Every November, Command Decisions Wargames Center (www.cdpaintball.com) in Taylorsville, NC hosts one of the largest scenarios in the Mid-Atlantic and players from all over the southeast save up their rubles to participate. This is the one game all year, all Carolina players wait for. This year’s Fulda Gap did not disappoint them. The nearly 600 player Fulda Gap (www.FuldaGap.com) event leaned more toward a real military simulation than paintball game as the strategy, battles and even the hiccups more closely resembled real life military situations than your typical paintball game. Players came from all over the southeast to participate in the one of the fastest growing scenarios in paintball.

The Fate of Heineken Rest in Your Hands

The real “Fulda Gap” is a valley located strategically where Soviet forces would have theoretically driven their tanks between former East and West Germany. Named after the town of Fulda in Germany, this “gap” represents a tactical doorway into all of Europe. CDWC creates a historically-based, futuristic scenario (figure that out!) where the Warsaw Pact and NATO forces clash (year after year) for control of this valley and consequently most of European continent. If NATO fails, millions will come under the iron hand of Soviet rule. No pressure there.

What Hills?

It’s taken me more than week to fully recover enough to even write about it. The two day Fulda Gap event was preceded by the Platoon Leader Mil-Sim Invitational (keep watching for that article right here as well. Seriously. I will get to it, I swear!). So essentially, what you have is three days of running up and down some of the steepest paintball terrain in NorthCarolina pretending you’re in shape (”round” is a shape right?) with Saturday including a night game. You could have bounced quarters off the Charley Horse/leg cramps in my thighs and that was on Friday night!

Overplanning or Underplanning?

Where was I? Oh yeah, Fulda Gap. If you start at the beginning, you need to go back about a year. This was when Team Boxer picked up the reins of commanding the Warsaw Pact side and began planning. (I love these guys, but this just means they really need to get a life; if you are planning a war game a YEAR in advance!) Kent “X-Man” Jones, the XO of Team Boxer was the commander in chief for all Warsaw Pact forces and due a last minute (a couple of weeks prior actually), Ray “Harley Hunk” Adams from O.D.X. was named the general for the NATO army. Harley picked up command when the original general had to abdicate for personal reasons and the short lead time may have contributed to how the events of the weekend transpired.

Let the Games Begin

The scenario started out withthe Special Ops Forces of both sides entering the field slightly earlier than traditional forces, but in no time, the two armies were facing off across the two opposing bases. The Warsaw Pact base was Gotha (commonly known to CDWC players as Bravo) at the north end of the field and the NATO base was immediately across the open field/valley at Camp Lee (better known as Firebase Rex).  At first, the battle almost looked like a Civil War recreation. Two armies lined up against each other, on an open field, taking long potshots.

Since I was on the Warsaw Pact side, I can’t give you much insight to Harley’s strategy (or what happened on the NATO side of the skirmishes), but I can tell you more about the Warsaw Pact’s plan. Originally, they were going to have our “Dagger Squad” (about 25 players) defend our HQ, Gotha, for the first half hour until a tactical nuke took out their base at Camp Lee. Then Dagger would run down the tape line into the woods toward Frankfurt (Sim City) and harass and try to take Sim City. All the while, the majority of our other forces would flank around and take key elements on the western and southern ends of the field. The nuke would make their center base uninhabitable for the day, removing a large number of players temporarily and relieving pressure on our base from that side for the day.

Then Reality Kicked In

Everything went according to plan… to a certain point. The Warsaw Pact, through the efforts of E.P.I.C. Unit 117th Guard and Team Boxer’s Runaway’s 39th Guard (whose Dagger Squad was comprised mostly of Team: Tango Alpha and some Boxers) used a tremendous amount of fire discipline to hold fire until the NATO forces tried to rush across the valley and we simply picked them off one at a time. You try telling trigger happy paintballers who have waited all year for this game NOT to fire. But to their credit, they held back, (well mostly). E.P.I.C. and a few others used some suicidal speedball tactics to take jabs at the NATO frontline and everything was going to plan. The nuke goes off on schedule. The base is defended.

Then, just like in the real military, the plan goes sideways.

Not as many NATO soldiers were in the base as expected. Most were on the frontlines on the north side of the base, harassing our base, so the nuke, while eliminating their base for the day, did not take out as many as expected. Then their tanks rolled up the tapeline. The same tapeline we were going to use to penetrate into Frankfurt. So we have surplus of NATO soldiers and tanks right where we want to send 25 players. Eh… maybe not. Like good military tacticians, the Warsaw leadership adapted. Team Krisis used artillery guns shooting Nerf rockets like surgical scalpels to remove tanks and the Warsaw Pact’s 39th Guard forces used good fire discipline to hold off a substantially larger force and managed to defend our base. New plans were made and while the initial portion of the plan to overrun Frankfurt was stalled, the overall battle plan pretty much held up.

Tanks for the Memories

Fulda Gap included artillery, anti-tank weapons and about 6 full sized tanks and pugs. The only time I called for tank support all weekend (to get some pinned down teammates out of danger), the four-wheeler “tank” flipped over backwards going up too steep a hill too quickly. Imagine. Hills at CDWC! No one was hurt, and if it wasn’t for my troops getting whacked, would have been a funny moment.

Another memorable tank moment was Rodney Smith of Team O.D.X. taking the oldest player (Ruth Moss, an 80 year old cancer survivor) around in the Beast and into their biggest battle of Sunday. Ruth had flown all the way from Ohio to come to FuldaGap and we surprised her with the tank ride. (Ruth is my mother-in-law.) Dressed in camouflage and a tankers helmet that was so heavy it made her head look like a wobbly bobble head, Ruthclimbed into the tank, asking for a gun to shoot with a n evil grin on her face. Rodney had even sent a golf cart to our tent to escort her to the tank. Besides her award for oldest player, free tee-shirt and patches from  Andrew “Ferg” Ferguson, the producer of the game, Ruthenjoyed her first paintball game ever and first tank ride. Special thanks to Rodney Smith and his tank team for making her welcome and making her day!

Coming in a day or three…  “For the Glory of Mother Russia! Part 2″
Photos by Melinda Metheney. Sorry guys, the really good photos went to PB2X for magazine articles.