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Just to prove that we are completely unbiased in our reviews, we will go so far as to shine the bright light criticism at our own team’s performance at Wolf Creek’s recent Clear and Present Dangerpaintball scenario.  As an unofficial, ‘non-team’ we decided to throw together a number of weekend warriors, who had played together before on various fields, for a common, unified goal, you know…   protecting my old, fat ass. Our ad hoc little team had suffered some last minute cancellations due to the game landing on the Easter holiday weekend. We lost about two thirds of our non-team due to family and travel obligations, as if family and religion were more important than paintball! Some people just need to get their priorities on straight! Clear and presently accounted for was Jason “Foolybear” Lineberger, “Camo Ken” Helfing, Paul “Bubbaloo” Metheney, and Daniel “Radio” Amos (see photo from left to right), all of which had traveled from 80 - 230 miles to be there.

While all the other teams were camo-coordinated, fiercely posed with their guns and game faces on; our team hugged in a girl-sort-of-way patting each other on the asses. It’s not that we were in touch with our feminine sides or that we were channeling Rosie O’Donnell, I think we just needed the warmth. Did I mention 40 degrees? (Okay, maybe Ken was channeling Rosie!) It warmed up quickly and before the first game launched, you could see people losing layers of clothing in anticipation of the upcoming heated battles.

“Camo Ken” Helfing
Ken braved the elements and came out of semi-paintball retirement to make it. To our astonishment and his credit, he lasted the entire day despite fighting off bronchitis. Who says he’s not dedicated?! Ken retires from paintball the way Cher retires from touring. She ain’t singing often, but she ain’t afraid to show some skin when she does! Ken’s the same way. Twice we had to stop him from putting on a sequin bathing suit!

Ken is not afraid to try and out flank someone even if takes him through the upper Michigan peninsula and away from the action. We occasionally have to drag him back to the front lines and away from his dreams of a stealth ambush in order to actually “see” an enemy, but once in it, I am always happy to have Camo Ken covering my back.

Regardless of his bronchitis and partial retirement, Ken bagged an impressive number of kills, some of which through some handy grenade work. We knew the battle was taking its toll on him when he started talking about himself in the third person, a sure sign he is fading fast, but even then Camo Ken was hammering away with his Smart Parts SP8 mil-sim right up until the end of the final battle.

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Jason “Foolybear” Lineberger
One of the interesting moments of the morning for me was, as I went around and took photos of the various teams, everyone I met, had heard of our own Jason “Foolybear” Lineberger from his writing in Splat! Magazine, his Strictly Scenario blog for Splat!, his PB2X.com editorials or just his phenomenal game play! I felt like I was playing with a celebrity! Then I realized that made him more of a target.          And he would be next to me.           In distinctive, Archon, non-camo, paint gear. Looking very much like a major Target.              A big Celebrity Target.  (I wonder if Rogue Cell need an extra hand?)

I’m only kidding. (Who’d want to be on Rogue Cell anyway!?) Foolybear was a blast to play with as he tore through enemy players and inadvertently switched between his bad Russian imitation accent and his really, really bad Colombian accent taunting the Yankee invaders!  (Fooly, Colombia is NOT an island!)

The only fault I could find with Jason’s play that day is his inherit independence. Jason literally sprints from one hot spot to another and if you’re on his team, you can either keep up or move out of the way. He is there to play and the beautiful part of that is, he kills enough guys on his own to not need a team backing him up. Lordy, don’t try to slow him down! He got frustrated with some technical difficulties with the radio and after he abandoned that it was even harder to track his location. I wanted to tag him like on Wild Kingdom and see if we could track his migration!

One thing came to mind as I watched Jason play, was the old adage about Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth had more home runs than anyone in his day, but he also had the most strikeouts! Babe Ruth also had the record for the most times at bat. Jason was decimating the enemy, but was getting shot so often he looked like a Jack-In-The-Box in and out of the Dead Zone. You could tell he loves the game and was not afraid of a little (LOT) of aggression and trading paint. As much as he gets into the role playing, the action, the industry, and the experience, you can tell he looks at this as FUN and keeps the perspective that this is a GAME.

Deal or No Deal
One of his biggest impacts on the outcome of the game (our Drug Cartel won by the way!) didn’t have anything to do with shooting paint. Right off the bat, he almost single handedly (in his worst Frito-Bandito accent) negotiated an alliance with the Colombian general to immediately swing the tide of the battle in our favor. Now granted, the alliances struck throughout the day didn’t always last long and usually involved some shooting someone else in the back, but hey! how many drugs deals don’t typically turn out poorly for someone? Fully immersed in the role-playing aspect of the scenario, Fooly had started the first of many deals made that day. At one point, we started calling him “Howie Mandel”.

Foolybear is a guy I would have on my team any day of the week, if for no other reason, than he is too damned dangerous to have on the other side!

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Daniel “Radio” Amos
 Amos is a long time rec paintballer, but relatively new to organized scenarios. “Radio” is by far the youngest member of our little non-team-band of brothers and hasn’t yet picked up the knack of knowing when we are busting his chops. Then again, Ken’s sarcastic sense of humor (?) is a bit on the dry side and an acquired taste. Most of us just ignore him. Amos was literally dying to get into an organized, objective-style mission and kept getting assigned to kill ‘em all type assaults and finally picked up a couple of drugs-for-money transfer missions (the bread and butter to us Colombian Drug Cartel players).Amos, like Jason, is a fiercely independent player and if we could keep track of him, we could tell you how he could improve his game. We have definitely voted him our communications chief and feel he has a strong future in broadcast radio. He’s like a paintball pitbull. Deadly, but you can’t keep him on a leash!Amos was sporting a brand new BT Ironhorse with an attached (non-remote) compressed air tank that made the whole marker system weigh more than he does. The thing shoots deadly accurate and as far as any paintball marker I have ever seen. IF you’re man enough to carry it. Evidently, Amos is. I can barely lug my my own butt around 80 acres of woods, let alone carry that cannon. If Dirty Harry were a paintballer, he would carry an Ironhorse, but only because Smith & Wesson doesn’t make paintball markers.Look for Amos to start being a regular at these scenarios. He got the state of blood in his mouth and like any good killer, we can’t get him to gargle it out!

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Paul “Bubbaloo” Metheney
 I have no idea where that nickname came from. Ask Ken. Maybe from my hillbilly heritage. Certainly not any fondness for the musical genious of Ricky Ricardo. I do love the game. I played some in the 90’s with some military buds of mine from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. About a year ago, my company, Metheney Consulting, Inc., took a group of friends, business associates and clients to Greenville to play for a corporate event and we had a great time. I caught the bug and since the fall have been playing more or less weekly. I work as a web developer and online marketing consultant and spend 14 hours a day behind a computer, so paintball tends to be my primary exercise and source of fresh air.I am guilty of all of the above tendencies of my temporary teammates above. I tend to be more than usually aggressive which tends to my getting shot somewhat more than usual. I’m a typical Type A Alpha Male (hey, 15 years in management!) and try to lead by example, so while I tend to bark direction to the troops, whether I was asked to or not, I am also usually the one in the front lines trading shots. Like Ken, I prefer sneaky stealth attacks to head-to-head shoot ‘em-ups. I invariably lose drawn-out shoot outs, this could have something to do with my ’slender’ frame finding adequate cover behind sapling trees. I’m too old and fat to outrun and outgun, but I can still be mean and sneaky. Old and Treacherous beats Young and Inexperienced every time. I am a fanatic about true teamwork and communication. There’s an old saying that say “You can’t outrun Motorola.” Give me a good team and some working radios and I can do some damage. I am also a big fan of leafy suits and ghillie suits, but comfort and the temperature sometimes makes that impractical. My long term paintball goal is show these kids (anyone under 40) that the old guys can still kick it and be just as dangerous.I’ve been modifying a Tippman Custom 98 for the last year with a response trigger, red dot sight, 4500 psi compressed air with remote, a 21″ sniper barrel, camouflaged out with a ghillied Halo hopper. The gun has been dependable, sturdy as hell, and consistent. Lately, I have been noticing that it is not as good at long distance, even with the extended barrel, as some of the newer tech guns. I borrowed  Ken’s Spyder MR2 (he was using his SP8) during the Wolf Creek scenario and while the gun malfunctioned with a  jam, I fell in love with its full auto, burst and single shot capabilities. I believe that tactics and stealth are more important than full auto fire power, but there are times when laying down a rain of paint would come in damned handy.The low point of my day was my (once-a-week) face plant where, due to the limited visibility of my mask, my crappy eye sight, and general lack of coordination, tripped on a vine and landed face down in the push up position…    staring at sharpened sapling stump about 2 inches around and six inches long, pointed right at, and about 6 inches from my right eye. I stayed in that position a loooong time; thinking about life, the universe and my place in it. Nothing like a natural pungee stick to put a make believe game in perspective. 

The (Non-) Team Overall
We made every mistake a team could make. As pretty much expected with little or no preparation. We went into this scenario with nothing more than our natural abilities.

• We had lousy communication
• Didn’t coordinate
• Generally ran around like a bunch of gung-ho kids wanting to shoot everything in sight. 
• We didn’t practice.
• We didn’t work out team strategies.
• We didn’t demonstrate any radio or communication discipline.
• We didn’t practice any team maneuvers.
• We didn’t discuss team agendas.
• We didn’t play off each others strengths and weaknesses.
• I would have been more than happy to defer command to the more experienced Foolybear, but he came on-board expecting to be a hired gun.

So did we suck completely? No.

• Some of us had a pretty good body count.
• Individually, we demonstrated some pretty sound tactical thinking and positioning.
• We were respectful of the refs, even when we knew they were wrong about a certain call. (more on that later)
• We didn’t take ourselves seriously or have ego issues that some teams get to extreme.
• We made some new friends and connections in the Carolina paintball world.
• We ended the day with no blood spilt or injuries that a good masseuse couldn’t fix.
• We had a great deal of fun, which above everything else, is the most important thing in paintball.

What can we learn from all this?

April 26th, a new and improved version of our non-team takes to the road to play at Command Decision’s Viet Nam Patrol 2008. Practice. Practice. Practice.

See ya then.