On the Road (to No Ends) Again
By Jason “foolybear” Lineberger
Photos by Scrapyard
Photography
Every February paintball teams take the
road to Road to No Ends, the annual 24 hour scenario at Adventure Beach
Paintball. This year the promised
warmer weather usually found on North Carolina’s coast and the reputation of
this excellent annual game drew a record-setting crowd.
Adventure Beach is an attractive setting
for scenario paintball. It’s only a
short drive to the coast, and during February the hotel and rental rates are
dirt cheap. The field itself is long and
flat with an impressive town on one end, a pyramid in the middle, and
everything from thick brush to a tire maze to round out the picture.
Every year field owner Kevin Shimwell
throws a new wrench in the works for the experienced teams. One year the sides battled to recover ceramic
tiles, which created a map to the final treasure in the game, one that was
buried on the field! Imagine the
shootout with hundreds of players trying to protect a few crazy runners
carrying shovels. Another year tricksy
role-players added an element of complexity, and each go-round the final
battles have become more intense.
Road to No Ends 2015 was a best-of,
combining difficult missions, role-playing (Shimwell employed two dedicated
role-players for the event), props, and the usual fight for real estate. Adventure Beach has half a dozen bases over
the grounds of the field, each with a flag station. Any team that can fly their flag can use that
base as a spawn point, so controlling ground is a key strategy, and it reduces
the amount of time any player might spend away from the action.
Team Capital Offense joined the side of
Jason “Reaper” Mann of Paintball Soldiers, general for The Hidden as we faced
off against The Knowing, led by Robert Flowers of Carolina Sabers. From game on it was clear that victory might
prove elusive. Our punch up the middle
ran into a defensive wall and a counter punch from two flanks that left our
side scrambling for a viable plan.
Capital Offense switched from up-the-middle aggression to play the
mission team, and we deployed to all parts of the field, wherever the missions
took us.
As Saturday wore on, The Hidden gained more
ground, and we encountered less opposition at our mission sites as we racked up
the points. Shimwell never lets the game
get easy, and subsequently our objectives changed to ones deep in enemy
territory; we even got missions to obtain props hidden beside the other team’s
insertion point. Those might be possible
in some scenario games, but in a game with instant respawn, missions like that
are exceptionally difficult. Twice over
the course of the weekend I turned over missions to a single player, Jim “Tag”
Edwards, who set off on his own to attempt the impossible. Both times he returned with signed cards and
harrowing stories of ghosting through enemy lines. So while the main force of our team took
bases and searched for props, our solo second line racked up the score for our
side.
The game concluded with an impressive final
battle where both sides ran at each other from opposite ends of the city. The first 15 minutes allowed players to tag
back in, and the last 15 minutes became a single elimination game. While The Hidden took ground and put the
pressure on our opposition, The Knowing retained a foothold and had a good
number of players still alive at the game’s end. This battled mirrored the game as a whole –
one hard-fought slugfest from beginning to end with neither team giving much
ground.
Although land control swapped back and
forth, we felt confident that the tally would swing our way as our side scored
mission after mission all weekend. Turns
out that the real points in the game came from collecting certain props, and
our opposition far exceeded our efforts in this department. Sure we lost by a landslide, but that just
makes us hungrier for our return next February!
Thanks to all the teams who make this game
great each year. It’s become one of
those can’t-miss scenarios that I mark on my calendar as soon as the date is
announced. See you all in 2016!
Special thanks to Scrapyard
Photography for providing the pics from this game.
Jason
“foolybear” Lineberger is the scenario slayer for Planet Eclipse and captain of
Team Capital Offense. You can catch him
on Twitter (@foolybear) or on Instagram (@foolybear).
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