Spring Game: Great Success!

I like!  Very Nice!  Clap Hands!  Great Success!  But seriously, we couldn't have asked for a better spring game for the MLTA.  Mother Nature provided us with 70° weather, I provided the gear, and 26 players provided the FUN!  This is probably the best turnout I can remember for an off-season game for our Laser Tag group, so it was exciting to see such a great mix of familiar faces and new friends.  I think we got a few of the newbies hooked on it too, so hopefully they come back for the regular season!

We met at my home at 5:30 and went around back to set up our base of operations.  Crates of equipment, spare batteries and tools, an adorable puppy, you know... the essentials.  Most of our "high tech" gear is still in development or getting repaired, so the playing field was pretty even as far as range and performance was concerned.  It made for some interesting shootouts during the course of the evening.  We played 6 games total, utilizing different parts of the park to stage games.

For the last game of the night, we managed to plan a "Veterans vs n00bs" game, but this one was different.  The team layout was the same.  There were 6 Veterans (all players who have been with us for at least 7 years) versus the rest of the remaining players, which pretty much had us outnumbered 3-to-1.  It's a pretty standard setting for our Veterans vs n00bs game, and it's usually pretty difficult to hold 'em off.  What usually helps the Veteran Team is forcing the other side into a bottleneck so they can take out multiple targets at once.  It's usually the make-or-break tactic for winning against the horde of new players.  To raise the stakes, we decided to split up the n00bs into two teams surrounding the Veterans Team.  This made it much more difficult as the Veterans were spit up with 3 watching each side.  There really wasn't any sort of terrain that we could force the bigger team into, so things were much more spread out and difficult to track.  However, the main advantage the Veterans team had over the mass of attackers was cover.  Making use of that, changing positions frequently, and nightfall helped cloak those movements, too.

Usually, by the end of a Veterans vs n00bs, either the Vets get overtaken or we squeak by with a few guys still standing.  This time, while I still think it was more difficult than other games, we managed to have all 6 guys survive the fight!  Granted, we were all pretty low on health, but it was fun leaving the field with the same group we went in with.

All-in-all a GREAT set of games, but a bit of a sweet ending for the veterans who have stuck through with us all these years.  I'm really looking forward to our upcoming summer season!!