Black Karma - Season Opener

 BLACK KARMA

After a short mild winter in the deep south, Black Karma was more than ready to get a jump start on our 2012 paintball season.  While much of the country had snow and frigid temps to begin their season, we were quite comfortable in the mid 60's. MPP Game's Apocalypse 2012 was our first game of the year at Bear Claw Paintball in Fayetteville, Tennessee and this game packed all the suspense and uncertainty as the ending of the Mayan calendar later this year.

The Mayan calendar has long been the subject of folk lore.  Does the end of the calendar mark the end of the world as we know it, merely the end of the 13th baktun or did the Mayans just get tired of making a calendar?  More importantly, do we need to buy Christmas presents this year if the world ends before Christmas?  The Apocalypse 2012 game was set after the fall of civilization with the New Earth Order (NEO) planning on enslaving the rest of the Natives to build a future for the rest of the human race. However, the Natives decided to flip the script and not say uncle making this game play out like the Thunderdome with two sides entering and only one surviving to lead the human race.  

Black Karma was part of the New Earth Order aiming to ensure the future was as we intended.  Our general very generously tasked us with a special (read that as suicide) mission at game on: run right into the heart of the Native team and give them a few headaches.  Everything was great until we ran into what we thought was an orange fog but it just turned out to be the entire opposing team all shooting at us in unison.  Luckily, we all thought it was quite funny and the weekend only got better from there.  Everywhere we turned we were able to find a good fight.  The Natives would scratch and claw their way to the front door of our base to have us push them back to their own doorstep.  It was a constant back and forth all weekend long. As the skirmish line moved back and forth all weekend, teams were running side missions and scoring points for various props.  The props for this game were inventive and spanned the universe.  There were alien’s embryos hidden on the field as well as vials of Hanta virus. Other props were some of the most realistic paintball props we had ever seen and we were sure the FBI or ATF stopped to chat with the Bear Claw staff a few times. 

After all the fighting was done and all the mission points counted, the Natives defeated the NEO, for now.  They may have beaten us this weekend but the war definitely did not end.  We will survive more adversity than bacteria and cockroaches combined.  The NEO will one day rectify this day!  Black Karma was honored to be awarded a Most Valuable Team Award from the NEO Team.  A few of our Black Karma teammates received individual awards at this game.  Chrissi 'Leadfoot' Dees was awarded an XO Award.  Blake 'Web' Weber was awarded Most Valuable Player.  For some reason, one of our newest teammates decided to ref this game.  However, Bruce 'Sarcasm' Freemon, was awarded Best Ref by both teams.  We still can't understand why he wanted to ref....

Not only was this game our first of the year, it was also our first game with our new Ethas.  I had planned on using my Etha a while and then loaning it out for people to try.  After the first few missions, I changed my mind and I could not put my Etha down.  The Etha performed great all weekend and I never had an issue out of it.  Hopefully next game I'll be able to let others try it but I make no promises!  We'll be heading to SPG Paintball in Rome, GA for their spring Flag Wars game so come on out and check out the Etha. 

Be sure and check out our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/blackkarmapaintball) and our website (www.blackkarma.org)

BLACK KARMA