Paintball Stuff

Get ready for a long-ish edition of stuff coming at ya on a Friday. First up, I'll be re-posting the 'The Mech Warrior' (from Baca's Blog over at the Big Bullet) over the weekend for those lazy slackers too lazy to click over. Why, because it has competitive paintball relevance unlike most Baca's Blog posts.

Video editions of MAO matches are now up at the PSP, soon to be VFTD's official major league website that blows the most. Even if you saw them live I would recommend you watch them again, this time focusing on learning something along the way. It's not only entertainment a potentially valuable tool as well.

I'm enjoying the website challenge poll so much I'm gonna start doing one every week on Mondays. Next week's topic will be the Millennium.

Speaking of the Millennium there's a couple fresh news items up on their website from boss Barry Fuggle and the website representing the combined might of the pro-paintball forces in Germany. Both are encouraging participation in the Bitburg event to show the politicians and media what paintball is really all about. And it seems to be working as registrations in the open divisions jumped this week from near single digits to numbers that could, with a few more days of registration available, match Malaga. Hopefully that's all that will match Malaga and no one will ask for too many explanations as make-up matches are made-up along with the Bitburg schedule. Otherwise the professional presentation of elite competitive paintball might not be overly impressive. Just saying.
Oh, and it's nothing to do with anything really but what's with the odd spelling of Bitburg in both posted items? Kind regards

The PSP is also trying out a couple new divisions in Chicago and try as I might, I couldn't help but wonder how they fit in the context of the UCP, the Universal Classification Program. The mere mention of the UCP should be more than enough to make the regulars here cringe but if you are out of that loop and want to suffer along with everybody else look here, here and here. (Don't blame me, you were warned.) (And besides, there's lots more where that came from.)
Anyway, I can see the "new" D4 being a variation on D3 Intro so that's not a huge deal although, it seems to me, there was a reason it was originally called D3 Intro. As for D2 Race2-2 it's really mostly a kind of catch-all to scoop up a few more teams, isn't it? One D1 player allowed but for general classification purposes it counts as D3? Which is fine by me but like I said, raises a few UCP questions in my mind.
Was the original division D3 Intro specifically intended to NOT fall below the "national level" threshold and infringe on local and regional events? This is potentially a reflection of a larger issue with the UCP; a tension between it's core function and what the PSP would like it to do--help build the PSP. There isn't a necessary conflict there, only some UCP functions at cross purposes. And, why, if a team plays D3 once without a classification "penalty" (cus that's how a lot of them look at it) play D4 at all if it's mostly a try out division? Same price, no prizes. If it might end up a permanent division it will definitely put the PSP national events at odds with local and regional competition. See previously mentioned UCP conflict.

Lastly, Friday is for recognizing new enlistees to the DPA. However, this is the third week in a row without any. Your failure to enlist is thwarting VFTD's plan for World Paintball Domination. Don't ask how it's supposed to work; it's really complicated. Since when did you care? Just join. It's the new agg.