Historically, there has often been a Wellington tournament in New Zealand at Easter. The first big paintball events in this country were in Wellington at Easter, and after a bit of a lapse in this area, it’s nice to have another big Wellington event.Wellington sits at the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand, and is the embarkation point for pretty much all surface travel to the South Island. The city sits around a large inland harbour, nestled in between the water and the hillside. This was my first trip to Wellington, and it is certainly a picturesque city. The waterfront, containing the event centre that held the tournament, used to be a mess of docks, containers, cranes, and shipping. It is now somewhere you can take your family for a nice day out and there’s any number of cafés, bars and restaurants for the casual visitor. Plenty of sculpture too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many statues and bits of art in such close proximity before. The Wellington Easter Paintball Event, officially titled “X-Cess”, and organized by Tag Paintball and The Worlds of Wellington Trust, got off to a rocky start some months previously due to a run-in with the NZPPA after concern as to the proposed format. This was quickly resolved, but the grumblings never really died away, and even resurged a bit when the play schedule came out. There were huge gaps between game sections, with teams playing first thing in the morning and last thing at night, with a first thing in the morning start again the next day. There were concerns about the proposed reffing, some of which it turned out were well founded, and there were concerns about the organizers wanting to charge not only spectators, but partners and relatives of the players. Let’s start at the beginning. I arrived on the Friday Morning on Day 1 of the event and heard from a number of players how their request to walk the field on the Thursday Night had been granted, but when they arrived they were ordered to leave. I saw chunks of sharp concrete being used to secure barricades to the floor. I saw the lack of a safety barrier between the Chrono area and the field-side spectator area. I heard how spectators were being charged $8 for entry. I thought “uh-oh”. But the event, to my surprise, still worked. I have to admit I went to Wellington expecting to report on the biggest mistake ever to hit NZ Paintball. I hoped it wouldn’t of course, but this was the first big event that the organizers had run, and they were doing it in a way that had never been done before, through an event promoter. I was keen to give it a chance… but I didn’t hold out much hope. The surprise was pleasant. When you actually saw the airball field in play, lit from within it’s huge mesh cage by floodlights suspended from the ceiling, and when you actually heard the crowd in the darkness around the field cheering and applauding, you realize that, aside from a few flaws, what you’d got here was a gem of a paintball tournament. The refs were green, and their inexperience showed in flashes occasionally throughout the event, but they were keen and willing to learn, and after a tentative start were getting right in there among the streams of paint to check and pull players. They were perhaps a little intimidated by some of the more experienced and vocal teams, and there were some bad calls, but overall they did a fine job in a difficult situation. I have certainly seen worse reffing at a major NZ Paintball tournament. The spectators being charged so much was perhaps a mistake. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I sat outside the event centre between games with my drink in the sun, watching the hundreds upon hundreds of families walking right past, whether just charging a single gold coin (NZ$1-$2) per person might not have been a better option. There were no Australian teams at this event, which was a shame. It’s been good to have the Aussies over here for the NZ majors, and they’ve been regular supporters of NZ Paintball… but we did have the Evil Factory team from the United States here, which is something of a first for the sport in this country. The standard of play throughout the event was superb. It was always going to be likely that the final event was going to be Saints (NZ) vs Evil (USA), and Day #1 (Of 3) showed that this was almost certainly going to occur, as at the end of the first round of games both the NZ and US juggernauts were one game each. The play was close, and pretty brutal at times, with some moves occurring almost too fast to follow. Raiderz, who have been doing well for themselves in recent events started strongly, but seemed to lack their usual sparkle in this event, slipping back to miss out on a spot in the finals. Flashpoint, ever optimistic, traveling up from the bottom of the South Island to play in events all over New Zealand were kind enough to give me a spot on their team after a player became ill on the last day, and it was great to be able to take a few scalps of my own, and play against the Americans, on their behalf in their last two games. The first days play saw teams split from their 4 seeded pools into the Plate and Cup competitions, effectively different tournaments run alongside one another, with the Cup taking teams from the top of the seeded pools, and the Plate taking teams from the bottom. It was no surprise to see both Saints and Evil in the Cup event, and they continued to batter at one another right up until the Cup Finals. Unfortunately for Team Saints, Evil had really got into their stride by the last day of the 3 day event, and the Cup Finals, which were a best-of-three affair were over in two games as Evil Factory made two consecutive, and decisive, wins. So with the event finally over, the positions at the end of play were: Plate: 3rd Point68 2nd Vicious 1st Phoenix Cup 3rd Breakout 2nd Saints 1st Evil Factory Looking at this event in hindsight it would be easy to point out all of the negatives and grumble. Many have, in fact, been doing that… but what I think we have here is a fantastic first effort by a bunch of chaps who decided to tackle the organization of a big event from a different angle. Sure, there are things that will need to be addressed before the next event, but I would certainly be happy to see this event happen again, and preferably with more time spent behind the trigger than behind the camera. |
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