We were invited to partake in the annual spring “Big Game” at Splatter Park near Columbus, Ohio. The field owner Sean had sent us an e-mail asking us to consider participating, citing a desire to “attract more teams that are scenario oriented for a more tactical feel to the game.” So at 4:30am the ARCs assembled at Battlefront to make the 2.5-hour trip down to Splatter Park. Chappy, Ivan, Goose and the Greek all loaded our gear into Ivan’s jeep and headed out, we were meeting CryptWolf and Bootman down there, Bootman was coming from the Viper Scenario in Indiana.

We arrived early at about 7:15 and were parked in the lower western parking lot at the bottom of a small rise. We set up our tent and went to register; this is where we ran into our first problem. Goose had come along to act as our team photographer, to take some action shots for what would be this review. Knowing that all the places we have played, Camp Blanding, EMR, Low Country and Sherwood all had different rules concerning photographers we asked what would have to be done. The registration guy told us that if he wanted to take pictures then Goose would still have to fill out a waiver, pay the entry fee of 20 dollars and would have to walk with a Ref. This was all acceptable to us and we sought out Sean to introduce ourselves and let him know we were going to take pictures of our team in action. This is where things went south, Sean told us that unless Goose was playing he wasn’t allowed on the field and if any of us were seen with a camera we would be removed from the game. We were told that he had a good relationship with his 2 camera guys and didn’t want to upset them. We have played a lot of different fields all over the country; fields where 68 Caliber and Pb Junkie and actual paintball magazines and publications were present and we have never been told we could not have our own cameras. This put a bad taste in our mouth and luckily we had an extra gear set up, so Goose geared up to play. We all checked out tanks, filled our pods and matched the paint to our barrels. Ivan and I have matching Hammerhead sets and we could get no 5 balls to ever match up to our fins. Ivan ended up using a .683 while I opted for a bigger .688 because the oblong and dimpled “Wreck” Paintballs kept getting stuck in my smaller Fins.

It was now about 8:00am and we decided to head up early and chrono our markers. When we arrived at the chrono there was 1 ref overseeing 9 chrono stations, basically he was standing at the back and pointing people towards open stations and telling them the field limit was 285. We all chrono’d and made our needed adjustments to get down to 285, then we approached the ref and ask where we get officially checked and marked as chrono’d. We were informed that we would be checked again as we walked onto the field, this seemed strange to us but everyplace does it different so we went back down the hill to our tent. We made our rounds talking to other players that were in the area, about 9:00am a ref wandered through telling us that we should be getting ready to start. So we all put on our podpacks and vests and with the other players started our way towards the admin building for where we assumed the Safety and game briefing would be. As we were walking up we saw huge droves of people entering the game field, when we arrived we were told that we had missed the beginning of the game and would have to wait for the next reinsertion, it was now 9:05 and we were informed the safety briefing had been over for about 15 minutes, so when the ref came down to tell us to get ready the safety briefing had already been over.

Finally after 10 minutes they lined us up for reinsertion, we saw a chrono on the reinsertion for each team and got ready for our official chrono check, that’s when the ref said “Ok you guys are going in”. We walked right past the chrono, 50 marker toting people and not one of them got checked. We were walking onto a field with hundreds of people and the field had no control or regulation on the FPS, this was the first joke of the day.

We were led into the field and we started to notice things here were very very wrong. As we walked onto the field we saw refs not wearing face masks, just goggles. The field rules on the website and posted around the property had stated no automatic markers, no ramping, Pumps and Semi-autos only, so that’s what we had brought with us, a mixture of Mech Cockers, Mags and Pump guns. As we looked around walking through the first firefight all we could hear were fully automatic A-5's and X-7's. The ref took us straight into a firefight, they placed us at the bottom of the first hill and told us to take the hill, a group of us moved to the right tape line and the whole team advanced easily to the top of the hill at which point the other team hit us head on. There was no cover, very few small misplaced bunkers and no underbrush to hide in, then the enemy reinsertion was placed at the bottom of the hill, the same spot we just left and the whole group was effectively cut off and surrounded. Within 5 minutes we were looking for the dead box.

Finding the reinsertion point was a complete waste of time, we asked a ref who was wearing nothing but a pair of goggles, no mask, where the reinsertion was and we were pointed to the “Hospital” basically a netted car garage in the middle of the field, as we entered it was filled with enemy players cleaning goggles and what not, we left there and searched out 3 more refs before somebody could tell us where the reinsertion was, finally we were told to go back to the original entry point.

The rest of the day went pretty much the same way, our team would be inserted directly into the fight, only to have the other teams reinsertions put into positions directly surrounding us and leaving us in a doomed situation. There was no game freedom, the refs basically kept placing everybody where they would smash into each other head on, you couldn’t move, flank or perform anything but head on fights. The few times we were able to move into a position where we could actually play some paintball and do some good the refs would yell at us and force us to go back there they placed us. Marking somebody out required 4 or 5 shots to do it, the balls would just bounce off people and when they did break a great deal of people just wiped them off and kept playing, I saw no less then three separate incidents where a ref watched a player wipe his paint and keep playing.

At this point in the day our whole team was pretty upset and disappointed, Bootman, Spartakis and I decided to seek out Sean and get some answers to the questions that had been bugging us all day. We found him and basically asked him what happened to the full auto rules, the complete lack of chrono enforcement and other questions about the game in general. This was the worst part of the whole day; never before have we met a field owner who exuded such arrogance as this man. We were told, “While scenario paintball was an intimate game with honorable players who did everything to help others out, that’s not what I do here”. He basically told us he was here for the money, that he had 400 players a day and that he was here for the group of players that come out, spend there money play once and then leave.

He told us how in 20 years he had seen and done it all, that we basically had no idea what we were talking about. The whole conversation was insulting; this man had invited us down here claiming he wanted to “attract more teams that are scenario oriented for a more tactical feel to the game.” We had driven almost 3 hours and paid our money to be insulted. Bootman had driven 4 hours from Indiana from a REAL scenario game to participate with the team. We left Sean disgusted, thinking it couldn’t possibly get any worse, but it wasn’t over yet.

We decided to stay for the prize drawing, figuring we paid our money we might as well see if we manage to win anything. Everybody gathered around the back end of this box truck near the main building. The man in the back started out by giving a speech about how they had 1200 people in attendance (there was maybe 200 people standing around the truck) He told us how the previous weekend EMR Castle conquest only has 1000, he told us this made them better. We were completely insulted this man could even compare the disaster they just had with anything put on by Blue’s Crew and EMR. We have played at EMR we have spoken to and shook hands with Blue, for this guy to even compare to such an outstanding individual made all of us sick. Next came the prize drawing, where the man in the truck began with “If you don’t want to get hurt I suggest you move away”. One individual who was standing near the center moved out and stood beside us, telling us “Last time I was here they did this, some guy landed on my calf and fractured my ankle” We were a bit confused by this as they started drawing numbers for a few marker packages, then came the “Best Welts” award. They actually had people come up and take their shirts off to reveal all the welts they had acquired from non-breaking paint. It was ridiculous, no young guns award, and no most honorable player, just an award for who took the most damage. Then came the part that really got us, they proceeded to throw prizes out of the back of the truck, hats, t-shirts, goggles and all manner of things, people were basically fighting each other over it, it was scary and we could now see how the other gentleman had fractured his ankle.

It was at this point we decided that enough was enough and we took our leave, we said goodbye to the people we had met that were great players, Country and Rock and invited them to come see us at Battlefront for a real paintball game.

In short the day was a real disappointment, we had come expecting a scenario paintball game, but found it FUBAR. The field was terrible, the paint was disgusting and the owner was the rudest most arrogant man we had ever met. Avoid Splatter Park! We have since heard from other scenario teams we play with that Splatter Park is not a place they go anymore. If not for it’s close proximity to Columbus and OSU with a constant rotating stock of players a place like this would not stay in business. If you play real paintball take our advice and skip this field, it’s nothing but a waste of time and money.