HomePicturesTechnicalTournamentRecreationalFieldsStores

Beginner InfoNews And ArticlesLinksResourcesVideoContact UsSearch

As the GRAND FINALE of the 1998 scenario game season, FOOL's GOLD pitted some of the worlds best known heroes against some of the most vile and despicable villains ever seen.  Starting with the trade show on December 4th, 1998, and continuing on through the game on the 5th and 6th, FOOL's GOLD was Florida Paintball Production's.  The prize package for this event broke over $40,000 in value with more than $4,000 in prizes for the Kingman costume party contest alone.

The story started, when it was discovered that many of the mild mannered people involved in the sport of paintball are actually the disguised alter egos of some dastardly villains.  It was discovered that Boris and Natasha Badenoff, spend their days under the assumed names of Forest and Tracy Hatcher of Pro-Team Products.  In an exclusive telephone interview with WARPIG they denied these criminal identities, however in the background we overheard someone say "I have new plan to get rid of moose and squirrel."

Insider information also indicated that Tim Schloss of the National Pro Shop has been using his business of producing Tiger Stripe paintball gear to hide his activities as the clown of Gotham - the Joker.

Other sources pointed out that Al Dapoli of ADCO Sales has been promoting a line of paintball sights merely to distract from his identity as the umbrella toting Penguin.  One un-named informant stated that Dapoli has been spotted wearing "Billy Bob" crooked teeth at many paintball events over the last year to make his disguise complete.

While rumors have surfaced that WARPIG is a front for the Central Intelligence Agency, this has proven to be entirely false.

According to a news story that was broken to the world on the Wayne's World web site, the infamous Auric Goldfinger discovered the secret that Alchemists have searched for over the centuries.... the ability to convert lead into gold.  With an unlimited supply of gold, Goldfinger threatened to collapse the world economies.  With the organized crime syndicates of S.M.E.R.S.H., S.P.E.C.T.R.E., K.A.O.S. and T.H.R.U.S.H working with Goldfinger, U.N.C.L.E., INTERPOL, and law enforcement agencies had quite a challenge on their hands.

The action started on Friday night with the player party.  Pizza and drinks were on the house for the players who had gathered in advance to camp out for the weekend.  A live band rocked the vendor's tent through the evening.  As usual for Florida Paintball Productions, Charlie Holton of Intense Marketing was the first to have a booth set up, with his vast collection of new and used paintball odds and ends.  If someone needed something to get their equipment running right for the game, it was there.

Saturday morning the vendors tent started filling up. A face not usually seen at FPP events was that of Fred Moulton Jr.  Fred is best known for drawing the cartoon series "Sgt. Splatter" which has been published in Action Pursuit Games, Paintball Player's Bible, and Paintball News.  AKA Performance products had a display of their low pressure valves and high efficiency bolts and barrels, Ben Tippmann and Thomas Ghee from Tippmann Pneumatics used a special cutaway Model 98 to show its new trigger system.  They also demonstrated the Tippmann quick fill CO2 valve.  Doug Zander of Benchmark products had a full display with his 45 frame, twist lock plugs and other accessories.  USA Performance Products staff traveled up from south Florida to play in the game, and to show the Viper M1 paintgun, as well as the VXT Icebox and new VXT Telescoping Stock for the Spyder.  From Proteam Products Forest & Tracy Hatcher, as well as Steve Davidson displayed the new Armson stealth barrels.  Next to them was the Diggers booth.  It was manned not by Diggers staff, but by members of team MIB, as a part of their recent sponsorship arrangement.  Many teams see sponsorship as some kind of paintball welfare.  Not team MIB.  Through the weekend, team members gave up time from the game to sell Diggers paintball shoes.  The money Diggers saved in airfare by not having to send their staff made their support of the team economically sensible.
Krebs Paintball, a Florida based paintball retailer brought assorted supplies and provided airsmith services.  At the end of the vendor tent was PMI Southeast's climate controlled semi trailer, loaded with RP Scherer Premium paint.

Florida Paintball Productions main sponsors are Worr Game Products, USA Performance Products, PMI Southeast, Kingman International, and Scott USA.  Additional prizes and support for Fool's Gold came from Airgun Design, ADCO, Allen Paintball Products, Air America, A.K.A Performance, Avenger, Battle Boy, Benchmark, BOA, CMI, DYE, Diggers, Intense Marketing, Indian
Creek Design, Indian Springs, J&J, JT, North Pass, Nu-Line, National Paintball, PMI, P&P Paintball, Paintball News, Paintball Sports International, Pearce Grips Inc., Redz Comfort Gear, RKB Engineering, Pursuit Products, Raven, Smart Parts, Tippmann Pneumatics, Unique Sports, Viewloader, WARPIG, Bad Boys Toys, On Target Products, Barnett, and Krebs Paintball.

The prize package for this game was immense, and included nearly 60 paintguns, paintball clothes, accessories, barrels, and gift certificates.  Players who had their numbers drawn weren't the only lucky ones.  Like he had done just two weeks earlier in California, Marty Tripes of Scott USA provided free thermal lens upgrades for all players wearing Scott masks.
 

Saturday morning it was time for player orientation.  The key safety rules were reviewed, as well as the new reffing system.  Fool's Gold's game structure was a little different than in the past.  It featured 3 different types of referees.  First there were standard referees, consisting of team Voodoo.  The standard refs did what refs usually do in walk-on paintball, they made sure things went safely and fairly on the field.  The scenario refs, consisting of team SyNRG (formerly NRG) wore distinctive blue Scott jerseys.  They handled scenario missions, accepting mission cards from players and coordinating the play.  This distinction and specialization helped the gameplay immensely.  Many players commented that this game was the smoothest run paintball event - scenario or tournament, that they had ever attended.  The third, and most unusual ref class consisted of player referees.  These were players who were chosen to serve as undercover referees.  They carried orange vests onto the field, and if they saw a situation which needed the intervention of a referee, they put on the vest and stepped out of the player role into the role of a ref.  Since players had no idea if the person next to them could eject them for unfair play or overshooting, they behaved themselves.

Next came the introduction of the generals.  The general for UNCLE (the good guys) was a name well known from WARPIG's Rec Talk message base, Chris "Goob" Nall of the Mayberry Marauders.   His CO "Gome" ran a tight ship.  Their intercom system at UNCLE headquarters really cut down on general "kills" keeping valuable points out of the hands of the bad guys.  John Arroyo of team Xtreme Assault was the general for SPECTRE (the bad guys) led his team in a chant of "Evil is good! Evil is good!"

In the game's story line, a group known as ISCAR had developed the process to turn lead into gold.  The goal of SPECTRE was to utilize this process to create enough gold to flood the world gold market, driving the price of gold through the floor.  They would then buy natural gold for literally pennies an ounce.  Once they had bought the lions share of natural gold they would release the information that radiation turned the manufactured gold back into lead, making it worthless, and bringing the price of real gold back up.  It was the old "buy low sell high" axiom of business with a little market manipulation thrown in.  UNCLE's mission was to keep the ISCAR process out of SPECTRE's greedy hands, and to buy as much of the world's natural gold supply as possible in order to protect it.

What most players did not know was that there was a third, secret team made up of high level Illuminati.  It was the Brotherhood Of the Grail (BOG).  BOG was bent on toppling the world economy which is based on the gold standard.  Their plan was simple.  Since they were able to get their hands on both real and phony gold through their connections, they were to sell as much as they could to both sides, taking gemstones as payment.  Their banking connections made loans of precious gems to both sides to cover additional gold sales.   When the gold swindle sent the economy into a tumble, the BOG would make sure the loans, which had been made at outrageous interest rates, would be called in, bankrupting both the good guys and the bad guys.  In the meantime, BOG would have gems which remained a valuable with which they could establish a new world order.

The gold bricks, which were sold to SPECTRE and UNCLE, then turned in to the bank, were secretly recycled by BOG, back out to the field only to be sold again!  They kept selling the same gold over and over, driving both of the main teams further and further into debt.  The bricks were actually gold painted ingots of lead which had been cast by Wayne Dollack and his son Marc.  Being made of lead they were extremely heavy, and moving them around the field was a much greater task than many players had expected.

The assay and banking office was located in the tunnel leading up to the field office (originally built as the loading dock of the space freighter Nostromo for an "Aliens" game earlier in the year).  Also in the tunnel was the "WARPIG-To-Go" field information touchscreen system with an updated field map and information about the scenario.

Saturday evening the dinner break came.  Some players cooked their own, or went to town, but a local caterer cooked up what have been proclaimed to be the best ribs in Ocala.  With some food in their stomachs, everyone gathered for the Kingman costume contest.  There are costume contests at most of the Florida Paintball Productions scenario games, but the Grand Finale, at the end of the year is always the biggest.  Marty Tripes presided over the contest as master of ceremonies.  A panel of esteemed paintball celebrities was gathered to judge the contest.  Reporter Ken "Hollywood" Gilder sat on stage along with "Famous" Ben Tippmann from Tippmann Pneumatics.  They were accompanied by Tracy Hatcher from Pro Team, Eileen Alexander from AKALMP, Jerry Olmstead from team TBA, Tim Schloss of Pursuit Products, Fred "Sgt. Splatter" Moulton, Brody Brockman of USA Performance Products, and Charles "Happy" Holton.   These judges had to choose from quite a crowd to figure out how to distribute over $3,000 in prizes that were set aside for the costume contest alone.  The winner they selected was Mike McDermott who dressed as "gold dust".  He was kind of like Goldfinger, but different, he said.  He wore gold colored armor and looked like an American Gladiator that had fallen into a bucket of gold paint.  2nd place went to John Johnson, who dressed as Judge Dredd, in a cleverly built costume with blinking lights in his helmet, and a codpiece that was the subject of more than one joke from the judges.  Mike Donaldson took home the 3rd place prize for his dark robed horseman of the apocalypse costume.  Cheryl "Cat" Thorton of team PostMortem (another name familiar to RecTalk readers) was awarded "sexiest costume" for dressing as Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series of video games.  Mike Urso was awarded "most fun costume".  He wore a grass skirt (and a pair of "tighty witey" briefs) and African tribal mask.  While the costume itself was not as elaborate as some of the others, Mike's wildman dance and chants to the crowd definitely made him a favorite.

Nightplay resumed with the standard velocity decrease to 250 fps (280 is the daytime limit).  As usual, the attacks on bases were stepped up, because the lower number of players on the field at night usually means weaker base security.

After the breakfast break, BOG's financial dealings had been figured out by some of the players, and UNCLE agents used their "advanced immobilization polymer", better known as Silly String to capture a key BOG member for interrogation.  Capitulating to UNCLE's demands their loans were forgiven, placing them at a decided advantage over SPECTRE.

Sunday afternoon, the gameplay was drawn to a close, and while Wayne Dollack was busy totalling scores and accounting for props, Ben Tippmann kicked off the closing ceremonies by throwing some WARPIG t-shirts to the crowd and raffling off 5 Tippmann Model 98 paintguns.  Prior to the scores, both generals took to the stage, awarding "Most Valuable" awards to teams, players and referees.  BOG's plot was also unveiled publicly, as they called due their loan and sent a collection agency after SPECTRE's general.

Wayne Dollack then read a news report which detailed the collapse of the gold standard, and that governments all over the world, were instituting martial law and confiscating all privately owned gemstones.  BOG had met their objective of throwing governments into chaos around the world.  He then proceeded to announce the scores.  They were the closest they had ever been.  While both teams had scores in the 4,000+ points range, UNCLE finished with a 50 point lead, claiming the victory.  Wayne then pointed out that at the start of the game, he had said he would eventually reveal "the ultimate good guy".  With a mighty fanfare, the world's greatest hero was brought forth.  Marty Tripes came forth dressed as Santa Claus.  Santa then proceeded to throw out t-shirts, hats and drink bottles to the crowd.  He then raffled off products and certificates from the game's many sponsors.

Fool's Gold was a solid end to a successful season for Florida Paintball Productions.  It was one of the largest games held at Wayne's World, with nearly 700 players in attendance.  Industry support for FPP events, and scenario games in general continues to rise.  This Grand Finale game brought out a wider variety of people representing paintball companies, including Tippmann Pneumatics' presence for the first time.  Florida Paintball Productions' 1999 calendar has been set.  Keep an eye on the Wayne's World web site, and the recreational section of WARPIG for information on their upcoming games.