KalNet Message Board

Those are some great questions. I'll give you my best to try to answer each of them:

1. Whenever I've played fields where there's a lot of horizontal, non angled lines of bunkers, it seems really hard to move anywhere. This field was gigantic so that was a mitigating factor, but when people started getting closer, did this make it difficult to move?

It was incredibly hard to move. There were almost no spots in the forward bunkers that you could live at. You would be back shot as soon as you got there. Actually moving side to side to other bunkers wasn't too hard, but moving forward and living was super hard. That's why you see guys all moving to a certain level, and then being stuck. The edited version of these games doesn't really show how much patience it took to stay small and alive till you could risk a move. The size of the field made it easier to move, but that same size made it much harder to live in a forward bunker. If you moved up you were now in the legitimate eliminating fire lanes from at least three guns. Power moves didn't work, bunkering really didn't work, there was too much ground to cover moving forward. It was very hard to move. I would sit in the back bunkers and become a 'catcher'. I would show them enough 'leg' (no pun intended) to keep their guns shooting at, and off my front guys. I had three of us that did that every game, catching paint. The trick is to stay alive while doing that.


2. Was verbal coaching only allowed for this event?

There was never any formal announcement for that. I never thought about it till we started playing the Ironmen. Then suddenly the spectators all were yelling and pointing the whole game. I've always taught my guys to watch the crowd, like where they were looking or filming for instance. Spectators give away alot of information without realizing it, if a team knows what to look for. So it was easy to listen to the crowd and it helped. I personally hate verbal coaching on the field, but I think spectators should be able to yell, scream etc. There's no reason you can't be yelling the wrong info to a team either, so it balances out in my mind. You've got to remember that all of these teams really had friends playing on other teams. And you wanted your friends to do well, so you helped them as you could. The refs never said no one could talk, so everyone did.

3. I hate to bring it up but I'm just dying to know...how did you feel about the "dead man's walk?" Can you elaborate more on the situation? Was it in bad taste back then to blaze people who were walking around as if they were eliminated but who weren't either actively signalling elimination (hand or gun up) or who had a barrel bag on? You guys clearly won that game until that shenanigans went down.

Whew, I hope this doesn't open up a can of worms. I had a HUGE problem with the dead mans walk at this event. Generally I don't have a problem with it. The reason for that is at every other tournament each team has ARMBANDS. At this event there were NO ARMBANDS. It was not in bad taste to bonus ball a player you suspected of doing a walk, but at this event we really had no way of knowing. I actually drew a bead on Todd when he was walking in line with two other dead guys (one in front and one behind him) , but I didn't shoot, I was looking for armbands. Since there were none I had to assume they were dead. No eliminated RAGE players had their guns up when they walked across the field. You can see that on the video when Todd is doing the walk. If you look he was called out at the 21:47 mark of the game, and the ref tells the other ref at the flag station to pull him when Todd runs for the flag. Also at the 15:43 mark, after Todd pulls the flag the ref calls him out again and points at the hits and tells him to drop the flag. What you don't see in the edited footage is that Todd refused to leave the field. He actually sat his butt down under the flag and refused. They had five refs around him telling him to leave the field. They actually stopped the game because of this, and tried to get him to leave. He refused. This went on for five minutes, while my player was told to stop at midfield instead of hanging the flag. I was miked up for this, as was Todd. You never hear either of our conversations on the video. Todd had hits on his gun, his stomach and his pack at this time. I'm yelling for the ref to let my guy run the flag in, I don't care if he's there or not. They will not. A player from the Banzai Bandits runs across the field naked to celebrate the Turtles winning the game. You'll never see that on a video, ha! Players are congratulating me etc. Then out of nowhere the ref says Todd's clean and does the one on one that you see on the video. I go CRAZY when he announces this. We eliminated everyone! Even with the dead mans walk! They can never air the stuff that was coming from my microphone, that's for sure. Now, in the aftermath think about this. In a World Championship Game they never interview either team captain. No interview with the refs for the reason for the call. Nothing. The video just ends. I was beyond furious, all the players there on other teams are disgusted with the call. Yet there are no interviews with anyone. When I confront the ref (on camera) about his call, he just shrugs and walks away. I'm told by the tournament promoter (I'll let you guess who) that it's better for our sport this way. "We don't want to show the world that this happens in our sport", ah screw it, it was Jerry Braun. You can ask everyone who was there (with the exception of the Rage guys) who won, and every one will say the Turtles. Jerry Braun never comments on this game to any media, except that it was a big step for the sport of paintball. Am I angry, bitter? Yes I am, even after all these years. I know this kind of thing is avoided from being said, but Todd Adamson cheated. We all knew it, and he knew it. He even admitted it to me a few years later and said I need to "let it go". Anyone who has ever played with Todd Adamson knows he is a cheater, and he knows he is a cheater and he is pretty proud of it. He'll say he never 'wipes', and I will say that is true. He just keeps playing with hits on him, keeping his hits turned away from the refs. He's continued doing this for years afterward in all the NPPLs and PSPs. Just watch him play sometime. I have no idea what he told the ref in our game to have the hits wiped off and him called clean, I just don't know. Bob Rose (the head ref) never gave me an explanation either. But that's how it happened. Sorry for the rant. This is the first time I've really spoken about this to anyone.


4. In the video, number 55 for your team goes to bunker "Larry Whitaker", who was playing over the top of the bunker. Your guy goes to one-arm him, did he just miss outright? I'm surprised it wasn't a mutual elimination.

Honestly I don't know. My mind was on other things when all this went down. I've never spoken to him about it, his name is Dave Miller. I'll tell you this, team Rage had a reputation at that time for not being the cleanest team out there. Okay, they were cheaters. If you played them in the woods it was almost impossible to get them out of the brush. They seemed to live forever! Until a ref walked up to them, then they would run off the field. Dave is a great player and friend. Oh, he also was going out with Tonya Harding after all that pipe hitting stuff went down. You can see him sitting next to her in some interviews. Just a juicy tidbit!

4a. At what point did people start commonly shooting ambidextrously and fielding the gun with both hands when going to bunker people? From videos, it looks like that didn't really happen consistently until the 2000s. Did people just "not figure this out", or was it deemed unnecessary when people had setups with remotes and power feeds?

October 19, 1981
Bang! Gotcha! You're Dead
A dozen adults armed with CO[2] guns take to the woods in a stylized reenactment of the childhood game of 'war'

December 06, 2004
Who Thought This Was A Good Idea?
On June 27, 1981, Charles Gaines and some friends went into the New Hampshire woods to settle an argument by shooting paint at one another. Look what they came back with