The South West Paintball League (SWPL) first event was held at the Skirmish Dorset paintball venue.
Brain child of Oliver Fulbrook who also heads up the mechanical
masters events – the idea of the SWPL started when several local teams attended
walk-ons and decided to play 3-man woodsball type games but wanted to play
against more teams of varying skill sets. The South West is lacking in these
types of events and seeing these guys step up and provide a site and format is
great. These are early days and hopefully the teams at the SWPL can grow the
event and invest any money back into the fields and infrastructure.
The cost for the day was just £35pp or £40pp with BYO paint. The game format
would be 3 man teams firing at 10.5bps or mech markers, the chrono limit would
be 290FPS. A hybrid event which would see teams play half of their games in the
woods and half on the sup-air field. 1st place winners would receive FREE entry
into Part 2 in September. A much coveted trophy to keep, alongside your team
inscribed on the SWPL shield will continue to catalogue the future title
winners.
The day was cold, sunny but very windy. With gusts of 45mph, this unfortunately meant the sup-air side of the tournament could not be used as the bunkers would not stay in place for very long. The woodland areas however were nicely sheltered in a valley and games went ahead with the fields being played twice. 9 teams in total made the trip to the first SWPL.
Mike Taitt and GI Sports supported the event, bringing down the GI van and supplying fresh tournament grade paint for any teams that wanted it. Again, the event would also be BYO so sponsored teams could shoot their preferred or sponsored paint.
UK Predators and Outlanders made it to the final with the UK Predators taking the top podium place and Outlanders 2nd. Underdogz took 3rd and Dorset Skirmishers A team followed up with a 4th place. The top teams are not green when it comes to playing woodsball or supair, that being said the scratch teams put in some impressive games and the fields were really a leveller to play with large areas of rhododendron in some zones, which is great concealment but offers very little in the way of physical protection. The large buildings and obstacles in the various zones made for some useful blind spots which teams fully used to their advantage.
The next SWPL is scheduled to be bigger 5-man event and scheduled for the end of September or first week in October.
Images from the event can be found on the Paintball Magazine Facebook page
www.facebook.com/PaintballMag/
Follow this page for more info about the SWPL
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