RPL Event #2 in Las Vegas at Combat Zone - Wrap Up

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Top Left, Max'd Kidz getting their 2nd Place trophy. Top Right, Sawyer and Dan after the Kingman Training event. Middle Left, Rich Telford playing with a Kingman Training pistol. Middle Right, the Smith boys in cool hats after the event. Bottom Left, Kingman Trainging event.

We got 2nd. That just about sums it up. A really good trip and tourney, but not great. 2nd is an accomplishment, but not what we went to Las Vegas for and not as good as we could have done.

Here is a recap -

The RPL Event #2 of the 2010 season was held last weekend, April 17 and 18 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The tournament was hosted at The Combat Zone, a new field in the Las Vegas area a few minutes past the South Coast Hotel and Casino.

The event drew teams from all over and as expected Vegas area teams were on hand to play. Nevada was well represented by teams like Sucker Punch, Sin City Blackout and Vegas Aces. The usual suspects made the trip from California to play as well; teams like us (Max’d Kidz), Golden State Pirates and G-Squad to name a few.

Sacramento XSV provide the two days of hard labor, or reffing. Thomas Taylor was the field’s head referee. Rich Telford was the ultimate ref and spent a good part of the two days getting yelled at as usual for everything imaginable. Jr. Brown managed to find a spot on the field that had shade a good part of the day and none of the other XSV players seemed to have enough seniority to take it from him.

Shawn Walker had a full RPL crew on hand to run the event and it seemed to go off without a hitch. Start times were almost dead on, as were end times each day.

The event ran a little differently than has been the norm lately, but the old school format seemed well received. The RPL brought back the format of rank mixing meaning that instead of only playing against teams of the same rank in the prelims, teams were evenly paired up to play other ranked teams as well. An example, all the AAA 5 Man teams played against an Open 5 Man team and a AA 5 Man team. Most of the teams found it nice to play up or down a level or two to work on their game. On Sunday, teams only played against their own rank based on seeding.

We did very well in the new format winning both of our games against the Open team we played and winning 2 of 3 games against the AA team we played.

We beat G-Squad in the Finals in the first RPL event of the year and faced them again this time. They won 2 of three against us in the prelims and then again in the Finals which left us with the 2nd place finish. We can’t wait to face them again next month in Event #3.

The Combat Zone (http://www.combatzonepblv.com/) was a great host of the tournament and were able to showcase their scenario fields as well as a great tournament field. Besides an easy to get to location on Las Vegas Blvd, the new complex also featured a very large player area with 20 or so picnic tables that was all fully shaded, a bar-b-q that was cranking out the dogs, burgers and kabobs as well cold drinks, a really big indoor and fully stocked store for all gear needs and even indoor restroom facilities.

We hosted a small Kingman Training event. Sponsors Kingman Training (http://www.kingmantraining.com/) supplied their new Chaser and Eraser pistols to be played with as part of their Next Big Thing Tour. They also provided all the paint and air. We helped players of the event and spectators as well to play one on ones and two on twos in a mini tournament setting and a fun time was had by all. Walker and Telford even got in on the action and went head to head against two of the field owners during a break in the RPL tourney. If you have not had a chance, you really have to shoot these ultra cool pistols. To see where team Max’d Kidz will have the new Kingman Training products available again to try out see the schedule section of their website at http://smithpaintballblog.blogspot.com/ or email smithpaintball@yahoo.com with questions.

It was nice to see another successful event in the Las Vegas area and hopefully this signals the beginning of resurgence for the sport of paintball in Sin City.