Who? The APL

For those of you at home failing to keep score here's a little reminder: the APL (this version) is not the latest version of the NPPL. The APL is the Valken-backed "national" paintball league run by Shawn Walker that is launching in February--after strip-mining the NPPL of any useful information last season under the guise of helping the league stay operational. (Rumor has it Chuck was last seen working an intersection in HB holding up a cardboard sign that reads: Will run paintball league for food.)
I had intended to ignore the APL, at least until an established pro team or two signed up, so what happens today? The APL announces Dynasty will play the first event at their home field. What a surprise. Could be a couple more pros will give it a shot too. We'll see. With the Dynasty announcement I decided to take a quick look around the APL website. In 7 divisions of competition there are so far 22 teams signed up for the February event at Camp Pendleton near San Diego. There's still a month or more before the event so the numbers have a chance to turn around and if the APL had been around for a while I'd expect an influx of last minute registrations but as the "new" guys trying to make a fresh impression 22 teams tells me they aren't generating much excitement. (Hence the Dynasty announcement.) The APL is blending format characteristics by going to an all Race To line-up while running their matches like the Millennium except they'll be using 12.5 bps as their ROF. (Like most of the PSP.) And opting for what they think will be the popular option of no sideline coaching. And a new bunker set of all PSP type props except for their mini-As. And then there's the field dimensions; not as long as a 7-man (170 feet) and as wide as a standard PSP field (120 feet). Who thought that was a good idea? After lifting the "best" features of two successful leagues they shoot themselves in the foot (figuratively of course) by going with the field dimensions that failed miserably for the PSP just a couple years ago. And then there's the rules brief posted at the website that reads like a plain English version of the PSP's basics. Which is fine I suppose as they couldn't hardly copy the MS rule book after all but the whole thing left me wondering why anyone would prefer the APL's re-hash to the real deal. The answer so far is they don't.