Paintball Miscellany

One quick additional word on the errant story Facefull posted yesterday and then pulled at the NPPL's request (apparently). Seriously, the sources must have been either NPPL people or bigwigs at KEE 'cus none of the primary PSP movers were present. Missed the story? Facefull was claiming the merger a veritable done deal until told their "facts" were mistaken and they should post haste pull their story. Which they did.

ProPaintball has a follow-up today on the latest rumorology regarding a merger and given the information in their latest missive VFTD will be doing a pre-merger analysis next week after the NJ Open as ProPaintball's sources are sufficiently well-informed (and willing to talk) that I no longer feel under any obligation to keep things under wraps at least in a general sense because plainly some NPPL sources have been talking.

Regarding last weekend's Paintball Festival I am hearing it was sparsely attended pretty much across the board. A couple hundred scenario players--maybe. A dozen teams competing in the UWL event--which is pretty typical. And perhaps as many as three or four dozen of the bread-and-butter field & store owner types which must have been a huge disappointment--but was readily predictable. And I'm not sure you can legally call it a trade show if there are fewer than 10 vendors present. The same people who ran the once mighty cash cow of the IAO into the ground show up a few years later trying to run a variation on the same theme and it is somehow supposed to magically fill up as the little people come from far and wide grateful for the privilege of attending? Really? Debra Dion Who? Oh, sure, apparently there was a decent turnout of bigwig types prepared to be seen and pontificate but it's easy to get them to come. They'll gather faster than you can say open bar. And it seems they were all a-twitter over airsoft which makes absolutely no sense to me at all. (We got into this a bit last week but it's back!) The fact is plenty of local fields already accommodate airsofters but how exactly does that help paintball and the paintball industry? Airsoft isn't a gateway to paintball play, it's a direct competitor to a (supposedly) strong element of paintball. And inviting airsoft in now only provides another non-paintball alternative to the new or occasional player. Unless the paintball industry is looking to morph into the airsoft industry--and last time I checked there already was an airsoft industry--none of their enthusiasm makes any sense. Unless Tom Cole is a master hypnotist too.

Did you see the new Tippmann multi-purpose Tippmann tool? (Designed specifically for Tippmann markers.) It's blunt, sturdy, nearly indestructible and fits in your pocket like a stubby, fat wrench. Am I the only one disappointed that it won't attach to my pickatinny rail system?

This last item is about the sold out, over sold even, final MS event of the season and more specifically about the size of the D2 division. For the 2011 season the MS cleverly disguised a shrinking base and incorporated scarcity into the mix by limiting the size of each competing division. This also helped in determining well in advance the scale of each event, fields required, etc. Consequently each event maxed out in all the divisions except M5 which has been discontinued. (And that one London event division that came up a couple teams shy.) Anyway the demand for Paris-Disney was apparently such that the MS has oversold D2 by 75% and D3 by 20%. In actual team numbers that means there will be an additional 30 teams competing, 24 of them in an enormous D2 of 56 total teams, on the same number of fields as an MS event intended for 30 fewer teams. (Or so I'm told.)
I have no idea if the days are long enough in Paris in early October to avoid playing under the lights or if there was enough scheduling time leeway that fitting an extra 30 teams in won't be an issue but what I do know is there are some teams and players who are concerned about how it's all going to play out. Unfortunately there is nothing VFTD can do for them so I hope they also mentioned their concerns to the MS. (haha) And I further hope the MS doesn't screw up what has proved to be a very good season for them at the last minute because they got too greedy--again. VFTD will wait and watch and see what happens.