Lite, Bacaball & Champions

This will be an easier post to follow than yesterday's, Officiating Bacaball, as it's pretty straight forward. It will also be (hopefully) shorter but I often start with the best of intentions and it all goes wrong from there. Today I'm simply going to distinguish between the basic variants of Bacaball and follow-up with more detailed explanations of the changes in future posts. By all means, feel free to ask questions, offer suggestions or call my sanity into question as you please along the way.

Lite: The idea for Bacaball Lite is to simply adapt and incorporate some features of Bacaball into any version of tourney style ball from recreational speedball games to local events played on out of date 7-man fields. The core component is the use of the Bacaball rulebook and officiating guidelines. It is perfectly acceptable to adapt those rules as may be needed to the specific game being played. For example, if the format isn't a multi-point match style game the process of accumulating flag demerits might need to be adapted in order to fulfill the rules' intent. The long term goal is to universalize the rulebook and its philosophic perspective. Granted that's a substantial goal but if no other element of Bacaball is taken seriously competitive paintball would benefit from a new perspective on rules and enforcement. As stated yesterday it's not just the rules but the consistency with which they are enforced and the temperament of the refs (and something worth another post some other time.) The alternative to incorporating the rulebook for a game of Bacaball Lite would be to incorporate the scoring system. Or both. So that Lite is either the Bacaball rules or scoring system or both adapted to a non-Bacaball format for the play of competitive paintball. (More on scoring coming.)

Bacaball: base Bacaball is played on a field 180 ft. long & 150 ft. wide. (Yes, this is bigger than either a NPPL standard field or the new PSP standard field though it retains the proportions of the original Xball standard field.) The bunker set is bumped up to 50 props and does not include any large, one-of-a-kind brand identifying bunker like the old X, current A or M. Penalty boxes remain consistent, more or less, with current practice. The same with pits--although in Champions they are positioned differently. The games (matches) can be played to time or score or the current PSP variant in which time takes precedent over score. First to seven or 20 minutes of non-running clock time, whichever comes first. Four flag stations are placed approx. along the 50 from wire to wire. Placement may vary to some degree based on a specific layout. Three flags are place prior to each point, a flag designated to each team by color and the up-for-grab flag. Each point one of the four flag stations will be empty with the others assigned a single flag based on prior random draw the Ultimate has on his (her) person. Lastly, each point of Bacaball lines up 6 players back center waiting for the horn or whistle to begin the point.

Bacaball Champions: Field dimensions, bunker set, flag numbers & placement, scoring and starting number of players remain the same as base Bacaball. The key changes in Champions is the placement of the pits and player insertion. (You read that correctly. Player insertion.) See the diagram for a view of the modified pits and ends of the "live" field of play. Any inserted player may enter from one of five entry points and immediately becomes a "live" player. However there can never be more than 6 live players on the field per team. Players insert from any insert point as soon as an eliminated player exits the "live" field area. In Champions it is possible for the complete active roster to play in every point. Scoring remains the same.

Next time I'll begin filling in the details on features like scoring, insertions, etc.