The Catshack is pleased to present an interesting after event report courtesy of The Tippinators paintball team who recently took part in the Tippmann Challenge held at the Mirabel Paintball field in Quebec, Canada.
Tippmann Challenge 2009 at Mirabel Paintball
Live Action Report
8:30AM, Saturday August 15th – As we turned the corner onto the long 
driveway that leads to Mirabel’s neutral zone, a greeter directed us to park next to a repainted school bus in a grassy field to our right. Pulling up to the bus, we heard a loud motor, almost chugging sound coming towards us; looking up, a helicopter flew almost directly over our rental van. With shocked looks and laughter, we all got out of the car to see the helicopter unload passengers, pick up more and then fly back over the field. If there was any question about the legitimacy of this event, a HELICOPTER defined the start of a day of paintball I will not soon forget.
9:00AM – After a short tram ride down to the NZ, a sea of players had collected 
under the tent we had thought was huge the day before. There was not much room left, with the temperature rising and finding shade was important with a long day of scenario ball ahead of everyone. We found PBL and Tippmann Sports, and were invited to stage directly behind them, alongside the Mont-Tremblant Cowboys. We quickly planted a Nova Scotia flag in our staging area, and continued getting geared for the game.
10:00AM – Having met a bunch of other teams during pregame introductions, we were running a little behind to the Japanese HQ (our re-spawn). The referees realized this and organized a shuttle (!) to send us out directly as the opening horn went. We passed an awesome castle on the left of our HQ, lots of built up bunkers, but we had just driven through a war-torn town in our little tram convoy. We could see the battle growing, even moments into the game. Arriving to our HQ, we saw our side’s leader, valiantly standing on a table, with a map of the battlefield spread beneath him, water and cleaning supplies surrounding the area. He screamed out orders to the already re-spawning players, gathered rushes to certain areas and kept morale high with a rally cry. At least, that was our guess, as most of the players were speaking in french! We were a little nervous about mingling in a game where we would have some difficulty communicating with our comrades in arms, but our leader saw our jerseys, recognized us and quickly let his team know: “Attention les gars! These guys don’t speak francais, anglais seulement!†We paired up with a few bilingual players who were more than happy to show us around the field. In fact, most players were happy to try to communicate in English, just as much as we were to attempt some messy French translations. Later in the day, one of our guys was referred to as “That crazy English guy!†Overall the language barrier didn’t even exist on field, which was awesome.
Our first mission was given to us directly from our team general, who sent us 
alongside a fair portion of our troops to the southern area of the field; a huge town that was filled with buildings, bordering Mirabel’s “D-Day†field. Sand dunes and huge bushes separate the two fields, while droves of players clash against each other to get through the lines. Over the next two hours we braved the frontlines, bringing along our comrades to rush the hills and push through the German lines on the D-Day field. We accomplished our objective of pushing back the enemy, who then pushed back across the lines. The border between the town and D-Day literally shifted all morning.
12:30PM – The scores were announced with the German team slightly ahead of the Japanese team. We knew we had our work cut out for us, and were told that our teams would be switching ends of the field. Then we were approached about performing a “secret missionâ€. We were given a large ammo crate (filled with paint and pods), that we had to distribute to players at the front lines. Excitedly, we gathered and charged into battle, setting up a defensive perimeter around the ammo crate at first, then leaving a single defender, the team scattered out with pods of paint in hand to deliver the much needed ammunition to the players there. We were positioned on one side of a small hill where there was a contested flag station – both teams scrambling to advance, crawling inches forward at a time through the volleys of paint. With only a few minutes remaining in our mission we got the last of the paint out to our Japanese team mates. The players in the area surged forward and we pushed through the enemy line to capture the flag station.
At the end of the game, the Japanese had outscored the German forces, a loud cheer coming from players on both sides as the scores were announced. Clearly everyone had an excellent time at the game, but there was so much more to see and do there too! Tippmann and PBL were showing off the new Tippmann bags, but also hosting a 2 versus 2 TPX Challenge! Before that got underway, we had a chance to try out their Predator Laser Tag System, which was a blast to play.
A quick thanks goes out to Tippmann Sports, BuyPBL, Mirabel Paintball and Backline Media for making this event so memorable for our team. We had so much fun, we can’t wait for next year. Come see all our pictures from Mirabel Paintball’s Tippmann Challenge at www.tippinators.com
Courtesy of Austin Flaherty and the Tippinator Paintball Team
