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Paintball Adventure Park near Taneytown is a nice field.  Good folks, decent refs, and the most affordable field in the state!  Their website is at www.paintballwholesalers.com and includes pictures from this event.

On November 10th they hosted “Merc Wars Invasion: Hartman’s World” featuring the Action Creek paintball tanks.

The plot:
 “In an outer quadrant of the Orion Nebula, the Confederation mining colony established on Hartman's World is in turmoil.
  Deep in the bowels of the planet, the colonists have discovered what appears to be some type of alien life form.
  News of this discovery has been intercepted by the Mercantile Consortium, a ruthless and greedy alliance of galactic outlaws who plan to profit from stealing this scientific treasure.
  Too remote to rely on protection arriving in time from the Confederation, the colonists have resorted to hiring mercenaries to help them maintain possession of this mysterious alien entity.”

Players were divided into two teams of about 75 players each: We were C company of the Hell Lions mercenary regiment, and were actually based on Hartman’s World as was a company of Kierkan’s Kammandos, another mercenary unit.  A squad of about a dozen formed a third team, The Blood Clan.  These were the mercenary’s mercenaries playing the two teams off each other and making things, well, interesting.

Medics were employed, two on each team who could wipe your hit, write your name in a book, and you could stay in the fight - so long as they got to you inside one minute and you didn’t move from where you were hit.  These boys worked their butts off and deserve all the accolades they get.

Now I’m new to paintball having played for the first time last May (2002) and 5 more times since then, but I’ve been a Civil War reenactor for 28 years.  As such, I’m more attracted to paintball as MilSim and scenario play as opposed to paintball as a sport.  Knowing the value of teamwork, I started organizing a team to play just this sort of paintball - the Hoplites.

Hartman’s War was to be our first real chance to work as a team, ok a small team of 3, but a team none-the-less.  While standing in line to buy our paint we were approached by one of the organizers with “Would you be interested in commanding the Hell Lions?”  At the moment I thought he meant a small squad within the larger team, i.e. a subordinate role so I said - “yeah sure.”  The job was a little bigger than that.

The game was divided into 6 missions.  Each mission had a primary and a secondary objective worth 100 and 50 points respectively.  The 3 tanks were assigned to either team by the mission orders, sometimes split between us, sometimes one team getting all of them.

Gathering the Hell Lions I briefed them on who we were and what I knew we had to do.  I broke them down into smaller teams of 5-10 based on existing groups and indigenous leadership, and then it was into the breech.

We got our primary goal of establishing our base in the first mission, but the “Beer Kans” got both of their objectives.  The second mission was to grab the local miner’s “sodahol still” (a cooler of sodas), which was a bloodbath for both sides.  The “Blood Clan” finally snatched the objective and hauled it off the field for the Kammandos.

Next mission we hired the Blood Clan for our side.  They spear-pointed the assault on the landing zone where some “artifacts” were waiting for transport backed by the Hell Lions and much of the rest of the team pushed into the Kammando’s base capturing the secondary objective and their colors.  The Blood Clan decided they were angry at us for allegedly firing on them, so they punished us by handing over only half the artifacts captured at the landing zone - selling the rest to the Kammandos.

At the lunch break the score was tied 250 to 250.

Because time was short, and darkness comes early in November, one mission was dropped, so after lunch we went into mission 5.  The Hell Lions were to defend their base and an agricultural station from a Kammando counter-attack supported by all three tanks.

I planned to defend in the advance by pushing to the far end of the Great Mushroom Forest, (airball fields) and falling back gradually to a prepared inner perimeter.  Placing my Hoplite teammates in strategic spots with radios we engaged the Bierkan’s attack.  We held strong at first until the tanks rolled into the action.  The right flank fell back a little too fast before the tanks and had to be pushed forward again.  One of the tanks was taken out on the left and a single player took out the other two with a LAW, one just as it reached our inner line.  The assault stalled without the tanks, but the left of the line was uncovered by the right’s falling back and was forced out of the agricultural station.  Both sides fed troops onto the hill on our left trying to dig the enemy out of the second growth that covered it.  We were unable to retake the agricultural station, a secondary objective for both sides, but our base held and, in-fact was never directly attacked.  The score stood at 350-300 Hell Lions.

The final mission, worth a flat 500 points, called for us to assault the Bierkan’s base and the mining rig in an all out grab for all the marbles before the Confederation fleet arrived.  With the tanks on our side and the Blood Clan on theirs - we battled our way into their territory, took the flanks and nearly surrounded the rig.  We were directly assaulting the rig and it looked like a Hell Lion’s victory when time was called.

The final score: Hell Lions 350, Kierkan’s Kammandos 800.

So ended my first scenario paintball game, and my first “command” in a scenario paintball game.  The Hoplites had a great time, as did I personally.  The Hell Lions played hard and considering they were mostly a bunch of folks just tossed together willy-nilly and called a team - played well.  The ferocious battles proved the Bierkan’s Kammandos were every bit as motivated and they earned the win with hard fighting tenacity and sweat.

Jerry “Uhlan” Todd
The Hoplites (http://mainecav.org/pb)

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