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Team Akicita Central Indiana Scenario Paintball Team
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Viper Scenarios Judge Dredd: Origins '07
The Judges Take The Day At Sherwood Forest This game was a highly anticipated game for a lot of people that frequent Sherwood Forest. Based on the comic Judge Dredd in the very popular 2000 AD comic series, this is the first installment of several games in the Dredd Universe. This one was entitled 'Origins' and was based on the serial of the same name that brought about the introduction of how the judges came to power in Mega-City One. Now while canon dictates all the roles to be men, there were quite a few women who stepped up to take leading roles in the event. Leading the judges as Chief Justice Charlotte Goodman was Peppermint Patty Schneider of In Contempt and filling out some of her role players was Gail "Trouble" Ferency, Barrie 'Nudi' Reid and Jess 'All Wound Up" Schneider. Taking the role of the President of the Unites States Robert Booth was Tim 'T' Erickson of Team WOW and filling out some of his role players were Jason "Beest" Clark, Brian "Boomer" Mitchum and Tim "Thespis" Fandrei. All in all about 165 players showed up for an awesome weekend with temperatures in the 70's and 80's during the day and the 50's at night. Sherwood is known for several things and first and foremost of that is the castle that Joe Stayback has been building on for the last 7 years. I remember my first game at Sherwood when the Castle was just getting put down and to see it now makes me realize that the castle at Sherwood will be here long after I have stopped playing paintball. Another thing that Sherwood is known for is the great players and sportsmanship that goes on at the field. At the past few games there have been a few air issues but Joe fixed that by bringing in the guys from Paintball Indiana Inc and they did an awesome job with never less then a 4500 fill if you wanted it. There was a paint issue with the paint not wanting to break, but Viper was on the phone with Archon and they brought out new paint and people swapped it out with few issues. Because some people didn't get the memo or know that they could turn it back in, there were some unhappy people. Bu Viper and Joe came back at the end of the event to bring this out, bring your Judge Dredd Badge to the May game and you get $15.00 off your first case of paint. Now how is that for caring about the players and making sure that they are happy? The sides while small were some of the better known teams of the area and with the smaller group of walk-ons allowed for a lot of hard play. Viper went over the rules and addendums at the player orientation. The extras for this game included an air-to-ground/air-to-air 'helo' that simulated the Lawmasters and ABC Robots that frequent the pages of the comic. They could only be used by Judges or Robots so those players with that on their cards had to wear their team side tape (red or blue) as well as a yellow arm band tape. Since the Judges wouldn't be caught dead out of uniform and it is hard to hide a robot, these made sense in the game world. Other extras included a walking tank and quite a few LAW's that are always a hallmark of Sherwood Forest. The game started on Saturday right on time as Viper likes to do things and the teams surged towards the middle of the field. Several things to talk about with Viper's games. First and foremost, he uses atomic clocks for everything. Insertion clocks are atomic, he wears an atomic watch on his wrist, and the missions are called in via another clock. So the smart paintball players would go out and get atomic wrist watches so that they are always set to the same time as the game world. You can pick them up for around $30 bucks and they are always good. Most auto update but you can manually force one as well. This works really well for RTS but it works just as well for his scenario games as he likes to run his games by the clock. Another thing is that before each game segment, Viper gives the commanders their first missions to run. On Saturday, the first game segment, it is four missions and then on Saturday night and Sunday it is 2. They vary from segment to segment but almost always include a drop box or wo for the sides to pick up. Unlike some promoters out there, you start off with 5 MOS cards per side. A MOS card is your pilots, demolitions, engineers, medics and snipers. This is the knowledge card that grants the player the abilities of the OS (Occupational Specialty). The supply cards, which are bandage cards (medic), rebuild cards (engineer), C-4(demo), Fuel (pilot) and sniper shots (sniper) are all in the drop boxes. They are placed with 150 feet of the bases, but that doesn't mean that you need to take your time getting them as the other side has and does sometimes get the box that is meant to be for you. If that happens then they get extra supplies and your side gets less. And that can be the key to the game, believe it or not. This is also where you get the money you need to purchase specific things and for Intel updates. But back to the game, both sides pushed the center field rather quickly as in this game there was a mission to clear a block of all enemies. As anyone who knows anything about Judge Dredd may be aware, there are huge blocks that people live on. They are named after famous people and people are very territorial about their blocks. However Judges and the Army alike would have to pacify the blocks by cleaning out the areas listed on the map and holding it clean for ten minutes. And this was probably one of the hardest missions in the game just based on sheer numbers of players. And that is part of the reason that the game was very much back and forth on Saturday. In most games at Sherwood, there are at least 300 or so people so that you can set up a skirmish line as a commander and hold defense at the fifty yard line. This was not to be the case with only 80 or so people on a side and with missions coming in every 15 minutes that called for 10 to 20 people to run them. As such, neither side prepared a good base security and spent most of Saturday trading base drops with Patty slightly coming out on top, although T's forces got his cookies first. Several times during the day play, the Lawmasters or Robots took to the air. The kicker to these devices was the fact that they were only allowed 5 minutes of fuel time or they crashed. And they were expensive to buy back, so it behooved you not to let them crash. The White House side drew first blood with the robots going in the air and clearing the center of the field. The judges retaliated with Jason 'Sweeper' Schneider of In Contempt taking the first run on the Lawmasters to the castle. And then the battle sort of stalemated as both sides started running missions almost neck for neck. However before the final battle the judges had pulled to a 4 mission lead. One of the most memorable moment in the day time occurred when Judge Joseph Dredd (yours truly) walked up to a huge firefight and pulled his Lawgiver pistol and yell, "Good Morning Citizens, you are in violation of Penal code 56454, possession of deadly weapons in commission of a crime. Throw down your weapons and prepare to be judged." He then ran up to players asking them how they pled and pronounced the verdict of guilty and then passed the sentence of elimination by shooting them. This would be replayed later by the Dredd brothers, but we will get to that soon enough. Dinner battle would be in the castle area over 5 slapsticks that split the 50 of both sides. The slapsticks push away from and towards the players and the deal is, that if the slapstick is away from you then it is going to be yours. The slapsticks are worth 5 points each so neither side is shut out of the battle even if all they get is one slapstick. The dinner battle was single elimination, 30 minute fight, meaning that when you got eliminated you were out. Whoever had control of the slapstick at the end got the points. The battle started off rather well for the judges who pushed the White House troops all over the field. However the red side (White House) did hold the castle which gave them the high ground and control of just about every slap stick save one for lane of fire purposes. The judges (blue side) pushed hard on the far tape line and even crossed the 50 and started to press hard on the red side. However the forces in the castle pulled back a little and pushed hard back eliminating most of the blue forces on that side. With less then 30 seconds left in the game the red side made a huge push and secured 3 of the 5 slapsticks leaving the judges with just 2. Going into night time play is always a rush for some people and a dread for others. The night vision assets weren't split evenly and they really can't be all the time. Just because someone has night vision doesn't mean that they know how to use them. However the red side had a plan that they affection ally called 'Loud and Proud'. What it did was take several million candle watt Q-beams and pointed in different directions, they would make off making as much noise as they could with the intention of spotting the people trying to move up on them and shoot them. They saw some success with this tactic, but the question of how much didn't answered too much as most of the night vision assets were tasked with running missions with a few detailed for base assaults as the night wore on. As it seemed to go in May, the night time base assaults took their toll and by 10:30 most of the red players were ready to bring the game down. Loud and Proud had provided some fruit but not enough to keep playing in the cold. The final mission was a take and hold at a spool in the field directly behind the castle and Judge Joseph Dredd got there first and got his mission started. About 5 minutes later up came the White House staff, with their lights and noise and they were going to start their mission. The ref went to get clarification and it was eventually determined that neither side got credit for the mission. The judges because Judge Dredd got barrel tagged with 5 minutes left of his mission while hiding in a stump right in front of the 'Loud and Proud' brigade and the White House because they started the mission so late because they couldn't take and hold it until they killed all the bad guys there first. And with that, the game wound down at 11:00 pm with the players heading to their respective amps and getting to bed. Sunday broke, clear and cool and back to some awesome paintball weather. Once again both sides had clear block missions but in the night it seemed that the red side had lost most of their walk-on's (about 25 players) and so that took them down a bit in forces. For you guys that see the walk on's and want to help your side, why not talk to them and let them know that there are two days of game play and that they shouldn't shoot all their paint on Saturday. We lost maybe 5 players because someone on our side (cough, cough) took the time to let them know what was going to happen when they shot all their paint and left. There was also some speculation that after the night time base assaults the lead had moved up to around 8 missions, so while not unwinnable, it was going to be an uphill battle. However the red never quit, they never stopped playing as hard as they could and it showed. Sunday also saw the emergence of both Dredd brothers as Judge Rico (Cody 'Hawk' Lawton) and Joseph Dredd (yours truly) pulled up outside the Congress building and ordered the Army to throw down their weapons and prepare to be judged. There is talk that the TV Show 'The Streets of Dan Francisco' even got footage of it (look for a you tube link soon). However in the end, Judge Rico Dredd's Lawmaster was hit and Judge Joseph Dredd was made to finish the judgment. Sunday saw the lead for the judges pull ahead even more as they red side was made to pick and choose the missions that they could run and the constant base assaults didn't help morale or numbers on the field. But there were some great robot runs from the Region Rats and they were returned by 1MG and Darksyde for the Judges. At 12:30 there was a 30 minute stand down to prepare for final battle and then the players met back out at the castle. This would be an hour long battle with the first 30 minutes, single elimination and the final 30 minutes constant insertion that so many people are used to. The objective; the slapsticks as before and this would be determined by who had the skill and the paint to hold it. The battle see-sawed back and forth with some great runs by teams on both sides. In the end however, despite a huge rush before the bird banger, the judges secured and held all five slapsticks, thus securing the win. The awards ceremony and prize drawings were held directly after the game with sponsors like Tippmann, Smart Parts, Python Paintball, Smokin Pants, and Archon giving up guns, loaders, masks and barrels. Then you had FreeBallin a vendor who comes out to Sherwood games and kicks in to the prize package quite a bit for the players. Viper and Joe thanked everyone who attended and Joe promised more work to be finished up before the May game. Viper announced that the May game would be the 2nd chapter in the Judge Dredd storyline that will encompass the next few games there. And then the commanders got up and gave out their awards and said their thank you’s. Both commanders were full of class and smiles as the scores were read, and while someone had to lose, I must say that the red side did so with the kind of class that should be emulated by anyone on that side of the stick. I am looking forward to my next Sherwood game in May; you guys should come out and give it a try. Score: Judges 593.25 - White
House 350 Judges - Commander Patty
Schneider White House - Commander Tim
'T' Erickson
Article taken from TB over on WorldofTB.com |