Name: Branden “Hollywood” Robertson
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Roster:Mission Masters team consists of Dean “Cuda” Allen, Karl “Jackson” Koleck, and myself
Sponsors: Three Rivers Paintball park in Freedom, PA; through TRPP, Mission Masters has various sponsors, including Tippmann, Spyder, and Empire
How I got into paintball:
It was early Fall 2005 when my friend Nick Guerrieri began beckoning me to play paintball on his property in Monroeville, PA. Nick and I were work colleagues at the time, so the pleading occurred daily. I wasn’t too keen on allowing him to pepper me with paintballs for sport, since he had been playing for a while and I never played before. Finally, I gave in.
When I arrived at Nick’s house, the weather was still warm (early September), but I had donned several layers of clothing…a reaction many have to the sport of paintball, where the unexpected inevitably leads to uncomfortable choices in garb. Nick handed me a pump-action paintball marker, black, called a Tigershark by Brass Eagle. The gun was an absolute mess. The central pin that held the trigger frame in place was loose and kept wiggling its way out. I took a few practice shots and got the feel of the marker, which felt comfortable in my hands and shot well. I didn’t know any better, so to me it was like shooting a sniper rifle. Nick’s marker of choice was his prized Spyder Ion, a semi-automatic marker that had better range, accuracy, and fire rate.
It didn’t bother me. I figured this would be an exercise in futility either way, even if I had a paint cannon.
We hit the field after well-wishes from Nick’s wife. We played one-on-one, naturally, moving laterally across a sloped, wooded, and leaf-covered hillside. Near the bottom, there were thickets and dense brush where deer tracks and paths could be seen. But I wasn’t hunting deer this day, I hunted a 200 pound Italian chap named Nick. And hunt I did.
We played death match, where the signal for the end of the round basically meant a broken paintball. I recall being quite nervous about being struck with a paintball because I’d never been hit with one before. I had no knowledge of what I was in for except the words ringing in my head ala A Christmas Story: “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!” The anxiety and fear fueled my rage, however, and what followed was an afternoon of butt-whooping paint hurling courtesy of Yours Truly. With my single-shot, pump-action Tigershark – which fell apart during two games, as I recall – I managed to not only beat Nick every single round, but I also achieved Flawless Victory for the entire session. That’s right, I wasn’t struck with a single paintball shot by Nick’s marker. But what I handed Nick amounted to his buttocks.
In one round, I managed to get to the creek bed channel running through the center of our play area, a very strategic position. Popping up, I struck Nick between the eyes of his goggles with such force that it pushed the plastic into his nose, cutting him in two places. One shot, one kill. During another round, Nick realized he was in a bad position – the upper hillside thinned out dramatically, but he gambled on that lone fact to try to lure me out. Well, a few shots flew by his head, and he began his retreat. As he ran up and away from me, I leveled the Tigershark and fired a single round. Not only did it hit him – one shot, one kill – it hit him directly in the kidney. Anyone who knows anything about kidney strikes know they hurt deeply. Down Nick went in a heap, battered, bruised, and beaten.
Nick and I laugh about the adventures in Monroeville, PA to this very day. That lone paintball outing changed my life, literally. I attended my first scenario event at Three Rivers Paintball park not two months later, in October 2005, for Resident Evil: Grave Danger, hosted by Mission Masters. I never had so much fun, even though I attended the event by myself (Nick wasn’t able to go). I left feedback for Dean “Cuda” Allen – who I’d never met prior to the game – on his website, introduced myself as a published novelist and a noob to the paintball sport, and figured that would be the end of it. I literally had no intentions of getting into paintball as much as I’m about to describe. Little did I know, but Cuda was in the market for some assistants starting in 2006, and my little feedback note prompted him to do a lot of digging into who I was. Apparently, a big impression was made, and even though my paintball experience couldn’t be described any other way but “green”, he invited me to join him in assisting with writing, designing, and running Mission Masters scenario games.
Many of you reading this may already know, but I’ve been with Mission Masters ever since, and don’t plan on leaving any time soon. 2010 marks the fourth consecutive season I will be directly involved with the behind-the-scenes aspects of paintball game design, and each year it gets better and better. I look back and, gosh, what if I hadn’t taken Nick up on his offer? What if I’d been too nervous or scared to take a chance with an extreme sport? What if I hadn’t found the Resident Evil game in October 2005 and never had a chance to meet Cuda or Jackson (Karl Koleck)? None of this would be happening now. I’ve been featured in Face-full and Jungle magazines by writing several articles based on the Mission Masters scenario games. Cuda is now my official website designer and our friendship has grown beyond the borders of the paintball community.
As invaluable as my relationship with paintball and its players, with the ebb and flow of the design process, none of it would’ve ever happened if it weren’t for my good friend Nick Guerrieri and his Brass Eagle Tigershark paintball marker.
B.T. Robertson
Author of the Chronicles of the Planeswalkers novel series
