How many times can these guys be involved in a World War in one month? The beginning of the November saw the Russians as part of the Axis of Evil at Fulda Gap, then the end of the month witnessed them fighting off World War II Nazis at MPP’s Stalingrad: Blood and Iron at Paintball Charleston on Nov 22-23rd. (I know! I know! it’s taken me a month to get around to this article. What can I say? I’m a busy guy!) How like art to imitate life. Can you say “Allies/Cold War/Detente”? I think you can. Now repeat it ten times. If the Russians are somewhat bi-polar when it comes to allies; their latest foes, World War II Nazis, are pretty much the universal poster children for bad manners. Read more

Nov 7th, Command Decisions Wargame Center (www.cdpaintball.com) in Taylorsville, NC hosted the Platoon Leader Mil-Sim Invitational. If the blog seems to be the CDWC newsletter lately… well, you throw your line in where the fish are biting! Early November belongs to Command Decisions in the Carolinas. The Platoon Leader Invitational just helped reinforce that this year.

Originally the game was scheduled in August, but CDWC moved it to the day before Fulda Gap to keep the out of state players from having to chose between two major events and to avoid the heat. The only problem is… he made it on a work day. This, above all, probably hurt attendance as did the cost of the two day Fulda Gap event piled on top of it. Ferg assures me next year the two events will be separate and the Mil-Sim event may even be a two day event. About 40 players took to the field whereas the original concept was to cap it at 100. Hmph! Some bosses have no concept of what “sick days” entail! Read more

Who Says the Real Estate Market is Down?

Fulda Gap (www.FuldaGap.com) on Nov. 8-9th at Command Decisions Wargames Center (www.cdpaintball.com) in Taylorsville, NC, was a game about taking and holding bases. Keeping real estate. The good news is that “taking the real estate” is a blast, literally. The bad news is that holding it… sucks. This means guard duty. Usually, where the battle is not. The sad but true portion of that story is that the “holding” is just as important to scoring the points. It is very hard for action junkies like paintball players to sit by and do nothing when they can hear the roar of hundred of paintball guns firing while they guard empty huts. To the Warsaw Pact’s credit, almost every unit I ran across did some sort of guard duty that weekend to share the “fun”. Even the most action-oriented teams such as Rogue Cell, Recon-1, Team:Tango Alpha2, and Greenman’s Czech paratroopers did tours of duty protecting wood covered cemeteries. Even, Capital Offense, our Spetznatz special ops force, held Apache until relieved. Read more

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. Read more

Occasionally you get surprised in paintball. Usually, they are nasty ones like the bush you just stepped around has more bad guys in it than a Quentin Tarrantino movie. Paintball Kingdom in Marshville, NC provided us with plenty of surprises and almost all of them were pleasant and welcomed. When you pull up to the site, the first thing you notice is that it’s someone’s driveway. You overlook the building to the left and focus on the rickety, long (huge) Chicken Coop in the back, thinking “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” Read more

BR Sports, formerly Black River Paintball, hosted “Valor vs. Venom” Saturday, August 16th, to a packed crowd of serious action junkies. The game pitted the forces of G.I. Joe versus the nefarious Cobra in the ongoing battle of Good vs. Evil. The field, located in Fayetteville (actually ON Fort Bragg property), saw 450+ players fight off the summer heat and the opposing army with everything they had… and then some. Read more

It’s bad enough when the bad guys beat you, it worse when you have to sing the Star Spangled Banner in front of 120 people on a bet, it’s a frigging nightmare when the stupid bet was your idea in the first place! That’s exactly what happened at Wolf Creek’s Vietnam Heat: Operation Cedar Falls recently!

The producer of the game, Andrew “Ferg” Ferguson of Tactical Diversions (otherwise known as Command Decision’s Wargame Center), asked me if I would like to general at July 19th event and after checking with my team to make sure they were up for the challenge, we agreed.  I have to admit I had a couple of late nights worrying about the score possibly ending up at 2000 - 0. I had never generaled a scenario before, but was pretty sure we (the team) could handle it. That’s what I get for thinking! Read more

 If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, the road to success is paved with planning, marketing and hard work. Saturday, July 28th saw the kick off (punt?) of X-treme Tactical Paintball and Carolina Panther’s DeAngelo Williams’ “Army of Ten“, a ten-man team woodsball tournament at the Waxhaw, NC field. The tournament had every INTENTION of being a phenomenal event for scenario paintball. Blend a world class athlete and NFL football star who loves to play paintball, mix in $5,000 out of his own pocket as prize money, toss in a naturally, wooded scenario paintball field, throw in a dash of testosterone and competition and you should have a helluva tournament, right?       Right?  Is this microphone on?  (Where does that road lead again?) Read more

 In Part One (”Against Recon1: A Moron’s Story”), I bored you to tears with one of several battles from when Recon 1 invited us to join their team holiday “practice”. Mostly, they just “practiced” slapping my squad around like Bobby does Whitney. But without doubt, it was one of the most enjoyable slapdowns we’ve had in a long time. (You have to pay extra for that in Vegas you know!) Read more

Clyde Hartsell didn’t set out to make one of the best paintball fields in the Charlotte area, he wanted to sell the land to property developers. The way property values have grown, he would have made a fortune. He purchased the 75 acres that now includes the Boss Paintball field (http://bossproshops.com/golddiggers/index.htm) as a quick land investment. That was eight years ago. Lucky for us, it didn’t work out that way. Today, Boss Paintball, formerly known as GoldDiggers (very close to the historical Reed Gold Mine) is one of the best wooded scenario fields in the area.  There may come a time at some point in the far distant future where a land developer will offer Clyde the right number of zeroes for the land, but until then, Carolina paintballers have struck gold again in Locust, NC, about 20 miles of east of Charlotte.

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