its current (and future) team members. Among those planned benefits are: paying for team members’ events for 2010, free entry and paintballs into Fulda Gap2010, a new rocket launcher and rockets for anti-tank/bunker busting, and new team shirts, banners and additional UHF radios. It’s good to be a Tango!

The economy sucks. Unemployment is at a record high and luxuries like playing paintball sometimes take a back seat to minor items like rent, gas and food. Attendance at some of the events this year was testimony to how much the economy has impacted paintball. Read more

For years, the Thornhill community in Ballantyne has been having its children terrified. This October 31st starting at nightfall, The Haunted Garage of Death at 10622 Back Ridge Rd in Charlotte, will open its doors once again to release the nightmares within… completely free to all trick or treaters.

From industrial style fog machines to power saw wielding zombies, the Metheney family, friends (and members of Team Tango Alpha2) host a one night haunted stop for South Charlotte children of all ages.

“It keeps getting larger each year.” says Paul Metheney. “It started as just a few of us in makeup as scharacters, but then we converted our 3 car garage into a small maze that the kids must traverse to get their candy at the end. Most are so scared that they run right past the candy bowl to escape. The parents enjoy it as much as the kids. The best compliment we ever had was a teenage girl screaming at us as she vaulted over a moving 6’ spider to escape, “YOU PEOPLE ARE A BUNCH OF FREAKS!”

“Last year, we had over to 350 kids go in and at least 347 come out. We did find enough pieces to make up the last three.”

The terror begins at approximately 7pm (or as soon as it gets dark) and will run until about 11pm.

The Metheney’s invite you to Trick or Treat at…

The Haunted Garage of Death!

Bring your little (or not so little) victims for some Halloween terror and candy starting at dark on Saturday, October 31st.

Take 485 to Rea Rd, go south. Turn right on Ballantyne Commons, right on Elm, left on Elmstone. In Thornhill, take Elmstone one mile  away from the theater and then turn right on Back Ridge  and the terror begins almost at the end of the road.
10622 Back Ridge Road

Side effects may include:  dizziness, dryness of mouth, nausea, diabetes, tremors, heart palpitations and temporary loss of bladder control. Not for women who are pregnant or nursing. The Metheney’s and any zombies (living or dead) associated with them are not responsible for any loss of limbs, life, nightmares, delusions,  hysterics or damage experienced by anyone caught dead of a mile of the place.

You know you’re in touch with your feminine side when you can fess up to “Tweeting” over lattes. In an effort to get more in touch with what these crazy kids are doing these days (I am channeling everybody’s father right now), Team Tango is going Web 2.0 with pages on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.  Adapt and overcome. That’s my motto. (Didn’t use to have one, but I read that on Greenman’s Tweets.) After doing the initial set-up, I am turning the reins of our experimental adventure of terror into Social Networking over to some of our younger and newer members. Their jobs will be to make sure that the latest Tango/Paintball-oriented news gets updated. And to not get me arrested. Sign up today to be our Friend, Buddy, Follower or Twit-Bitch, as the case may be. You can be assured that, like everything else in the universe,  all this will change, evolve and eventually be screwed up bya  guy named Gates.

I was just checking over the admin portion of this site and thought I would share couple of quick factoids. This week, TangoAlpha2.com, (this blog) celebrates over 150 articles written in the last 20 months (for you math majors that is averaging nearly 8 articles per month). We have over 200+ subscribers plus an unknown number of unregistered readers. All the major fields in the Carolinas subscribe and receive updates, as well as nearly all the major teams in the region. In the past few months we have been averaging one or two new subscribers every day. Not bad for an “afterschool” hobby. Read more

After a year and half, the Team: Tango Alpha2 site finally gets a minor facelift. Changes include a new flash home page with shots of some of the team in action, an RSS feed from the blog on the lower right of the home page to keep viewers up to date, and a new banner on the secondary pages. Content has been tweaked and the team schedule updated as much as possible. One little used feature of the site is a catalog of tactical maps from most of the local fields. Any fields wishing to submit their maps can send them to paul@tangoalpha2.com .

The team itself took a partial break during the summer months due to the economy and the heat, but is fully back in action. (Trying to find a large, well organized, scheduled scenario is a bit more difficult these days.) With some practices and rec days coming up, the team is getting geared up to play at Adventure Beach on October 3rd and command the 117th for the Warsaw Pact at Fulda Gap at Command Decisions in November.

The team is recruiting for general team membeship and for the Warsaw Pact, playing as part of the 117th. Sign up today for Fulda Gap!

Action Pursuit Games magazine has a new editor-in-chief and you may see a few differences in the future. For one thing, instead of just seeing articles about events 3 months AFTER they occur, you can now get sneak peeks at UPCOMING events, such the preview of Command Decisions‘ Fulda Gap coming this November 6-8 to Taylorsville, NC. In the “November” 2009 issue (which came out in August?), the very first feature in the magazine is the “pre-game warmup” for the biggest game in the east coast. Read more

Okay, not literally. Ole Lar is probably a pretty good guy (as weathermen go), but while you’re waiting for Doppler Radar to tell you what the weather is going to be like 2 months from now, your local paintball field owner is freaking out because nobody is pre-registering for his events. Paintballers have always been that way and it seems unlikely that this article will change their procrastinating ways, but  let’s give it a shot, shall we? Read more

Ferg from Command Decisions sent this to me. This is probably not a surprise to anyone, but it seems that Team: Tango Alpha2 was voted number 8 of the Top 12 Most Disturbing Paintball Teams. Weirdly, we just narrowly beat out ODX at number 9 (and they have TANKS!).  Oobject.com puts up various lists and somehow our team ranked. Now I know we ARE ‘disturbed’, but ‘disturbing’? Well, I guess we will take it as flattery. At least they spelled our names right. The photo was taken at Vietnam Heat about 16 months ago. I don’t even know who SOME of those guys are! I am a little concerned that we ranked more disturbing than a team made up of all Indians… and an American vs Iraq Jordanian team. Well, come to think of it, we do have a couple of guys from Matthews, NC that worry me a bit. Ferg and I decided that you should go up and vote for us. If we’re going to do something, we might as well be the best… even if it is being The Most Disturbing. (I send ‘em a picture of me in my Spiderman Underoo Pajamas and we win hands down!) I got your disturbing right HERE!

After a few years of the same look and feel, the Fulda Gap web site (FuldaGap.com) has gotten a little facelift. Not a stretched-my-chin-around-to-my-ears-”Nip/Tuck” overhaul, but an update in navigation and style. The site was designed and developed by Metheney Consulting, Inc. (don’t make me use the word ‘geniuses’ out loud!) and keeps the old site’s color scheme and sense of history while using a Top Secret briefing folder as its metaphor. You’ll also see some new patch/logo designs that go on the site, one design for NATO and one for the Warsaw Pact. The site is still a work in progress, in that Ferg and Lee Ann are updating the field, so the maps may change and new sponsors are signing up everyday. If you have comments or suggestions for the site, please send them to info@scenariosupply.com.

Dear paintball producers and field owners,
We, the players of the world’s greatest sport, have only one recourse left. Outright grovelling and begging. We’re not above it and not ashamed to resort to it. But for the love of Tippman, please get it together and figure out what you’re doing.  Two words: “game scheduling”.

In the last five months, at least 8 major games in our area have canceled, changed, or rescheduled at the last minute, raising hell with players schedules, lives and more importantly how much fun we can have. Read more