Well...Kiwi's have to be the most unassumingly rugged people I have ever come across. The whole field was run out of the field owner's cell phone. He ran the whole shebang by himself. Now you think that would be a roudy nightmare, and in the States it could potentially grow into one very quickly, but your average Kiwi's are very well mannered. The field was around 15K from Wellington, and Peter had got in touch with some friends, who called their friends, and before I knew it we had enough warm bodies to fill a booking. We were sixteen in number. Peter, his son Jason, his friend and I were on the "Brown Team" with four others. In the photo above, Peter is on the right, and his son is the front row right, Jason's friend is FRL.
We were given a very basic orientation at the "Club House" and then climbed half a click straight up to the field. When I say straight up, it had to be a fifty degree grade uphill. I was beat when I got to the field!
The field was a narrow track on the uphill side, with a wooden fort at one end (shown partially above in the picture) and another wooden fort with trenches 150 meters opposite. Nicely constructed, too. On the entrenched fort, the defiladed positions were sand-bagged trenchs overlooking the trails to it. Really nice! The boundry was the track on the uphill side forming a ridge between the two forts, and a ravine of dense undergrowth, trees, and spiny brush decending about 300 meters.. Brutal field. The ravine literally fell away from the ridgeline. If your footing slipped, you'd tumble down into the revine until you either got stuck on a bush or hit a tree. The ravine was criss-crossed with trails. Good firing positions were possible along trails, and at intersecting paths, but the uphill and downhill parts quickly lost line of sight. Hard to ambush anyone from above. Oh... you could hear them well enough, you just couldn't hit anything but scrub brush with a paintball.
The owner, Dave, ran four games in two hours. Two attack and defend, two straight two-flag games. I had a great time. I played sniper game, waiting near our fort. I have to tell you, that even on defence, I couldn't see the other team take possesion of our flag on two occasions.... that's how dense the undergrowth was. Course, I can be fairly dense at times, too... perhaps thats the reason we lost two flags. "Huh? Did you hear somethin? What did ya say? Speak up, sonny?"
I got whacked four times. I gave better than I got, on this occasion. I shot seventeen out. When you got hit, the routine was to go to the hut halfway between the forts, and go inside for ten seconds. Doesn't sound like much of a penalty, but if you had to climb 100 meters up a ravine to get there, it wasn't all cokes and smiles. Everybody was puffing after that climb.
The markers were PMI Piranhas, pretty new ones,and they worked flawlessly all day for everyone. No Squigees supplied, however, and no ref to clean your gun or goggles. CO2, as you can see. Paint was fairly fresh Nelson, but quite dear at $25 (Kiwi) a hundred. I guess it works out Okay for field paint with the dollar conversion, but it's still around $150 a case USD. And there were no reffs, baby, just the one guy and your buddies.
If you find yourself in NZ for a "holiday" and you want to play here, be sure to call and make a booking at a field. From my experience, paintball is played as a "club outing" in most areas except Auckland. Everybody in the club knows each other and they typically meet once or twice a month. Most activities are set up this way here. A walk-on player may find an empty field. I've met several guys form NZ over the internet, and they're helpful regarding tourneys and fields. Markers can be tricky to get into New Zealand, but renting is easy enough.
