I am not writing an overview of the Summertime Showdown Tournament held at Tombstone paintball. I will neither speak of the teams present nor their playing throughout the day.  Instead, I will review the Summertime Showdown as if it were a product so that you, the reader, will receive an idea of how this tournament is produced and if effectively managed.  I will do this by looking at the tournaments fields, referees, and my overall impression of the tournament and its environment.

The Fields:

        Held at Tombstone, an extremely reputable paintball field in Corona, California, a player should except nothing but the utmost in well-maintained and diverse fields.  This tournament location was no exception.  The fields ranged from an extremely small stacked tire field to open fields with spread out and varied obstacles and bunkers.  In playing these fields, my team and I found them to be very well balanced and simply a blast to play.  For example, my team (Purple Stuff) played on both sides of a field in two different games.  Yet, there was no disadvantage to either side.  It was all a matter of preference after the coin toss.  This was very nice, as teams would not be rendered hopeless because of a bad coin toss.  We know this to be true as we lost EVERY coin toss.  Therefore, the fields, which were all in essence speedball fields, were extremely fun to play.  They were evenly sided and diverse so that teams would have a well rounded and, most of all, fun day of exciting play.

The Referees:

        The referees at this event were nothing short of spectacular.  I would like to thank Broken Arrow and Hostile Takeover for taking the time to professionally run this tournament.  Calls were made swiftly and with authority and with a professional attitude.  For example, a player on my team was pulled from our game against the Dark Nights due to the fact that he was accidentally shooting non-field paint (one of his guppies was not emptied from an earlier playing day: purely an accident).  I am actually going to compliment the refs on this decision.  Why?  Because it shows that the judges were paying such close attention to the game that they even noticed something as small as the paint being shot.  This just goes to show you how professional and fair the reffing was during this tournament.  In other words, these were simply some the best refs I have ever seen.

Atmosphere:

        The atmosphere of this tournament was close to a sort of paintball theme park.  Companies and manufacturers such as Air Concept Industries (ACI) had vendor's booths showing of their new products.  This gave players a chance to see many products that they might consider buying in the future.  The Tombstone staff was a very pleasant bunch on hand.  Leon of Tombstone actually came up to my team to congratulate us and speak to us about the tournament. The staff did not just hold the event, they were part of it, and had no problem attending to the needs of its players.  The atmosphere was great and set the mood for a fun tournament.

All in All:

        All in all, the tournament was a blast.  With spectacular reffing, a friendly and professional staff, fun and diverse fields, and challenging teams.  My team and I had what might possibly be the best day of paintballing in our lives.  I suggest if you have a group of friends that love to play that you should come down and give the next Monthly Paintball Newsletter tournament a try.  You will be glad you did.  I would personally like to thank Sean Takeda for constructing such a wonderful tournament.  Sean, it was the MPN's first tourny and it was this good!!!  It can only get better as the Monthly Paintball Newsletter moves along.  In addition, it was great how all teams team could receive REAL prizes, not just the first place team.  Next I would like to thank Broken Arrow and Hostile Takeover for being incredible referees.  You made these games fair and fun.  Without your professional approach to the tournament, I do not think it would have been the same, period.  And lastly I would like to thank Leon and the Tombstone staff for being so friendly and courteous.  It is nice to see an owner and field staff that actually cares about their fields and players.  Purple Stuff and I look forward to seeing you very soon as the next Monthly Paintball Newsletter tournaments near.

Congratulations to the Killer Bees and Blur on their win.

Brian Speiser
MPN Columnist
Team Purple Stuff