Deadwood '07

Deadwood was a two-day Paintball scenario game that was one of a series of Cowboy/Western themed games at Strategy Plus known as "Frontier Wars". There were poker games at the saloon, horse auctions, horse thievery, stickups, kidnapings, cold-blooded murders, Posse roundups, duels and too much tomfoolery to begin to mention all in one place! On the red side there was the Swearengen gang and on blue, the Tollivers. There were actually two "third entities". The Law wore green armbands and the Indians (or Native Americans, if you prefer) were in green bands and headdresses.

Team Extreme Measures played the Law with several of our members playing specific roles. On Saturday, the bulk of us spent time responding to threats to our lovely town of Deadwood. Right at the start of the game, Swearengen's goons chose to come into town to knock off a couple of orphan girls. That put the red team at a disadvantage for the early part of the game as the Law could not let such a heinous act, that devastated the peace and tranquility of our little town, go unpunished. First point of order was to lock down and purge the town of any of Swearengen's men. Push them out and exact retribution with extreme prejudice.

During most of the time that I spent at the town, on one end of town we were constantly being harassed by Swearengen's men and on the other side, Swearengen men (who were obviously unaware of what the other men on their team were up to) were walking right up to us. They would realize that the Law was returning fire at their own teammates. Before they could say, "what the ...!" and raise their markers, they were being barrel-tapped or opened fire upon. This certainly made for an interesting dynamic. At the same time that the Law was trying to protect our town from would be raiders, we were also trying to be open to players acting roles and trying to barter goods and favors.

One of my personal highlights was after chasing some of Swearengen's men out of deadwood and down to the neighboring village. After being shot out, myself and some Lawmen had to pass through Swearengen's men to reinsert. On our way we realized that we had backed them up against our reinsertion point. First thought was 'GREAT, how are we going to get back in without getting lit up'! Then it occured to us that their attention was on the ridge where we had come from, not behind them at our reinsertion. Once we had made it to our reinsertion, myself and two other Lawmen decided to barrel-tap as many people as we can till we're found out and then just start shooting till we're eliminated. The idea was that we would weaken the line enough for our teammates over the next ridge to push through. We spread out and snuck up behind the opposing force. We worked our way from back to front, barrel-tapping as we went. I personally tapped about 15 people as I made my way through the most dense pockets of players. All told we eliminated about 25 of our opponents. In fact, we made it back to our guys on the ridge to tell them all was clear. As I looked back behind us, I could see only one of Swearengen's men out in the woods. I have never barrel-tapped so many people! much less all at once! Priceless!

On the second day, I mostly tried to help out the field and see where I could be of use to the field manager. Several times I ventured out into the game to deliver messages and missions. It was really cool to help create a mission and help put it in motion. Also staying at "mission control" gave me a chance to change perspective and gain a birds-eye view on how the game was running. While I did not carry a marker at any point during the day, I included the day in my brigade page play log because I was shot at and in one case pegged by a few paintballs!

One highlight of the day was delivering a telegram to Marshall Bullock that called for the capture and detainment of Francis Wolcott for murder. Upon delivery of said telegram, the marshall began reading it out loud... ...while Wolcott was standing right next to him. All Props to Shadawg of Team Ragnarok who played Wolcott because I have never seen a man in full paintball gear take off and run that fast! EVER!

What a great weekend! The weather was beautiful and the field was great! I don't think there was ever more than 1 person in front of me in line for air and every tank fill was a full one. Although the paint was accurate and didn't cause any breaks, it seems that the fill in the RPS Premium paintballs seemed to be staining more than usual. I'm not really sure what to attribute that to? While I missed Friday's meet and greet, potluck dinner and poker game, I was there for the Talent show, the performance by local band "Hit and Run" and several other impromptu Poker games. The food served up at the field was also good. How could you go wrong with grilled steaks and sausage?! - Oh, and good company.